I'm not a huge fan of RFK Jr.
I respect that he's his own person, of course, but I have profound differences of opinion with him on a lot of topics, including his previous position on vaccines and his extreme environmentalism.
But right now, I'm on his side about something, and that's how everyone is giving him crap about his comments regarding children with autism.
First, understand that I'm the parent of at least one autistic child. My eldest has taken it upon himself to get tested after his sister's diagnosis, so that number might be increasing.
My daughter is 13 and we just learned about it. She's a high-functioning autistic child, what they term as a "Level 1."
This means she's smart, happy, and a wonderful person with just a few quirks that have introduced some challenges in her life, but has also made her a freaking subject matter expert in others.
With a little work, she'll likely live a life completely devoid of significant problems from her diagnosis.
However, she's a fortunate one.
As Kennedy himself noted in the speech that has created so much hoopla – though, if you just get your information from the media, you might have missed it – about 25 percent of autistic children aren't Level 1 or even Level 2. They're in that third group, which is the most severe.
My lovely daughter can tell you anything about her favorite shows, including who the voice actors for numerous cartoons are. Those in that 25 percent sit in a chair and rock a large portion of the day, never telling their parents they love them, never holding a job, never getting an education, or any of the things Kennedy mentioned in that speech.
A lot of people hear what Kennedy said about possibly finding a cure, or at least a treatment, for autism, and immediately thought it was about somehow purging quirkiness from our world. I understand that because a lot of people out there would want to cure someone like my daughter to make her "normal," whatever that actually means to them.
But when people lash out about Kennedy's comments, even if they mean well, they're forgetting about those other 25 percent. These are the kids who will never be able to experience the joy of graduating from school, getting married, seeing their children for the first time, being recognized professionally for something, or any of the other joys we experience in our lives.
They'll never be able to live anything resembling a normal life.
Their existence isn't about being quirky or strange. It's about being trapped in a prison cell of their own minds.
Talking about this with some friends, I was reminded of a scene from "X-Men: The Last Stand."
In that movie, a pharmaceutical company creates a cure for being a mutant. Rogue, played by Anna Paquin, asks if it's true, excitedly. Halle Berry's Storm say's it's not a cure because there's nothing wrong with them.
Throughout this part of the movie series, mutantism is used as a proxy for homosexuality, which many believe warrants no cure. However, we need to remember that the character of Storm has the ability to control the weather, meaning she has a power that is downright terrifying if she's angry, but of great benefit if she isn't. It's easy for her to say there's nothing wrong with them.
For Rogue, though, her power makes it impossible for her to have human contact without potentially killing someone.
Like how these fictional powers seem to exist on a bit of a spectrum, where some are beneficial to the mutant and others are a detriment, autism is also on a spectrum, where some embrace their autistic "superpowers" and relish being different, while others would just as soon be normal rather than face the constant struggle to do much of anything.
My daughter and, possibly, my son don't need a cure. I'm thankful for that in so many ways.
But I'm not about to allow people to pretend that they're the totality of autism because that fits their vision best while simply ignoring all of those who suffer in obscurity, to say nothing of their parents who would do anything to hear their child say "Mommy" or "Daddy" for the first time, even into their 20s.
So how about let's focus on what RFK Jr. said, and how we can help these truly unfortunate people, and not what some people want us to think he said.
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