Saturday is Halloween. My kids will be out.
They aren’t my kids by birth. They’re a group of young queer and trans adults I mentor. Some of them will be at parties Saturday night. Some of them will be on stage, because Halloween weekend is a big weekend for drag, and a few of my kids are very good at it.
Most years, my Halloween worries are ordinary: Did you eat? Who’s driving? Text me when you get there. This year, someone mailed Texas a ghost story, and I can’t stop thinking about where the fear it stirred up is going to go.
Liam Gent
Last week, someone I know found a brochure in their mailbox addressed to the “students” of the household. The cover read “Texas Trans & LGBTQ+ Student Resource Guide.” Inside were pages on emancipation, on what to do if your parents don’t support you, and on hormones and gender-affirming care.
By that evening, they had posted it to Facebook with a caption angrier at trans people than anything I had ever seen from them. I have known this person a long time. I never had met that version of them.
The brochure worked. That’s what keeps me up.
I knew within about 4 seconds that no trans organization wrote it. We have spent years watching what happens to trans kids when their parents believe someone is coming to take their children. Nobody who has sat with those kids would mail their parents a how-to guide on leaving home.
“Nobody who has sat with those kids would mail their parents a how-to guide on leaving home.”
The name on the envelope, Texas Transgender Student Union LLC, was filed in Wyoming on Sept. 2. The return address is a Houston-area Post Office box. The real organization whose branding, links and tour dates fill the pages, the Transgender Education Network of Texas, says it did not write, approve or send any of it, or the text messages that came first. TENT has since received threats of violence.
Nobody has proved who paid for this, and I won’t pretend to know. I’ll only note that Wyoming is a long way to go to start a student union in Texas, and most student unions have students.
State Rep. Jeff Leach has asked Attorney General Ken Paxton to investigate who financed it. Paxton is running for the U.S. Senate against James Talarico, in a race where trans kids have been a campaign theme all year. In May, Paxton ran an ad of Talarico saying, “I love trans children” on a podcast, with a voiceover telling Texans this is not who they are.
Ken Paxton
I’m not accusing Paxton of sending the mailer. I’m saying the man asked to find out who is frightening Texas parents about trans kids has spent the year frightening Texas parents about trans kids, under his own name, on purpose. That’s a conflict of interest roughly the size of the Panhandle.
Here is what I know from experience. When a story like this goes viral, somebody always decides to do something about it. That somebody never finds the LLC in Wyoming. They find whoever is closest and easiest to see.
On Halloween, that’s my kids. A drag show on Halloween weekend is a room full of people who are visible on purpose. A queer kid walking to a party in costume is visible on purpose. Visibility is the whole joy of the night, and this year it’s also the risk.
So the night the mailers hit, I sent my kids something like this: “Hey y’all. Be extra careful right now, out in the world and online. These mailers are scaring people about trans folks, and that usually means more violence. Remember, there are no red shirts on my ship. Every one of you comes home, every time.” (In the original Star Trek, the red shirts are the crew members who don’t make it back.)
I have sent some version of that message more times than I can count. I am angry that I had to send it. I’m scared about what Saturday could bring. And I’m tired in a way that sleep doesn’t touch.
“Real advocacy groups don’t mail kids behind their parents’ backs, because they know exactly who opens the mail in a Texas household.”
The brochure was addressed to children. Real advocacy groups don’t mail kids behind their parents’ backs, because they know exactly who opens the mail in a Texas household. The envelope was the message.
It talked about emancipation. The oldest lever there is the fear of losing your child, and this pamphlet pulled it with both hands. Those pages were written for your eyes, not your kid’s.
It said, “You don’t have to know whether you’re definitely trans.” In a counselor’s office, that sentence is a kindness. It tells a scared kid they don’t have to have their whole life figured out by Tuesday. Printed under a forged name and mailed to a worried parent, the same sentence reads like a recruitment slogan. The words didn’t change. The witness did.
And it wore TENT’s face, so that when the anger came, it would land on real people. It did.
The ninth commandment says, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” We tend to teach it as a rule about fibbing. It was a courtroom law. In ancient Israel, a false witness could get a neighbor killed.
In 1 Kings 21, Jezebel wants Naboth’s vineyard. She writes letters in her husband’s name, seals them with the king’s seal and arranges for two scoundrels to accuse Naboth in public. The town believes the letters. Naboth is stoned, and the vineyard changes hands.
“The method is about 2,800 years old, and somebody put it in a bulk-mail envelope in time for spooky season.”
Forged letterhead. Hired accusers. A crowd that does the rest. The method is about 2,800 years old, and somebody put it in a bulk-mail envelope in time for spooky season.
To the parent at the mailbox: You were lied to. The people who lied to you were not trans people. They counted on your love for your child to do their work for them, and that is a filthy thing to do to a parent.
Your anger is fine. It means you love your kid. Where it goes this week matters.
If you posted the brochure, take it down or correct it before Saturday. A correction from you will reach people that a statement from TENT never will.
On Halloween night, if you see someone in costume getting harassed, or a crowd gathering outside a drag show with the wrong kind of energy, be the adult who steps in, or at least the one who calls for help and stays.
And the next morning is All Saints’ Sunday. The Greek word for witness is martys, the root of martyr. The church always has remembered its saints as witnesses. So say something true out loud that Sunday, in Sunday school, in the pew, in the parking lot after. One sentence will do: “That mailer was a lie, and the people it lied about are our neighbors.”
I’m still hoping the person I know takes their post down. I’d settle for a correction. I’d gladly take an awkward phone call.
Mostly, I want Sunday morning to come with every one of my adopted kids home. Whoever sent that envelope is counting on the rest of you to stay quiet and believe the letter. Please disappoint them.
Liam Gent is a writer and church inclusion consultant in North Texas.
Related:
Fake trans mailers and texts aim to scare Texans to vote for Paxton | Analysis by Josh Olds
Here’s a clue about the fake trans mailers | Analysis by Mara Richards Bim