Apologies to Sly Stone for that title, but he said it, he laid it out:

One child grows up to be
Somebody that just loves to learn
Another child grows up to be
Somebody you’d just love to burn
It’s a family affair

It’s my sister’s birthday today. The only sister from my family of many that I still had a (tenuous) relationship with, but now don’t.

She found THE LORD and teamed up with another of my sisters to denounce and attack my queer niece over the care of her trans-y child. It’s “child abuse,” apparently, to allow your child to be who they feel they are.

Wait, that’s not what they think. They think it’s “child abuse” to allow your child to defy the patriarchal misogynist hetero standard: the one and only true way. Praise the lord!

I don’t know. Somehow, out of what turned out to be a conservative MAGA side of the family, I wound up with not one but two queer neices. So maybe there is a god.

But yeah, the one sister I thought made it out alive has become a Jesus freak and so, naturally, voted for Agent Orange. The last time I communicated with her was when she texted me “Happy birthday” and said, “Hope you have a nice day.” That was 17 days after Der Führer crayoned his imbecilic penis-waving signature at the bottom of an executive order written by Christian Nationalist perverts that essentially declared that trans people don’t exist, and never have, in AMERICA.

So I wasn’t having a nice day, and told her so. I explained that what was happening to me was precisely what the people she voted for had promised to do, and that her betrayal broke my heart. I told her that maybe she could separate politics from our relationship, but I no longer had that luxury or privilege. She didn’t respond to that, predictably, I guess, and hasn’t contacted me since.

I’m going to see her in a couple of months when Ayin and I go to my niece’s big queer wedding. I don’t know how she or my other sister (the bride’s mom) will behave, but I suspect they’ll be smiling through their gritted teeth at the whole fruity spectacle. But they’ll be on our turf, so they’ll have to behave. If they even show up. It just occurred to me they may choose not to.

I’ve written about forgiveness here before. I believe in it as a (the?) path to freedom, and I work to practice it. I forgive my sister for contributing to my suffering. But that doesn’t mean I have to hang out with her. Or even perform surface-y chit-chat with her. My forgiveness is a private thing. I’m not here to ease the minds of my tormentors.

So, if you were wondering, I won’t be texting to hope she has a nice day.

Despite the loss of all my non-queer family members and the oppression of the unapologetically fascist regime we currently live under, I still feel lucky. Ayin and I have had a ton of good fortune rain down on us over the past 25 years, and we have our chosen family here in the desert and elsewhere.

Sure, I can’t leave the country for fear of being denied re-entry (missing out on a company-paid trip to Costa Rica later this year, boo!), but that’s a temporary problem. They’re all temporary problems since everything is temporary anyway. The truth of it all is I am an ungovernable punk, and I can’t—and wouldn’t—change that.

Only love can conquer hate, and love can’t be legislated away. Really, what else is there?

WRITTEN BY A HUMAN