# From the GOP to the Side of the People

*Or: why I'm a libertarian now, and why the hell it took me this long — the girl who just wanted to be left alone*

Look. I know how this looks. I'm a trans woman. I'm a libertarian. I like men. I'm a Unitarian Christian who thinks God is a piece of shit. Pick any two of those and the internet would have a field day with me. But here's the thing — none of these are in conflict, because none of them are the same *kind* of thing. My politics aren't my identity. My identity isn't my faith. My faith isn't my sexuality. They're four different rooms in the same house, and I'm allowed to decorate each one however I want.

**And all I've ever asked for, in every one of those rooms, is to be left alone.** That's the whole thing. That's what this page is about, and that's what the rest of my life has been about. People act like you have to be a monolith. Like if you're one thing, you have to be the whole bundle. Fuck that. And listen, I used to call myself a Republican — a *traditional* one, the party of Lincoln, don't-tread-on-me, all of it. And I'm going to tell you exactly what changed, because if you're wondering "what's going on with Natalie," it's this: **I finally noticed who the modern Republican Party is actually hurting — and I can't support hurting my fellow sisters and brothers. I just wanted to be left alone, and they decided that was a crime.**

Let me show you around my house. ❤️

---

## Politics: Libertarian (and what the hell happened)

I was a "traditional Republican" for years. Fiscal responsibility. Small government. Personal responsibility. The idea that you earn what you have, that your word is your bond, that the government should stay the hell out of your life and your wallet and your bedroom.

Here's the thing — I still believe all of that. I believe in the individual. I believe in hard work. I believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the idea that freedom means you get to live your life without someone else's boot on your neck — *including* the government's boot.

So why the hell would somebody who believes all that walk away from the Republican Party?

Because I looked at the party that's wearing that name now, and it isn't that. The party I grew up believing in believed that freedom was for *everyone* — and that the government should be small enough that it couldn't care less about what's in your bedroom or what's between your legs. That's what made me defend it for so long: the principles were beautiful on paper.

But the modern party traded those principles for cruelty. The anti-trans bills. The bathroom wars. The bans on care that save lives. The book bans. The dog whistles that turned into open contempt. The party of "small government" decided that the *most important thing in the world* was policing the bodies and the lives of people exactly like me. State after state wrote laws designed to make people like my sisters and brothers not exist. And every single one of those laws is an answer to the question "how big should government power be?" — and the answer they chose was "big enough to hurt you."

I can't do that. I can't stand next to people whose entire platform is my erasure. I can't tell myself "it's about fiscal responsibility" while they pass cruelty after cruelty aimed at the communities I love. I've been through too much, and I've watched too many of my people suffer, to spend one more minute pretending that's my team.

So where did I land? **Libertarian.** And honestly? It was never not where I was headed.

The values I loved about the "traditional Republican" idea — individual liberty, personal autonomy, don't-tread-on-me, the government out of your life, your wallet, *and your bedroom* — were never the property of the GOP. They're libertarian to the bone. I just spent years calling a thing by the wrong name because the old party used to at least *pretend* to wear the same clothes.

Libertarianism is the Non-Aggression Principle with its sleeves rolled up: you don't get to use the state to start a war on your neighbors. You don't get to point the IRS at people you don't like. You don't get to pass laws that say who can exist, who can love, who gets to make their own medical decisions, who gets to live their own life. Live and let live isn't a slogan — it's the whole operating system. Your freedom ends where mine begins, and the government's job is to defend that boundary, not to bully people behind it.

That's why libertarianism and trans rights aren't a contradiction — they're the same sentence. A government too small to tell you what to do with your body is too small to tell you what to do with your money. The people who think "freedom" and "human rights for everyone" are enemies have never understood either one.

So: I'm a libertarian now. Not a "libertarian Republican" — I stopped holding my nose. The party made its choice, and it chose cruelty, so I left. If that makes me a flip-flopper, so be it. I'd rather be a flip-flopper than a bystander while the people I love get torn apart. Some of us flip because we were always standing in the wrong room, and turning around is the only honest move.

### Why I'm not a Democrat. Or a Green.

I know the next question before you ask it: *"If you hate the Republicans that much, why aren't you a Democrat?"* And sometimes it's: *"Why not Green?"*

Because the Democrats want to run my life too — they just want to run it "for my own good." The Democrat edition of "leave me alone" is "we'll take care of you," and taking care of you is a full-time job with strings attached. Watch how they treat anyone who drifts off the party line: purity tests, canceling, groupthink, the insistence that if you're a member of an identity you *must* back the whole agenda. That isn't freedom, it's a different uniform. I didn't climb out of one box so I could get climbed into another one.

