What if….? It Has!

Today is a departure from our usual format.

Sometimes things are occurring that I can not in good conscience remain silent on. 

Several of those issues have combined and are pointing towards some very dangerous trends that have included targeted assaults on individuals, human rights and the very definition of freedom.

Whether or not you have an opinion on the issues that so-called leaders are trying to criminalize is not the main rationale behind our discussion. It’s the bigger implications of what might happen to you, for anything “they” may disagree with in the future. 

I’ll explain on this scary and revealing edition of “Becoming Today”.  

As I alluded to in today’s headline, these things have happened and are happening not just in  a single location, but all across our nation. Before you dismiss the news as ‘that doesn’t relate to me’, realize once a precedent is set, it can then be adapted to fit precisely you.  

So what if I told you government officials have been ordered by an elected chief executive to go  into people’s homes and demand medical records? 

It’s not a what if. It has happened.

Not in a small remote village. Not in a country ruled by a tyrannical despot. “It has” right here in America, where the United States is supposed to stand as a symbol of enduring freedom for all the world to see, and possibly aspire for.

I’m not talking about a township commissioner three-weeks on the job in a remote rural community of less than 150-people. I’m talking about the highest ranking leader of the second largest state in the nation issuing “Executive Orders” allowing for directives to target children and their families. 

Texas ranks second in both geographic size and population in the nation. Nearly 1 in 10 Americans reside in Texas in an area that is larger than 150 countries in the world, including every single one in Europe. A fact they acknowledge and promote as a selling point to tourists with their slogan, “Texas, It’s Like A Whole Other Country”.

According to their state constitution the role of the Governor includes making, “policy recommendations that lawmakers in both the state House and Senate chambers may sponsor and introduce as bills”.

It does not say he creates laws. 

It does not say he mandates regulations nor does it say he has a responsibility to or an obligation to circumvent other elected officials and local governing bodies in the performance of their duties. 

The Oath of Office, which he voluntarily affirmed upon being sworn in, also publicly states his understanding of his role, the scope of his job . 

Plus it also makes a covenant with the residents to follow his duties accordingly, faithfully, and “will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States and of this State, so help me God.“

His directive aimed at transgender children, their families and even their medical providers, would even on the most basic  levels seem to go against his pledge. 

Governor Abbott acting in accord with the full confidence of State Attorney General Ken Paxton, directed the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate nine families for alleged child abuse, because it was believed they sought gender-affirming medical care  for their kids.

Rules are being made outside of the proper regulations to target a small, small minority of the state’s population. The US Census Bureau indicates there are close to ten-million families in Texas, so focusing on just nine certainly seems out of character with the assurances citizens are given under the state and federal constitutions. 

Furthermore, of these initial nine, one of the invasive actions occurred in the home of an employee of the DFPS. “Coincidentally”,  that parent was also suspended from their job, after agents of the government came into their home and demanded copies of their daughter’s medical records.

Most people in the world can quote the words of our founding fathers, concerning certain  inalienable rights, “that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.

Rights to live our lives. Rights to be free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behavior, or political views.

Plus I see no happiness in threatening to tear families apart, creating emotionally damaging scenarios in a child’s home and then taking away the family’s livelihood. Leaving families scared, scarred and financially insecure is not the role of, nor is it anywhere near the proper use of the authority of government. 

The liberty and freedom assured in the BIll of Rights and the defining statements boldly made in the Declaration of Independence which scholars, historians and legal experts continue to contend mirror the U S Constitution, serve as further reminders.

To remind us that there are set limitations on government; designed at a time that reflected the fear of government imposing its will on the people.

Imposing their will, the so-called leaders in Texas are seeking to seize private medical records of which we not only have an expectation of privacy to, but there are also clearly defined regulations to assure that. 

Even more egregious is the fact that under the guise of “protecting the children” Governor Greg Abbott should order this. He is the same person who has within the past year publicly stated quote, “Texans, not government, should decide their best health practices…,”

So therefore if he believes Texans, the individual people. The families, not government officials, should decide what is best in regards to their healthcare and individual needs. Why is he now issuing directives in direct contradiction to that.

His beliefs, by the way, were part of another “executive order”.  Another directive he issued “prohibiting governmental entities in Texas — including counties, cities, school districts, public health authorities, or government officials — from requiring or mandating mask wearing”.

In response to the COVID pandemic, this same governor decreed the citizens have the ultimate authority as to the extent and needs of the healthcare of themselves and their families.

So why in that case and not this? Why is he so fixated on such a small, micro portion of his state’s population.?

In Texas there are approximately 3 point 2 million children between the ages of 10 and 17 years old. Of those, it’s “guesstimated” that maybe 14-thousand are transgender.

That would be, let me spell it out, point zero, zero, zero, four, three, seven, five percent of the state’s overall population. Numerically that is .004375%. 

Remember following the decimal point, the first two zeros equal zero percent. The third is one-one thousandth of a percent, so rounding a bit, even using fuzzy math, the Governor is allocating funds, personnel, resources and the full weight of the state government, in an attempt to regulate approximately four ten thousandths of a one-percent of the population. 

Oh I haven’t mentioned this yet. The Governor’s decree also seeks to send the parents and medical providers who assist the children to prison. Furthermore, for the protection of the child, it directs they be removed from their homes, seemingly making them ‘wards of the state”. 

That by proof of past performance and documented history exposes them to the further traumas and long noted abuses prevalent in state run foster care systems across the nation.

