Dusty Farr is fighting for his transgender daughter’s right to use the girls’ bathroom at her Missouri high school.
Before his transgender daughter was suspended after using the girls’ bathroom at her Missouri high school. Before the bullying and the suicide attempts. Before she dropped out.
Before all that, Dusty Farr was — in his own words — “a full-on bigot.” By which he meant that he was eager to steer clear of anyone LGBTQ+.
Now, though, after everything, he says he wouldn’t much care if his 16-year-old daughter — and he proudly calls her that — told him she was an alien. Because she is alive.
“When it was my child, it just flipped a switch,” says Farr, who is suing the Platte County School District on Kansas City’s outskirts. “And it was like a wake-up.”
Farr has found himself in an unlikely role: fighting bathroom bans that have proliferated at the state and local level in recent years. But Farr is not so unusual, says his attorney, Gillian Ruddy Wilcox of the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri.
I’m not crying you’re… nah I’m crying.
I really don’t care what it takes for people to finally open their eyes and minds as long as it happens. This father could’ve very easily not accepted his daughter, but he did. Not only did he accept his daughter, he admitted to himself that he was wrong his entire life. It doesn’t matter how he was in the past, we should not judge him for it. He knows what he did and who he was, he will beat himself up over it enough and doesn’t need anyone else to help him with that. We should celebrate this man.
People who have awakenings like that later in life are very valuable allies. They can speak to segments of the population that we can’t and I am very happy to have someone like him on our side.
Same. It’s unbelievably frustrating that there are so many people who don’t care until it impacts their lives, but there are also plenty of trans kids who end up closeted, homeless, or dead because their families won’t change no matter what. I’ll take this guy supporting his kid over that any day. I want people to know that changing their mind is good and welcome. Hopefully that’ll make it more likely and more kids will be safe.
I agree, it is incredibly frustrating but people learn at different paces and in different ways. Some people can only learn from hands-on learning and first-hand experiences.
Yep, and people that have done the work to rethink their preconceived notions are very helpful in helping others along. Speaking as a trans person, there is a lot of stupid, painful and upsetting questions that even well-intentioned people ask when they are learning about trans people.
Yup 100%, I know that all too well. It can be hard to deal with, especially at first, but it’s worth doing. Much more than just assuming bad intentions and that they’re just hateful people.
Ignorance ≠ Hate
No he didn’t. He admitted he was interpreting “God’s word” wrong his entire life. What happens when his interpretation changes again?
Edgy
I’d love to hear a different way to interpret the man’s own words if you have one.
It’s not about that. The man is religious, that’s not gonna change from one day to the next. You don’t need to be religious to be a bigot, that was just his excuse.
What happened to being tolerant of others beliefs? Religion has nothing to do with being an ignorant bigot, it’s just often used as an excuse for it.
You are misreading why I’m focused on that. I agree with your viewpoint, except that he believed his bigoted beliefs were God’s will. He also believes his release from them was God’s will, and that he’d wrongly interpreted God’s will before.
Had he made the jump to “God is bullshit” instead of “I have misunderstood God” then I’d have a lot more trust in his change of heart. However, in this circumstance he has very clearly decided that his morals go no further than whatever God “wants” him to believe - and therefore, should he wake up tomorrow and realize God actually wanted him to be like he was before, I have no reason to imagine he’ll be anything different than that.
edited for typo
I agree that there are problems with that kind of religious thinking but what I got hung up on in your original reply was this
What says that the next interpretation will be negative? We can’t assume that. I know where you’re coming from and I was a bit bitchy in my reply, I’m sorry about that.
Who knows why he said those things the way he said it, but if that’s what it takes for him to accept the things that are going on around him then it’s just whatever, good for him. Who knows, maybe his next realization will be that the bible and religion aren’t “all that”.
The way I interpreted your post at first was almost like accusing someone of “futurecrime”. We don’t know what is in store for this person, all we know is that he had a change of heart about something but obviously he is not ready to let go of his religious beliefs. I guess it also made me a bit angry because it sounded like something I might’ve said a long time ago when I used to be fiercely anti-religion and I really don’t that old version of me. It wasn’t very productive.
Maybe that was a bit of projection on my part.
I wouldn’t dream of taking religion away from someone today. I don’t like it but for some people it’s all that they know and it’s how they make sense of the world. It’s a crutch but some people need it and are completely lost without it.
Oh no, I’m not anti-religion at all. Although I did have a period like that in my past, also.
Truly devout/pious folks from any religion I’ve known have been good people and a joy to be around. I think they’d be good people anyway though, and their religion just gave them a framework.
When folks use religion as their justification for behaving in ways that are clearly at odds with its most basic tenets, that’s what I find toxic, and do feel is far, far too common.
I’m probably coming in hot on the topic in general because although I’m a cishet white guy I’ve just about had it with the ridiculous bullshit from the right in this area in recent years, and it’s becoming a real hotbutton issue to me.
They probably would be yeah. Although I have family members who definitely weren’t great before they found religion. Two uncles in particular who are great now but were not on this path before. Then I have another uncle on the other side of my family who absolutely refuses to accept that his daughter is gay and him and his wife have put that child through absolute hell. I’ve seen videos of her mother screaming at her that she was the devil and all sorts of disgusting shit that a child should never hear from anyone let alone a parent. Being trans I’ve cut contact with them completely because even if they act nice in my face, I know what they say when I’m not around.
Yeah unfortunately it is. Religion is as corrupted as politics are these days. These people seem to think they’re only following the word of god but they’re just being manipulated. I can’t help but feel bad for them even if some of them would literally want to see me dead.
I get it. This all needs to stop. I’m just scared that if all sides just stay angry at each other we will never be able to get past this without things getting even uglier. So when I see someone like the dad in this story, I’d rather forget everything else and appreciate the fact that they’ve improved and even give them praise. They’ve admitted to being wrong at least once so maybe now they won’t be so quick to hate things they don’t understand.
I don’t know, maybe I’m naive. All I know is that I’m really sick of all the negativity, the constant outrage and outright ragebait articles, all the pundits and the talking heads who basically just try to make the other side look dumb for views, all of it. It feels like we’re all being played, even by the people on “our side”.