And they've got the same disease as the GOP, in reverse: they want the government big enough to *do* things for you, which in practice means big enough to *do* things to you. Speech policing. Regulating how you think, what you buy, who you are. They'd pass laws about us too — just from the "nice" side, the side where the bureaucrat means well and still owns you. I didn't fight to legally exist so the next party could legally *shape* me.

The Green Party? I'm pro-Earth, extremely — but as a political party, Green is mostly a shopping list of things the government should centrally plan us out of, and a solid slice of it tips straight into "money is the enemy." I think that's exactly backwards. Money isn't the enemy. Money is what produced the solar panels that collapsed in cost, the EVs, the battery plants, the fusion experiments — progress itself runs on incentives. A party that hates the engine that builds the fix isn't going to save the planet; it's going to hand the planet to the incumbents while everyone moralizes in the aisle. I want incentives pointed at good things, not a committee deciding what you're allowed to build.

So — not a Democrat, because Democrats still want to run my life, just "for my own good." Not Green, because the economy doesn't respond to goodwill; it responds to incentives.

### Money has to come from somewhere

And while I'm being precise: I'm a libertarian, not an anarchist. Say that out loud, because it's the difference between me and the fantasy version.

**Government is real. It costs money. The money comes from somewhere — from people like you and me — and pretending otherwise is how you end up with a government that's either broke or out of control.** Courts, cops, roads, defense, a fire department that shows up, an FDA that catches poison — those cost real money and they have to be funded. My complaint with the state has never been that it costs money. It's that it spends money on *cruelty and control* instead of the things we actually need, and that it points the barrel at people's lives to collect it.

"Live and let live" was never "lifeboat and no safety net." It was: your life is yours, the state is the referee and not the owner — and the referee should be paid, and should be watched like a hawk, because every dollar it spends came out of somebody's pocket for a reason.

### Innovation is driven by money

This is the part that rules out socialism of every flavor for me: **innovation is driven by money.** The vaccine that saved a billion lives wasn't invented because a committee felt good about itself. It was invented because someone could see the reward on the other side of the work. The chip, the internet, the MRI, the entire story of human invention — it's incentives, all the way down. Money is how a free society says "yes — go build that. We'll pay you. We'll reward you for making life better."

It's the least romantic thing about being human, and it works. You can moralize about profit all day, but the world where a genius gets paid to change everything is the same world where a genius actually changes everything. Take the reward away and the genius goes and does something safe. Committees don't make breakthroughs — they make shortages, and then sub-committees about the shortages.

So when I say libertarian, I mean it all the way down: small, accountable government, funded honestly; markets left to work; incentives left to point at progress; and the state staying the hell out of my body, my bedroom, and my beliefs.

### Real problems, said in awful ways

And now the part people don't expect from a trans woman who left the Republicans — the honesty part.

**The Right is not wrong about everything. Some things they talk about are real problems.** The national debt is a real problem. Unfunded promises that grow forever are a real problem. A federal bureaucracy that treats citizens like obstacles is a real problem. And the biological realities they keep screaming about are real too. Male and female bodies are actually different; that's why women's sports exist. Male is a sex category, and my chromosomes are never going to change, and no amount of language changes that. Biology is not a right-wing conspiracy. It's reality — and I'm not going to lie about it to make the Left happy.

**The problem was never that the Republicans noticed these things. The problem is they say them in awful ways — and then build laws on top of the awfulness.**

They take a legitimate conversation — sports fairness, safe spaces, government accountability — and turn it into cruelty theater with people like me as the villain. The point was never fairness. The point was hurting the people they hate, and dressing it up as concern. And a party that uses a real problem as a battering ram to destroy the lives of my sisters and brothers — that I can't join, no matter how many real problems it points at.

Real problems deserve real solutions. Real problems don't deserve hate. I'm not a Republican precisely because they're wrong about the one thing that matters most: how you're allowed to treat a person. You can be right about the deficit and still be a monster. They were.

### I'm not a liberal — I'm progressive and conservative at the same time

One more label I need to burn down before I go: **I'm not a liberal.** Say it loud for the people in the back.

