In March of this year, two months after the inauguration of the 45th. president of the Unites States, the Department of Health and Human Services dropped questions about sexual orientation and gender identity in two surveys of elderly people (which must surely explain why I wasn’t included in either one of the surveys).
Shortly after the new administration took over the West Wing of the White House, the Department of Health and Human Services removed all information about LGBT Americans from its website. That’s right…deleted…gone…erased.
And now the words transgender and diversity are two of seven words no longer allowed at the Center for Disease Control according to a recent administration rule. The other prohibited words include vulnerable, fetus, evidence-based, science-based and entitlement.
Seriously.
In the spirit of bipartisanship, I decided to create my own list of seven forbidden actions for the West Wing inhabitants in 2018:
prejudice
discrimination
knee-jerk reactions
selfishness
alternative facts
early a.m. tweeting
maniacal nuclear threats
I lost my holiday spirit with this one, but I promise to retrieve it. Until then…
Stay tuned.
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About Sheila Morris
Sheila Morris is a personal historian, essayist with humorist tendencies, lesbian activist, truth seeker and speaker in the tradition of other female Texas storytellers including her paternal grandmother.
In December, 2017, the University of South Carolina Press published her collection of first-person accounts of a few of the people primarily responsible for the development of LGBTQ organizations in South Carolina. Southern Perspectives on the Queer Movement: Committed to Home will resonate with everyone interested in LGBTQ history in the South during the tumultuous times from the AIDS pandemic to marriage equality.
She has published five nonfiction books including two memoirs, an essay compilation and two collections of her favorite blogs from I'll Call It Like I See It. Her first book, Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing received a Golden Crown Literary Society Award in 2008. Her writings have been included in various anthologies - most recently the 2017 Saints and Sinners Literary Magazine. Her latest book, Four Ticket Ride, was released in January, 2019.
She is a displaced Texan living in South Carolina with her wife Teresa Williams and their dogs Spike, Charly and Carl. She is also Naynay to her two granddaughters Ella and Molly James who light up her life for real. Born in rural Grimes County, Texas in 1946 her Texas roots still run wide and deep.
I'll Call It Like I See It 
When will people wake up?
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I would like to know, Susanne. At least the black women in Alabama woke up with a loud resounding roar this week. Bless them all.
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I’d like to ban them from all words, all the time.
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Seriously. I’m with you, Bob, and appreciate you as well. You are one of my favorite bloggers – and certainly one of the most informed. Bless your heart.
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I’ve written grant applications for CDC grant funding. The big one was for HIV testing targeting the transgender community. I wonder what that Request for Proposal is going to look like now that they can’t say “transgender.”
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Hm. Harry, I fear for that grant application. Sadly, I might add. It’s a world gone mad.
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It is a world gone mad….how do we get ourselves out of this hole the government keeps digging?
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It starts with our votes…
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