The following is a plea to Congress and the President to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) HR-3017, which is currently stuck in the House Committee for Education and Labor, Chaired by Rep. George Miller.

LGBT Americans want to help get this country back on its feet, but can’t as long as most of the country can still legally discriminate against them.  We need ENDA and we need it passed NOW! There is no excuse to discriminate in the work place any longer.  None.

(This is the 3rd and final installment in the “Stuck in . . . ” series.)

We all know that loneliness does not limit itself to LGB or T people. This feeling probably strikes 100% of the human population at one time of another, many living in perpetual loneliness for most of their lives. A person can feel lonely because they have no one special in their life who loves them. Others can be lonely in a crowd of people who do love them. A majority of people don’t go out of their way to choose to be lonely, yet some do. But, loneliness goes out of its way to chooses us.

Even though the feeling of loneliness does not differ between LGBT people and straight people, the causes can be different. If we can believe the figures for the number of LGBT people in the population, between 5% and 10%, then that means that there would be far less LGBT people in the world to find your special someone from. Of course, bisexual people have more numbers to choose from, as do straight transgender people. If an LGBT person lives in a rural area, their chances become zero in many cases. However, numbers alone don’t keep people from feeling lonely.

Loneliness in the lesbian community is such a large issue that it generated a joke. When two lesbians fall in love, one quickly rents a U-Haul so they can move in together. It might seem funny, if it didn’t have its basis in reality. For gay men, you’ll find dozens of cruising bars in large cities to accommodate their need to cure loneliness, even if it’s for just one night. Everyone tries to cope the best they can, but loneliness keeps its own time.

(Break)

I find the Religious Right’s obsession with gay people having sex is such a far fetch and ridiculous notion. I imagine that these people happen to be so sexually repressed and lonely that they can’t stand it when someone else enjoys themselves more than they do. But, the myth of gay people having sex all the time happens to be far different in reality, otherwise the term “bed death” would not have been coined and used in the LGBT community. Bed death happens to couples who have been together for a long time, but have long since stopped having sex. I can tell you from my previous experience as a straight married man, it happens to straight people as much as LGBT people.

In the LGBT community, loneliness causes a higher incident of smoking and drinking, since the “cure” for loneliness is supposed to be found in a bar, or so some think. When a person needs to conquer their loneliness for one night, they might have unprotected sex as the result, which will lead to many other problems. Some have even taken their own lives because of depression from loneliness. I guess with unprotected sex and suicide, we can easily say that loneliness kills.

I want to focus on what causes trans people to become stuck in loneliness. What I have seen and want to address has happened to some trans people, but not all of them. Some have a multitude of reasons to feel lonely. The biggest would be the stigma from society that we are somehow not “real” men or women.

Some straight women and some gay men may not want to date a trans man because he doesn’t have a penis, or at least not a functional one. Some straight men and some lesbians would not want to date a pre-op MtF because they still have a penis. And then, there are some straight men and lesbians who won’t date any transsexual woman, regardless of surgical status, because they still consider them men. The existence of a penis at birth is all that matters to them and the rest of that person’s life or personality doesn’t. One easily sees that when it comes to romance, many trans people can find themselves facing loneliness.

Loneliness comes in other forms for trans people. Being rejected by family members can be devastating to many trans people, but gay, lesbian and bisexual people also face this very same loneliness. I experienced it myself. It took seven and half years to become accepted by all of my family members, but my father had to die before that happened. Yet, I’m one of the lucky ones.

Other forms of rejection can cause loneliness, such as losing long-time friends after starting transition or coming out, which I also experienced. And, losing work friends and have others harass you at work, even though your company allowed you to keep your job. Yep, I had that happen, too. All of these made me feel lonely at one time or another, but I got over it. Sadly, others don’t.

Another cause for loneliness is not seen as loneliness by some trans people. Body dysphoria causes many to avoid intimacy until their body fits their mind. The feeling of an incongruent body becomes a real and viable reason for a trans person to remain alone. Some trans women even refuse to touch their penis, except with a wash cloth. Once they have surgery, for the most part, they become happier and end up with enjoyable love lives.

Other trans people never get over their loneliness, even after all of their surgeries. Some start transition thinking that life would magically become better after surgery, regardless of how many people told them differently. They spend all of their time and effort making sure they reach their goal that they had no time or energy left learning how to socialize in their new gender. I see this more in trans women then trans men.

Some of these trans women never learn the skills socializing as a woman and decide that being lonely is much easier than learning those skills. Some even become bitter and lash out at others, blaming them for their loneliness. Socializing with others takes the edge off of loneliness, but it may not fully remove it. I play in an all-women’s pool league to help take the edge off of my loneliness. It’s the highlight of my week, even if I lose. (But, I don’t like losing.)

Loneliness can be a debilitating feeling that causes depression, isolation and in some cases, death. I feel it is one of the least known human feelings, but one that therapist have spent a lot of time talking about. Loneliness hits every individual for different reasons and at different intensities. However, it can be conquered. Some cases, the “cure” takes a lot of work to overcome. If you are without friends, then an effort has to be made to bring new people in your life. If you just broke up with someone, then go through the grieving process, but keep hope alive. If your family has rejected you, then don’t cut off communications, or you can make a new family with close friends. No matter how loneliness has taken a hold of your heart, its grip can be broken. Time is usually the answer.

