You know those signs, “Drive like your kid lives here”? My neighbors put one up when both our kids (now seniors in high school) were in Kindergarten. They thought a clever way to get drivers to slow down would be to remind them that they too might have young kids riding bikes or crossing the street. Assuming the drivers had a conscience, my neighbor hoped that this reminder might help them to observe the speed limit. And it worked, at least some of the time.
Just days away from the election, there are many yard signs popping up all over town. My own sign might read: Vote Like Your Kid is Queer. Your vote this November impacts not just your life, but the lives of your neighbors, including those across town you’ll never meet but whose roads you may travel at top speed. And for that reason, I am asking you to vote for candidates and policies that explicitly protect my queer kid as if they were your queer kid.
By most accounts, my nonbinary child and their trans friends are typical American teens. When not spending inexhaustible hours in their room, they go to concerts, dress up for prom and complain about unfair grading. In other words, you know their type even if you may not know my teen personally. And the fact is, you don’t have to know them in order to respect their humanity.
Further, it’s likely that you do know or have met a gender-diverse young adult. Regardless of whether you live on the coast or Midwest, rural or urban, or red or blue state, gender diverse individuals represent 5% of the under-30 population. It doesn’t matter that you don’t know who it is. And that’s really my point. You don’t need to know a person’s gender identity in order to do business with them or to be neighborly. You treat people with kindness and civility because they are fellow humans doing this crazy thing called life alongside you.
When you go to your ballot box on November 5, I want you to consider the reality that someone standing in line with you to vote has a trans family member, or friend, or is gender-diverse themselves. As you both wait in line to vote, that fellow citizen deserves to believe that the vote you cast is just as likely to preserve their loved one’s chance at living a good life, as the one they are about to cast themselves.
It isn’t too much to ask your fellow Americans to support candidates and policies that don’t explicitly intend to harm the people you love most. Just like it isn’t too much for me to ask my fellow Americans to slow down and obey the speed limit when driving down my street.
This post is part of my collection of blogs about cis parents of trans, nonbinary and gender-expansive kids called: Parenting Through Transitions. Additionally, a version of this post appeared in the Nov 14, 2024, daily of the Kansas City Star and its conglomerate of papers: McClacthy. If you liked this post, please subscribe to receive my monthly email newsletter, as well as follow me on social @rachel_hulsteinlowe_llc.
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