Their Own Affairs

 The Russian government—that great exemplar of "Christian" and "Western" values, according to our neo-fascist Putin admirers in this country—recently sentenced a woman to eighteen months in a labor camp. Her crime? Writing K-pop fan fiction with a gay theme. 

Meanwhile, here in the U.S., our own Putin-inspired fascists are sending out criminal subpoenas against trans health care providers. The march of regress carries on. 

I hate that so many self-declared political "moderates" in the Democratic coalition have coalesced around the idea of throwing trans people under the bus as their strategy to make the party seem more "mainstream." 

I cannot believe for an instant that the weird Christo-fascist obsession with LGBT people is actually the default "normie" viewpoint in America. 

I suspect, to the contrary, the true default—the genuinely "normal" attitude—is not to spend any time worrying about how other Americans dress or what pronouns they use. 

The weird people are the ones who spend their hours obsessing over and trying to criminalize people for the way they express their gender or their sexuality. 

If my ways are not as theirs / Let them mind their own affairs, as A.E. Housman once put it—in a timely cry of protest against the persecution of LGBT people in the UK in his era. 

But no, they will not; they must still

Wrest their neighbor to their will,

And make me dance as they desire

With jail and gallows and hell-fire.