Growing up a gender-atypical child in the politically broken and culturally fragmented country of South Africa, social acceptance and even basic tolerance was often hard to come by. Dealing with the growing pains of adolescence as an unworldly teenager is challenging enough. But doing so in the lonely corner after being shunned by everyone in the room – your family, your friends, your community, your tribe – can make life for a queer kid seem unbearable at times.

In this vulnerable state, liberalism offered me what I so desperately wished for. Not only was I accepted for who I am, but I was celebrated for that which makes me different. And like a nurturing mother, the left took me under her wing with promises of inclusion, acceptance, and a sense of security and protection from a cruel and unjust world.

As I grew into adulthood, however, I soon realized that Mother Left’s generous promises of inclusion, acceptance, and shelter, were highly conditional. I was welcomed as a nestling as long as I parroted the leftist script of big government, open borders, gun control, and the insidious subversion of Western values.

At face value, I was allowed to be myself; a little gay boy, and eventually a transgender woman. But as soon as I was simply Theryn Meyer, with my own unique ideas and beliefs oft-contrary to the leftist script, I was branded a bigot and swiftly booted from Mother Left’s cushy liberal roost.

Nevertheless, the account of my expulsion from liberalism only tells half the story of how I find myself here today; a male-to-female transgender conservative. I certainly do hold these political convictions in part because conservatives seem to be the only ones who care about the mass importation of rabidly anti-LGBT cultures; and also because they seem to be alone in their concern for gay and trans people’s right to self-defense. But despite these obvious motivations, my conservatism runs much deeper than policy.

Even into my adulthood I still seek tolerance and understanding from my fellow man, and integration into my society – much like the leftist majority of LGBT people. However, our approaches toward achieving these goals differ fundamentally.

Characteristic of the left is to spew incessant streams of demands for the inclusion of, and the affording of various entitlements to, sexual minorities. They claim by fiat things like same-sex marriage and the use of washrooms that correspond to a person’s gender identity, to be “fundamental human rights.” But what is not quite as characteristic is to bring up, or acknowledge the existence of, any responsibilities that LGBT minorities may have to the society in which they seek tolerance and integration.

As a trans person, I recognize that I am an abnormality; an anomaly that makes up a minute fraction of the population. In a sense, I am an ‘outsider’. And much like if I were to move to Japan in hopes of being accepted as Japanese into the culture of the country, there are certain responsibilities that come with being an outsider seeking acceptance as an included member.

As an immigrant to Japan, I won’t gain acceptance by refusing to speak Japanese, and demanding of the natives to learn English so as to accommodate me. I won’t gain any tolerance by refusing to take my shoes off at the door when entering a Japanese household, and I’ll never be considered “one of us” by Japanese people if I try to push my western customs onto others at every opportunity.

Similarly, LGBT people will never obtain the acceptance they want by forcing a church by law to marry a same-sex couple; they will never achieve tolerance by decreeing a new definition of gender and mandating the use of manufactured pronouns; and they will never be understood as ‘one of us’ by the mainstream culture through lecherous public displays of erotic smut known as “pride parades.”

Conservatives like myself aren’t hesitant to just any kind of change. Moreover, we aren’t cautious of change simply for it’s own sake. Instead, we resist authoritarian and politically motivated revisions to the fundamental principles, customs and institutions that threaten to destabilize and even destroy the fabric of our prosperous western civilization. Traditional marriage, the nuclear family, and even the notorious “cisnormative, heteronormative gender binary,” aren’t institutions constructed simply to oppress women and minorities. Instead they form, in part, a framework of order, structure, and coherence upon which a society can operate functionally.

It is this framework that has allowed Western Civilization to flourish and progress into a society that holds as its core values the freedoms that allow gay and trans people to be gay and trans in the first place – freedom of speech, freedom of choice, freedom of association, and freedom of assembly, to name a few. It is this very framework and these very freedoms that the anti-West left seeks to tear down. And it is our Western culture, its fundamental institutions, and its core values, that nobody should fight to conserve more than LGBT people.

Respect is a two-way street. Being reasonable, and using patience and perceptiveness to convince the common populace that you as a trans or gay person do not in fact pose a fundamental threat as an “outsider,” and that you are “one of them,” will get you much further than flinging accusations of homophobia and transphobia at every person who refuses to submit to your every whim.

Eventually, once tolerant people will become fed up with their continued demonization and the systematic overthrow of their culture by a small minority of moral elites, and they will lash back with genuine intolerance – which is why the LGBT community is its own worst enemy.

So, my fellow faggots, dykes, and trannies, I urge you to reconsider your position as political pawns in the left’s nihilistic agenda; I recommend you abandon your authoritarian efforts to re-engineer a populace; and I instead invite you to join me and other conservatives on the front lines in defense of western civilization, to preserve the institutions and traditions that have brought about this prosperous society and, in turn, guaranteed you the freedom to be who you are.

Theryn Meyer is a South African-Canadian political commentator, blogger, YouTuber, and cultural critic. With a focus on free speech and gender politics, she has appeared on multiple news outlets and talk shows, including The Steven Crowder Show, Gavin McInnes Show, The Rebel, The Rubin Report, and The Agenda with Steve Paiken. Meyer is considered Canada’s leading conservative transgender pundit.