' Joy and Hope to be Found' - CNN spotlights four parents who became fierce, loving advocates for their transgender children

CNN just published a very good article about four parents of transgender boys. The article allows them to relate about how their kids came out, how it affected their relationships, and how the recent anti-trans hysteria made them fierce for their children and other trans children.

 The article is simply amazing due to the honesty and brevity of the parents. They speak from the heart and you will learn more from reading this than any foul anti-trans book or talking points spewed from the mouths of right-wing phony experts.

Here is just an excerpt and after reading it, you will want to read more:

Anger has played a role in all four parents' efforts to speak out against transphobia. Stephen Chukumba of New Jersey told CNN he'd never considered what it meant to be trans until his son, one of his four children, came out as trans. He quickly caught up on the proper vocabulary and history and learned the myriad ways in which trans Americans have been excluded from society. "I found myself really incensed by it," he said of transphobia. "I just can't sit idly by." 

Amber Briggle would agree. It was rage that spurred the owner of a massage business to alert local media in 2016 to a Facebook post by a candidate for sheriff in Denton County, Texas, in which he endorsed physical violence against transgender people. The same year, she invited the state attorney general who criticized trans-inclusive policies to her house for dinner with her husband, daughter, and her son, Max, who is trans. She may not have changed the attorney general's mind that night, she said, but her dinner did get the attention of the Human Rights Campaign, with whom she helped create the Parents for Transgender Equality National Council. She did a TEDx Talk, too, about supporting her son's transition and started a blog about what it meant to be his mother in a state with hostile policies toward trans people.

. . . All four parents unequivocally support their children, though some said they could have been better allies in the beginning of their sons' transition. "I would say I failed at first, although my kid laughs when I say that," Trujillo said. 

From the time her son was 2, he showed her in different ways that he was a boy, Trujillo said. He'd draw himself as a boy and leave LEGO figures of boys around the house to hint at the way he saw himself, he told her. When she finally overheard Danny's friends use "him" in reference to her son, "all the puzzle pieces fell into place," she said. 

Danny was 8 when he socially transitioned, and Trujillo immediately affirmed him. Before he formally came out, she said she didn't see him as trans because she worried that she'd say the wrong thing or damage Danny in some way. But once he transitioned, she realized he knew himself better than she did. Briggle said she'd do "a million things differently" now than she did when her son came out. For one thing, she said, he'd been "expressing that he was a boy" since he was 2-and-a-half, but she didn't understand what he was trying to tell her.

After reading the article, I made one sad realization. Transgender issues are similar to the problems we are facing when it comes to misinformation about the COVID vaccine.  Too many people are being manipulated to draw their own inaccurate conclusions by others with ulterior motives.  They aren't being empowered to educate themselves. They are being empowered to think they know more than the medical experts and others invested in these issues. Sometimes people need to realize their limitations, shut their mouths, and listen to those who know what they are talking about. That would do a world of good.

Photo does not include children in CNN article. It was taken from the Human Right Campaign's Transgender Children & Youth: Understanding the Basics