What is the ideal American family? Is it a loving mother and father with happy children living on their own property with a white picket fence? Nope, according to The Guardian, it’s a gender queer family of clown nuns.
To honor the 50th anniversary of the Stone Wall Riots, The Guardian has published a series of articles under the category “Stonewall at 50,” which exclusively panders to LGBT issues. Yesterday, the lefty U.K. publication released an article entitled “The new American family: Trans, gender queer, nonbinary, two-spirit.”
The article shared the stories of six different families -- all of which opposed the traditional, heteronormative, Judeo-Christian idea of family.
The article gave the story of Rev Hicks -- a 31-year-old “gender queer Sister of Perpetual Indulgence who created a family of clown nuns.” Yes, that is a real quote from the article. Hicks lives in an “all queer/trans household” with a “trans spiritual family.”
Hicks identifies as a “clown nun” and The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence is a group of drag queens that satirize religious beliefs about gender and family (pictured right). Hicks stated, “We definitely are rethinking what it means to be re-radicalized nuns in a way.”
Another featured family was that of Charlie Arrowood, a 32-year-old “nonbinary person” who is the parent of two adopted children (3 and 5) with a wife of 13 years. Charlie was born a woman, came out as lesbian in middle school, then got top surgery (breast removal surgery) after getting married.
If your birth family disagrees with your ideas about gender, or you're just not happy with them, Charlie suggests that you abandon them and find a new one:
If people who are part of your nominal family are not making you happy, and they’re complicating your life, and bringing you anxiety and stress and sadness, drop them. Go somewhere else, because there are people out there who you can create a family with.
Another subject of the article was Reva D’Nova -- a 55-year-old “two-spirit” Native American elder. In some Native American communities, “two-spirit” people are considered to be a third gender (sometimes even a fourth) that carries out a unique set of roles in society. They combine the activities of both men and women, but they carry unique traits that make them distinct from both. According to D’Nova:
Two-spirit people are honored people. We're considered sacred people, namegivers. We would do matchmaking and medicines. And then, once colonization came, we were taken from our families. A lot of our two-spirit gay people were hidden away. We went from a place of being honored to a place that was not so honored. Now we're coming around, finding our own identity again.
The evil white man stole D’Nova’s identity, but thankfully, D’Nova’s indigenous community helped rediscover that identity.
There are more characters featured in the article that you have to read about to believe, from a 35-year-old “non-binary person” married to a 60-year-old trans man with 20 adoped "adult kids," to a 56-year-old “masculine-presenting non-binary person” who is part of a throuple and “spiritual siblings” with one partner's mother.
Shockingly, this is not satire. This is real life and what the U.K. Guardian wants to be the "new American family."
