Struggling

Warning: ranting and whining ahead. Skip this if you don't care for that kind of thing, and I honestly don't blame you if you do. 

I am trying. I swear to God, y'all, I am TRYING to be productive and creative, but I keep failing and I keep beating myself up for that and of course that means I have less motivation to try, because if I don't try then I can't fail. 

I'm positive that I have some kind of undiagnosed condition affecting me, because I haven't felt like myself for a long time now. Not quite a year, but at least since the summer, so... eight to nine months now? I don't know if it's physiological or psychological, or both, or something else entirely. I just know that I hate feeling like this and I want not to feel like this but there's nothing I can do to change it. 

"Why don't you go see a doctor, Erin?"  Believe me, I would love to do that. The problem is that I don't have any insurance and can't afford the ruinous rates that medical professionals charge.

"What about the Affordable Care Act?" Yeah, about that... there's nothing "affordable" about the ACA, at least for me. Last December I got a letter from the IRS, and after a brief panic attack where I was certain that I was about to be audited (because that was exactly the kind of year 2023 was), I read the letter and it told me that "A new law expanded the availability of affordable health care plans. Most people who sign up through Healthcare.gov find a plan that costs $10 a month with financial help."

BULLSHIT.

The Bronze level would literally bankrupt me. That's more than I make in a month, and then some. 

"Why don't you get a job that offers healthcare?" The short answer to that isn't accurate and the accurate answer to that isn't short. The medium answer is that I lost my job during the Great Recession, so I moved in with my parents. I wasn't able to find anything other than temp work, and then my parents started having heath problems and they needed me around to help them, drive them to doctor's appointments, pick dad up when he fell, etc. By the time the economy had fully recovered, I needed to be on-call for them pretty much constantly. I could get away with going to a weekend convention (even though that was a gamble) but on a long-term basis they needed me here. Then the Pulse Massacre happened and I founded  OBS, and I thought that maybe I could make a living as an author and product reviewer and 2A advocate, but between my parents' declining health and the enduring clusterfuck that was 2020, that never happened. At this point, with my father now dead, my mother needs me more than ever. Even if I did try to get a job the gap in my resume is just too big for anything other than part-time work in retail or fast food, and part time work is notorious for giving no benefits and not having a consistent schedule. 

At this point I don't know how much longer I can keep going. The Government, both state and federal, talks a good game about how they care about people like me and if I just apply I'll get help, but every time I've applied I've either been denied or priced out. Apparently I fall into what is known as the Medicaid Gap, where my income is too shitty to pay for medical care, but my living conditions aren't shitty enough to get me any sort of a break. 

I am fully aware that the state, the country, the world, life itself owes me nothing except death. On the other hand, since 2008 I've been told that this country wants to help people like me, and the politicians who espoused those views keep getting elected, so I'd be a fool not to try to take advantage of that. There's a saying I read in a book so long ago that I can't even remember the title, but the sentiment is essentially "Any man would forswear himself with a gun to his head" and that's how I feel right now. The only problem is that every time I ask for the help which I'm assured is out there, no one gives enough of a shit to actually render it. At this point I'm convinced it's all for show, that the politicians who claim to want to help don't actually want to help but instead only want the appearance of helping because it earns them votes. 

I guess I'll just die, then? 

What Fresh Hell is This?

I don't want to be told that my concerns about the Government making it illegal to be transgender are hyperbole ever again.

 

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A post shared by Erin Reed (@erininthemorning)

Here is the full article, and here is the full audio recording.

If you think I'm overreacting by being concerned that elements of Big Government are actively scheming to prevent adults from exercising their body autonomy, then let me remind you of all the problems we still have today as a result of a similar moral panic which occurred over 100 years ago. Prohibition, aka "How dare adults have the ability to decide whether or not they can get drunk," gave us the following:

• The creation and subsequent militarization of the ATF, aka "the Revenuers";
• Organized crime, which was created to smuggle and distribute prohibited alcohol;
• The War on Drugs, aka Prohibition 2.0, because when the Volstead Act was repealed organized crime pivoted to the next profitable thing;
• Gang culture and violence, an outgrowth of both organized crime and the war on drugs;
• the National Firearms Act of 1934, which was the result of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre of 1929, and which was not only the first attempt at national Firearm Prohibition but also led to further infringements upon the Second Amendment like the Gun Control Act of 1968, the Hughes Amendment of 1986, and so forth. 

So no, do not attempt to tell me that another government attempt to control grown-ass adults who aren't harming anyone (except, arguably, themselves) won't end up the same way. 

I say "arguably" above because while I don't believe that transition harms anyone, even if it did, what business is it of yours? Grown-ass adults have the right to do unhealthy things to their bodies. It's why we allow them to smoke and to drink alcohol. So long as you aren't hurting another person through your actions, such as driving while impaired, what you do to your own body in the privacy if your home is your business and not mine and definitely not the Government's. If you believe otherwise, then understand that you are saying it's the right of the Government to declare what actions are unhealthy for you to take and forbid you from taking them, and by the same token that Government can compel you to take actions which they deem as healthy. Do you want compulsory Covid-19 jabs? Because that line of reasoning is how you get compulsory Covid-19 jabs. So if you want to get drunk, eat junk food, get high, get a tattoo, get cosmetic surgery... hell, if you want to amputate a limb... it's your right as an adult to choose to have that done. It's also your right (and duty) as an adult to deal with the consequences of that choice. That's what freedom is: the right to make choices, even bad ones. If you want to be protected from the results of your choices, then you don't want freedom, you want a parent. 

Finally, I'm going to address the elephant in the room of "people who are mentally ill cannot give consent to gender transition": if an adult is so mentally ill that they cannot give consent to what happens to their bodies, then that adult cannot give any other kind of consent (financial, sexual, legal, etc.) and should be declared non compos mentis via due process and either assigned a legal guardian or institutionalized. Without this due process, depriving an adult of access to transition resources is the medical version of issuing an Extreme Risk Protection Order (aka a "Red Flag"). An ERPO is what is issued when someone thinks another person is a threat to themselves or others and alerts the authorities who, instead of getting that other person the help they need, just seize that person's firearms -- in other words, arresting the tools they use because they might do something wrong with them, while still leaving them free to harm themselves or others via different means. Put bluntly, that's either magical thinking or virtue signaling, because it doesn't at all address the problem which this law is purported to prevent. 

