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It is exactly 50 years since September 11, 1973, when the United States government helped topple and kill the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, in order to install a dictator more to its liking.
In his 17-year rule, Augusto Pinochet had over 3,000 of his countryfolk murdered and tens of thousands more tortured, and the specter of Chile was felt wherever the CIA and US flexed their muscles, as they often did, during those decades. I wonder what Chile, South America, Latin America, and the United States’s relationship with these countries would be like today if not for that coup.
Some years–those ending in a 1, especially–I think a lot about September 11, 2001. And some years, that earlier 9/11 dominates my thoughts.
Photo: Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional de Chile; permission: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Chile
At our neighborhood’s Fiesta on the Hill yesterday, I saw a man wearing this t-shirt, and I loved it. He didn’t remember where he got it, only that it benefited a Texas group working for trans rights, and sure enough, I found it easily online, where the profits benefit Equality Texas.
I neither need another t-shirt nor can fit one in my dresser drawers, and as I wrote recently, I’m trying to pare down my stuff, especially clothing. But I am so heartsick about what Texas is doing to trans beloveds: scratch that, physically sick. Luckily, Equality Texas will accept our donations even if we don’t order a t-shirt. So will the National Center for Transgender Equality, Kind Clinic (providing gender-affirming health care in central Texas), Trans Women of Color Collective, and other excellent organizations working for civil rights.
The GOP, in choosing which wedge to drive between people to get out their voters this cycle, has decided its best bet is anti-trans legislation and rhetoric. The Heritage Foundation has proposed that the way to go is to define transgender as pornography, period, and the Republican Party will no doubt follow their blueprint, as it has done so many times before
Meanwhile, plenty of people who identify as liberals, leftists or feminists, including some Unitarian Universalists, smear the struggle for civil rights as some kind of narrow “trans ideology” and claim that trans rights and women’s rights are incompatible. They pour out of cracks like worms after rain every time someone dares to affirm that some people who are women menstruate and/or have uteruses. Apparently they think that worked great for J. K. Rowling. Unfortunately, their ideas about sex and gender ideology, while outdated and discarded by biologists and psychologists, still find a lot of traction in legislatures and courts.
So, while defending science writers on Facebook and wearing t-shirts aren’t all it’s going to take to guarantee trans equality, public witness makes a difference, especially if paired with our money and time. For t-shirt-inclined Unitarian Universalists: you can support Trans UUs in Florida with or without the t-shirt. I do have one of those, bought before my t-shirt moratorium. And make sure you’re seeing action opportunities from Side With Love.
Sermons in Stones 
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