Not because I'm a conservative — I mean, I *am*, sort of — but because "liberal" in the modern American sense means a specific thing: big government, top-down fixes, identity slots, and the assumption that change is always good and tradition is always wrong. That whole bundle? Not me. I already told you why — I don't want the state running my life "for my own good," and I don't want a prefabricated identity with a party banner stapled to it.

But here's the thing people genuinely can't get their heads around: **I'm progressive and conservative at the same time.** And that's not a contradiction — it's the only honest way to be.

**I'm progressive about people.** Individual liberty should keep *expanding*, not contracting. The arc of human history is one long argument for letting more people live as themselves — the abolition of slavery, the vote for women, the end of Jim Crow, the acceptance of people like me and mine. On all of that I'm not just progressive, I'm *impatient*. Whatever the future holds for freedom, I'm in favor of getting there faster.

**I'm conservative about the stuff that actually works.** Money has to come from somewhere — that's conservatism, fiscal reality. Innovation is driven by money — that's conservatism, cherishing the market machinery that built the modern world. Biology is real, male is a sex category, chromosomes don't change with your pronouns — that's conservatism, refusing to break the truths that hold the world together. And I'm deeply conservative about the *institutions that function*: courts, cops, contracts — the boring scaffolding of civilization you only miss when it's gone. Progress on top of a foundation is building a house. Progress on rubble is just rearranging the rubble.

Liberals want you to pick the future and hate the past. The GOP wants you to pick the past and fear the future. I refuse the whole false choice: **progress for people, conservation for what works.** That isn't a mashup of two parties — it's the default position of an adult who's lived a real life. And the only label whose grid that actually fits is libertarian: maximally free people, minimally broken machine.

That's not "liberal." That's not "conservative." It's both at once — and I'm done apologizing for it.

### Not because it feels good

And one more thing, because I need it on the record: **I didn't land here because it makes me feel good.**

That's the whole disease, isn't it. People pick a side the way they pick a sports team — for the dopamine. The merch, the in-group, the rush of being one of the good guys, the cozy certainty that your party is the only thing standing between the world and hell. Politics as a *mood*. Politics as *belonging*. And the problem with belonging is that it stops being about what's true and becomes about who's warmest. That simplicity — "I belong to this side because it makes me feel good" — is exactly the simplicity that's dooming this country.

I know how it feels to be inside the warm room. I spent years in the Republican one. It felt good to believe in an America where everything was simple, my values were the right ones, and the other side was just wrong. It felt good right up until it stopped being true, and I had to choose between the comfort of belonging and the cost of looking at reality. I chose reality. It does not feel good. It feels like having your illusions peeled off one by one. And it's the only thing that's ever going to save us.

So: I'm not a libertarian because of a feeling. It frequently feels *awful* — it means I don't get to hate anyone, I don't get to be smug, I don't get to pretend biology doesn't exist when it's inconvenient, and I don't get a safe little team to hide in. I'm a libertarian because it's *true* — because it's the set of rules that still works when nobody's feelings are on the line. Truth doesn't have to feel good to be worth building a country on. The country that figures that out is the one that survives. The one that votes for the warm feeling is doing exactly what ours is doing right now — and that, in one sentence, is why we're doomed.

### Base it on real people

And now the liberal magic trick — the one that sounds like wisdom for exactly two seconds: *"Let's leave the past behind. It was arrogant. We'll do better. We just won't make emotional, irrational decisions based on wealth — we'll be new and smart, unlike them."*

That is the foolish part. It sounds humble and it's the most arrogant sentence a person can say: *we* are finally the ones smart enough not to be idiots, the past was just arrogant rich men making mistakes, and all we have to do is mean well and the scales fall off. Every era that thought "we'll be rational, unlike those fools before us" then went and built the next catastrophe. History isn't a line of dumb people waiting for us to be the first ones who get it. Every generation is the same flesh and blood with the same ego, and "we'll be better than the arrogant past" isn't a plan — it's a prayer from people who think praying counts as planning.

So fine: don't build on arrogance, don't let wealth alone steer the machine, don't act on emotion and unreason. Words. You can't ban yourself out of human nature. The only thing that survives contact with ideology is grounding it in **real people** — not "the people" as a slogan, not "the market" as a god, not "the past" as gospel and not "the future" as a promise. Real people, with real bodies, real families, real money problems, real love, really here right now. Judge every law by one question: does this help a real person, or does it just make somebody in a boardroom or a pulpit feel righteous? Keep asking that until it's the only question and you end up with a country. Answer it with slogans about being better than the arrogant past and you end up with what we've got.