Having said that, I would not be surprised in the slightest if the next tactic chosen in Transgender Prohibition is having us declared mentally unfit. If that happens, keep in mind that "not obeying the government" can be diagnosed as Oppositional Defiance Disorder, which means that after the Prohibitionists are done with declaring transgender people mentally ill, they can come after anyone who speaks out against the government. The Soviet Union weaponized psychology by declaring their dissidents mentally ill, and if you don't think that can happen here, then just watch during this election season as both sides trot out the predictable "studies" claiming that conservatives/liberals have a lower IQ and a higher incidence of pathology than their opponents. 

To summarize:

1. Prohibition always makes things worse.
2. Always look for second and third-order effects. 
3. Don't allow the government to exercise against others any powers which you wouldn't want your opponents to use against you, because your side won't always be in control. 
4. Let grown-ass adults do what they like to themselves so long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. 
5. Mind your own freaking business. 

Addendum

Speaking of moral panics, I've lived through a lot of them. Here are the ones I know about, off the top of my head:

• the Salem Witch Trials
• Prohibition/the Temperance Movement
• Reefer Madness/War on Drugs
• True Crime & Horror Comics corrupting our children
• Rock & Roll is corrupting our children
• the Dungeons & Dragons Satanic Panic
• Subliminal Messages/Satanic Backwards Lyrics
• Explicit Lyrics aka Tipper Gore's crusade
• "If it saves just one life" Gun Control
• "The Gothic Movement"
• Transgender Prohibition

I'm certain I've missed some.

What do they all have in common? Well, if it's not already obvious, then Jon Hamm has a handy presentation for you.

 

Beware the Curbstomps of March

This has been a rough month for me. March has stabbed me in the back, knocked me down, and kicked me such that the only thing I've been able to do is cover my head and try to survive. I'm honestly surprised I've made it this far, but that's mainly because I have skipped out on a lot of my duties, avoiding social media when possible, and practicing as much self care as I can. 

So because writing makes me feel better, and because I want to feel like I've accomplished something today, let's take a look at the highlight reel from March Maliciousness. 

It started with the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), March 1-4. I covered the very worst parts of it in my post titled A Little Knowles is a Dangerous Thing, but just to be clear I want to point out that most of CPAC 2023's theme was villainizing transgender people. Now, I've said before (and will say again) that we can have productive and necessary conversations about topics like "At what age do children have bodily autonomy?" and "Should transgender athletes compete in sports?" because these are topics without easy answers that will require difficult solutions. (Sadly, most people want cookie-cutter solutions that can be implemented without having to think about them, which is a problem because people aren't uniform dough, we are complex and unique entities and what works for one person won't work for another.) However, CPAC went far beyond that and dove headfirst into "Let's make it illegal for grown adults, who aren't hurting anyone, to find comfort in their own skin and within society."

The next week there was the Jeremy's Chocolates debacle, wherein Jeremy Boreing took exception to Hershey for having a trans woman featured in one of their commercials for their International Women's Day Her/She (get it? Hershey, Her/She?) and threw a big ol' fit about it and decided to sell his own overpriced chocolates to compete against Hershey. Now, this is important for two reasons:

1. A lot of my conservative friends thought this was the Best Thing Ever and were laughing about how Jeremy was "owning the libs" by saying things which mocked and denigrated trans women. The fact that they didn't realize they were mocking and denigrating me, and therefore hurting me, didn't seem to register with them. 
2. Jeremy Boreing owns The Daily Wire, which airs Michael Knowles' show, as well as the shows of other anti-trans pundits like Adam Walsh. So by spreading the message of this commercial, and by buying these chocolates, these friends were directly funding people who hate me and want me back in the closet or in prison. 

I asked people not to do this. I pleaded with them to please consider Rule 4 ("Be aware of your target and what is behind it") as it pertains to online virtue signaling. I cried as I received friendly fire from people who I thought liked me, respected me, even loved me. I wept as they treated me like I was acceptable collateral damage in this bullshit culture war that has now politicized chocolate, of all things. 

Either they didn't hear me or they didn't care, for they kept doing it. So I started unfriending them, because people who hurt me for laughs or for political points or who just don't care aren't my friends. At this point I've jettisoned close to a hundred people, and it seems like every few days another one says something hurtful. The very worst of them was when a friend of over a decade, with whom I have been very close, posted a link to a Not The Bee article about how transwomen are a threat to women by invading their private spaces and generally painted us all as vile sexual predators. 

About the only good thing to come out of all this, and it's a tiny silver thread in this otherwise very dark cloud, is that some friends have reached out to me and let me know that they love me and they will support, protect, and defend me if things in this country become as bad as it looks like they will. That kindness resulted in my ...By Other Means post and this accompanying graphic:

If you have transgender people you care about, they're probably scared and hurting from the events of the past month. Reach out to them with this sentiment to let them know that they can rely on you. pic.twitter.com/8dYPCvAf5X

— Pink Pistols National (@PinkPistols) March 25, 2023

... and then Some Asshole, who was transgender, shot up a school. 

http://nonadventures.com/2015/06/20/the-some-of-all-fears/

I think I've established my bona fides over 16 years of blogging that I loathe mass-murdering fuckheads and would have gladly given my life to stop this fuckhead if I'd been there. I also like to think that my readers know me well enough that I'm not going to defend said fuckhead just because said fuckhead is transgender. Trans people are still people, and people can be awful regardless of other characteristics (except maybe people with Down's Syndrome. I've never met one who wasn't sweet and kind). 

Unfortunately not everyone in the world reads this blog and therefore doesn't know me, so the picture which was made for the above post and which was spread across social media on March 26th made it look like I, the Pink Pistols, and Operation Blazing Sword were defending the mass murdering fuckhead on March 27th. I guess I'm lucky that I didn't post it to the OBS website because that would have been worse. 

For the record, I didn't delete the social media posts, because that would look like we were ashamed of the sentiment and I'm not. It's still true. But we have had to clarify things. I made this post on the 28th which seems to have been sufficient for all but the most obtuse:

Erin Palette here, speaking in official capacity as President of Operation Blazing Sword and National Coordinator of the Pink Pistols.

I emphasize, in the strongest terms possible, that our organizations are defensive and only defensive.

— Pink Pistols National (@PinkPistols) March 28, 2023

Part 2
I denounce, in the strongest terms possible, any offensive actions taken in our name

We are not vigilantes. We are not a militia. We are not a mob howling for blood.

We do NOT act out of vengeance. We act only in defense.

— Pink Pistols National (@PinkPistols) March 28, 2023

So all of this week I've been getting it from both sides. The anti-transgender right is making damned good use of this anti-trans sentiment by declaring us all mentally ill and therefore we shouldn't be allowed to own firearms because we're all sick deviant perverts, while the anti-gun left is doing their usual song and dance about how anyone who owns a gun has blood on their hands and we're all facilitating a cycle of violence and so forth. 