This Gubernatorial decree certainly appears to be the very definition of government overreach. 

Worse yet it’s not only happening in Texas…

At the end of this past week a Texas judge ordered the Governor’s mandate be halted. Granting a temporary restraining order until courts fully resolve the legal issues at stake.

Multiple lawsuits have been filed against the state, by the families focused on and many human rights groups which are coming to them. Court dates are set for mid-Summer, meanwhile in Idaho…

As the judge in Texas was hearing evidence, the Idaho House of Representatives approved  legislation that would send parents  seeking medical care for their transgender children to prison for life.

Not a typo. Life in prison for talking to a doctor.

They even are desiring to make it law to prevent a parent from traveling to another state to seek assistance for their child. The lawmakers  also ignoring the recommendations of actual medical associations are wanting to legislate what kinds of medications can be prescribed to people and who should get what surgeries when. 

Proudly sponsoring this measure, Idaho State Representative Bruce Skaug declared, “If we do not allow minors to get tattoos, smoke cigarettes and drink alcohol  or sign legal contracts, why would we allow them to make decisions to cut away organs based on their feelings during puberty time?”

Surgeries related to gender transitioning are not performed on children in the United States. 

By all accounts it has never been done and all major medical associations  as well as international organizations prohibit doctors from performing the operations until after a patient has turned 18-years old. 

That’s past the age of consent, at a time when the individual is considered to be mature and responsible enough to make their own decisions and do things like borrow money, vote and enter into military service. 

The Idaho situation still has a ways to go before it could possibly be signed into law. However as we witnessed in Texas the beliefs of a single individual can corrupt the system to take away an individual’s rights.

As we began our discussion today, I noted, “Before you dismiss the news as ‘that doesn’t relate to me’, realize once a precedent is set, it can then be adapted to fit precisely you”.  

If directives, executive orders and other decrees are allowed to stand in this issue, what’s next?

What if? 

What if suddenly someone decided it would be a great political tool to prevent left handed people from eating in public?

Sounds ridiculous. But while I haven’t fully examined the numbers I’m certain there are more openly left handed people in this nation than there are transgender children.

If a precedent is set, then there will be a basis in the “land of the free” to allow a single person’s will or whims to make you just that much less free.

Then there will be the next person seeking election who not only supports him, but says it’s not enough! Left handed people should be mandated to wear brightly colored gloves to warn others of their abhorrent and deviant behavior. 

Sounds ridiculous.

However the reality is there are probably some right now, saying I support that idea. 

Think it can’t happen? To a lesser degree it has. 

I was born left-handed. I was forced by public school officials to stop “doing that”. 

I was mandated by official directive to write with my right hand. Some even went as far to reinforce a false narrative that being left-handed was a sign of the devil.

So I was forced, in the light of day,  to write right handed.

At night, hidden away in “my closet” when I had to produce all those thousands of sentences like “I will not write left handed”, I did so left handed.

In fact, their infringements upon my rights to live as I was created, empowered me to become ambidextrous. So in my view, I won .

I triumphed over the nonsensical. 

I championed against what was bordering on tyrannical abuse of a child, I raged against the machine by learning how to write with three pens in each hand, and gained the ability to write six sentences simultaneously  in less time than most could set one on paper. 

Then assisted covertly by my left-handed Grandfather, who was subjected to the same misinformation campaigns decades earlier, I was taught about carbon paper. Now I could do ten sheets on each side, 20 pages, 60 lines at once.

Where there is a will there’s a way.  

Attacks like the ones I’ve shared today can be overcome.

It all begins with us. Each one of us.

We must decide to take action . Stand up for what is right. Shine light onto the darkness that is attempting to restrict us. Then we must take that action. Do it. Publicly.

I believe I have done that here today.

You don’t know what you don’t know, but once you do, that’s when the work begins.

We all share in the responsibility of being the change we want to see. Of co-creating our world for the better.  

It’s at the very heart and soul of our shared path.

“The Essence of Becoming” is “the process of coming to be something or of passing into a state”. Coming to be always, “Becoming”. Growing, developing and shifting into an attitude and daily practice of always, “Becoming”.

How do I, as an individual and we as a society, focus on “Becoming” what we are truly destined to be? 

How do we become all we can be? 

How do we further enrich our lives and those of our families, friends, communities and society as a whole? “

So how do we begin?

In cases like we just discussed it is taking on the duty to select and elect better leaders to ensure our future, to guarantee that we are again are living within our rights, which include but are not limited to the following: 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

So what qualities make a good leader? 

There are many that are integral and should be easily recognizable in a “Becoming” stewart. 

We’ll discuss those tomorrow, on our next edition of “Becoming Today”.

Before we go, I want to share some words I just recently heard.

I know I’m several years late to that party, but apparently the time was right for me to learn of them and share them with you.

Jo Jo Siwa, now just 18-years-old is a “former” child star, who made music for her peers. A child speaking to other children in this song she co-wrote contains much wisdom.

As with the “faith of a child” receive these words and realize how “Becoming” they are:

“I don’t really care about what they say

I’m a come back like a boomerang

Won’t let the haters get their way

I’m a come back like a boomerang

Ooh ooh whoa ah”

I think that may become my rallying cry for this week, “Ooh ooh whoa ah”!

I will not let hate win. Words give us power. The tongue has the power to create or destroy.

I chose creation. I choose love. I choose compassion. I choose dignity. I choose to respect all. I choose common sense, including one nation “under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

How about you?