B.J. FLETCHER: People deserve the right to make their own choices … and mistakes

If you turn on the news, real or fake, these are the topics that are making up 90% of the airtime or newspapers that we tune in to or read. It’s dominating our government’s conversation 24/7. Now I ask you, do you really know what they are talking about? Do you really care. Do you have your own opinion or are you, like so many are, too lazy to seek out facts or are you being told by your “pastor” or friends how to think or feel?

I have my own opinion. Actually, back in the late ’70s I dated a nice young man. His name was Bobby. Good boy. Handsome. Loved his grandmother. Loved the Lord. Yet over time, he stopped loving himself. He never felt like he fit in.

In his early 20s, he started thinking about the possibility of having a sex change. I witnessed, for years, the thoughts and feelings he went through. By the time he was 32, Bobby went from Bobby to … I will not tell you her name now.

You notice I said “her?” I did because she now has made a full transition into becoming a woman (other than the fact she can’t have children). Did I agree with her decision? No. But I respected the fact that she made it on her own, used her own money, and didn’t put her business out on the streets to become famous, etc.

She did it to “fit in,” to find a place where she felt comfortable.

Right after that, I had a friend who had an abortion. She was 19. She didn’t want to tell her parents she was pregnant and truly hated the father of the baby. She was raped. Again, I stood by that decision and drove her to Jacksonville. I didn’t have the strong belief of God as I do now, so I felt I was doing what a friend should do.

What do these two circumstances have in common? Both individuals were old enough to make up their own minds, had no social media to make their decisions on how many likes they got and used no taxpayer money to pay for their decisions.

Many want to beat up Christians or members of other religious groups for not wanting this to become a government issue. But they are right. If you want to do anything to your body, mind or soul, do it. But don’t shove it down our throats.

Parents have a right to want their kids to get a good education so they can navigate through this world. They have a right to fight against drag queens doing story time. (Note: If a drag queen was telling stories at our schools back in the day, the teachers would have been dragged from one end of the school to the other.) If your child wants to go to a drag show, let them come of age and go see one.

If you want to buy an electric car, buy one. But don’t put so many restrictions on the auto industry that it forces them to stop making automobiles. Many of us can’t afford the batteries that go to these cars, much less the car. And charging stations. We have an infrastructure that when the clouds come out, our utilities go down. How are those cars going to be working for you when we have another Hurricane Michael or a flood?

I am saying all of this for a reason. Leave people alone; let them make their own choices. Their own mwistakes. But let us make ours also. I pray for the day when the media tell the “rest of the story.”