Agitating for the removal of a Constitutionally-guaranteed right without any due process is certainly a spicy take, but it's definitely not a Conservative one. In their haste to infringe upon the rights of a demographic they find icky they haven't realized that this same tactic can be used against them when the Left controls Congress and, just as an example, decides that since Oppositional Defiant Disorder is in the DSM, anyone who distrusts and defies the authority of the government clearly has ODD and is therefore mentally ill, meaning they should be denied their Second Amendment rights for "the good of all."

Meanwhile, the Liberal gun prohibitionists don't seem to realize that the ugly, hateful statements they make about gun owners are exactly the same kind of ugly, hateful declarations being made about transgender people, and that they think one is good and they other is bad when in fact they're both awful vitriol that accomplishes nothing except starting a fight and moving us all further away from finding common ground, which is "Murder is bad regardless of who does it, and we should find ways to save lives without punishing the innocent."

You've heard of "The Man Without a Country"? Well, I'm a woman without a political party:

• The left wants my body dead because I own guns. 
• The right wants my soul dead because I'm trans. 
• The libertarians, god bless them, are incapable of being elected dogcatcher. 

This results in me having no competent representation to defend my rights against the federal leviathan.

It feels like I'm stuck in a Michael Moorcock novel, witnessing the stereotypical struggle between Law and Chaos, and Chaos is currently winning. And I don't mean the bright, fun chaos of spontaneous creation and whimsy; I mean the brutal, destructive, churning chaos where nothing can live because there's no stability that is conducive to life. 

This is already really long and I'm not even up to this past week, so I'm going to end this for now and continue it in part 2 where I talk about our house's mold problem. Sigh. 

A Little Knowles is a Dangerous Thing

Michael J. Knowles, speaking at CPAC 2023, stated that "Transgenderism must be eradicated." It's on the video embedded below, and that statement has been quoted by both conservative and liberal websites. Knowles later weasel-worded his statement by saying that he's not calling for genocide, because "genocide refers to genes."

If you know me, you know that I have strong feelings about this position. I'm going to leave the "Being transgender is not an ism" rant for another day so that I can concentrate on the larger picture here. 

First, Knowles is calling for the eradication of everything that allows transgender people to become whole, which is a murder of soul if not of body. We will kindly be allowed to live... so long as we crawl back into the closet and stay there for his comfort, and to hell with what that does to the quality of our lives. 

Second, what he's calling for can be rounded up to genocide -- or democide, if you're feeling pedantic -- because once being transgender is made illegal, the two choices a trans person has are:

1. Comply and only dress and present as the sex assigned on your birth certificate, which effectively eliminates all trans people from society, or
2. Refuse to comply and face potentially lethal response, because all laws are ultimately enforced at the barrel of a law enforcement officer's firearm. 

Third, can you imagine the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth if a liberal pundit had declared that "conservatism must be eradicated"? The Republicans would condemn it as hate speech and an existential threat to them. 

I never thought I would see the day when someone would call for an end to my way of life at a political convention, nor did I think they'd be cheered for it, yet here we are. This feels very much like a testing of the waters; by having a media pundit say it instead of a politician, CPAC could have disavowed Knowles' statements as "not representative of our positions" if the crowd reacted poorly. But the audience cheered and clapped, which many if not most conservatives will interpret as broad support for such actions. 

By the way, just in case you think this might have been a one-off situation, here's Michael Knowles saying similar things. 

"Be normal."  How privileged can you get? And I hate how the term privilege has been distorted and over-used, so when I use it that's saying something. 

It's simply shocking to me to see someone, but especially a media pundit, who is so expressly against the First Amendment that he wants to bring back laws forbidding self-expression that harms no one. 

He's not even talking about transgender children; he's talking about forbidding adults of legal age from dressing and acting as they want. What happened to GOP being the party of the Constitution? 

"We have a duty to express our sex in the correct way." This is not a political argument; this is a religious argument. Well, so much for separation of Church and State. And nothing bad has ever happened when the government legislates religious purity, has it?

Do you remember the origin of the pink triangle, Mr. Knowles? Because we do. And we won't ever let that happen again. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_concentration_camp_badge

Armed transgender people don't get bashed, Mr. Knowles. We will NOT go back into the closet for your benefit, nor will we allow you to take away our liberties without a fight. 

To anyone who plans to enforce this: stack up and send expendable goons, because they aren't coming back. Give me liberty, or I will give you death.

Clarification. It's a Beautiful Thing.

I've received an immense amount of pushback from some people regarding the Operation Blazing Sword - Pink Pistols press release on the Rittenhouse verdict. This is disappointing, as I took great pains to make the statement as neutral as possible regarding Rittenhouse himself and focus solely on the gun rights aspect of the case. 

I stand by my assertions that if Rittenhouse had been convicted, ADA Binger's position of "You were armed, therefore you deserve violence upon your person" may well have taken root and destroyed what we have left of the right to keep and bear arms. Pink Pistols cannot perform its function if using a weapon for self-defense automatically negates your right to self-defense, and it is for that reason we agree with the court. 

Once the argument of "You aren't allowed to defend yourself" has been accepted by the courts, it doesn't matter your political affiliation, race, sex, religion, disability, or anything else; that charge will be used against you. 

You are either for self defense or you are not. There is no grey area.

On a related note, there are an astonishing number of people who cannot wrap their heads around the concept that there can be an overlap between behavior that is "Perfectly legal/Well within your rights" and behavior that is "Ill-advised/Self-endangering."

It is perfectly legal for me to dress up in a skimpy bikini with $100 bills stuffed into it and totter down the sidewalks of a rough neighborhood in stiletto heels after midnight. I have every right to do that. However, this also puts me in significant danger of assault, theft, robbery, etc.

Now, if I am assaulted/robbed/etc, it's the fault of the criminals. It's not my fault, because a crime needs a criminal to commit it: no criminal, no crime. It's not my fault because even if I'm not there, the criminal may decide to prey upon someone else. But doing such a thing proved to be ill-advised and self-endangering, because I increased my chances of becoming a victim happening by making myself an easy, enticing target. 

Similarly, Kyle Rittenhouse being in Kenosha, openly carrying a rifle while trying to protect businesses and stop fires and offer medical treatment, was perfectly legal. He had every right to be there doing those things. (If you doubt that, look at what the court ruled.) It was also ill-advised of him to do so, and it put him in significant danger. He will be forever scarred by this, and the repercussions will follow him all the days of his life. 

