My faith in humanity has been temporarily interrupted.

*I have edited this post. I had to walk away from it yesterday and regroup. The wounds were raw from watching the meeting when I wrote this. I realize now that I was referring to things that don't make sense if you aren't in the moment of listening to the people speak. I have attempted to clarify with my edits.*

Mayor Pat Gerard and Commissioner Woods, I respect you so very much for your integrity and for holding firm for human rights Friday night in the Largo commission meeting.

To the brave people that took the stand and stood up for human rights, I applaud you.

To those that stood up and spoke of your own struggles as a transgendered person, I am in awe of your courage.

To the commissioners I shall not name, words fail me. You had a chance to admit you made a mistake when you blatantly discriminated against someone with a medical condition.

In the past few weeks, there has been an incredible amount of personal attacks aimed at Steve Stanton, his family, and at transgendered people in general. These attacks have been made in letters to the editor, in newspaper forums, and in blogs like Troxler's blog of the St. Pete Times.

In the past few weeks, transgendered people have been called deviant, perverted, selfish, delusional and have been laughed at in the cruelest words these people could muster. My heart breaks for all the people that have read these attacks and know that these attackers are talking about them.

Is it any wonder that so many people that suffer from GID commit suicide? To all the people that cried and whined about Stanton being a terrible role model for children, do you not grasp the number of people that are transgendered? Can you not make the small jump mentally to realize that those very children you wish to protect include transgender children? These young and teenage transgendered kids will see your venom too, and thus perpetuate the cycle of maintaining high suicide rates. This is not a game, your hateful actions have consequences.

To those that are so disgusted that transsexuals dare to love, marry and have children, if only you could bring yourself to just expand your thinking for 5 minutes and look at the logic. This is a cycle. Transsexuals hide, marry, have families and try to outrun this thing their whole lives because of people just like you. When they do finally come out and deal with this later in life, you call them liars, deceivers, untrustworthy, selfish and shameful. You attack them for trying to hide and live a normal life. Yet, it is your actions that tell the 12 year old that they dare not speak of their own pain and transition young, that they must try harder to live the lie so that they might never be discovered. This is, indeed, a vicious cycle.

You say that the reason you want Stanton fired is because you can't trust him. You say he lied because he hid his transsexual nature from you. Your statements that wives and children are affected by transition and therefore the sufferers themselves are selfish for trying to save their own lives are inane. You don't know the pain that is felt by the sufferers themselves, those forced into hiding by society and who tried to live normal lives - so to not bring pain upon everyone in their world. I don't want pity. I'm an adult woman with a transsexual partner and I am proud to stand by her side and hold her hand.

You protesters claim pity for children that will be shamed and harassed by their peers because of the parent finally coming to grips with their gender issues. Yet your actions teach your children to do just that - harass, shame and threaten those very children.

When will we understand that people are people? When can we finally put all these issues to bed and just live our lives being kind souls?

Annie

Stanton

I am on the edge of my seat, following the commissioner meeting in Largo.

Here is the blog that is tracking the breaking news.

I pray that we can move this country forward where people that are born with this birth defect now longer have to live in shame, to be discriminated against.

Perhaps tonight we'll take a step forward for tolerance.

Annie