We need to support the people Trump is stepping on

This fall will mark the 50th anniversary of the release of the "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." A comic romp sending up 1930s science fiction movies, it featured Tim Curry as Dr. Frank 'N' Furter, a cross-dressing mad scientist, Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon as the naive young engaged couple who ...

The movie was so popular, it feels almost strange to describe it, like explaining the plot of "Hamlet" — "See there's this guy, he's a prince, and his father is murdered ..." Everybody knew "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."

But times change.

You did not attend the movie once but many times, bringing along props — squirt guns for the opening rainstorm, toast to throw. I was 15 when I first went with a group of friends.

My parents neither noticed nor cared about me viewing this randy cross-dressing romp. We did not live in constant dread of trans people, nor worry about encountering them in bathrooms, nor fret about their influence on high school sports. There was no moral panic.

Yes, trans people were played for humor. But then groups scorned by mainstream society traditionally tiptoe toward acceptability through comedy.

It is a foot in the door, just as white households who'd never invited a Black guest to their table howled at "Amos and Andy" in the 1930s, and Jews who couldn't stay at a restricted resort in the 1950s could still tell jokes in its ballroom.

There's nothing I can do here to stem the current fear-mongering, except point out where attention is being misdirected, like a magic trick. Card-carrying liberals darken at the topic, suddenly concerned about bathroom assaults and unfair swim meets.

Democrats took to reflexively blaming the outcome of the last election on their previous — the "wreckless" is unspoken — acceptance of trans folk, as if addressing fairness in track meets by undoing democracy makes even momentary sense. "Look at those drapes! We must burn the house down."

I try to make my friends step back and see how the issue is being framed for them and usually fail. They aren't considering the vast number of Americans who have this orientation and struggle to live but the margins, the nagging issues — do not male bodies pose unfair advantage in the 100-meter dash?

It's like any other prejudice, only not as noticeable. If every time someone mentioned the word "Muslim" I began ranting about terrorists, or every time the word "immigrant" came up I cited some ghastly crime against a 12-year-old girl, you'd peg me as a hater. Terror and crime are real problems; the hate is in pretending these problems represent the entirety.

Trans people rub so many the wrong way they never make the same realization, that they are mistaking the problems for the people. They ignore that about 3 or 4 million Americans identify as transgender.

Should the federal government step on them with both feet, as Donald Trump did his first day in office, decreeing them out of existence with the stroke of his pen? As if that were possible.

When you're not afraid, you can see what's in front of you. In 1992, I wrote an article on the trans community in Chicago. As a reporter, I was interested — Who are they? Why do they do this? — and I'm proud to have written without judging or telegraphing my unease.

Respecting people different than yourself, even if you don't yet understand them, is still permitted. I thought I would put in a plug for at least trying before the possibility is utterly forgotten and begins to seem an antique practice, like churning butter.

How did kindness toward those carrying a heavy load go so far out of fashion? If the intersex community bugs you, take it up with God — it was They who sprinkled it across nature.

And yes, I conjured up a plural divinity just to mess with you. We're still allowed to be light-hearted.

"Rocky Horror" was funny, and humor will help the next four years be less horrible, while never losing sight of the real lives affected. Not so funny to them. Not so funny to the trans soldiers booted out of the military.

This will lead to the greater suppression of people who, for a while, were allowed to live their lives the way they wanted to live. The same way you or I do, without the abuse that bullies pile on the vulnerable. That will surge back now. Because we will let them get away with it, and too many of us even sympathize with the abusers in our secret hearts.