Playing Volleyball With a Life

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/25/us/san-jose-state-volleyball-transgender.html

("Judge Allows Transgender San Jose State Volleyball Player to Compete")

The world is on fire and this is what consumes our thoughts and stirs our passions?

There are conflicts across the globe where millions are being displaced, where hundreds of thousands of lives have been ended.

There is an unrest, an uneasiness with democracy, as nation upon nation has found ample reason to move ever closer to finding comfort in the arms of leaders who would strangle the breath out of the freedoms that so many have fought so hard for so long to preserve and protect.

In our own country we have seen the resurrection of a man who has seemingly spent a lifetime in moral decay, who has demonstrated utter contempt for our laws, our Constitution, for the truth.

And we instead focus our energies on the issue of one person, who has without doubt gone through enormous hardships, who has made a determination to be true to their nature, who seeks nothing more than to participate in a game?

This is an answer in search of a problem. This is the Republican mantra to find scapegoats in bathrooms, on the volleyball courts. To make every transgender person a threat to our very existence. As they have made every immigrant into a criminal, someone who would eat our most beloved pets.

It sickens me that we have permitted this to occur without protest, at least adequate protest. That we have moved ever further to a nation that has abandoned logic, empathy, compassion. Who finds villains lurking around every corner. Who is drawn so easily to its hatreds, its fears.

For God's sake, leave this beleaguered person alone. Do not destroy one more life. We have just passed Thanksgiving and Christmas will soon be upon us. Let us demonstrate the mercy and goodness that this season asks of us. For once, let our better angels out.