Why Can’t We Just Let Queer Kids Be Kids?
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Photo by Denin Lawley
(OPINION) When I read about Nex Benedict, 16, the nonbinary teenager in Owasso, Oklahoma, who died the day after a fight in a high school bathroom that may have been sparked by bullying, I couldn’t stop thinking about Sue Benedict, the grandmother who was raising Nex.
I watched a video of the two of them speaking with a police officer in a hospital emergency room shortly after the assault, which according to Nex started after three girls mocked Nex and some friends. Nex, frustrated, poured water on them.
As of this writing, it remains unknown whether the ensuing beat-down Nex suffered caused the teenager’s death.
Maybe I was only projecting, but on that ER video it seemed I could see the pain on the grandmother’s face, hear the worry in her voice.
Margaret Renkl wrote a powerful op-ed in The New York Times about the Nex’s death.
Whether or not the assault killed Nex, it came in a climate of much bile in Oklahoma aimed at transgendered and other sexually nontraditional people by conservative culture warriors.
“We don’t know yet why Nex Benedict died or whether they were bullied in the bathroom that day because of their gender identity, but we absolutely know that right-wing political leaders in Oklahoma have repeatedly demeaned and vilified queer people,” Renkl observed.
“Ryan Walters, the state superintendent of Oklahoma schools, is known for his hostility to transgender rights. He threatened a state takeover of the Tulsa school system, in part for its ‘woke ideology.’ He believes ‘radical gender theory’ has put Oklahoma girls in danger. He created an emergency rule that prevents transgender students from changing their gender designation on school records. The list goes on and on.”
In Kentucky, where I live, lawmakers have taken much the same tack.
Some of the opposition to new ways of defining and coping with human sexuality may be sincere. I try not to impugn people’s motives. I can’t read minds. Sometimes the critics raise valid concerns, in my opinion, such as whether powerful hormone therapies or permanent gender-altering surgeries are appropriate for minors.
Still, a lot of the opposition in Oklahoma, Kentucky and elsewhere appears to be little more than vulgar grandstanding and plain old garden-variety bullying. It’s “let’s find somebody who looks weird and smack them around.”
Maybe at the ultimate receiving end of such folderol was a very real teenager trying to find a path through life. Just a kid. And the kid’s grandma.
“Nex did not see themselves as male or female,” Renkl quoted Sue Benedict as explaining to a reporter. “Nex saw themselves right down the middle. I was still learning about it, Nex was teaching me that.”
For me, as for Renkl, that line — “I was still learning about it, Nex was teaching me that” — tore my guts out. That’s a grandparent’s line, pure and simple. That’s what our grandkids do: teach us about all manner of things.
We of a certain vintage don’t tend to get the whole transgender, nonbinary, queer thing. We have no frame of reference. After I read about Nex’s death, I had to ask my wife, a retired schoolteacher, what “nonbinary” means in regard to gender. If that makes me a dinosaur, and I assume it does, well, I’m a dinosaur.
I can’t say whether all the countless new gender permutations are legitimate. Maybe some are more social contagion or attention-seeking rather than biological predestination. Who knows?
What really matters is that I’ve got grandkids. Five of them. Each unique in marvelous, remarkable, illuminating ways.
And I love them. I expect teachers, classmates and lawmakers to treat them with human decency. I don’t want my grandkids, or anybody else’s, demonized. I don’t want them bullied. I don’t want them hounded to the margins.
If my own grandchildren started coming to me tomorrow one after the other and saying, “Papa, I’m transgender,” or, “Papa, I’m nonbinary,” or “Papa, I’m (fill in your own designation here),” I wouldn’t love them one iota less.
I’d ask them to teach me. I’d try to understand. Sure, I’d try to help them think everything through. I’d gently point out any flaws I saw in their reasoning. But I’d assure them that whatever they ultimately concluded, I’ll always be in their corner.
Kids are, by definition, continually transitioning in one manner or another. Sometimes they’re amazingly perceptive. Frequently, they’re dumb as rocks. When I was a teenager, I was a raving maniac. (You don’t want to know.) We all live and grow and learn as we go.
Yet every child of every shape and kind and hair color and body piercing is a miracle from God, a revelation, a gift created by the Lord in his own image, loved unconditionally by him.
It’s up to us to recognize kids’ worth and cherish them all, whether or not we understand the ways in which they interact with the world. It’s up to God and them to eventually work out the details. In the meantime, our job is to love them just as they are.
Paul Prather has been a rural Pentecostal pastor in Kentucky for more than 40 years. Also a journalist, he was The Lexington Herald-Leader’s staff religion writer in the 1990s, before leaving to devote his full time to the ministry. He now writes a regular column about faith and religion for the Herald-Leader, where this column first appeared. Prather’s written four books. You can email him at pratpd@yahoo.com.