When I was seven or eight, my mom sent me to an all-girls summer day camp. I was fairly shy at that age, but I enjoyed it. There were around 75 campers and a few teenage counselors, all of them kind.

We would start each day with a group activity as we stood in a circle around the flagpole. One morning the head counselor announced that she had an extra-special surprise for us.

“Today we’re going to crown our freckle queen,” she said. My heart sank to my toes.

We were instructed to turn to our right and count our neighbor’s freckles. The girl to my left looked at me and threw up her hands. I was crowned without further ado.

I suspect the camp counselors would have scrapped the whole plan if they’d thought about how upsetting it is for kids to be singled out over some characteristic that makes them different. My excuse for the counselors is that they were teenagers—basically kids themselves. I would have a hard time extending such grace to an adult.

I’ve been thinking about that as I’ve watched Tennessee’s Republican state leaders use queer kids as a political punching bag. On the one hand, their laws banning trans kids from school sports and giving teachers the right to ignore kids’ preferred pronouns are solutions in search of a problem. These laws were generated in response to right-wing media, not any issues on the ground. On the other, somewhere between 10 and 16 percent of Americans identify as LGBTQ+. That’s a lot of Tennesseans, including a lot of kids, getting the message that their state government considers them a problem to be solved.

You’d think I would have thrown away my Freckle Queen badge, but I didn’t. It’s still somewhere in my attic. I guess it’s a reminder of the importance of empathy—although really, I don’t need a reminder. I don’t think most adults do.

Allison
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