When I was growing up I learned about the heroes who ran the “underground railroad,” the network of people, places, and organizations that helped slaves escape from their masters and flee to freedom in northern states or Canada.

Harriet Tubman is perhaps the most famous of the “conductors.” She risked life and limb to help slaves escape the tyranny of their lives. Many others, both Black and White, risked everything in the service of freeing others. These were true American heroes, and I would love to see Tubman honored by replacing Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill as is currently planned.

Today, though, a new hero has emerged. One whose achievements will rival those of Tubman and company:

🤦‍♂️ Can we just all agree between “Trans-Genocide” and now “Rainbow Underground Railroad” these are the most insulting narcissistic non-serious privileged assholes to walk the planet? pic.twitter.com/NJEA0LiKIm

— Five Times August (@FiveTimesAugust) June 16, 2023

Tubman was herself an escaped slave who returned 13 times to rescue others from the fate that she had endured, saving 70 people. She was remarkably brave–I would have been happy to have escaped and I doubt I would have had the courage to do what she did, and she had been permanently injured with a traumatic brain injury from abuse she suffered as a child.

When someone goes to the website FleeRedStates.com, a message reads, “As LGBTQIA+ citizens in Red States, many of us feel at risk. Current laws are highly discriminatory against trans youth and their families. Our marriages, our families, and even our safety are at risk. If you feel the need to leave the jurisdiction of a Red State, let us help you sell your property here and connect with you an LGBTQIA+ or ally agent in a better location of your choice. We are licensed in Texas and we have affiliates in all 50 states and several countries.” People can share their contact information to create an account and start the process of connecting with a real estate expert.

“We’re calling it kind of the ‘rainbow Underground Railroad,’” McCranie said. “We’re trying to get people out quietly and get them to someplace where they feel safer.”

Yes, you read that right. Apparently, Texas and other states which are restricting minors from being sterilized and mutilated, or just as bad, ensuring that only females can play in women’s sports, are engaged in a level of oppression that mirrors that which slaves endured in pre-civil war America.

“We’re trying to get people out quietly and get them to someplace where they feel safer,” said the man who has a website that he freely advertises and talks about to a TV station.

First of all, nobody in Texas is trying to pass a law that does anything to oppress gays, lesbians, bisexuals, or even transgender people who are adults. All the laws being discussed have to do with legitimate public policy questions regarding the appropriate way to treat children who suffer from a mental illness: dysphoria.

Florida, another state that is being roundly criticized as hostile to gays and lesbians, just had one of the largest concentrations of gay people on the planet travel there for a huge gay days festival–just days after the Human Rights Campaign warned how unsafe the state is. This is from the Associated Press:

LGBTQ+ people flock to Florida for Gay Days festivalhttps://t.co/Nu6zuwBoXA

— Tom Williams (@tommyboy0690) June 1, 2023

One of the key reasons an “Underground Railroad” was necessary was that slaves were prohibited from leaving. On net, chances are good that Florida and Texas are gaining gay and lesbian residents, and nobody is prohibited from leaving should they so choose. The idea that anybody has to “quietly” search for a safe way out of Florida or Texas is about as absurd as thinking that a bandanna will protect you from a respiratory virus.

Yet here we are. The MSM is promoting the idea that a realtor who is making bank on getting as many listings as possible is somehow a hero on the scale of Harriet Tubman.

The level of narcissism is impressive, but it is entirely in keeping with the new definitions of “violence” and “genocide” we keep getting shoved in our faces.

One of the few heartening things about this decade is the fact that many gays and lesbians are waking up to the fact that their identities have been hijacked by a radical movement that wants to borrow, or rather steal, the legitimacy that they have earned through decades of activism.

I have long wondered why LGB people allowed the “T” to join up with them. The argument that homosexuality is not the result of a mental illness was a key component for the normalization of gays; transgenderism is, by its nature, based upon what is manifestly a mental illness, whatever the current textbooks say. Its underlying cause is “dysphoria,” which is by definition a mental illness: “a state of unease or generalized dissatisfaction with life.”

It is completely understandable that transgender people would want to share the stage with gays, but I never understood why gays accepted them horning in. It clearly was a mistake, as growing hostility to gender ideology will inevitably spill over into growing hostility to the gay rights movement.

It’s time for gays to push back, and some are. More should.