And it wasn't his fault, because we have footage showing he was attacked first every time. However, he made himself a tempting target, because he looked like a vulnerable child with a valuable gun. If he hadn't been there, then other crimes would have happened; they just wouldn't have happened to him.

It astounds me that there are people who can't grasp this concept that just because something is ill-advised doesn't automatically make it illegal. If everything dangerous was made illegal, we would have no police, no firefighters, and no military. 

Your head is there for more than just decoration. Please use it. 

All Shiny and Chrome

Yesterday, I found out that Hopalong Ginsberg was put into Facebook jail for saying the word "tranny" in an automotive group. In other words, he was using a slang term for the transmission -- a term which has been around since at least the 1950s and far outdates the word being used to describe transvestite, transsexual or transgender people -- and his account was suspended.

This is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard. I'm not a fan of censorship in general, but zero-tolerance censorship without even taking context into account (and probably without human judgement) is absolutely abhorrent.

And so, as I am wont to do, I got a bee in my bonnet and post this on my public figure page. 24 hours later and it's still there, but I'm going to include a screenshot of it just in case:

I've written in the past about my views on the word: 

I acknowledge that some transgender people dislike the word "tranny", and so I won't use it to describe them and I encourage everyone else to be gentle with its usage. But personally, I find the entire thing funny -- after all, doesn't a transmission "switch gears" and doesn't a transgender person essentially do the same thing in the eyes of society? -- and by using and laughing about a word which is allegedly offensive, I reclaim it and remove its harmful power (c.f. the Pink Pistols and their reclamation of the pink triangle).

I acknowledge that the word makes some people uncomfortable but that doesn't make the word inherently bad, and banning people for using it when talking about automobiles or electronics (where tranny is used as slang for a transformer) is beyond stupid. 

As far as I'm concerned, tranny is just a natural shortening of any multi-syllabic word that starts with "trans", and being offended at it being used to describe transgender people is as ridiculous as people offended by "homo sapiens" because it has the word "homo" in it and that's a slang term for "gay". 

So I'm taking a stand on Facebook. Maybe it'll change some minds. And if I get banned, then witness me, all shiny and chrome. 

Stupidity Should Cause Physical Pain

Thanks to Miguel Gonzalez, I was exposed to this inanity from Maggie Morris, a student at MSU and a member of SACRED (Springfield Area Coalition for Responsibility, Equity & Dignity):

"There is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment. As a society, we are technically free to express ourselves without regard for the mental or emotional well-being of others. But if the best defense for a statement is that it isn’t technically illegal to express, where is the benefit? What does it accomplish? Why should we as individuals tolerate language and attitudes which harm the unity of our society?"

Maggie, you're absolutely right; we need the government to determine what kind of speech is hateful and forbidden. President Trump should create a panel of censors to determine what language is permitted, and this commission should be staffed with people like Rush Limbaugh, Dana Loesch, Ben Shapiro, Sarah Palin, and Milo Yiannopoulos.

[waits for hysterical screeching to abate]

No? You don't like that? Then maybe you should rethink your position on the government dictating what can and cannot be said in our society.

In fact, here's an idea: Always consider how your opponents could use a law against you before you advocate for its implementation. 

Oh, who am I kidding? These are the same people who will declare that "Trump is literally Hitler!" and then in the same breath demand that "Only the government should have guns!" ...because if you're fighting "literally Hitler", it's totes sensible to be disarmed first, right?

Being stupid should cause physical pain. Not injury, mind you, but pain intense enough that it can't be ignored. I'm thinking taser-level pain, where it stops you dead in your tracks and it hurts like hell, but has no lasting effects except maybe a bloody nose from falling on your face or soiled pants from when you lost bowel control.  Pavlovian conditioning to stop stupidity would benefit humanity more than anything else I can think of.

Unwelcome Defender

I think this might count as a definition of irony: being asked to leave an Active Shooter Seminar by one of the deputies teaching it, right as it gets to the fight portion of "Run, Hide, Fight", because the pearl-clutching pastor saw the bulge of my gun under my clothes.


I shall expound:  A local church was hosting an active shooter (they called it "active killer" because as we've seen, murderers are using more than guns these days) seminar and because I'm a prepper who likes training and learning, I decided to attend.

I am of course carrying, because I always carry when I leave my house. I'm printing through my clothes, but I don't worry about that because 1) Florida law says "Keep it concealed" rather than "Thou shalt not print", which is good because cover garments in 80+ degree weather suck, and 2) churches aren't prohibited places in Florida and there's no posted signage on the doors about guns not being allowed.

It's a 2 hour class, and I'm sitting on an uncomfortable chair, and I've never been able to sit still in my life, so of course I'm fidgeting and trying to get comfortable. I know for a fact that I don't expose the gun, because it's covered by my shorts pulled up and my shirt pulled down, but the bulge on my right hip is probably obvious when I put my weight on my left as I try to keep my butt from falling asleep.

One of the deputies comes up to me and says "Can I talk to you for a moment?" and gestures to the back of the hall. I of course follow him.

The conversion goes roughly like this:

Him: "Are you carrying a weapon?"
Me: "I am a licensed concealed carrier and I have a lawful firearm, yes."
Him: "You can't have it in here."
Me: "Churches aren't prohibited places in Florida."
Him: "You can't have it in here,  in this particular church."
Me: "Sir, I didn't see any posted signage to that effect. If I had I wouldn't have entered."
Him: "Would you mind taking your weapon out to your car?"
Me: "I'll just leave."
Him: "I don't want you to leave. I want you to take this class. You can come back if you leave your weapon in the car."
Me: "I want to take this class as well, but I will not disarm to do it. I'll leave. Thank you."

He was very polite about the whole thing, and I could tell he was enforcing something he didn't want to, so I didn't put up a fight. He walked me to the door, and once outside we had a conversation like this:

Him: "I really don't want you to go."
Me: "I understand that, but I refuse to disarm. Since I'm not welcome here, I'll leave."
Him: "You really feel that strongly about it?"
Me: "I really do."
Him: "I'm really sorry about that."
Me: "I understand. You're just doing your job. I bear you no ill will. I think it's bullshit, because there's no posted signage, but I won't disarm and I won't make a scene, so I'll just leave."

I volunteered to show him my permit, and he looked at it. "Oh, you're local!" "Yes, sir."  He apologized several more times, and I could tell by the look on his face that he knew it was bullshit and that he didn't want me to go. He explained that people were on edge because of the shooting, and the pastor was anti-gun, and she had seen the bulge on my hip.

"I understand that, sir. Please tell her that she asked a lawful carrier to leave, and that she really needs to post signage." He nodded and I left. I sincerely hope that when it was his turn at the podium again, he said something to the effect of "If you have an active killer and you can't run or hide, the best way to fight them is with a lawfully carried concealed handgun," but I rather doubt it.

