What possesses a great nation’s government to suddenly make transsexuality the center of its civil rights, education and juvenile health agenda?
A recent White House proposal to adjust Title IX would make across-the-board school and college sports bans a civil rights violation. Sidestepping any conclusive ruling, the Supreme Court the same day allowed a twelve-year-old West Virginia transgender girl to continue competing on her middle school track and cross-country teams while legal battles work their way through lower courts.
About two-thirds of Americans oppose transgendered athletics. Critics argue that they destroy women’s sports and mock Title IX’s original intent.
More broadly, the Biden administration appears ready and eager to use federal laws and courts to override state-level resistance to what is misleadingly called “gender-affirming care.” This package includes name, appearance and clothing changes, puberty blockers and hormone cocktails, genital and breast reconstructions, facial plastic surgery, speech therapy, and urologic and psychiatric services.
“The Department of Education has affirmed that federal civil rights laws protect all students, including transgender and other LGBTQI+ students, from discrimination, and reaffirmed its commitment to vigorously enforcing those laws,” the White House announced. “The Department of Justice, Department of Education, and Department of Health and Human Services have issued a joint message for transgender students about their rights.”
Department of Justice assistant attorney general Kristen Clarke for the Civil Rights Division, Department of Education acting assistant secretary for Civil Rights Suzanne Goldberg, and Department of Health and Human Services assistant secretary for Health Dr. Rachel Levine — who else? — are the designated heavies in a coordinated federal rights initiative.
“Transgender Americans have an unwavering champion in the president,” the White House pledges, warning that “conservative politicians have advanced hundreds of anti-transgender laws in states across the country so far this year, putting the fundamental rights and freedoms of trans Americans at risk.”
Hundreds of gender bills are floating around state legislatures. Late last month, the Kentucky legislature passed and then overrode the governor’s veto of a wide-ranging bill restricting surgical sex changes, curricula, bathrooms and pronouns. Kansas and other states have recently enacted elaborate sports and bathroom restrictions. Florida, Missouri and Texas have enacted regulations banning puberty-blocking hormones and surgeries for minors. At least twelve states ban “gender-affirming care” for minors by law, and many more are trying to do so.
Parents in particular object to children being pushed into a world of freakish drag queens, in-class dildo demonstrations and federally funded gender counselors asking children to question their identity, possibly concealed from parents.
But other Americans, many of them under thirty, believe in nonbinary everything. They draw great emotional satisfaction from alliances with those they consider oppressed or excluded. Gender fluidity is a creed, genetics and DNA or not. An estimated two-fifths of the nation maintains that gender and anatomy can differ — a view held widely throughout the world.
Who pays for the medley of counseling, procedures and surgeries remains unresolved. Public and private medical insurance costs for sex changes and continued maintenance of biological simulacra might add up to a pretty penny. How much of the costs of these elective procedures will be borne by taxpayers, some of whom might think sex-change surgeries are unconscionable mutilations or insults to God?
Many physicians, hospitals, therapists, and health officials have a distinct financial interest in the lucrative, expanding field. The pro-trans colossus rolls forward. The American Medical Association states in a 2021 letter to the nation’s governors that “trans and non-binary gender identities are normal variations of human identity and expression.” The American Psychological Association and Centers for Disease Control agree. From the Associated Press, telegraphed sophistry helps sway opinion: “Doctors say reproductive anatomy at birth doesn’t always align with strict definitions of sex and that binary views of sexual identity can miss biological nuances.”
Normal variations…expression…doesn’t always align…biological nuances. The LGBTQI+ propaganda machine churns away, the opposite of nuanced. Whether it’s race, sex or any identity complaint, woke and its allies demand that individuals, society and nature change to meet the putative needs of the “vulnerable.” And not only change, but repudiate time-honored social conventions, ability hierarchies, trust systems and animal instincts.
One unstated sideline in gender activism is to dislodge — “de-privilege” — male-and-female marriage as an ideal for rearing children. Family diversity is a core theme in California’s second grade social studies curriculum, which lists as examples: “Immigrant families, families with lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender parents and their children, families of color, step- and blended families, families headed by single parents, extended families, multi-generational families, families with disabled members, families from different religious traditions, and adoptive families.”
Anything missing here? Lawmakers and state boards of education in California and elsewhere find it politically impossible to favor, idealize or acknowledge the benefits of a male-and-female, father-and-mother, married-with-children family. Active lobbies inside governments, media and non-government organizations are on the lookout for any normative tilt.
In our age, even in Grover’s Corners, some woke “ally” on the school board will make it “their” cause to disrupt and reimagine, and the rest of us — most of all school principals and the district superintendent — no longer dare roll any eyes or object. In blue zones, local school administrators are likely to be leading the LGBTQI+ parade.
Conviction overrules science. To fulfill impossible forms of equality, citizens are asked to acquiesce in bio-medical fictions and ignore mental illness. For militants, any failure to comply with fantastic claims — and do so absolutely and reverently — is bigotry and hatred, worthy of violence. Many attention-seeking sex radicals seem aroused by their own tantrums and malice.
The antinomian style has had a long run, and it’s showing. Patriotism, religion, family, hard work, and civic interest are on the wane, as the Wall Street Journal has documented, most radically for under-thirty Americans. Alongside gender fluidity, courtship and family formation are ebbing.
Playing mind games with genes and biology will someday end, as have previous social and medical frenzies. We do not know when or what will be the engine. Meanwhile, the White House cynically stirs up intense partisan conflict. As its reckless initiatives go forward in courts, schools and hospitals, the nation will reap the whirlwind.
