Today my president declared me a non-person. With the single stroke of a pen, he declared that I was not real in the eyes of his government. He rolled back years of work by radical thinkers and started a process to dismantle a country in which I have lived my entire life. Our country has a document that we have followed since its inception. We have amended the Constitution and with the Fourteenth Amendment, we declared that ALL people born or naturalized in this country have a right to be treated equally and that no State or agency has the right to treat any one person or group differently. This new president has decided that he does not have to follow this founding document of our country and that this amendment does not apply. He has decided that under his government, I am a non-person and even though my family has lived here for generations, I am no longer a citizen that deserves the same rights and protections as all of the others. In his country, I am a non-person simply because I am transgender. In his country, there are only two sexes. He has announced that gender is no longer appropriate as a word and that we are only to refer to it as sex, as an act not a characteristic of a person. He no longer can recognize a whole person. Debased to an act, I am now a non-person.
So here I stand for all of the People I know, for all of the HUMANS I love and respect and honor. We ARE more human, more alive, and more real people than he, a coward, an ignorant and uninformed person, will ever be. I honor all of you who he is dismissing today. I honor all immigrants, all blacks, Asians, all races and creeds. I honor all transgender, all gender fluid, all queer, and LGBTQ+ people. I honor myself. I am a person. We are people. We are love and compassion. Together we are a voice and a force. He is not a government. He is a man. He is not President; he is a public servant. He is our servant. It is our voice that we now must raise up to remind him that he serves us, We The PEOPLE, of the United States of America. I honor you, I honor me!
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