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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
I knew it had those letters, but it is a bogus concept made up by people who refuse to accept that heterosexuality is normal and desirable. Saying sexuality is fluid and that people choose to identify as any of a number of “identities” is admitting that it is a choice and not fixed, certainly not genetic.
And then some of the “identities” are redundant. How can someone be “pan” but not “bi”. Unless pan includes beastiality. Or maybe it’s sexual attraction to goat-men. And how is queer different from gay? And aren’t lesbians gay? And if someone is trans, don’t they want to be thought of as the sex they mutilated their body to become? Why would they want to be called that, and have special signs outside bathrooms?
For the whole pronoun thing, just mock the process by not using pronouns to refer to trans people.
“Have you spoken with Caitlin? How is Caitlin doing? What will Caitlin do next week? What does Caitlin think of that?”
Because the most important thing is not naturalness or clarity or expression, but not causing offense.
Moderator Note:
You don't know this.Heterosexuality is normal and desirable so is homosexuality. All pansexuals are bisexual but not all bisexuals are pansexuals.
Look I am not going answer rest of that nonsense. This is the character flaw on the right that I am talking about. [redacted].
So maybe the LGBT+ are radical but is it any wonder when people like yourself engage them on these issues?
To be fair I do that or use they, mostly because it’s less effort.
Try not to police people’s speech around here. It makes you look like an obnoxious fool.
Let’s make this simple. Would you call a trans person to their face “trannie”? If someone thinks that is appropriate or civil, that builds on my point why the LGBT+ are so “radical”.
@nandapanjandrum: Tell me you weren’t hoping for that happy ending.
@mitchellmessom, where were you during the SSM wars? I see you’ve been a member for quite a while but we’ve never met before. Nice to meet you. It’s been a while since I’ve seen this particular group get together to trash the gays, so hopefully this thread will be an outlier or a last gasp. But if they’re going to re-litigate this war it will be nice to have another hand at the barricades.
I don’t use an alias as I find it keeps me civil and forces me to own everything I write. So I was under some contractual obligations relating to my former job at time, at times like that I find its better I write nothing.
I think it was the families (Mom&Dad) who prevented the significant others visits. Not laws.
The Left weaponized this into a cause for government overreach and unnecessary laws.
Yea, that doesn’t really help. I want the right to have my husband at my hospital bedside, even if my religious and homophobic parents don’t approve. That question of it being a “right” is unavoidably a question of law. The law can be silent on it, but in the words of the old Rush song, “if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” Only marriage – which made my husband legally my “family” and my next of kin – gave me that right.
I also use my real name, and own everything I write. While I’m on the opposite side of this topic, I greatly respect those who decline to shield their identity while discussing controversial topics.
We are talking about a group of men who put on dresses, pantyhose, and lipstick, and then demand that we not only say they are women, but that we actually believe it, or face criminal sanctions. Who’s being uncivil?
It appears we need to add that to the growing list of Words you Must Not Use At Ricochet.
In what jurisdiction do you face criminal sanctions for not saying or believing that they are women? That risk does not exist in the United States of America anywhere except for a few people’s fevered imaginations.
These times need people like you. It’s a crappy job, but someone has to keep the flame of truth alive.
I’ve put my real name in my profile now. I continue to use my screen name because it is the alias by which people here know me.
I disagree with this statement. Homosexuality is neither.
I flagged this part. The Ricochet staff have said that they do not want members responding to this sort of thing, and have said that they will handle these matters.
Proving one of the points in the Original Post.
They are radical because anyone who claims to have a clue about wisdom is rejected by them. People who care about them? My new friends care more because they accept me the way I am.
Yes, absolutely. Lets have a conversation on what it means to “accept”. You are unhappy because you feel that walking around as a male while you think you are female rejects your identity, but your body is also part of your identity. Turning around and rejecting your body to accept your internal identity is still rejection. And you see the results of that continued rejection by only seeing a temporary blip of contentment after transition before cascading into depression once more and then suicide.
Perhaps that small blip of contentment is from external recognition that not all is right, but the solution on offer isn’t helping.
And you talk about virtue signaling.
Civil good enough?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/05/17/you-can-be-fined-for-not-calling-people-ze-or-hir-if-thats-the-pronoun-they-demand-that-you-use/?utm_term=.961b5004d08c
It’s awesome!
just speaking from lived experience :-)
Peace.
Oh my god.
To respond in lawyer terms: objection, lack of foundation, assumes facts not in evidence.
To respond in more colloquial terms: a bigger pile of psychobabble mindreading nonsense has never been posted on Ricochet.
Seriously? You know all that about the internal workings of the minds of hundreds of thousands if not millions of people, few if any of whom you even know? I’d be embarrassed to have written this.
Cato, Stina is talking about the transexuals.
How about we stop with the name calling and motive-impugning on both sides, and get back to either discussing, supporting or refuting, the information presented in the OP?
No, the claim was that there were criminal sanctions. So if we’re all “owning” what we say, let’s own it.
Moreover, if this “guidance” is still in effect (and it’s not clear it is, the link to the NYC Human Rights Commission document now comes up “You have reached an outdated page on NYC.gov, the Official New York City website.”), it won’t last 15 minutes in court when they try to enforce it. It is patently unconstitutional.
I know. And I’m very perplexed at how ze knows so much about all of their lives.
I meant fabulous.
Also.
In addition to.
In the interest of candor, I’ll note that I appear to have located the NYC regulation and as far as I can tell it is still in effect. It remains undeniable that it is unconstitutional however and I expect it to be struck down when it is tested.
You did, but it was unnecessary then because we not only believed you, but often made the same points about the consequences of the Left’s sexual agenda and the way they enacted it.
Which is worth more to you:
Calling in a debt seems far more in your self-interest — and more in service of good — than flagellating willing allies for past disagreements.
This, in my experience, is not really the case. I’ve had two transgender students in my classes. In both cases, they emailed me before the start of the semester and explained that despite the name given to me by the registrar, they would prefer to be called by this other name, and asked that I use these gender pronouns (I had one male to female transgender student who asked that I use she/her, an one female to male that asked that I use he/him). In a class discussion setting, there are ample opportunities to say things like, “What do the rest of you think about Amanda’s argument? Do you agree or disagree with her?” Avoiding the pronouns to use the name repeatedly just for her would be noticeable and would, in time, feel passive aggressive against the student.
As a professor, it is my job to lead the way in making sure everyone in the class is comfortable and treated respectfully. It is not my job to make pronouncements about any perceived ideas about their mental fitness (I’m a historian, not a psychologist, so I’m completely unqualified to do so anyway) or to editorialize on their preferences (that being an example of bringing politics into the classroom that I abhor, and anyway, my perspective on this is live and let live). I use whatever pronouns they or anyone else asks me to, and the class follows my lead.
Both students were excellent in class – thoughtful, prepared, wrote terrific papers, made great arguments. I’ve had students whose mental health I worried about; neither of these two came close.