The Lesson Texas, Florida, Other States Can Learn From Gwen Araujo

I can't keep up with the hate being thrown at the transgender community. It really is mind-numbing to listen to some of the ignorance. If you're going to come at me with a Bible and tell me what God said, save it. You're not speaking for God. You're speaking for yourself and claiming it's God. God will judge us all in the end. And people who say Jesus this or Jesus that and judge transgender people ought to be ashamed of themselves. Read words in the Bible where he said he does not know you and soak in the message.

This is the problem with religion, but not faith. You see, organized religions oftentimes hit you with an agenda that deviates from the message of God and Jesus. It happens. It's one of the reasons I distrust churches, although I know they do good things for communities. I think a person's spirituality is their own. Their relationship with God is unique to them, and they don't have to peacock or grandstand around others to show how pious they are. I also believe God, Jesus loves all people, even the LGBTIQ and specifically the transgender community.

Let me hit you with some truth here. People don't become transgender because somebody put a silly idea in their heads. However, if you try to suppress them and force them into a box when they are transgender, you can do great damage to them in the long term. This is a lesson that we have learned through the years. There was a young girl of 10 years old who did a video, I believe in Florida. As they say, she was assigned boy at birth, but she's a girl. Her parents aren't fighting it, and that's a good thing.

I don't know why God creates transgender people, but I know it isn't an accident. I know it isn't a mistake. God gives us these experiences because He believes we can handle them and we can learn what we need to learn. Really, when you're transgender you learn a lot more about mankind, because there's a lot of hate out there. However, you'll also discover those people capable of showing you tremendous love an acceptance.

Gwen Araujo was murdered on October 4, 2002, and they tried to use the "transgender panic" excuse to get these killers off. Make no mistake, they are killers. They are murderers. In fact, there was a young lady who I won't name here who kind of instigated it and never even got a slap on the wrist for it. A transgender person's life is as valuable as anybody else's life, but we devalue it all the time. People like to dead name them after they have been murdered. They've been out as the women they are, and the obituary will still mention their male name. They will be mocked and ridiculed, and this still goes on in 2022.

I want to talk about how Gwen Araujo relates to what's going on right now. in Texas with this "don't say gay" nonsense. For the longest time, when a family was dealing with a gay or lesbian or even transgender youth, the idea was to guilt and shame them into "acting normal". You wonder why some of the people in their 40s and 50s now are coming out as transgender? A lot of them knew early on, but they felt guilt and shame and suppressed it as best they could. I'm one of them. I understand completely, and that's one of the reasons why I admired Gwen Araujo. She was brave to live her life as she was.

There wasn't a lot of acceptance for the LGBT community back in those days. That changed slowly, but for years they had to do it in private. Even somebody expressing their gender had to do it only in certain places for fear that they'd get beaten. That's what makes the transgender community so important at places like Stonewall. While gay and lesbians might be able to hide in the closet in discomfort in those dangerous times, you weren't hiding being transgender very well, were you? If you were expressing it, they saw you.

So by the time Gwen was coming out as trans and openly admitting it at 14 years old, her mother Sylvia Guerrero accepted her. However, she didn't know what needed to be done. There was no handbook. We were just starting to see more people who were transgender, although a lot of times in the media and entertainment, they were the jokes. We started seeing that they at least existed.

It wasn't easy for Gwen as she dealt with wanting to express herself as a girl in a boy's body. She wanted to put on lipstick at school and dress like any other girl would. Even if people were telling her it was wrong, she only knew how she felt.

What put those thoughts into her head? The reality is that's how she was born. She was always different, even as a little boy. As she grew up, it became more apparent. Sylvia didn't know how to deal with all of it, and she reacted as other parents might. Tearing down the feminine posters and the feminine decorations in her bedroom, removing her makeup supplies. All of that, because she didn't want to deal with Gwen. Where was Eddie? She even told the gender therapist not too speak with her again. But Sylvia realized it was wrong to do that.

All she knew was how to love her daughter just the way she was, so she took her shopping. She bought her makeup. When Gwen became good at doing hair and makeup, she encouraged her. This was Gwen's dream, to be a makeup and hair stylist of the stars, and there were plans to get her into beauty school.

It's kind of hard to be a mother and deal with your child when the hormones are raging. Now you've got a transgender child, and that's even worse. She feels like a girl, a straight girl, so she wants to be with boys. How do you deal with that? It wasn't gay to Gwen as if that matters.

Sylvia knew that it was dangerous. I think that's why she would be awake at night when her daughter went somewhere, worried about whether she'd come home. Gwen was going to do what a lot of girls at 17 years old were doing. Nobody was telling her it was dangerous and why she needed to be careful. I think Sylvia was trying to be the best mother she could be, but there was no handbook. That's the point.

The education we see now is big. We are learning a lot about what it is to be trans and young. We're also educating people that it's not okay to freak out and beat a transgender person to death. There is no excuse. It's not a mental illness either, and the people who claim it to be should be ashamed of themselves.

It's something bigger. It's just who these children are. It's who Gwen was, but she didn't have the resources around her to help her become the woman she was going to be. She just had her feelings and a mother who did the best she could to understand.

Resources like the LGBTIQ community offer are very necessary. Some people are going to have the knee jerk reaction that if you acknowledge the kids that are different, you're putting messages into other kids heads. You're making them gay and you're making them trans. I used to have a little bit of a worry about that, but it's slowly gone away. You're not putting any thoughts into anybody's heads. However, the education you give to these children is one that helps them accept who they are and know that they are not bad for being different.

It helps them as they grow up and their bodies change, because a transgender woman doesn't want to see the masculine changes. I should say many of them don't, because there are those who don't have a problem with not having certain gender confirming surgeries.

To the ones who are young, odds are more in favor than against that they don't want the masculine changes that are coming. I understand the concern to make them wait a little bit longer, but beating them into submission and telling them they have to be the boy isn't the way to go about it either. Let's have a discussion, but let's not silence the transgender community or the LGBTIQ community. That's harmful to these kids.

All that "don't say gay" does is leave these youths to figure it out for themselves, and that can be very dangerous. We still live in a world full of hate, and this education is part of the process. It's okay to speak about these issues in front of a classroom of a majority of straight children. For one thing, it lets the kids that are a little bit different know that they aren't bad. It also lets the straight kids know that those who are different aren't bad either. It's a message of acceptance and tolerance.

This last part is what hits close to home with me. Gwen just had her 37th birthday a couple of days ago as I write this. Her mother has lived a difficult life with depression in the years that followed. She was a spokeswoman for transgender acceptance for a while, and her message was very needed. It's needed now. However, it's been a struggle for her ever since. I know that Sylvia has seen a lot of the information, and she wishes she knew it then. That information then might have saved Gwen's life. That's the bottom line.

When you think about what we know now, 20 years later, it's not acceptable that we wouldn't be allowed to have these discussions. The children need to know. You're not changing the kids from who they really are, but you're letting the different kids know that they are alright. In a religious sense, God loves them too.

This last part is just a little addition to let you know that if you want to support Sylvia Guerrero as she struggles and help her keep the possessions that belonged to her daughter, there's a GofundMe site. I know she would appreciate it, and maybe somebody could come at her with a hand out to lift her up and get her back on her feet again. God works in many ways, so maybe there is an angel out there for her.