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Made to Care: The Illiberality of LGBT Politics
The subtitle to this piece could have been: We Told You So.
We marriage defenders said, “You can either have religious freedom/freedom of conscience or same-sex ‘marriage,’ but not both.” You may be asking, “Why is she bringing that up again? Does she want to restart the SSM wars?” It’s because the Culture Wars are back in the news, and not just in the US, but throughout “advanced” (beyond the truth) societies of the West.
Here at home, the Colorado baker is going to have his day at the Supreme Court. It only remains to be seen if Justice Anthony “Obergefell” Kennedy will decide in favor of the First Amendment or his own misguided redefinition of marriage. Even if he decides the baker gets to keep his freedom of conscience, he may do so on very narrow grounds that the baker has freedom of “creative expression” as an artist, and not so much freedom of association as implicitly guaranteed by the First Amendment.
And then there’s Rocklin Academy. Even kindergartners must be made to conform to the ascendant transgender confusion. Their teacher read I am Jazz and Red: A Crayon’s Story before the big reveal of their classmate as a trans-girl. Neither the teacher nor the administration thought it important to inform the students’ parents before teaching the kids that blue is red, or boys can be girls, if they feel like it. Notice a trend here?
LGBT politics isn’t about “marriage equality” or transgender rights. It is an attack on objective truth and an empowerment of authorities at all levels to coerce speech and thought. Marriage has always been a legitimization of male/female conjugal unions because it is in the interests of individuals and society to attach the naturally occurring offspring of such unions to their parents in family units. That was widely understood as the truth of marriage – the accepted social reality. Up until Obergefell (and, leading up to it, gay adoption), we, as individuals and as a society, were allowed to remain indifferent to naturally sterile relationships between homosexuals. No more. We are being forced to care.
It’s the same with the minuscule fraction of people with gender dysphoria. While their condition is tragic for these individuals and the people who love them, their impact on society was negligible until now. Now laws are being passed to compel speech in the form of “preferred pronouns” (ref: Jordan Peterson, Canada), and children are having their world turned upside down by the revision of what is so obviously true: a person with a penis (and XY chromosomes) is a boy, and a person without a penis (and XX chromosomes) is a girl. One might even say, “it’s science!”
These are just isolated anecdotes, you say? Ha! Let’s look at what happens when a nation caves to the LGBT agenda.
In Great Britain, the slide into unreality moves apace. The “Ministry of Equality” has expressed support for a proposal to allow gender reassignment surgery without any medical consultation as building on the “progress” of same-sex “marriage.” Also from an “equalities” minister: “I feel we’ll only have proper equal marriage when you can bloody well get married in a church if you want to do so, without having to fight the church for the equality that should be your right.” The leader of the Liberal Democrats was forced to resign despite voting for SSM, because his Christian belief that marriage is between a man and a woman is intolerable in politics and must be publicly denounced. Further, Christians are being excluded from foster parenting because, “The equality provisions concerning sexual orientation should take precedence.” You can’t make this shtuff up. So now homosexual couples will be able to foster and adopt, but people of religious conviction won’t. “Family” is now anything but a man and a woman loving their children in a faith-filled home.
We live in such stupid times.
Published in Culture
In my mind, the issue isn’t SSM or ‘treating people with the dignity they deserve’. It is what comes next after these initial shifts in public policy, as is illustrated by these real examples of a larger agenda. And that agenda is not neutral or live and let live. It is decidedly oppressive and will not permit co-existence.
It criminalizes a previously widely held worldview. That is wrong. It deserves a push back.
@catorand, Old I’ll admit to, proudly…As to the adolescent dating game; I was always a spectator, not invited to play, so…There you go. (That’s not to say that I haven’t had those moments; they just came a lot later than most people’s…Spectating can be instructive.)
My problem here is that I’m struggling with the scenario that would lead to the Title IX investigation. Simply making a one time mistake because you don’t know what pronoun someone goes by isn’t going to get you there. So it would have to be something like one of the male students in my class repeatedly referring to his transgender woman classmate as “him.” Doing so repeatedly and insistently, despite requests to stop, would come across as aggressive and disrespectful, even bullying. I’d pull the student doing it out of class and ask him to stop. Because he might not believe in transgenderism, and he might think his classmate is mentally ill, but it’s not his job to rub it in his classmate’s face every day, and doing so repeatedly would create a hostile atmosphere not at all conducive to learning. There’s nothing especially Christian or compassionate about being a jerk just for the sake of it.
So while I agree in the abstract that the idea of policing language this way can be troubling, I can imagine specific scenarios where I’d definitely take issue with someone using the wrong pronouns.
why?
Yeah, “Live and Let Live” is not acceptable to the left. I have friends who were strong proponents of gay marriage, but once they saw the shift from “Let us have this, you don’t have to participate” to “You must participate and celebrate” (specifically speaking of the lawsuits against private businesses like photographers, florists, and bakeries) they started to wonder if they’d been sold a bill of goods. And these people are generally advocates for gay marriage. But they didn’t anticipate the slippery slope they now see us tobogganing down at the speed of sound.
Don’t tell me the slippery slope is a fallacy when the slope’s been greased and we’re already halfway into the abyss.
That sounds like an interesting tale, and, before we approach a hijack, I wanted to make clear that, not being a libertarian, my issue is not necessarily with duly enacted legislation (such as ENDA might have been), but with interpretive actions taken by unelected officials (EEOC) that amount to unreasoned fiats.
Why not? Those are real questions. I have the character flaw of caring more about truth and the meaning of words more than how sensitive I sound.
But wait another year…
I thought she summed it up well.
