User:Woozle/LwaC/2016-05-24
The core of the email I ended up sending my dad (see #lunchWithAConservative):
<paste>
[...] I hope your travel went well, and I apologize for not responding to your earlier messages. I was rather focused on what you had been saying over lunch about legal protections for trans people, and felt very much that I needed to write to you about that.
The email I wanted to write started to get a bit complicated for a number of reasons, starting with the fact that I felt it important to clarify that by writing to you in disagreement, I was not attempting to reject you in some way or pick a fight, but just to correct some misinformation you seemed to have come across. I also wanted to make sure to have all my facts straight and so forth.
Time passed and I wasn't able to find the time for writing that email -- so then I was thinking maybe I should just write you a shorter email laying out the basic points: yes, transpeople do need protection; no, these laws don't protect women or children, in restrooms or anywhere else; HB2 was primarily an excuse for Republicans to abuse the power of government while complaining about government overreach (their followers lap it up without even noticing the inconsistency), yadda yadda...
...but then I came across the video in this post, and thought maybe that was a better place to start:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHicahGSVv0
The guy yelling throughout that video (he seems to be the one holding the camera, so you never see him) is one of the reasons why trans people need protection. Essentially everything he says is false -- much of it made up to scare the uninformed into thinking transsexuality and homosexuality are equivalent to child-molestation or something, for the benefit of a few politicians who want their supporters looking the other way while they create more real problems and refuse to solve others.
Laws like HB2 only encourage and empower this sort of obnoxious public display -- and this is far from being the worst example I've come across.
Again, this is by no means an attempt to start a fight, nor am I trying to create a rift of some sort. I just felt it important for you to be aware of the reality of what's going on with the recent War On Restrooms nonsense. What the Right is doing here is really quite horrid, and they shouldn't be allowed to get away with it (though they probably will).
I hope you are enjoying England. [...]
</paste>
My better judgement was telling me not to get into this -- but I figured that if we were going to have this discussion at all, now was the time to have it, when we won't be meeting face-to-face for awhile. (He'll be away for a few weeks at least, though I'm not sure exactly how long.)