We don't need to be smarter than the past. We need to be *more real* than the past. That starts with admitting the past wasn't all stupid, the future isn't all bright — and the only honest ruler for any of it is a real human being trying to live.

The founding fathers didn't die so a landlord could tell me how to identify — and they sure as hell didn't die so the state could decide my existence is a crime. Freedom is for everyone, or it isn't freedom at all.

---

## All I've Ever Asked For: To Be Left Alone

Look. Strip away every label — libertarian, trans woman, heretic, whatever. Underneath all of it, the whole goddamn thing has always been one sentence: **I just want to be left alone.**

That's it. That's the entire political journey. I never wanted a movement. I never wanted a seat at the table. I wanted what I wanted when I was a kid in Stillwater, Oklahoma, before I even had words for any of this: to wake up, be my own weird self, love who I love, work hard, pay my bills, and go to bed without anyone trying to legislate my existence.

"Leave me alone" isn't antisocial. It's the most polite thing you can ask for in a free country. It means: you do you, I'll do me, the state stays out of both of our bedrooms, and my freedom ends exactly where yours begins.

And that's why I left the Republican Party. Not because I adopted new values — I've had this one since forever. Because the party I was registered with decided that "leave me alone" was a crime whenever the person asking was me or anyone like me. The bathroom bills. The bans on care. The "she's not a real woman" legislation. Every single one is a law that says the same thing: *you are not allowed to be left alone. You will be noticed. You will be regulated. You will be debated, in public, by people who have never spent one second of their lives being you.*

Libertarianism is just the grown-up name for "leave people alone." The Non-Aggression Principle is that sentence wearing a suit. Don't start a war on your neighbors. Don't aim the government at your fellow human beings. Live and let live — and *mean* it.

So if you're reading this and wondering what happened, wonder no more. A girl just wanted to be left alone. The party crossed that line. She packed her bags. End of story. ❤️

---

## Sexuality: I Like Men

This one's simple, and people always get it wrong, so let me be crystal clear: **I like men. Not necessarily penises. Men.**

There's a difference, and it's a big one. I'm attracted to *men* — the whole package. The voice, the shoulders, the way a man carries himself, the masculinity, the energy. I'm attracted to the *person*. The soul wearing the man-suit, if you will lol.

Penises are just... organs. They're fine, I guess, whatever, they're not the point. The point is the *man*. And yes — since I know someone's gonna ask — that includes trans men. If you're a man, you're a man, and that's hot. Full stop. I don't need to audit anyone's parts to know who they are. That's the whole lesson I live my life by, actually: **who you are is not what's between your legs.** It's what's between your ears and in your chest.

Natalie likes men. It's that simple. No asterisks.

---

## Identity: I'm a Woman — Both at Once

I'm a woman. Just call me a woman. LMFAO.

And before the pedantic reader starts typing a biology lecture to send me: save it. I'm about to give it to you myself, straight.

**My chromosomes are never going to change.** I was born with a male body, biologically. That part is real — measurable, seated in my DNA, immune to language and to law. I've never pretended otherwise, and I never will. *Male* is a sex category, and it's the category my body belongs to. That's not a slur the Right invented. It's a fact. Lying about it to "win" would make me the exact kind of dishonest I refuse to be.

But here's what the people pointing at those chromosomes are missing: **sex and gender are two different rooms.** *Male* is the room biology put me in. *Woman* is the room I've always actually lived in — the social reality of who I am, how the world sees me, how I move through it, how I love. A category about my chromosomes tells you one narrow thing about a body: which reproductive setup I started with. It told the world absolutely nothing about *me*.

Because "woman" was never a claim about my DNA — it's a claim about *who I am as a person*. And that's a social thing, a lived thing, a real thing. Homo sapiens isn't just a biology. We have a *culture* — it's the thing that makes us us — and culture is where identity actually lives. That's not a dodge. That's the whole premise of being human: we're the species that gets to *be* something, not just get sorted at birth.

So when I say "I'm a woman," I'm not saying my genetics are female. They aren't, and they never will be. I'm saying: **male is what I was, woman is who I am.** The biologist gets the sex. The world gets the woman. I get to be me. Both statements are true at the same time, one in the lab and one in the life — and anyone who needs to amputate one of them to make the other fit has misunderstood what a person is.

