LGBTQ+HW: When the Ocean Is Your Therapist and the Undertow Is Your Truth

By Killian Yates (Satire, But Not Really)

Published: March 29, 2025, 7:15 PM PST

In a bold move toward inclusive identity politics that somehow manages to confuse even the most progressive dolphin, the federal government has quietly acknowledged two new additions to the LGBTQ+ alphabet: H for Horse and W for Walrus.

No, this isn’t satire. Except it is. But it also isn’t.

See, in today’s America, it’s not enough to identify as pansexual, gender-fluid, or Two-Spirit. That’s 2022 talk. In 2025, true enlightenment comes when you decide you’re an aquatic mammal with rights—particularly, the right to drown in the icy surf while chasing a jellyfish hallucination your TikTok therapist told you is part of your healing journey.

This week, yet another young person—this time a developmentally delayed 15-year-old—waded into the Pacific to “reconnect with their sea-gender identity” and never came back. Their support worker? Hands tied. Quite literally. State policy says you can’t impede someone’s expression, even if their expression is a death wish dressed up as Disney.

"It’s their lived experience," says a representative from the Department of Inclusive Mortality. "We don’t want to shame them for becoming one with the current."

Apparently, The Little Mermaid is no longer just a movie. It’s now a tragic endgame for individuals who’ve been handed the vocabulary of liberation but not the guardrails of reality. And rather than acknowledge that some people need help—not hashtags—the system doubles down.

Want to be a horse? Here's a saddle. Want to be a walrus? Here's a bucket of fish and a one-way bus ticket to the Oregon coast. Don’t worry, we won’t stop you. That might be ableist. Or transphobic. Or whatever "-ist" gets you canceled faster than you can scream for a lifeguard.

And to be clear: this isn’t about mocking identities. It’s about the state-sanctioned suicide-by-ideology that’s sweeping up the most vulnerable people among us while we all play make-believe and call it progress.

Some of us are old enough to remember when "Do no harm" was the rule. Now it’s "Do whatever they want, and let the sea sort it out."

We don’t need rainbow lifebuoys or gender-neutral surfboards. We need leadership with the guts to say: not everyone is capable of giving informed consent to jump into a riptide. We need systems that protect, not perform.

Because if you can’t stop a mentally impaired kid from thinking they’re a walrus and walking into the ocean to “join their kind,” then you’re not an ally. You’re an enabler. And their blood—or brine—is on your hands.

Add H. Add W. Add whatever you want. But if we don’t stop this madness soon, the only letter that’ll matter is the one from the coroner.