I am sorry your scolding self-righteousness prevents you from laughing at WC’s funny. You have my sincere pity.
@she, I know you asked us to cool it with the personal stuff, but I think @mitchellmessom‘s joke policing is in point of fact exactly what the op is all about and must be laughed at.
The Joke by Milan Kundera
Under the Title IX rules in place until about 10:30 this morning, yes, a single incident could get you reported, and all reports had to be investigated to determine if the activity was something that could, if continued, rise to the level of actionable sexual harassment. If it could become actionable in the future, the school had to take action now to prevent it. Got that? No possible chilling effect there. So, yes, a single incident could end with you having to deal with the Title IX bureaucracy, which at most schools is run by the very illiberal, uncivil types we’ve been talking about in this thread.
I am not in favor of being a jerk for the sake of it, but when a person who is clearly a man demands that I act as if he is a woman, I don’t believe that my choices should be limited to “acquiesce” and “shut up.”
I’ve observed that a great many people who want to be able to say that certain sexual or gender orientations are disordered nonetheless recognize it’s not their job to rub it in the face of those they meet face-to-face. Those they meet online, not face-to-face, may be a different story. When someone does come across as a jerk in person, I wonder how much of that has to do with strength of belief, rather than poor social calibration or some other shortcoming.
I’ve known those who come across as massive tools because they’re socially awkward (me, for example, particularly when I was young and stupid, and more than a few beloved family members). And others who come across as massive tools because they believe they’re entitled to do so. Sometimes the entitlement does spring from rock-ribbed belief that they’re on the side of Truth and Justice. Others, though, can be just as rock-ribbed without acting similarly entitled, though. Especially in face-to-face conduct.
Is this a story from “The Babylon Bee”? Heavens!
The style and tone is pure Onion. What an influential publication!
Oh I don’t even like the duly enacted legislation when it regulates non-state actors. If you’re a private business and you don’t like faggots, don’t hire me. But when you’re a public school and attendance is legally compulsory, don’t tell me you’ve got a duty to protect everybody but the gay kid from bullying.
Midge, I have shared meat and mead with you and can confirm that you are not, in fact, a “massive tool.”
I’m saying I’ve encountered it several times – recently, on a public university campus where title IX applies – where someone made a good faith mistake/slip up, was corrected, and nothing came of it because everyone recognized that people sometimes slip up and use the wrong word. I spend my days on a college campus. The fact that it could be policed to the extreme doesn’t mean that it is, though I don’t think we disagree on concern about the extreme example. I agree that a simple mistake should not result in the Title IX bureaucracy being thrown at you, and would protest any such occurrence if it happened at my school (I have tenure; I could get away with it!).
But can you see where I would have no problem taking my student to task in the example I gave? If you were in my class, would you refuse to use “Amanda’s” preferred name, because it is a woman’s name and she is a transgender woman? What would that accomplish, exactly?
Yes, The Babylon Bee is The Onion for Christians. A bunch of us here are fans of it. The stories are generally funny in proportion to how much Christians of all kinds can relate to them, and this one’s quite relatable.
I’m always triggered when I find I’m to the left of someone on an issue. I need a safe space from libertarians! :) I even read Richard Epstein’s book on anti-discrimination laws, but couldn’t quite get there. Too much conditioning.
If so, your friends were fools in this, and for the reasons you describe.
Again, though, I stress that:
Again, we’re with you on that and have always been with you on that.
It’s hilarious and far better than the Onion.
They were promised there would be no slippery slope. They trusted those who told them that.
So, . . . when someone once again says “Aw, stop with the slippery slope fallacy!” why should we trust them this time? Which is my point.
On Ricochet, maybe, although I can think of a few who would still dismiss such concerns as fearmongering.
In the greater culture? Not seeing it.
It’s worse than that. You’re to the left of an out, loud and proud gay guy on a gay rights issue. Put that in your pipe and smoke it! :)
Whether man, you’ve made some decent points. But my question is, how do transgenders view themselves: as people with a birth defect, or people who have simply chosen, for no reason other than that they “feel like it”, to identify as the gender that they physically are not? There really isn’t another option. And how does the answer to that question affect what we are discussing here? For example, if it’s not a birth defect, then why should I be required to misuse language just because someone else decides to pretend they are the opposite gender?
It’s just that “I told you so” is usually something someone says after a disagreement. I don’t think anything has happened that both sides haven’t agreed would happen.
To a large extent this could be said about anyone on the right. Classical liberals don’t call themselves Conservatives because they often disagree with Conservatives. We all agree the Left is wrong most of the time, but we disagree about which parts they are wrong about. This is less true on Ricochet because the more intelligent someone gets the more they tend to lean classically liberal.
But since Trump’s election especially we’ve seen this divide worsen. The vast majority of the Right is fine with keeping most, if not all, of the Welfare State as long as liberals aren’t in charge of it.
Classical liberals are fine with reducing discrimination in governmental social engineering even if the left is going to (wrongly) use it as a means to bludgeon Conservatives.
Can you expand on how you expect this upheaval to play out?
These are disagreements about the best way to run society playing out in the public sphere. I’d hardly call it doomsday.
Yes all of them want this every single one of them… Trees from the forest friend.
We have to tease out the moderate elements and liberty minded thinkers of the LGBT+ community, we won’t be able to do this if our interactions are blunt and offensive.
I think you’re reading more into my attitude than is there. I don’t see any solution to the assault on objective truth and freedom of conscience in which you (or anyone) might be helpful.
Consider this post more of a chronicle of the decline. Don’t mistake indifference for hostility. I just want the bracing truth about what’s happening to be out in the open.
Can you even imagine what comes next?