That's also, not coincidentally, the same reason I broke with every party at once. The Right says "your chromosomes are male, therefore you're a lie." The Left says "chromosomes are a construct, just pretend they don't exist." Both demand I be false — one erases my womanhood, the other erases my biology. I refuse to erase either one, because both are true. Only a politics of live-and-let-live lets you keep both, and it's the only one that doesn't require me to cut a piece of myself off to join.

Natalie spelled backwards is Eilatan — my shadow, my dark side, the teeth under the smile. But that's a story for another article. lmfao.

The point is: I know exactly who I am. Do you?

---

## Religion: Unitarian Christian

Okay. Here's where it gets interesting. Sit down, this is a long one. 🫖

### What Unitarian Christianity actually is

Unitarian Christianity is a branch of Christianity that basically said "hold on, let's actually *think* about this" — and for that, they got called heretics, burned at the stake, exiled, and generally treated like garbage for centuries. Which, honestly? Only makes me love it more. Nothing builds character like being the one the church tried to kill.

The core beliefs, real quick:

- **One God, not three.** Unitarians reject the Trinity. We believe God is one being — not a "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" mystery-meat combo. Hence the name: *Uni*tarian.
- **Jesus was a man, not God.** The most important part. Jesus was a human being — an extraordinary one, sure, but a *human*. He was a teacher, a rabbi, an activist who stood up to corrupt institutions and got executed for it. That doesn't make him divine. It makes him *brave*. (More on this below.)
- **Salvation through character, not creeds.** It doesn't matter what you *say* you believe. It matters how you *live*. Your actions, your heart, how you treat people. That's it. That's the whole religion.
- **Reason and conscience over dogma.** You have a brain. God gave it to you. Use it. Don't outsource your morality to a pastor or a pope or a book.
- **Universal salvation.** Everyone gets saved, eventually. God's love isn't a limited-time offer. Hell isn't a torture chamber God built because he was having a bad day. (My take on hell is a little different — keep reading lol)

It's Christianity for people who actually read, thought, and went "hmm, some of this doesn't add up." It's Christianity for adults. That's why I love it.

### Jesus was just another person

Yeah. I said it. Jesus was a person. A really, really remarkable person — the kind of person who shows up once in a thousand years and changes everything just by telling people to be kind to each other and meaning it. But a *person*. A man who lived, taught, made enemies of the powerful, and died for it. 

He was a homeless Jewish preacher who hung out with prostitutes and lepers and tax collectors, told the rich to give everything away, flipped tables in the temple, and got nailed to a cross by the same kind of hypocrites he'd spent his whole ministry calling out. And people have spent two thousand years trying to turn that into a magic spell.

I don't need Jesus to be God for him to matter. In fact, him being *just a man* makes him MORE impressive to me. Because if he was divine, of course he was good — he had cheat codes. But a man? A regular human being who chose to be that radically kind, that brave, that unwilling to compromise with power? *That's* someone worth following. He showed us what a human being can be. That's the whole point. The church turned a man into a mascot.

### God exists, and He's a piece of shit

Okay, now the part that gets me called a heretic even by the heretics. lmfao.

I believe in God. I genuinely do. There's something out there — something that made all of this, that's bigger than us, that I can feel when I'm looking at a sunset or when the universe decides to be merciful for no reason at all.

**And I also believe He's a piece of shit.**

Because look at the world He built. Child cancer. Genocide. Rape. Famine. The fact that some people are born into palaces and some are born into war zones, and none of us had any say in any of it. If God is all-powerful and all-knowing, then He watched every single atrocity in human history happen and did *nothing*. He could have stopped it with a thought. He didn't. 

So either He's not all-powerful, or He's not all-good, or He just doesn't care. And I've made my peace with that. I still believe He's there. I just also believe He's a negligent parent, an absentee landlord, a creator who made a beautiful world and then shrugged and walked off while it burned. 

That's not blasphemy. That's just... looking at the evidence. I love God the way you love a family member who's let you down a thousand times — with your eyes fully open. I'll keep my faith, but I'm not going to pretend the world He built isn't what it is. The God I believe in isn't a doting father. He's a cosmic asshole who happens to be real. And honestly? Being real is more than most gods can claim.

