Anyone who opposes men using girls’ bathrooms is hateful, bigoted, and responsible for every transgender suicide that happens in Texas from now on.
That’s the chilling declaration of The New York Times: “Sometime in the near future, a transgender teenager in Texas will attempt suicide — and maybe succeed — because vilifying people for their gender identity remains politically acceptable in America.”
This statement is in response to the citizens of Houston rejecting the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO) that was dubbed a broad anti-discrimination rule, but didn’t actually grant any civil rights; it only provided an avenue of recourse for discrimination. “Anyone in a protected class who thinks they are being discriminated against can sue in federal court,” Leslie Loftis writes. “HERO added an option to complain to the City of Houston. File a complaint and someone would investigate, like calling about pot holes.”
While HERO included much that voters didn’t have any problem with, they took exception to forcing establishments to let grown men use the bathroom with little girls, not only because of the threat of violence, but because of the violation of privacy—something those on the Left used to value.
Men Are Not Women
Women simply don’t want their space violated by men, and aren’t women’s rights something we’ve fought long and hard for in this country? Does the safety and privacy of women even matter to The New York Times? The fact is most women don’t want to see their privacy rights sacrificed on the altar of “equality” for men who imagine they’re women despite their bodies proving otherwise.
The New York Times says the only thing transgender students want is to use the bathroom “like any other female student”—but this is the crux of the matter. Men who imagine themselves to be female are not women. They are men who think they’re female—for whatever reason, and we don’t know why they think this.
Is it a chemical problem? A brain development issue? Is it merely psychological? Whatever the problem is, the fact remains that their bodies are male. This is what’s objectively real, not their feelings (and, no, we’re not talking about the miniscule percentage of the population that is truly hermaphroditic).
Whatever you want to call them, they’re not just “like any other female student”; indeed, many, if not most, still have a penis. This is not a hateful or bigoted statement. It’s simply the truth. If we truly care about these people, then we should get them the help they really need instead of leading them along a path of regret.
Gay Politics Have Reduced Liberty
Given the facts, the citizens of Houston are perfectly in their right to raise concerns and oppose an ordinance that is designed to promote a gay political agenda, which silences opposition and increases the power of the state rather than secures equal rights for all. If we’ve learned anything from the same-sex marriage debacle, it’s that the gay rights agenda results in a loss of rights for freedom-loving Americans.
Yet The New York Times still deems hateful these concerns about liberty and about protecting women and young girls from violations of privacy and possibly criminal acts. Dissenters are “bigots” who are “destined to lose.” (Is that a threat? Sure sounds like it.) The fact is the people who are being hateful are militant LGBT activists and writers for the New York Times who demand that society—and women in particular—embrace their Puritanical vision of truth and reality.
If they say boys and men who imagine themselves female are actually women, then everyone has to agree. Never mind that these men have never lived a woman’s life. As I’ve written before in personal detail, no man shares the experiences, the biological development, the struggles, and the strife of real women. They’re not “like any other female.” To pretend they are is to embrace mass delusion.
This Is About Power, Not Truth
Does this mean we shouldn’t be compassionate or loving to people who are struggling with this kind of dysphoria and delusion? (And, yes, it is just that, despite what the politically correct American Psychological Association has to say on the matter.) Of course we should be loving and of course they should have their actual rights protected (and they are!), but that doesn’t mean we should indulge their fantasies by changing the norms of our society and put our rights and liberties at risk.
Yet this is exactly what the Left wants. The great defenders of moral relativism want us to abandon objective values for fantasy so those with power can use the authority of government to determine our destiny. (Such a thought should make any lover of individual liberty shudder.) If you oppose them, then you’re maliciously attacked and beat into submission. All dissenters must be silenced—and the best way to do that is to cast them as the evil ones, the bigots who are “destined to lose.”
But the real evil ones, the real haters, are those who are perpetuating delusion, who are advancing their own standards of truth and demanding that everyone comply—or else. If you oppose them, you get what we read in The New York Times: accusations of hate, even to the point of insisting people who disagree are responsible for the tragic choices of the mentally ill.
Such tactics are not new, of course, but they have become increasingly hostile as they’ve gained traction. In 1988, Nobel Prize-winning author Saul Bellow made a comment about the differences between literate and preliterate societies, stating, “Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus? The Proust of the Papuans?” Bellow, an elderly white male and a Jew, was viciously attacked in the media for defaming the Third World and opposing multiculturalism. His prophetic response perfectly describes what we are dealing with today, especially in light of The New York Times’ hateful attack on the citizens of Houston.
Rage Destroys Independence
Righteousness and rage threaten the independence of our souls. Rage is now brilliantly prestigious. Rage is distinguished, it is a patrician passion. The rage of rappers and rioters takes as its premise the majority’s admission of guilt for past and present injustices, and counts on the admiration of the repressed for the emotional power of the uninhibited and “justly” angry.
Rage can also be manipulative; it can be an instrument of censorship and despotism. As a one-time anthropologist, I know a taboo when I see one. Open discussion of many major public questions has for some time now been taboo. We can’t open our mouths without being denounced as racists, misogynists, supremacists, imperialists, or fascists. As for the media, they stand ready to trash anyone so designated.
This is exactly what The New York Times and others in the media have done—trash anyone who disagrees with them. Like the Puritans of old, they set the stakes on fire with their pens, burning those who refuse to obey their Holy Writ in order to purify society and usher in their progressive utopia.
The rage from the Left is a threat to the liberty of us all. The only defense is to stand strong before it, call it what it is—the fury of frustrated despots—and never forget what is real. The greatest power the bully, the abuser, has over his victim is to make her doubt what is real and what is true. The abuser draws her into his fantasy world, defining truth for her, so that she is subject to his will. When she refuses to comply, he explodes in rage, denigrating her until she cowers in submission.
We must not allow this to happen. We must never cower. We must stand for truth. Only then will we remain free.
