Traumatized Autistic Boy Called Transgender, Ejected From Cinema
Is this really who we are as a nation? What happened to kindness?
Fifteen-year-old John Gallinaro is so traumatized he can’t sleep at night. He’s afraid to use the bathroom at home by himself. His mom says he often expresses fear of Nicole Nicolet, a Cinemark cinema manager in Hazlet, New Jersey who recently “accused” John of being transgender. She called the police on him and his mom after ordering them out of the theater where they had been enjoying the Disney movie Elemental.
Their crime?
John’s mom, Christine Gallinaro, took him into the women’s room to help him.
“This is not a transgender bathroom!” Nicolet reportedly yelled in the crowded lobby shortly after she had security guards surround the mother and son. Eventually, police arrived and helped eject the pair from the premises.
“What is this?” I asked myself last week after reading a news story. “Common narrative? Public fed up with trans people? Sad, entrenched transphobia targeting a queer kid?”
Actually, no. Zero trans people appear in this story.
Our two main characters are just a devoted mother and her nonverbal, developmentally delayed child who loves movies but can’t use…
