An open letter to Representative Justin Price: Educate yourself
Melanie DuPont in UpriseRI
To watch Justin Price on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXhI4_MEADY. Maybe Justin Price is traumatized by his own LOLA experience (or click on it at the end of this article. That's a great song, by the way. Also, if you go to the link for this article in UpriseRI, you can find lots of additional video of this hearing.
At Tuesday night’s (January 30) hearing of House
Bill H7066, you
stated that you “represent the heterosexual community.”
You do not.
My name is Melanie DuPont, and I am one member of the considerable
part of the heterosexual community working to decrease human suffering. And I
vote.
Representative Price,
your queries and comments here tonight, during the
testimony in favor of 7066, betray an ignorance that comes from isolating
yourself from the facts that make you uncomfortable.
I encourage you to
alleviate your ignorance by putting aside your biases, prejudices, and sense of
entitlement to a surprise-free life, and– You know what? I was going to say,
“Go burden the LGBTQ community by reaching out to a lesbian, gay, bisexual,
transgender, or queer acquaintance or family member, who is not terrified of what your bigotry means to the
number of years they can expect to live, and ask them to smarten you up.”
Instead, I suggest you
binge-watch, I don’t know, “Modern Family” or “Will & Grace” or any other series that will warm
you up to the idea that LGBTQ people are humans who deserve to live, even after
you get angry. (Side note: it’s legal to get angry. It’s not legal to strike people in anger.)
Your repeated
implication tonight, that surprise and anger justify homicide against
LGBTQ humans, and the idea that sudden knowledge of a person’s gender identity
or sexual orientation excuses assaulters and murderers from taking
responsibility for their bigoted, violent actions…those assertions turn my
stomach.
And I assure you: if they can muster the strength to tolerate your ignorance, then your first lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer friend will have to fight much stronger nausea than I fight tonight.
And I assure you: if they can muster the strength to tolerate your ignorance, then your first lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer friend will have to fight much stronger nausea than I fight tonight.
When, after years of
practicing, you finally learn to ask questions without causing irreparable
damage, both to LGBTQ humans and to your own political career… seek out
additional conversations, and listen. Learn where you’re wrong, and when you’re
ready, I urge you to openly apologize to the LGBTQ community (by then, you’ll
know what for).
I’m heterosexual. I
don’t want my friends murdered, and I don’t want their murderers to get off on
lesser charges. Neither should you. And I resent the false implication you
made tonight, that trans-panic violence is a normal, expected
reaction to surprise. It’s not normal.
Lives depend on ending
the ignorance that perpetuates the myth that LGBTQ humans are “fair game” for
the toxically masculine individuals you currently accept as “normal.”
So educate yourself.
Here are all of
Representative Price’s comments and questions during the committee hearing on
H7066:
“This is a tough one.
Let me see if I got this straight,” said Price. “So if there’s a person that’s
identifying themselves as a certain gender presents themselves to another
gender of the opposite sex, and they’re okay with that, like, they think
they’re in a heterosexual relationship and come to find out that they’re not,
and and and they have a real problem with that, like a mental problem with
that, and they maybe, um, maybe have some aggressions to that, being um,
deceived and now having engaged in some sort of relationship, like a homosexual
relationship that they didn’t want to be in, or one of these other alphabet
relationships that they don’t want to be in, the courts are going to say that
their actions are not justified?”
“I guess my standard
question is, ‘Where’s this legislation coming from?” asked Price. “What’s the
precedent for this?”
“So I just want to
preface my remarks with I don’t have any problems with anybody’s gender, or
whatever, you know, how they want to live their lives, but the way this is
written, would this actually – would this condone – people with other gender
preferences to push their gender onto heterosexuals and be eliminated from any
ramifications from it? I guess what I’m saying is if someone presents
themselves as a certain gender, and it goes to a certain point, and then the
other gender, heterosexual gets mentally frickin’ unstable about this thing,
you know, like, finding out that he’s been kissing someone he doesn’t realize
he’s been kissing…”
Samson Zarek Hampton
spoke in favor of the bill. He confronted Price directly for the comments made.
“Representative Price,”
said Committee Chair Cale Keable, “Are you sure you want to ask a question?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” said Keable.
“I’m not against [the
LGBT community] in any way,” said Price, “but I represent the heterosexual
community and this bill would essentially eliminate any defense that my sexual
preference has…