I swear, I do not understand this mindset. My pistol was concealed, but the deputies were wearing theirs openly, so she clearly wasn't afraid of their guns. And the deputy clearly wasn't afraid of me, because our interaction was conversational rather than confrontational. So she's one of those people who would rather have a quasi-professional caste created to be her absolving wet workers rather than accept personal responsibility for her own safety... which is ironic, since the entire point of the seminar was that in an active shooter situation, you have to take steps to protect your life because the police aren't there.

Reaching My Limit

I will put up with a lot of crap on my Facebook wall. So much so, in fact, that my friend David Blackard has told me that I have "the patience of a saint" for putting up with people for as long as I do.

What's ironic about his statement is that I am inherently impatient and don't like it when people disagree with me such that my first reaction is to go "No, you're full of crap, go away"; but because I am aware of my impatient, dismissive nature, and because I do not wish to live in an echo chamber (the first rule of Dunning–Kruger Club is that no one knows they're in Dunning–Kruger club), I tend to let people disagree with me -- no matter how much I find it grind-my-molars irritating -- until they breach certain pre-defined "no go" zones. And when that happens, I take swift and decisive action, which can range from deleting the post and telling them "Don't ever do that again" to blocking them.

One of those limits is verbally attacking my friends. Names which I'd allow against me aren't allowed against my friends, because I figure it if hurts my feelings perhaps I'm just sensitive, but if it pisses me off to see my friend treated that way, you're done.

Another such limit is to go out of your way to misgender me. While it can be difficult to get my pronouns correct in person if I'm not looking my best, it is entirely another thing to look at my female name and my feminine portrait and go "You know, it would cost me absolutely nothing to be polite in this text-based conversation, but I shall make an effort to be insulting."  I've actually had people argue with me over what I actually am!

The third limit is the one which prompted today's post, and that is when someone makes a blanket "You are X and you should feel terrible for being X, you worthless person" statement. Usually these have been people telling me that I'm mentally ill because I'm transgender (I beg to differ, and prefer to think of myself as having been born with a birth defect and am trying to make a difficult life more pleasant for myself), but given the most recent tragedy there's a fair amount of name-calling and finger-pointing at responsible gun owners.

Here is what pushed me to my limit today:

Why, how dare I want the means to preserve my life against violence! How dare I kill another who wishes harm upon me! Why, if I were truly enlightened like Jd, I would offer myself up as a human sacrifice before the criminal who wanted me harmed, because my death would be moral. And if I disagree, why then I shouldn't sully the title of American by claiming it as my own; I should rather emigrate to a less-enlightened country or else exile myself to death in the outermost darkness.

Needless to say, this raised my ire to such a degree that I briefly lost my composure and indulged in some very un-ladylike f-bombs:

Any morality which requires me, a non-criminal, to die because it makes people feel better is a direct threat to my existence and I won't tolerate it. I probably could have continued to debate this... person... but the moment someone outright tells me that they prefer my death, I cease to give a shit about anything they do or say.

One of these days, people will push me until I get so upset that I will actually answer the question "How many people have to die before you will embrace gun control?", and they will be horrified at my response. But that, dear reader, is a subject for another day.

(Sunday) Schooling People

If you're going to cherry-pick Bible passages at me, you'd better bring your A-game, because not only am I going to read the entire chapter for context if you do, I'm also going to research your position using various concordances and commentaries. And if you're wrong, I will absolutely beat you over the head with it, and the icing on top will be Jesus's words against your position.

For context, last week a friend of mine made this Facebook post:


The comments are about what you'd expect. Most of them were from people who either moaned about how far we as a people have fallen from the light, or how Paul was deeply mistaken and that he'd be paying for this mistake in the afterlife.

Now when it comes to personal opinion, that's all well and good; you can believe whatever you like as far as I'm concerned. But when someone quotes the Bible in order to justify a belief which is completely in opposition to what Jesus preached, I go all Rarity on them.



The Old Testament
So when Christians try to condemn homosexuality using the Bible, the first place they usually go to is Leviticus, because it states twice (Lev. 18:22 and Lev. 20:13) that homosexuality is an abomination. In fact, Lev. 20:13 goes so far as to state that a man who has sex with another man must be put to death.

Now, setting aside for a moment the irony that the people who are making this quotation won't go out and execute homosexuals -- meaning they are violating the exact same Law which they claim to uphold -- there's the fact that they are cherry-picking the Law to suit their own ends.

No, no, no, sweetheart; you don't get to do that. You either follow ALL of Leviticus, or you follow NONE of it. And if you decide to follow all of it, that requires a radical change in lifestyle, because the Law bans a whole lot of things, including but not limited to:

• Eating Fat or Blood (Lev. 3:17) - Sorry, no marbled rare ribeye for you!
• Drinking alcohol in holy places (Lev. 10:9) - Sucks to be you if you're Catholic. 
• Eating an animal which doesn’t both chew cud and has a divided hoof (Lev. 11:4-7) - This is the basis for the whole "no pork" part of Judaism. No bacon for you!
• Eating seafood without fins or scales (Lev 11:10-12) - This basically amounts to "Fish and only fish." No shrimp, no crabs, no lobster, no calamari. I expect a LOT of people in Louisiana and Maryland would be upset by this. 
• Mixing fabrics in clothing (Lev. 19:19) - No blends for you! All your clothes must be 100% cotton or wool or whatever. Go on, check your underwear; I bet it's a blend. 
• Trimming or shaving your beard and/or sideburns (Lev. 19:27) - I guarantee you that every single American male has broken this law countless times throughout their loves. Fortunately for them, there's no penalty given. 
• Getting a tattoo (Lev. 19:28) - Yes, even the cute little one on your ankle. 
• And finally, my favorite:  (Lev. 20:9) "Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death. Because they have cursed their father or mother, their blood will be on their own head." This pretty much dooms anyone who was ever a teenager. 

What's that, I hear you say? You don't want to do all these things? You want to shave and wear blended clothing and drink sacramental wine and eat bacon?

Sure, you can do all those things. Mark 7:14-23 is your escape clause.

Of course, if you use this, then you can't condemn homosexuals, either.

But wait! I hear you cry. Jesus specifically said 'sexual immorality'! Doesn't that include homosexuality?

Perhaps it does and perhaps it doesn't; I'll address that in a moment. Let me point out, though, that Jesus intervened to save the life of a woman caught in adultery -- the penalty for which was death of both parties, although the male adulterer is nowhere to be found -- so is it truly that difficult to believe that He would also challenge the death penalty for those who are homosexual?

