Rendering: Adam Pardee/STAFF.

I’ve cross dressed.

When I needed a cheap laugh as a child, I’d go find some stuff in my mom’s room—maybe a hat, some shoes, a scarf, some jewelry.

There’s a photo of me in a high school yearbook wearing a woman’s nightgown with my hair in pigtails, back on high school pajama day or some such school-sanctioned event.

Wearing my pajamas wasn’t enough; I had to wear women’s stuff. People were probably used to me looking like I just rolled out of bed in my clothes. Women’s clothes were way more fun. So I, in theory, could be a respectable politician. Because they all seem to have cross dressed in college, or Halloween, or on vacation in South America… Because cross-dressing is fun, and every man knows it, regardless of political bent.

I didn’t get into the make-up and hairspray until I was older, but it was the ’80s and all the other guys were doing it. And, truth be told, it made a lot of us look better.

All men want to cross dress, some more secretly than others. And it’s more than OK to be descended from white Europeans, all the conservatives say. And cross-dressing to the English is as popular as tea over there.

And, even if it’s not funny—and that’s who we really should be talking about—if your brain tells you it’s more comfortable dressing that way, why not? I will never wrap my head around anyone caring about what anyone else wears. Yes … let’s make people dress like a gender they don’t identify with because we don’t.

Who’s it hurting?

And if you’re a man who wants to dress up as a sexy celebrity woman and dance around a stage, who am I to tell you not to (as a society, we don’t seem to care about women dressing as men, just like lesbians are generally more OK than gay men)? Again, who are you hurting? That’s personal, rugged, individual freedom at work right there, which conservatives…

Uh-oh. A big ugly unexplainable bolder has rolled onto our rugged, free, individual highway of logic. Now what do we do? It’s tedious and boring. I’m tired of the constant illogic of whatever conservatives are pretending to be upset about this week.

Being trans wasn’t a big deal until trans people started asking for a seat at the table and, at the very least, a bit more thoughtfulness from the rest of us. Then they became a problem. It’s what the U.S. has done to every group that starts to gain a little traction. Typical unimaginative dividing to conquer BS.

Despite the boredom, I did notice a couple weeks ago, when the Supreme Court declined to reverse a lower court’s injunction stopping Florida’s new Protection of Children Act from stopping some drag shows for allegedly being too sexually explicit. But not without the court being a bit divided; the three most conservative justices, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch—all of whom were born in the 14th Century—dissented.

I guess Clarence Thomas wasn’t a big fan of “Bosom Buddies.”

I guess it’s good news that six of the nine decided not to intervene. But, still, three landed on the side of a proposed law claiming to protect children from explicit sexual material which, even if it was, doesn’t tear children apart quite like bullets—which Florida should understand by now. By 2023, Florida, according to worldpopulationreview.com, ranked third in the U.S. in school shootings, with 132, trailing only California and Texas.

Pro-gun Florida with its pro-gun Governor Ron DeSantis (who looks amazing in white go-go boots), has proven it doesn’t want to protect its children. So, quick, find an enemy.

Ah, yes, trans women. We don’t understand them, and there’s not very many of them, so let’s blame them.

The defenders of the law say it only targets sexually explicit entertainment. Your guess is as good as mine when it comes to what’s considered sexually explicit, but that’s far from the point. Because now we’re getting back into sex-is-the-enemey religious territory used to control people, usually women. Sex isn’t bad, as far as I can tell. Like most people, I didn’t expose my kids to sex in movies and in general because they either weren’t ready to hear it, or I wasn’t ready to talk about it.

Why are we even equating trans people with sex? Then, to sex that’s bad?

Because certain straight people get all weak thinking about it. So the hide the bigotry in the false mantra of protect the children.

Kids are resilient, adults say when justifying divorce, alcoholism, domestic violence, movie violence, cooking shows, school shootings. But they can’t handle trans people?

Instead of just trusting venues to restrict these shows to people 18 and over (remember R-rated movies? Bars?) Florida has its panties in such a bunch, it has to make a law that says it’s about all live entertainment. It’s not.

It’s tiresome, but I suppose we need to remember these things aren’t going away. Who knows what’s next, especially if Donald Trump is re-elected and the fascist hounds are uncaged. If you’re more terrified of a cross dresser than the idea of reelecting a multiple criminally indicted, 20-something-times accused rapist who openly talks about jailing his enemies as most powerful dimwit on the planet … maybe find your local community college and take a history class. In some of the history books that certain states haven’t burned yet, there are illustrations of our Constitution-writing founders who owned slaves and sometimes wore long wigs and make-up.

Whoops.

Follow music critic Tony Hicks at Twitter.com/TonyBaloney1967.