By Ann Rostow–
Mudville at MSNBC
I’m sorry to say that my news phobia has continued, so I don’t know what to make of the shakeup at MSNBC, the channel I once flipped on at daybreak and watched until cocktail hour. Sometimes I even turned it on in the afternoon as well. (Cue: rimshot.)
But seriously, I have switched my attention to the odd stories in the recesses of the paper. I click on articles about dark skies in Scotland or the promotional efforts of Meghan Markle. The TV comes on for sports or detective shows only. Quick glances inform me of the latest outrages, and I’ll also pursue any headline that warns of division or problems with Trump or Musk’s activities. But that’s it.
This fundamental shift has dried up my fairly rich store of current information, yet even thus impoverished, I now courageously prepare to draft my GLBT column. We could start by delving more deeply into the new case that the Supreme Court accepted for review in January. Alternatively, we could ask ourselves why Meghan has changed her new brand from “American Riviera” to “As Ever.”
“Some of you may have heard whispers about what I’ve been creating,” the Duchess explains in a video. “I’m thrilled to introduce you to As Ever—a brand that I created and have poured my heart into.” She adds, “This new chapter is an extension of what has always been my love language, beautifully weaving together everything I cherish—food, gardening, entertaining, thoughtful living, and finding joy in the everyday.”
I’ve never had a strong opinion about Harry and Meghan, but in my new world, it seems important to start judging. New chapter? What was the previous chapter? Why would anyone be “whispering” as if Markle’s revised brand name was worthy of excited speculation? How could she have “poured her heart” into the new brand when she spent the last year or more hyping the previous brand? I hate the now-hackneyed expression “love language.” We all cherish food, entertaining, thoughtful living, and finding joy. These are not specialized areas, and if they are, that’s why we have Julia Child, Martha Stewart, books, and caviar. So there.
To Arms, Citizens!
My wife just sent me a Washington Post article about transgender Americans buying guns. The Post interviewed a dozen trans men and women who were arming themselves, and reported that a new subreddit for “transguns” has drawn 2,500 new members since the election. Wake Forest professor David Yamane, a sociologist who studies gun culture, tells the paper that “anecdotal accounts” indicate the phenomenon “is absolutely happening.”
I can understand the impulse, although statistics make clear that, if anyone is harmed by the gun you just bought for yourself, it’s likely to be you or a family member. Further, what exactly are people planning to do with these firearms? Kill those who are hostile to transgendered men and women? Even in the midst of Trump’s attacks on the trans community, the chances of actually being in a life or death situation are vanishingly low. (That said, they’re a lot higher for trans people than are the odds against cisgender citizens.)
I’m guessing that the trend reflects the combination of rage and fear that Trump and company provoke, and I’m also guessing that other groups are visiting the gun shops—women, minorities, immigrants, gays, lesbians. Whatever the actual dimensions of this Trump-inspired pistol packing, it adds to the simmering violence, distrust, and madness that now underlie our society.
James Carville recently suggested Democrats lay low and wait while the Republicans self-destruct, and I appreciate the strategy. Guys? Keep your powder dry.
No Disaster
Moving elsewhere, while I was about to look up details of the new Supreme Court case, I just fell into an article about losing things that, naturally, made a reference to the Elizabeth Bishop poem “One Art.” (My friend Jill sent me Bishop’s biography, which I recommend highly.) That sent me to a lengthy analysis of the poem itself, which included some handwritten notes that Bishop typed before she started.
“HOW TO LOSE THINGS/ ?/ THE GIFT OF LOSING THINGS?” What? Did she think those could be good titles? What follows are prosaic jottings that seemingly can’t have been written by the genius who penned “One Art.” But what I eventually recognized was that genius has a process. Elizabeth Bishop didn’t sit down on a sunlit patio with a glass of wine, write: “the art of losing isn’t hard to master,” pause for a sip, put her pen in her mouth, and frown for a minute before continuing. She crafted her famous villanelle from the raw materials of her mind and history and it probably took weeks and weeks. (I should look that up.)
Anyway, this is obviously beside the point, but let’s say the poem is taught to high school students in public schools. The last stanza reflects Bishop’s gay heartbreak, the loss of a woman’s love. And let’s say one of those students comes home and discusses the class with his conservative Christian parents. Would his parents then be able to claim that the school district deprived them of their free exercise of religion by teaching the work of a gay woman, or by indirectly presenting a lesbian scenario? Would they claim their right to parenting had been infringed?
The question is not far from the one posed to the Supreme Court, which will decide whether or not some Montgomery County, Maryland, parents have the right to opt their kids out of elementary school readings that might include five or six GLBT children’s books. The books describe two princes fighting dragons, a puppy lost at the pride parade, a girl with a crush on a friend, a trans boy coming out to his parents, and a niece meeting her uncle’s male fiancé.