But Erin! I again hear you cry. Jesus told the woman to 'Go and sin no more.' If He tells her to stop being an adulteress, then wouldn't He also tell a homosexual to stop being gay?

That is a topic for another discussion, because it assumes homosexuality is a choice.  I've met enough gay people who have fervently wished they could be heterosexual just to feel "normal" to cast that particular assumption into very strong doubt for me. Furthermore, there is a debate that homosexuality may be the result of genetics or environmental factors such as birth order.

If you want to have the debate that homosexuality is an illness or genetic defect, then I suppose we could argue that Jesus might cure a gay person of his gayness the same way He cured lame people of their lameness. But that's categorically not the same thing as telling a sinner to stop sinning.

The New Testament
Speaking of sinners and the New Testament, let's talk about the other favorite passage which is brought out. While there are several references to homosexuality in the Epistles (1 Corinthians 6:9-10, 1 Timothy 1:9-10, and Jude 1:7 -- although with that last one, I'd argue that the "sin of Sodom" wasn't so much homosexuality as it was the roving rape gangs), the one I see most often is Romans 1:26-27.

Taken by itself, this passage seems pretty damning... except one should never take a Bible passage by itself; one should always read it in context with the passages before it and after it. In this case, start at the beginning of the paragraph -- which is Romans 1:18 and titled "God’s Wrath Against Sinful Humanity" -- and read to verse 32, the end of the chapter.

The very first verse of the chapter says "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people". Verse 21 says "For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to Him ." In other words, God's wrath is directed not specifically at homosexual people, but rather at the people who are neither worshiping God nor thanking Him. In fact, verse 24 specifically states that it's only after they failed to honor God that God abandoned them to their sinful natures.

Then there's the verse which follows the quote:

You can see where it quite plainly states that those people who didn't worship God had depraved minds and were deceitful, malicious, envious murderers. Now since the Apostle Paul didn't differentiate between the people in verse 27 and verses 28-31, it's fair to say that he's talking about the same people. But not all all murderers are homosexual, and not all homosexuals are murderers. So the Apostle Paul is speaking categorically, i.e. all who fail to worship God give themselves over to some form of depravity (sin).

Now here comes the best part! The very next line -- which is Romans 2:1 - says "You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things."

In other words, Paul is saying "Hey, reader! YOU'RE A SINNER TOO. So stop passing judgement on other people, because you will be judged for that as well."

According to Christian doctrine, we are all sinners -- man and woman, gay and straight -- and the wages of sin are death , but those wages have been paid through the blood sacrifice of the lamb, Jesus Christ. All we must do is accept His forgiveness, believe, and we shall be saved (1 John 1:7, Acts 3:19).

As far as I'm concerned, this addresses all of the objections which may be found in the New Testament. If you aren't convinced, though, let me leave you with the words of our Savior, as recorded in the Book of Matthew, chapter 7:

Go, and do thou likewise. 

Correcting the Record: Anger Post

I am in an absolute rotten mood. I've been that way for a while now. Anyone that was looking forward to more Gotham Rain, I apologize. My mind's not in that place at the moment.

A few things over the last few weeks have caught my attention, though, and I have a few very simple messages before I go back to laying in bed watching Supergirl on Netflix.

A few weeks ago there was a petition on change.org to change the settings of the upcoming Far Cry 5, which is set to take place in rural Montana, with the antagonists apparently being some sort of religious cult. The Petition is written with such ham-handed, overt usage of the language of social justice activism inverted into a strawman of gamers the level of which hasn't been seen since Gamergate that anyone that took it seriously and reported on it as such should turn in any journalistic credentials they think they still have the right to hold. In the words of Vreenak from the best episode of Deep Space 9, "It's a FAAAAAAAKE."

Mario got called racist and culturally approprating because of a sombrero outfit in the new game. Mexican gamers promptly fired back en masse with responses ranging from "we're cool with this" to "this is pretty neat" to "you assholes are why we lost Speedy Gonzales." Stop looking for reasons to be outraged. It's getting old. To everyone.

Some genius decided she'd take her activism to retail by moving tank tops for boys into the girls section because they had the NASA logo on them. At this point I'm sure that the perpetrator has never been in a Target before now, as retail staff are going to have to move those back, and I've never seen a man working in the clothing section of a Target. So congratulations for inconveniencing low-paid women! Also, Target fired back with a link to their selection of girls clothing with NASA logos on them. I haven't seen a burn that bad since Wendy's still had good social media.

Apparently, everything else can now take a back seat. Clean energy, crime, homelessness, wars; they're all unimportant. Our top priority now is legislating social media.

Oh, and I've been waiting to use this one. MUH FREEZE PEACH. So now free speech matters to you?

A congressman or senator or someone was shot, and another shot at, or something. All I know is that everyone further Left than me is scrambling right now, #NotAllLiberal'ing the shit out of it because the shooter was fervently Anti-Trump and Pro-Bernie.

Battle of Berkely. Evergreen College. Cheering on Antifa. Punch a Nazi. Kathy Griffin beheading the president in effigy and Madonna contemplating blowing up the White House. You've lost the moral high ground Lefties. Even Vice and the Anti-Defamation League know it.

You're no longer the "Politicks of Peace." You've got an extremist problem. There's blood in the water, and if you don't do something about, 2020 isn't going to matter, let alone 2018.

Erin's going to bullet point that paragraph, I just know it. 
I guess I showed you! - Erin

I'm going back to bed before this day gets any worse. Thank you, Erin, for the LEGO Batgirl. It made me smile for the only time this week that didn't involve alcohol and Doctor Who reruns.

You're welcome. Salem. [hugs]

What You've Lost, and What You're Leaving Behind

When I wrote my last week's missive on my car and first-world problems, I didn't think any more of it. I didn't have even a spark of an idea of what I was writing about this week until a few separate ideas culminated in a topic I'd very much like to discuss.

It's a symptom of a disease that's been eating away at my side of the political spectrum for a while now. It sticks in my craw that my idea of the Left has been the compassionate one, the one that just wants to look out for the little guy even if we have a nasty habit of overreaching in doing so, but since the election with the, my side's more vocal proponents have been showing they care very little indeed for the little guy.

I used to be proud of this.

Over the last few weeks, I've seen one of a few reactions. There are the articles that are clearly sitting down and going "Okay, this is why we lost. Our party is corrupt, and we spent so much time calling everyone sexist and racist and transphobic and misogynist that we alienated a vast majority of voters, and while they may be problematic, we'll never win them over to our side that way."