For me, I hold out hope that she is out there, waiting to pry the loneliness from my heart. I just know she’s there, waiting to prevent me from being stuck in loneliness.

Think of how dull the world would be if everything came in just twos. We would only have two different colors, two different smells, two different tastes and two different sounds. People would appear in just two different varieties for each sex, and only thinking in just two different ways. From our diverse perspective, it would be a boring existence, except that in that world, boredom would only come in two forms as well.

Being a science fiction fan and writer, I can easily imagine how a world of true binaries would look. I’m envisioning a novel coming from that right now. We should consider ourselves lucky that Mother Nature can think beyond binaries. Unfortunately, even with all the evidence in front of us, Human Nature cannot think beyond binaries.

I should clarify that last sentence. When it comes to all that exists around us, we easily bask in the beauty of a world that goes way beyond binaries. We see flowers of all colors and varieties. Our pets come in all shapes, sizes, species and temperament. One could take a decade sampling all the varieties of food the world has to offer. Yes, we don’t live in a binary world, yet in some forms, binary thinking exists in people.

(Break)

If Mother Nature can think beyond binaries in every form of creation, then it stands to reason that sex, gender and sexual orientation also go beyond binaries. Try telling that to most of humanity, including some gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and straight people. Yes, even some transgender people cannot think beyond binaries, which has caused some rather heated discussions on blogs and lists at times.

Noticed I didn’t include intersex people on that list. Overall, I have found that because an intersex person can have so many different issues that would make them intersex, their life situations force them to think beyond binaries. I have learned a lot from my intersex friends, and they still have more to teach me.

So, where does a lot of this binary thinking come from? Easy. “The Bible says that God only created man and woman. The Bible says that men cannot lie with men and women cannot lie with women. The Bible says that men cannot wear the clothes of women and women cannot wear the clothes of men.” How often have we heard these examples from the Bible used as weapons to beat us over the head with? Yet, we hear nothing about stoning our children if they disobey, nothing about not eating pork and shell fish, nothing about not divorcing and remarrying, and nothing about not wearing clothes made with different materials. Seems those get swept under the evangelistic rug for convenience sake. Welcome to the “pick and choose” religious world.

Because binary viewpoints on sex, gender and sexual orientation exists with a majority of humans, we get amendments to state constitutions that say men can only marry women, and visa versa. Yet, in all of those state constitutions, you will NOT SEE a definition for what constitutes a man and what constitutes a woman. If you try to pinpoint a definition for them, you will find many exceptions to whatever one you pick, leaving out some of those fine, upstanding evangelist citizens in the process.

Why? Because Mother Nature (God) never follows a binary model when creating humans. Scientists have even identified over 600 species of plants and animals that can change sex based on the needs of the species, further blurring the binary lines. If binaries don’t exist in nature, then why have so many states based laws and amendments on vague and undefined terms such as “man” and “woman?” Who allowed them to get away with it?

Let’s also look at God for a moment. If you were God and could create anything, ANYTHING, then that means you would have no limits. You are not stuck with binary thinking and can mix and match all sorts of features when creating humans. Yet, a misguided portion of society wants to put limits on God’s abilities when it comes to the sex, gender and sexual orientation of people. How arrogant are those people? On top of that, if you don’t choose the right one of the two – such as sexual orientation – then you’re not following God’s plan, as if they had absolute proof of how God thinks.

There are five known sexual orientations – heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, asexuality and pansexuality. For those who don’t know, pansexuality, or omnisexuality is a sexual orientation characterized by the potential for aesthetic attraction, romantic love, or sexual desire for people, regardless of their gender identity or biological sex. Pansexuality has been described as a “means to skip the binaries and essentialism of bisexuality.” I personally see an overlapping of the two.

When the Ex-Gay Movement comes up in conversation, people’s binary views of sexual orientation frustrate me to no end. You have straight people saying they can cure a person from being gay and gay people saying that a person will always be gay. Neither side cares to even acknowledge the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the person isn’t gay or straight, but somewhere in between.

The AMA recognizes twelve to fourteen various chromosome patterns to designate a person’s sex. If XX designates female and XY designates male, then what sex are the others? The AMA, in order to bend to the pressures of the Religious Right, has designated some of the other patterns male and the others as female. But, are they right? I refuse to believe they can be so positive on the person’s sex if they do not have either XX or XY. And, Mother Nature, in all of its non-binary wisdom, has even created male-bodied people with XX chromosomes and female-bodied people with XY chromosomes. I have a female-bodied friend who has XY chromosomes. This proves that using chromosomes to justify a binary model for sex just cannot be done.

Failing the medical determination, we can go with a person’s gender, specifically their gender identity. What their mind says has to be the strongest deciding factor when medical evidence becomes too vague. Even there, no binary exist, otherwise Leslie Feinberg wouldn’t have embraced gender-neutral pronouns. Some people feel they have a neutral, an undefined or fluid gender, thus shattering binaries in gender as well.

Binaries for sex, gender and sexual orientation are nothing more than creations by people who will not accept a variety of possibilities, or want to make it easy to place people in neat little boxes. Nature has no concept of boxes. The lines between everything in nature become blurred and undefined when studying them carefully. Too bad some people ignore solid evidence in order to push their brand of intolerance, but that has been happening for thousands of years. The more we push aside binary thinking and embrace the wide diversity of nature, the harder it will be for the bigots to thrive. Don’t expect that to happen anytime soon.