Monday, February 4, 2019

Trans folks are lucrative Night of the Living Dead threat to frightened faithful




     There are not a lot of transgender citizens of the United States — figures I see hover at around half a percent. Still a significant number of people: about 1.5 million. But not like they’re crowding me.
     Looking over my 58 years on earth, I can’t think of any interaction whatsoever outside of my duties as a professional journalist. None that I noticed. No doubt I have run into trans folks and been unaware.
     What I’m trying to say is, the existence of transgender Americans has not been rattling my windows, certainly not the way it does certain individuals who profess to be religious. To hear them describe it, the transgender community is a kind of Night of the Living Dead assault, an inexorable force on the march. That people exist who do not identify with their birth gender is an earthquake, a revolution, one they will not tolerate, this pickaxe aimed at their own wobbly sense of self. It is something terrifying. Something to be stopped.
     Last week I received an email from Brian S. Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage. His effort to stop gay marriage was a flop, so, like the March of Dimes shifting from polio to birth defects, he re-deployed his forces in the fight to keep the world exactly as he imagines it should be.
     Brown’s letter begins:

Dear Friend — I have been saying for a while that the push by LGBT extremists to impose gender ideology on society has reached insane proportions. Take what is happening in California, for instance.
The Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee of the California Legislature, a Democrat, has declared that people who testify before the committee will be prohibited from referring to another individual using male or female pronouns such as ‘he’ or ‘she,’ ‘him’ or ‘her.’ Instead, the rules now require the use of the pronouns, ‘they.’ The rule change was made to endorse gender neutrality so that “transgendered” and “non-binary” people are not offended with the use of a pronoun that doesn’t fit their gender identity.
To continue reading, click here. 

9 comments:

  1. There's a famous 19th Century quote: "I don't care what people do as long as they don't do it in the middle of the street & frighten the horses."

    But I certainly reserve the right to laugh at you if you make the People of Walmart.com website!
    I am utterly baffled by the men wearing women's clothing in Walmart! They obviously aren't trying to look like women, so maybe someone here can explain it?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bravo for encouraging financial support for snopes.com. You, as a respected journalist, you could do even more for the cause by getting them nominated for a MacArthur or a Pulitzer.

    Seriously, their contribution to the general enlightenment of society far outstrips that of most past journalism award winners. My hope is that such recognition would help free them from having to rely on online ads for support - the public deserves having such a reliable resource be free of the tawdry come-ons found almost everywhere else.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've contributed in the past and should again. I copy and paste one Snopes link or another probably an average of four or five times a day.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  5. My FaceBook "friends" have expanded the work of the California legislature to claim that it insists that 9 genders be recognized.

    By the way, Mrs. Patrick Campbell (a famous English actress, known in her day as Mrs. Pat) was the source of the "....scare the horses" gem.

    john

    ReplyDelete
  6. To be honest, transgenderism used to be out at the border of things I took seriously. But the people who are so mortally offended by it, to the point of telling one baldfaced lie after another, are such unregenerate swine that I concluded that if they're against it, it has to be valid.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's probably tribalism at its worst, but move over, I'm right with you there.

      john

      Delete
  7. Transgenderism is something most of us didn't used t hear about, but it has long been familiar to cultural anthropologists, since it exists, in one form or other in most of the societies they have studies. Men and women who display characteristics of the opposite sex are sometimes persecuted, in other instances revered and given religious roles.

    Tom

    ReplyDelete
  8. I haven't run in to it often. But people on the right just don't want to know facts. I have posted stuff from Snopes and the right wingers think it is fake news from the left.

    ReplyDelete

Comments are moderated, and posted at the discretion of the proprietor.