That's an OK way to think. It acknowledges that there's a problem, and starts a conversation (a genuine conversation, with more than one point of view that goes more than one way -- that's the way conversations work, in case you had other ideas) about how to fix it.

Then there's the crowd that's basically REEEEEEEE END OF THE WORLD RACIST MISOGYNIST WHITE SUPREMACY EVERYWHERE IF YOU POINT OUT SOMETHING POSITIVE YOU'RE SUPPORTING LITERALLY HITLER LOOK AT THIS SWASTIKA AND THESE PEOPLE KILLING THEMSELVES NO IGNORE SNOPES THEY'RE LYING EVEN THOUGH THEY HAVE A BIAS TOWARDS OUR WAY OF THINKING.

That bothers me, but nowhere near as much as this.

Every single one of those is more than a month's rent for me.

It all started the other day, when I posted to a social media feed the ticket prices to Hamilton, and how privileged you must be to be able to afford to see the show. I obviously ruffled a few feathers, as I received a few unkind words in response.

Mere days later, I was greeted with these tweets (I still do not condone the use of Twitter) that perfectly illustrate another topic I have written about. I only know who one of these people are, and that's Francesca Ramsey from MTV's Decoded, who has appeared in my writings before. She's the drill sergeant in the Social Justice Boot Camp.

That's right, Ms. Ramsey and Mr. Kalidi. Some of the people who are boycotting Hamilton (and those of you who are, knock it off. When Mike Pence said people booing him was the sound of freedom, that was possibly the most mature statement I've heard a politician say all year) can't afford tickets. That's because when they go on sale, they're a "reasonable" $200, but then they're gone immediately. Faster than sports games or music concerts. If you want to see Hamilton, the only reliable way to do so is to spend what is, to a lot of people, an entire paycheck for one ticket.

I have no idea if it's any good. I'm sure it's a fantastic musical; my progressive friends won't shut up about it. What I do know is this: I'm a liberal that didn't want Trump for president and I can't afford tickets to Hamilton. To me, seeing Hamilton isn't worth the price of admission, so while I'm not boycotting it, I certainly won't be seeing it, either.

Which brings me to the term "Coastal Elite." If you're not already in one of those major cities in the US that would decide the election alone if we scrapped the Electoral College, you can't see Hamilton, because a) you probably don't make enough money, b) the ticket prices, and c) you have to add the cost of travel and lodging to the price of the tickets. Redundant? I don't care. If you're mocking people for not being able to afford a seven hundred dollar theater ticket, I want you to drink in every redundant word I'm typing here.

The bottom line here is that I'm completely fed up with the natural evolution of the Champagne Socialist and Limousine Liberal, which I dub the Perrier Progressive: the ones with their moralistic heads so far up their own moralistic asses that they can't empathize with the fact that not everyone makes enough money to spend their entire month's rent on seeing a goddamn play.

Until you can realize that, we're not the good guys anymore; we're the ones fiddling while Rome is burning around us, blaming the poor proletariat for all the world's problems. Maybe the fire is the good guy now.

Kiss my broke ass.

I Refuse to Placate Your Stupid Robot

Hey all. The reason I haven't posted much here this week is because I was preoccupied with a little thing known as Hurricane Matthew that was happening at the same time I was attending an out of town media event. As Salem mentioned on Friday's highly relevant post, I evacuated to Georgia to avoid not only any destruction the storm might bring, but also the annoyances of loss of power, water and internet, and now I'm hanging out with friends and being Prepper Fabulous in full-on girl mode. 

So with that said, here is a rant I wrote on Facebook:

Apparently "being trans" requires the ability to "give no fucks", which is an attitude I have trouble cultivating. I shall explain.

Today, I got all girled up to go meet some friends and hang out with them, and I had a *great* time.

And then I went to Walmart.

I needed to pick up some supplies because, frankly, I have Super Jew hair on pasty Irish skin, and that means I have to shave to a fare-thee-well if I want a chance of hiding Ye Olde 1700 Umbra with makeup. This means I go through razor blades fairly quickly, and getting girled up today killed both my boy razor (face) and girl razor (other), so I needed new ones

Thus I went to Walmart, and acquired fresh horses, and while I was there I got a few other things for my girlie side like scrunchies and the like.

And then I had to check out.

Now the thing you need to know about me is that while I am not completely antisocial, checkout is one of those times where I truly do not want to deal with people because they will try to talk to me and UGH all I want to do is buy my shit and leave. I don't want to talk, I don't want to be asked how I'm doing or how my day has been been, just ring me up and get me out.

Now, because I am not a rude piece of shit, when I do not feel like dealing with cashiers, I go to the self-checkout units because they don't ask me how my day was. This is perfect. It's doubly perfect because, well, I wanted to use my debit card instead of cash, and since my card is in my legal boy name, I figured using the card would invite judgement or questioning looks.

Yes, I am aware that the cashiers likely don't look at the names, and if they do they won't give a shit. See above re: me and fucks given. Also, knowing my luck, I'd get the one assiduous cashier who would look to see if the signature matched, see the difference, and call the manager and/or the police because clearly I'd stolen a debit card from some guy so I could buy $30 of beauty products.

Anyway. I get to self checkout and proceed to scan and bag. I get ALMOST DONE when the machine says that I didn't bag the item -- or maybe it said there was something in the bag that didn't belong, I don't recall. The point here is that I had been doing everything properly, with everything that ought to have been in the bag actually in the bag, and nothing in the bag that shouldn't have been in it.

So the machine doesn't like my arrangement, fine. I take the item out and put it back in to make it happy. It still doesn't like it. Okay, fine, I will take out ALL THE ITEMS, cancel the entire transaction, and do it all again but slower because apparently this machine is special needs.

I try to cancel out, and the machine basically throws a fit by saying that it requires an associate to void the transaction. In other words, now am I not only going to have to deal with a human, I get the added pleasure of looking like either an idiot who doesn't know how to self-checkout, or some shady bitch who's trying to scam the Mart of Walls.

At this point, I just threw my hands up and walked the the fuck away. Yes, I abandoned all my items; there weren't that many and an associate was going to come over anyway, and frankly I was tired of the whole thing. All I wanted was to buy my crap and leave, and instead I was dealing with technology which couldn't understand that I had indeed properly scanned and bagged my crap.

Call me petty, but I felt that buying stuff after that would be saying "Sure, you have shitty tech that gives poor service, but have my money anyway." I reward good customer service and shun poor.

Thank you for listening to me gripe. I feel better now.

Guest Post: I Feel So Helpless About Orlando

Forty-nine people died early last week.

