Back when I was a queer activist in New York City in the 1990s, before the word transgender had entered popular narrative, I knew plenty of men who called themselves gay who later responded eagerly to new transgender understanding.

For many years of their lives they thought of themselves as effeminate men, as gay men, even as they transgressed against gender norms in their presentation.

Today, they have the freedom to embrace gender identity in ways denied to them in the past. They have the freedom to identify as transgender because it more accurately reflects who they are.

It baffles me that people, especially leaders of the LGB Alliance, seem to be in such a god-awful panic over this freedom.

As far back as we were able to peer into the human experience, we see cultures where gender-variant people have been free to express their gender. We know being transgender is a common human experience. You’d be hard-pressed to find an anthropologist who would disagree with that statement.

Why the LGB Alliance is so desperate to stop trans people from being free to be who they are is beyond me.