At first, the district allowed parents to opt out, but eventually it became too cumbersome due to high numbers. Legal precedent indicates that schools may not coerce religious speech or action. But just because a student doesn’t agree with something discussed in school does not mean the school is violating his or her constitutional rights. Indeed, parents can’t complain about every little thing with which they might disagree, particularly something that’s passively presented in the classroom. As such, a lower court ruled against the complaining parents, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit backed up the lower court.
It’s never good news when the Supreme Court accepts review of a civil rights or, in this case, First Amendment victory. Presumably, at least four justices would like to reverse the Fourth Circuit, and with this bunch, it’s pretty likely that one more will be convinced. A majority of this Court wants the GLBT community to remain quietly in the closet, and although they have enlarged it to include double shelves, a special shoe area, four mirrors, and a little velvet bench in the center, the notion that school kids might discover we are part of the real world is not to be indulged.
Who Let the Alpha Dogs Out?
Here’s part of the reason the far right has put our community in its crosshairs. What would you think if I told you that people identifying as “LGBTQ+” have tripled in the 12 years that Gallup has tracked sexual orientation? It’s true. The pollsters question 14,000 Americans by phone every year about everything. And obviously they’re not using landlines.
(They stopped relying exclusively on home telephones after last year’s results led to headlines like: “Gallup Finds 78 percent of Americans Have Mobility Problems and Short Term Memory Issues,” “Gallup: Nearly 26 percent of Americans Cannot Name The Current Year,” and “Americans Believe Kids These Days Need Better Manners! Gallup Says.”)
But here’s the flip side of the coin. The increase is due to one main trend: GenZ teens and young adults identifying themselves as bisexual. We’ve seen this before. I think GenZ began in 1996, which makes me wonder again, why did people call the previous generation “millennials”? They didn’t even make it to the millennium! GenZ should be the millennium generation.
And as we were saying, it’s not clear how exactly GenZ defines bisexuality. Are they really indifferent to the gender of their future partners? Or are they just reluctant to close the door? It doesn’t really matter, but the trend suggests we appear to be expanding fast, and it will only continue. Each generation has a higher percentage of those who place themselves in a non-heterosexual and/or transgender category, although the percentage of people identifying as “gay men” or “lesbians” remains more constant.
Also, I just discovered to my horror that Gen Alpha began in 2010 and is just coming to an end in 2025! I have only begun to learn the salient facts about GenZ, and now I’m late for the party with Gen Alpha. And what about the next group? Are we really going to call them Gen Beta? Can we get some imagination going? Maybe the Alphas can come up with a new name now that they’re almost all here. Maybe they can name the Betas before they get old enough to make a fuss about it.
Can you wait one second? My landline is ringing.
So Goes Maine … Let’s Hope
I couldn’t even bring myself to read that someone took the “T” off the National Parks website that highlights the Stonewall Inn as a National Monument. All sorts of government agencies have taken the TQ out of LGBTQ in deference to one of these executive orders about gender. I’m a little surprised Trump and Musk haven’t just erased the LG and B while they were at it. There’s no excuse for removing the T from any official reference to our community, but taking the T off Stonewall, where transgender patrons led the rebellion against a police raid and launched the gay rights movement, is beyond petty.
Maine’s Governor, Janet Mills, had to listen to Trump condemn her for enforcing transgender rights for athletes in the Lobster State. In a morning meeting that went viral, Trump put Mills on the spot. When she said she’d follow federal law, he insisted that he was federal law.
“Well, you better do it,” Trump warned. “You better do it, because you’re not going to get any federal funding at all if you don’t. And, by the way, your population, even though it’s somewhat liberal, although I did very well there, your population doesn’t want men playing in women’s sports.
“So you better comply–because otherwise you’re not getting any federal funding.”
Mills replied: “I’ll see you in court.”
Subsequently, she’s been the target of a recall petition, which I gather won’t go far in Maine, one of 30 states where the governor is not subject to recall.
And finally, we continue to make progress in the courts where the fight against Trump and Musk’s most drastic efforts takes place. One of our early victories came in the case of a trans woman prisoner, who was about to be moved into the men’s population and lose the hormone prescription she had taken for many years. We’ve seen a number of similar rulings, preliminary injunctions, in other trans prison cases, but I was very surprised to read (in The New York Times) that only two dozen of the 1,500 trans women in federal custody are held in women’s facilities, in part due to the red tape involved.
Say what? What’s happening to those women? I will investigate if it doesn’t involve an exorbitant amount of effort.
In other transgender court news, U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes delivered a blistering series of pushbacks to government lawyers during a three-day hearing on Trump’s new ban on transgender service members. I’m not even sure of the contours of the Trump ban, because I think our new Defense Secretary dumbed them down a bit. But whatever they are, they are not likely to survive a mid-March showdown in Judge Reyes’ courtroom.
The Trump crew will appeal any defeat to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia—usually friendly terrain for our side—but these days, who knows?
arostow@aol.com
GLBT Fortnight in Review
Published on February 27, 2025
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