Choosing to be you

I had an interesting conversation with a colleague the other day. It started with a discussion about poverty. As a white man, who grew up in a Catholic, middle-class family, he never understood how kids needed schools to provide breakfast and lunch free of charge. It wasn’t until he started getting involved in community work that he truly began to understand the impact poverty had on kids and their performance at school.

Somehow the conversation made its way from supporting the youth in our community and then to transgender youth specifically. His believe is that being gay and/or transgender is a choice. He thinks kids do it to fit in or stand out in their communities. He then said something really profound, ran right into the point and didn’t even see it. He said, “with everything happening to transgender people right now, why would you ever choose to identify that way?”

That’s exactly the point. Why would anyone ever choose to be hated, discriminated against, rejected, and threatened? They wouldn’t. No one would say, “I think I am going to be gay or transgender because I want people to threaten my life. I want my life to be extra hard. I want people to stare and spit and swear at me just for being. I want people to reject me, to throw me out of places, to create laws against my existence. Yeah, I think I’ll be trans.”

There is a choice, but not whether one is or is not LGBTQ+. The choice is whether to live as one’s authentic self, to be brave enough to say, “I am going to be me, even if they hate me. Even if they reject me. Even if they make laws to dehumanize me. Because I have to be me.” Or to choose silence. To hide and live life as a lie, being someone you don’t know, in a body you don’t belong in, and hating yourself for it. All in an attempt to avoid the hate, rejection, discrimination, and threats to your life.

So that’s the choice, to hide your authentic self, to isolate and pretend, or to be yourself and face the hate of others. Some choice, huh?

Me? I choose kindness. I choose to believe people are who they show me they are. I choose to encourage others to be their authentic selves and then love and accept them for it. I choose to be a safe place for everyone. Period.