Any Port In A Storm? Not If You're Trans, Apparently

<www.theadvocate.com>

<Who, Me? I'm Not Nappin'...>

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You can tell something about an administration by its hit lists. For Nixon, it was the press. For Reagan, it was the Sandinistas. For Bush the Elder, it was the Iraqis. For Bush the Younger, it was anyone Middle Eastern, and Social Security. For Trump, it's anyone with the T-word -- not T for Texas, but T as in Transgender. He's not keen on having them serve their country, he's not willing to give them equal access to healthcare, and now, apparently, he's not ready to accept them in homeless shelters.

That's the word from "U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary" Ben Carson, who's championing a rule change that would roll back the 2012 Equal Access Rule that prohibits homeless shelters and programs from discriminating "on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity." The proposed change, if it sticks, would allow providers to consider either of those factors "for the purposes of determining accommodation within such shelters and for purposes of determining sex for admission to any facility." What's more, they can also evaluate "privacy, safety, practical concerns, [and] religious beliefs" in making a determination about a person's sex. 

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. If you don't meet Baron Bozo von Combover's hetero measuring stick, you'll just have to spend another night on the streets. And you can roam them, knowing that the decision-maker who put you there did so, because God whispered in their ears. Nothing personal, but their faith was strong, right? Such thinking would hardly raise an eyebrow in countries like Iran or Saudi Arabia. There's just one small matter, though. That's not how our democracy, as fractured and broken as it appears, is supposed to work, exactly. But I digress.

<I'm Just Busy Makin' Life...>

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The only silver lining here, if we can call it that, is that this proposal -- like so many that this noxious regime belches up, and spews out -- is likely headed for some type of legal challenge. it's hard to imagine trans folks, or their allies, simply winking at this latest blast of legalese, one that's designed to make their lives significantly worse.

As in many cases, statistics tell their own story. According to transequality.org, one in five trans people experiences homelessness at some point in their lives, or about 20 to 40 percent at any given time. Stated another way, that's roughly 1.6 million people, a staggering number for a modern developed nation. Then again, we've lived with ever-spiraling numbers of homeless since the Reagan Eighties, so what's a million more? These facts, inconvenient as they seem, count for little in the brutish world of Trumpism, where money and power are prized above human life. (Never mind the last words of Bob Marley, who told his sons on his deathbed: "Money can't buy life.")

There's no question that young trans people would feel especially hard hit, since family rejection -- coupled with eviction from their homes -- is a common trigger of homelessness, which often coincides with violence, and other types of discrimination. Like housing, where Carson has never worked, and knows nothing about. But that doesn't stop him from plowing ahead with a measure that, again, will make life worse for millions. Because, when God whispers in your ear, anybody who gets in the way is fair game.

<...Miserable For Millions>

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Two other aspects are worth mentioning. First, why it should surprise anyone that the announcement doesn't square with Carson's assurances to a Congressional committee that no plans existed to roll back the 2012 language? Trump can't keep his story straight, so why would any of his minions? If I were sitting on any of those bodies, I'd start with the notion that I'm not getting the whole truth, let alone a half, or even a sliver. In other words, if they told me the sun was shining, I'd go outside to check. And take my umbrella. Just in case.

From my perspective, it's hard to overstate the contempt that the Carsons of the world feel for rules and procedures. (I can't say "the Trumps," since I don't hang out in those circles, not have I interviewed any of them.) At best, they are nuisances to be gamed, or gotten around; at worst, they are obstacles to subvert, by any means necessary. If that means ducking FOIA requests, so be it. if that means lying to a committee, so be it. if that means telling a different story as each new contradictory fact emerges, so be it. Take your pick of the relevant quote here, whether it's William Henry Vanderbilt ("The public be damned"), or Abraham Lincoln ("Public sentiment is everything").

What's all the more galling, as I've already mentioned, is that the decision-maker here has no housing experience (so, in keeping with our house style, we put his title in quotes). in all fairness to Carson, he's certainly not the only know nothing cluttering up Trump's Cabinet. "Education Secretary" Betsy DeVos has never worked in a school; "Consumer Financial Protection Bureau" head Kathy Kraninger has no experience in consumer affairs, financial services or regulation, the very areas that she's tasked with overseeing. 

This same ignorance, as my sister pointed out in our weekly phone call, looms large over the rush to ban abortion in Ohio, where State Senator John Becker seriously suggested that an ectopic pregnancy can somehow be reimplanted into the uterus, or in Alabama, where State Senator Clyde Chambliss freely admitted his lack of scientific knowledge over the area he couldn't wait to impose his views. But it didn't matter, he asserted, because "from what I’ve read, what I’ve been told, there’s some period of time before you can know that a woman is pregnant… It takes some time for all those chromosomes and all that." 

Such mangled reasonings put them on par with geniuses like the late Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK), who earned raspberries all around for describing the Internet as "a series of tubes," and email technology as "an Internet," as he clumsily waded into the net neutrality debate. Even so, such gaffes didn't prompt his colleagues to yank his leadership of the committee charged with regulating the technology. Failure falls upwards, as we've seen. Especially in politics.

Multiply this confederacy of dunces by hundreds, or thousands, and you begin to realize the enormity of the damage that Carson and his kind may dish out. Such matters often end up as late night comedy fodder, but let's not allow our laughter to push the consequences out of our minds. Will we recover? Time will tell. But in the short run -- or, at least until this policy is overturned -- millions will suffer for who they are, or who they love. Nobody deserves that. --The Reckoner