I will no doubt offend many with this column, so just line up. A few days ago I received an invitation to a “live webinar” dealing with “campus facilities and transgender students: creating save and welcoming spaces on your campus.”
The invitation came from AudioSolutionz LLC, in Durham, N.C. Since Duke is in Durham, and Duke is heavily politically correct, I suspect a Duke connection. Genny Beemyn is listed as the organizer and presenter of the program in complying with Title IX of the federal government.
Many of us remember of setting off to college. It was an exciting time.
But, today, alas, “many transgender students come to college ready to be themselves, to finally be able to express their gender identity, [but] too many colleges shut gendered doors—bathroom doors, locker room doors, res hall doors— in their faces, telling them in no uncertain terms, ‘while you might be ready to be out, we are not ready for you.’”
If some of college administrators are out there reading this, you need to plug into the webinar by Beemyn which “will share strategies to develop restrooms, residence hall bathrooms, and locker rooms in recreational centers and athletic buildings that can address the needs of transgender students, including an examination of social and political concerns and the financial cost. The experiences of several campuses will be discussed as case studies to help other colleges create transgender-supportive facilities.”
Yale is a leader in girls in boys’ bathrooms and vice versa, the dream of all callow boys of course, and our proverbial janitor in the girls’ dorm.
There is a bulleted list of “session highlights,” which includes two I thought useful for college administrators.
If you are interested in being more like Yale, try “Hear how different campuses have sought to foster and create inclusive restrooms, shower rooms, and locker rooms and the obstacles faced in doing so.”
And if you want to know where the Obama administration is on this: “Know what are the expectations of Title IX to prevent discrimination against transgender students.” The expectations of course are to cut off your federal funding, all of which comes from your taxes.
So there you have it. I think it was South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, when musing on a wild free-for-all debate a few months ago, who commented colorfully “my party has gone batshit crazy.” I’d like to amend that a bit, I think my country has gone batshit crazy in embracing, defending, and extolling the transgender craze.
I am not arguing for a return to the manliness of the Marlboro Man. All of you under the age of forty will have to look that up on your cell phones. I am arguing for a clear recognition that God created a man and a woman, and they were to procreate and populate the earth with children, both male and female.
My argument against this new experiment in equality is based on the Bible, our Constitution, and common sense.
I don’t remember reading about transgenders in Scripture. If you disobeyed God and, for example, like to have sex with the same sex, or liked to do it with animals, or practiced anything beyond the norm as defined by God, you were not only in sin, but you were usually executed.
I am not so Biblical that I think we should be stoning homosexuals and transgenders. We don’t burn people at the stake anymore for transgressions against Biblical principles. But we have to draw a line in the sand.
We cannot all reduce ourselves to the lowest common denominator, or aberration, or abnormality in society, by pretending we are all equal. That’s not what the Constitution meant and how this country became what it is: the best not the worst of it.
We share a set of common principles, and equality of opportunity—in freedom and with liberty–is one of them. The Constitution did not declare that men and women can all do what they damn well please, since this is a free country, and the rest of us have to accommodate to aberrations from common sense and the Bible.
Scripture informs me that the transgender phenomenon is an extreme expression of human disdain for the world that God set up for us. Spit in God’s face and there are consequences.
Common sense tells me that my ten-year old granddaughter shouldn’t have to share a bathroom or locker room with a boy, no matter how confused s/he is about his/her gender.
Published as “We Must Draw a Line in the Sand” in The Tuscaloosa News, Sunday, May 29, 2016
Invisible Mikey
May 28, 2016
I’m not offended. Learning that there are people different from ourselves, including ones different from what we were taught, is a process. Girls used to get less money for sports programs, because we thought girls can’t, shouldn’t (whatever) be athletes “like boys”. At some point we all realized fair is fair, and if you’re giving out school support grants for sports at all, girls deserve it as much as boys. I see the trans rights laws as one of those areas we hadn’t previously considered. A few years ago, it would have seemed unimaginable that we would be having social conflict over the right to eliminate body wastes in public facilities. Who must poo where is a matter of negotiation between parties who hold different interpretations of the requirements of civil law.
The only objection I have, and it’s more of a need to react for purposes of clarification than an opposition, is to conflating anything about the Bible with civil law. I realize it’s important to you, but it doesn’t really matter what it says about men and women as far as law goes, not the way the Constitution does.
It is of interest that our understanding, our interpretation of what both the Bible and the Constitution says and means has changed radically over time. Pastors no longer use scripture to justify continuing slavery, and only a small number of “young Earth” creationists believe all science must be made subservient to the assumption we’ve only been here 6,000 years. Likewise, there have been a lot of amendments to the Constitution, and its intents are the basis for many Supreme Court cases today.
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laclayton
May 30, 2016
Mikey, thoughtful commentary. My only comment on your comment is also I suppose in the nature of the philosophical, rather than polemical. The only problem I have in following the Constitution is that it is man made, while the Bible/Scripture is God given. I know this is a subject for books, but it is kind of my quick measuring stick before looking at whatever issue I’m writing about or commenting through a deeper and wider view.
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