Chris Powell: Alphabet people needn’t be so terrified in Conn.

A six-band rainbow flag representing the LGBTQ community. The initials stand for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer or questioning.

MANCHESTER, Conn.

Many people are terrified by Donald Trump’s return to the presidency, but perhaps none more so than members of sexual minorities, who lately have commandeered nine letters -- a third of the alphabet -- to construct an acronym with which to represent themselves. The other day an activist among Connecticut's alphabet people told The  Hartford Courant that the political climate "continuously demonizes and degrades us" and that Trump wants "to legislatively and socially erase our community."

Really? Is there evidence for such claims, or do they just manifest paranoia, neurosis, hysteria and self-absorption?

For Connecticut isn't darkest South Carolina. To the contrary, it long has been quite libertarian about sexual identity. 

In 1971 the state was among the first to repeal its ancient law criminalizing homosexual acts, a law that hadn’t been enforced for many years. To get rid of it little political courage was required from legislators. 

In 1991 the state prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation. 

In 2005 the state legalized same-sex "civil unions" and in 2008 same-sex marriage. 

While some towns decline requests to fly the "pride flag" at town hall, it’s because the flag constitutes propagandizing for causes government hasn’t endorsed and most people oppose. This is not oppression.

As for Trump, while he, like most people, is against letting men who think of themselves as women participate in women's sports, he has not proposed anything to prevent people from presenting themselves as being of a gender that doesn't match their anatomy. Indeed, though Trump has gotten no credit for it, as a Democratic president would have gotten, his choice for treasury secretary, investment fund manager Scott Bessent, is a gay man married to another gay man, and they have two children. 

They live in darkest South Carolina and have yet to be assassinated, and there have been no shrieks of outrage about Bessent from the MAGA crowd.

Trump will prohibit confining in women's prisons men who think of themselves as women, since such practice facilitates rape. But this isn't oppression either; it's safety for women prisoners.

Presumably Trump will oppose letting men use women's restrooms and vice versa, but this traditional policy for gender privacy doesn't obstruct anyone's access to a restroom. When you have to go, you have to go, and you always will be able to. 

Amid Connecticut’s political correctness, the restroom issue has gone nutty here, with the General Assembly having required all public schools to put feminine-hygiene products in at least one male restroom. But even without that law, those products would be available in the school nurse's office, and furiously busy as the new president is, it may be a while before he worries about school restrooms in Connecticut.

The alphabet people profess to be terrified that Trump will get Congress to prohibit irreversible sex-change therapy for young people who suffer gender dysphoria. Of course many other people are terrified that some states still don't prohibit such therapy. But objection to it is not oppression but adherence to the principle that minors are not competent to make life-changing decisions. Nor should minors be pressured into such decisions by adults. 

Besides, most young people seem to outgrow their gender dysphoria and many others come to regret their irreversible sex-change therapy. Such therapy should wait until young people turn 18.

So what’s left to terrify the alphabet people? 

They often hold public rallies complaining of oppression and demanding respect, but the supposed oppressors never show up and nobody gets hurt. Nearly everyone who encounters the rallies passes by in libertarian indifference, the highest form of respect. The demonstrators are in more danger of getting hit by a drunken driver than by a "homophobe," a "transphobe," or a hysteria-phobe.

So the alphabet people should take the chips off their shoulders and live their lives as best they can. While some people could do without their braying, fewer people wish them harm than wish harm to Trump, and the alphabet offers another 17 letters with which they can continue searching for their authentic selves.    

Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).