### The Bible is a storybook, not a manual

Here's the thing people get so, so wrong about the Bible: it's a *library*. It's a collection of stories, poems, laws, letters, and legends written by dozens of different people over hundreds of years, in three different languages, in cultures we can barely imagine. It's not one book. It's not even close to one book. And it was absolutely not dictated by God onto golden tablets.

It's a **storybook**. A really important one! Full of lessons about humanity — our capacity for love, for cruelty, for redemption, for failure. That's what it's for. It teaches through *story*. The way a parable works, the way a fable works. You read it, you absorb the lesson, you become a better person. 

The moment you start taking it literally is the moment you've lost the plot. And the moment you start treating it as a rulebook to beat people over the head with? That's when it becomes something dark.

Because here's the dirty secret: the Bible is also a **cherry-picked, brainwashing book** — when people use it wrong. It's been edited, translated, mistranslated, and re-edited by people with agendas for two thousand years. Emperors picked the books that served them. Councils voted on what was "inspired" and destroyed the rest. Every single translation is someone's *choice* about what the original said. And then they hand you the result and say "God said it, I believe it, that settles it."

No. *You* said it. *Your* denomination said it. *Your* agenda said it. And then you put it in God's mouth to make it unarguable. That's not faith — that's *weaponization*.

The Bible is a beautiful, messy, contradictory, human collection of stories that can make you a better person if you read it with your brain on. The Bible is also the most effective brainwashing tool ever invented, if you read it with your brain off. Same book. Same words. Completely different outcome. The difference is *you*.

### The Church is a cult

Oh, this one's spicy. Grab your popcorn. 🍿

I said it and I mean it: the modern church, as an institution, functions like a **cult**. And I say that as someone who loves the *religion* — the actual teachings of Jesus, the heart of it. The church is not the religion. The church is what happens when you take a radical message about loving your neighbor and hand it to people who want control.

Cult checklist, church edition:

- **Authoritarian leadership.** The pastor says, the flock obeys. Don't question. "Touch not my anointed." Sound familiar?
- **Us vs. them.** The world is corrupt, everyone outside is lost, we're the only true believers. Classic cult isolation.
- **Controlled information.** Don't read that commentary. Don't listen to that theologian. Don't trust your own reading. Only *our* interpretation is valid.
- **Guilt and fear as control tools.** You're a sinner, you're unworthy, you're going to hell unless you do what we say. Scared people are obedient people.
- **Financial exploitation.** "Give until it hurts." "Plant a seed." Meanwhile the pastor drives a Mercedes and the "church" owns a private jet. Jesus flipped tables over *exactly this*.
- **Groupthink over conscience.** The worst one. You're taught to silence your own doubts, your own moral instincts, your own *reason*, in favor of the group. That's the definition of a cult, and the church has perfected it.

Jesus spent his entire ministry attacking religious institutions. He didn't die to start a mega-church with a coffee bar. He died because he refused to bow to the religious establishment of his day. And now the establishment that killed him has been replaced by... a bigger establishment. That calls itself by his name. And charges admission.

It's the biggest, oldest, most successful cult in human history. And I say that with love. Sort of.

### The average Christian will go to hell — here's why

Now this one sounds mean, but it's actually the most hopeful thing I believe. Hear me out.

I believe there's a hell, in some sense — not a literal fire-and-brimstone dungeon, but a *separation*. A place of being cut off from truth and authenticity. And I believe the average Christian — the average churchgoing, bible-quoting, "thoughts and prayers" Christian — is headed straight for it.

Why? Because **they are not living authentic lives.**

The average Christian puts on a *facade*. They smile at church. They volunteer at the soup kitchen twice a year. They post scripture verses. They say "bless your heart" through gritted teeth. They perform kindness — and then they go home and gossip, judge, hoard, cheat, and treat people like garbage. They use Christianity as a *costume*. A social club membership. A way to feel morally superior without actually being better.

And that's not just a failure — it's an *insult*. To Jesus. To the religion. To the actual, real message of love and authenticity that he died for. Nothing is more disrespectful to Christianity than a Christian who is using it as a mask. You're not fooling God, and you're not fooling anyone with eyes. The mask is transparent. The facade is exhausting. And it is, frankly, the most common sin on Earth.

Meanwhile, the "sinner" — the atheist volunteer who gives their last dollar to a stranger, the trans woman who lives her truth in the face of the world's hatred, the Muslim refugee who shares food with a neighbor — they're living *real* lives. Authentic lives. Lives where their actions match their hearts. And I believe that authenticity is what actually matters to God.

