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LEXIE CANNES STATE OF TRANS — To no one’s surprise, Christian extremists took to the airwaves and internet with the usual vile and hatred following Caitlyn Jenner’s coming out.

By happenstance, forwarded to me today was a response from an anonymous forum member in reply to a vile statement about Caitlyn posted earlier in the day by another member. In my opinion, this person’s reply is likely among the all-time great rebuttals to those who hate in the name of Christ. Amazingly spot-on with writing skills most writers dream of having, I was both impressed and entertained!

I’m reproducing the conversation here. I’ve changed usernames and made a few edits. The forum is neither religious or LGBT orientated, nor is it a news site’s “comments section.” Just ordinary people discussing matters of varying topics.

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Christian Bob:

“If you don’t consider what Bruce Jenner is doing to his life as perverted, we’ve lost society as we know it…heck…who’s he fooling…keeping the plumbing he was born with…he’s still a male. There’s some really sick stuff going down here…they all just need some real help. . . . No hate here…just concern about lives…don’t believe me…that’s your concern.”

Forum Lurker:

Well, Christian Bob, you’ve truly outdone yourself. And in finding a new low bar to scuttle beneath have compelled me to make a rare appearance on this forum to offer a rejoinder on behalf of those of us not blissfully swimming in an ocean of ignorance.

To state the obvious: No, I don’t consider what Caitlyn Jenner has done with her life as perverted. I’m quite confident not only that I’m not alone in that opinion, but that yours is actually the opinion in the minority. Thankfully, your version of “society as you know it” has not truly existed anywhere in the real world for many decades. If ever. I.e. Many of the cherished chestnuts the far right clings to regarding the so called good old days are completely manufactured and lack all historical context or nuance and are invariably chained to (then) contemporary social convention.

While your opinions are certainly yours to hold and you have every right to express them, others in turn have the option of pointing out they’re utterly contemptible and offensive. “No hate here”, you claim apparently failing to appreciate the irony. And I suspect knowing full well you sound completely hateful; thus feeling the need to preemptively offer a limp and unsupportable defense.

I mean, really. What great “Christian” or “conservative” values are being upheld by your sick refutation of Caitlyn Jenner? It’s certainly not love. It’s not empathy. It’s not acceptance. It’s not kindness or understanding. It’s not even base level human sympathy as evidenced by your sneering, ignorant, and judgmental commentary regarding “his plumbing”. Way to represent those “Christian” ideals you’re always blathering about there, pal.

Either you don’t know, (which I doubt), or you don’t care (which seems far more likely) that transgender persons (not to mention many, many other members of the LGBT community; which happen to number in the tens of millions nationwide) have struggled for decades with bigotry, prejudice, bullying, psychological and physical violence, and even death. Guess what? The attitudes you espouse are contributory. Period.

I ask the following question semi rhetorically; as you’re demonstrably a buffoon of almost cartoonish proportions that has time and again proven incapable of thoughtful and reasoned dialogue. To wit, what “help” do you feel Caitlyn and other transgendered people need? Some form of forced psychiatric counseling while being involuntarily detained in a mental facility? Somehow, I don’t see Jesus being on board with that plan. Of course, the “help” you feel they need amounts to a blanket refutation of the very idea that one’s sexual identity is an inherent trait. Therefore, according to you, there’s something “wrong” with Caitlyn. A short excerpt from an article [from Salon.com] I recently read neatly encompasses the evangelical meltdown that accompanied Caitlyn Jenner’s Vanity Fair cover.

“In the minds of those who hold traditional views on gender (the equipment you’re born with dictates what you are), Jenner’s coming out represents a disquieting departure from the tidy gender basis of the traditional family: one man, one woman, united for the primary purpose of procreation. A subset of conservatives, mainly evangelical Christians, may never accept deviations from this worldview, not on matters of gay rights, nor marriage equality, divorce, gender bending, nor gender transition.

But the future of conservatism is moving in a different direction on at least one related issue, with a strong majority of young Republicans supporting same-sex marriage. While we shouldn’t conflate sexual orientation and gender, a conservative shift on marriage equality is an admission that, as far as our rights are concerned, there are more important things in our lives and in our relationships than forming procreative unions premised on fixed, traditional gender roles. Freedom to marry the people we love, and freedom to embody and perform the gender that our minds tell us we are, turn out to be freedoms that people want to enjoy equally with cisgender, heterosexual couples who already get to choose not to marry, not to reproduce, and not to stay married, all without giving rise to crass media backlash against our choices.

Fair enough, you could say; nobody’s trying to deny Caitlyn Jenner the right or the freedom to be who she is; conservatives just stand in value-opposition to Jenner’s choice to come out to the world as Caitlyn. Here again I ask: if it’s not about the relationship between traditional gender roles and the traditional family—a relationship that cisgender, heterosexual, conservative couples defy all the time—then what exactly is the conservative value that underwrites the backlash against Jenner and her gender transition”?

The answer is unseemly and thus your inability to confront it. You’re a bigot, Christian Bob. On some level you clearly recognize the viewpoints you hold on a wide variety of topics are not only unwelcome in public and mixed company but are not in any kind of way reflected in the mainstream. I’m sure that’s bothersome to you. (Sorry about that!) Furthermore, you’re a resentful and aggrieved bigot. One who conflates the inability to publicly denigrate those whom are different from you without engendering harsh condemnation, (as evidenced in this posting) with persecution.

No, you are not being persecuted. You are being ridiculed for being painfully and unrelentingly derpy. There’s a difference.

If you could ask any of the thousands of young people who have taken their own life’s due to being unable to cope with the unrelenting bullying that accompanies their own struggles with sexual orientation or gender identification, then you might have an actual idea of what persecution means. . . .”

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Whoa! Word.

Caitlyn Jenner comes out: https://lexiecannes.com/2015/06/01/caitlyn-jenner-takes-trans-community-to-the-top-of-pop-culture/

Watch LEXIE CANNES right now: http://www.amazon.com/Lexie-Cannes-CourtneyODonnell/dp/B00KEYH3LQ Or get the DVD: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0963781332

Read Lexie Cannes in The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/courtney-odonnell/

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Categories: Transgender, Transsexual, Trans, Transphobia, exploitation, dehumanizing, violence, hate