I live in Michigan, the cul-de-sac of the United States. Nobody comes here unless they meant to,  or else they got lost in Ohio and didn't hit a deer on the way. Our outdoors are great, the beer is fantastic, and the city life is alright if you don't mind driving past an endless field of corn to get to it.

Not much happens here either (at least not in terms of people dying at a mass murderer's hand) and for that I'm both thankful and incomprehensibly pissed off. My life is as safe as it gets; I'm a reasonably young, healthy, straight white adult male who lives in one of the safest cities in one of the safest states in one of the safest countries in one of the safest eras we've ever known.

And yet as fortunate as I am, as fortunate as we all are, forty-nine people's lives were still brutally cut short by intolerance, hatred, bigotry, and violence.

And for that I feel so fucking helpless.

I can't even begin to imagine, in the sheltered womb that is my life, how the LGBTQ community must feel about this. An icy hand of evil has reached up from the past to claim wonderful, innocent souls. Why? No, seriously, why?

Because the people at Pulse committed the horrible, unforgivable crime of loving someone?

Because the people at Pulse were somehow disgusting monsters for having a different identity?

Because the people -- no, wait, that's the whole problem. To this misguided asshat, they weren't people. They were reduced to nothing but their “sins,” deserving only of death, certainly not of mercy. But they were people and they didn't deserve this.

And I feel so fucking helpless because even with all my advantages, I can't personally stop evil from reaching out and striking at a community of people who are beautiful and worthy of life, and yet live in fear.

And I feel helpless because every time something like this happens, social media blows up with so many candles and prayers you'd think there was a PartyLite convention at a church. We all leap to the ramparts to defend our castles of logic and reason, and damn you for being heartless or damn you for trying to solve violence with a vote, or loathing with a law, like it'd actually do anything. Meanwhile, the bodies cool in morgues and I am left feeling helpless in the face of ridiculous, senseless horror.

Some indeterminate time later, the whole cycle starts anew, because not enough of us personally reached out past our keyboards to damn well do anything to help.

Look, my position is pretty clear, and it's trying to fix a problem like hatred and bigotry with a politician's pen is like trying to put out a fire by yelling at it. If you do nothing to address the source of the fire, you've done nothing to remove its effects. Banning objects to control behavior doesn't fucking work and you all know it, because it didn't work for alcohol and it didn't work for drugs and it didn't work for guns and just knock it off already! And yeah, I know we're all making a lot of noise about banning people now, too, but the Internet has no borders and that isn't going to work either. Hell, it didn't even work when the Internet didn't exist. If you want to know more, look up the Japanese internment camps. What a godawful legacy that was.

My position is also pretty clear on how I feel about the LGBTQ community, or at least I hope it is: people are all wonderful, complex, flawed and fantastic, all at the same time. I'm not some paragon of virtuous thinking, but it never made any good sense to me to hate a person for what they are or who they love. We are all weird, wounded, and wild, and if I have any right to life and happiness, so do you, no matter who “you” are.

Assuming you're not the asshole who murdered forty-nine fabulous people, that is. I hope you saw the truth of things before you perished, you miserable moron, but I don't regret or mourn you. You ran out of chances, you misguided and stupid person, when you murdered another.

That's right, even the killer is a person. Not because he's done anything special to deserve it, but because if we dehumanize even the worst of us, we risk dehumanizing the least of us. And that leads only to more of the violence we saw on Sunday. I won't perpetuate it.

Despite how I feel, though I'm not helpless. Not really. And for that, I am profoundly grateful.

Instead of another long virtue-signaling diatribe or stupid meme about what “should be” or how nobly offended I am about what just happened, I can actually do something. We have a tremendous surplus of speech, but we also have a terrible deficit of action. If any of the actions I'm taking today do anything at all to help, then I'm more lucky than I have any right to be. And if just one life is spared by my efforts then it's more than I could hope or dream.

I'm donating blood tomorrow, because wounded people keep needing blood and they can damn well have every drop I don't need right now. I couldn't do it earlier because my schedule sucks and so do donation center hours, but I'll get there tomorrow, probably right around the time they'd actually need some more to replace what was used. Lucky them, I'm O+ and that's a popular flavor.

I found out you can't easily donate to the Pink Pistols, but you can volunteer your time, and that'll have to do for now. Even a straight guy can pass out flyers, even if they're suuuuuper pink. Or I can help teach people who want to defend themselves. I'm not saying they should have to, or that it's their fault if they don't. I'm just saying if they want to, I'll damn well help where I can.

I've joined the Michigan Coalition for Responsible Gun Owners to improve the rights for people in my state to protect their lives however they wish, and I was one of the first 50 people to sign up for Operation Blazing Sword. Human life is a tremendously valuable thing, and it's worth protecting in whatever way is needed. If a good, law-abiding person chooses a firearm to do so, then I'm going to work harder to make that possible for them. There's no good reason the least advantaged of us should suffer at the hands of those most advantaged. And I'm not just chucking money at them, either; I'm going to volunteer my time, any time that the Pink Pistols, if they'll have me, don't consume.

I will seek out more training not just to defend life, but also to preserve it. I will train harder to defend against violence and also to save a life if it happens to myself or another.

I will strive to make my life, my home, my words and my actions a true “safe space” for people who need it. I'm not talking about what the phrase “safe space” has become these days; I'm talking about what it used to mean many years ago. I promise that if you are gay, trans, whatever; my home, my car, my office, even my shoulder, is a place you can go for refuge if you are in danger. Because you are a person and you have value.

Most importantly though, I will speak and act against hatred, against bigotry, against intolerance. No person should fear for their lives based on who they are or who they love. I promise I will stand against hate by speaking out against it, not just on Facebook where it's easy, but in person and in public where it actually matters. The solution to speech one finds abhorrent is more speech refusing it, with every word an expression of compassion, of justice, and of outreach.

I am also asking you (you beautiful, wonderful, capable person reading this) to do the same. All my strength doesn't amount to much against the problems we face. But if you help, even a little, even anything at all, we can nudge the world to better.

Can you donate?

Can you contribute, or volunteer your time to help the defenseless gain their strength?

Can you speak out against intolerance and bigotry, even when it's tough and personal? And can you speak to our youth so that they might learn tolerance and compassion better than we did?

Can you donate blood? They were full yesterday, but they'll need more, a constant red flood of it, until all are healed. And can you keep donating even months and years from now?

Can you train yourself on life-saving emergency care procedures to help the injured in a tragedy?

Can you go beyond what I'm doing now, and return again to ask me to do the same as you have?

Do one thing, at a minimum, right now, if you can do anything at all. Social media won't save lives, but action will. Let's help.

Raymond Garety III