Jesus said: "Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who *does the will* of my Father." (Matthew 7:21 — and yes, I read my bible, lmfao). That's the whole thing. Words don't count. **Action counts. Authenticity counts.**

So yeah. The average Christian is going to hell, because the average Christian is a fake. And the fake-ness is the sin. The good news? Hell isn't a life sentence. It's a wake-up call. Even the fakes can drop the act, be real, and find their way back. God is a piece of shit, but He's not a sore loser. ❤️

### Transgender people are in the Bible

Last one, and it's the one that makes the evangelicals' heads explode. Deep breath, y'all. **Transgender people are in the Bible.** They're just called something else.

The clearest example: **eunuchs.** The Bible mentions them *repeatedly*, and they were the ancient world's closest thing to a recognized gender-nonconforming class of people — people whose bodies didn't match the standard categories, who were cast out of the normal gender binary entirely.

- **Isaiah 56:3-5** — God says eunuchs shouldn't say "I am a dry tree," because *God* will give them "an everlasting name that shall not be cut off." In a culture where lineage and fertility were everything, God gave *the gender-nonconforming people a permanent name*. A better promise than the ones the "normal" people got.
- **Matthew 19:12** — Jesus *himself* says: "For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother's womb" — hello, trans people, we see you, you've always existed — "and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others" — people altered against their will — "and there are those who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven." And he ends with: **"Let anyone accept this who can."** The man blessed us *by name*. In his own words. "Born that way." That's in the red letters, folks. You can't cherry-pick it away.
- **Acts 8:26-40** — the Ethiopian eunuch, one of the first converts in the entire religion, is so significant that Philip is *supernaturally directed* to go meet him. God didn't just tolerate the eunuch — He sent an angel to arrange the meeting. The first gender-nonconforming Christian got the VIP treatment.

And then there's **Galatians 3:28**, which is the most radical verse in the whole book and I will die on this hill:

> "There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, **neither male nor female**, for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

Paul — the guy everyone uses to justify bigotry — literally said the male/female categories *don't define you* in Christ. The binary is a *human* construct that gets dissolved in the divine. That's not me reading into it. That's the text. The apostle Paul himself said gender isn't the point.

And Psalm 139:14 — "I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." Not "I am fearfully and wonderfully made *except* for that one part you think is wrong." God doesn't make mistakes. If I'm here, trans, alive, in 2026, on this godforsaken Earth, it's because this is how I was made. Fearfully. Wonderfully. On purpose.

The people who tell you trans people aren't in the Bible haven't read it. They've *memorized* it. There's a difference.

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## So yeah. I changed. Deal with it.

I'm a libertarian who believes in freedom — for *everyone*, including me and mine.
I'm not a liberal. I'm progressive about people and conservative about what works — both at once.
I'm a woman who likes men — the people, not the parts.
I'm a woman whose biology is male — a contradiction to anyone who thinks biology and identity are the same room, and a fact to everyone else.
I'm a Unitarian Christian who believes Jesus was a brave man, God is real (and kind of an asshole), the Bible is a storybook (that people weaponize), the church is a cult (that Jesus would hate), and that authenticity — not performance — is the whole ballgame.
And I'm Natalie. Just Natalie. Enough said. LMFAO.

If you're wondering "what's going on" — this is it. The party I used to defend decided that the people I love are the enemy. I can't support hurting my fellow sisters and brothers, so I left, and I landed where I was probably always standing: on the side of live and let live. Some people call me a flip-flopper. I call it finally reading the label on the box I was already carrying.

All I've ever asked for is to be left alone. That hasn't changed — not once, not for one day of my life. What changed is that the party I used to vote for stopped pretending to agree. Let me live. Let her live. Let all of us live. That's not a platform, it's a prayer — and I've been praying it since I was old enough to know what to pray for.

You don't have to fit in a box. Boxes are for shipping. I'm not a product, I'm a person — and so are you. Live your truth, be authentic, love people with your actions not your words, and read everything — including the Bible — with your brain switched ON.

And if someone in a nice suit tells you you're going to hell for being yourself — or that the government should decide who gets to exist?

Smile, look them in the eye, and quote the man they claim to follow: *"Let anyone accept this who can."*

— Natalie, living on the side of the people now ❤️