Exactly when did our intrepid conservative leaders deem it impermissible to make the moral argument against official approval of homosexuality? The date, the year at least, when our “on-the-Right” stalwarts junked any reference to the disorder of a “gay” lifestyle? That there is something decidedly and intrinsically “wrong” with same-sex activity?
I’m not sure — maybe some time back in the mid-eighties? Early nineties? As recently as twenty years ago, Seinfeld could build an entire episode around characters repeatedly mentioning homosexuality and then proclaiming, “Not that there’s anything wrong with that!” (the joke being the speakers plainly felt there was, even if refusing to admit it.) Well into the callow years of the new century, another sitcom, King of Queens, would regularly tease about gay-winking effeminacy as something odd, even undesirable.
That kind of popular entertainment humor in 2019? Incomprehensible. Candidly, it’s startling those TV clips of yore even survive as late-night reruns nowadays.
Whenever it became verboten to even hint homosexuality might be anything besides absolutely fabulous, the point of fact is that today anybody in the limelight — politicians, entertainers, journalists, celebrities, social commentators – avoid like the lavender leprosy any moral disapprobation of same-sex canoodling. This development has to be a real hoot for the sexually anarchic Left since, once conservatives or religious traditionalists refuse to acknowledge any right/wrong limitations on libidinous activity, the debate is effectively over.
That conclusion was painfully reaffirmed when our poor President was caught scrambling recently to justify his highly commendable policy against transgenders’ serving in our military. Disappointingly, he arrived at that polemical shoot-out without the bluntest and most essential tool of the arsenal: emphasizing the conspicuously unsound nature of gender dysphoria.
“Gender dysphoria”? That’s sesquipedalians’ favorite term for a person all mixed up about his/her sexual identity. It wasn’t only centuries ago, or even mere decades, that clear-thinking folk would vocalize the obvious: any hairy-chested lad dressing like, speaking like, insisting on passing himself off as a lady was a troubled soul. Same for any woman resolutely opting for the aggressively butch route — I’m not woman, hear me roar! — and expecting the rest of society to play along.
Such individuals are laboring under a heartbreaking delusion, plain and simple. The presence — or lack thereof — of a penis objectively means something. The involvement of XY or XX chromosomes isn’t a pesky fantasy to be wished away by use of a frilly dress or tomboy haircut respectively.
For those living in defiance of these facts? Reality will come insensitively blundering in, regardless of their feelings. I love first-century-BC Roman poet Horace here: “You can drive out Nature with a pitchfork, but she keeps on coming back.”
Or, if you prefer, writer Philip K. Dick a couple millennia later: “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”
For eons, our forebears honored the self-evident: Individuals pretending they’re something they’re not ain’t good for themselves; or for the rest of us. Introducing Corporal Klinger into the soldierly culture — he was MASHs zany orderly who attempted to win exemption from military obligation by sashaying around in female regalia like a crazy person — isn’t advantageous for fighting effectiveness, unit cohesion, etc. Since national security and the well-being of those upholding it turns on such undiluted martial virtues, whatever undercuts them has to go.
On the heels of the Trump White House’s formal ratification of June as rainbow-bespattered “Pride Month”, Stars and Stripes reports, “About 1,525 troops had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria since July 1, 2016, when Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, lifted a military ban on transgender people openly serving and allowed them to seek medical treatment.” “Diagnosed”? Was that an editorial slip? Since when do normal, desirable conditions need to be “diagnosed”?
It seems a spasm of unfashionable honesty overtook — perhaps unintentionally? — the authors of the column. Transgenderism — like homosexuality — is a psycho-sexual aberration. Boom. It needs “diagnosing” because those vexed by it need help finding a way out of their dilemma. That prognosis ought not include slobbering over their pathology, reassuring “trans” men and women there’s no problem, no consequences whatsoever, if they indulge it.
The President should’ve made that case when asked about his transgender armed forces ban. He didn’t because, according to politically correct passions perplexingly infiltrating even conservative/traditional environs lately, he couldn’t. Lifestyles that dare not speak their names have shouldered aside and smothered once laudable, perfectly defensible objections to those lifestyles. (And, to be frank, it’s becoming increasingly clear our Commander-in-Chief personally doesn’t much mind other’s addled sexual/gender preferences regardless.)
So, DT was left touting a legitimate, but appreciably less vigorous and persuasive, demurral:
[T]hey take massive amounts of drugs, they have to … You’re not allowed to take drugs, you’re in the military you’re not allowed to take any drugs … and getting the operation, the recovery period is long and they have to take large amounts of drugs after that …. So I said yeah … because of the drugs and also because of the cost of the operation.
Nobody should be surprised if that explanation ultimately fails to sell President Trump’s policy to the masses. The venerable, history-confirmed truism remains: across the board, in this or any other prickly matter, when one side abandons fundamental verities, they’ve lost the contest. Maybe an unborn child isn’t a human being? Watch out for a pro-abortion tidal wave. Earning one’s own livelihood isn’t automatically requisite? Katy-bar-the-door on an omnivorous welfare state. Perhaps the IRS ought to claim first dibs on a person’s earnings? Bye-bye reasonable tax rates! Prudent countries needn’t fixate on immigrants’ background and beliefs? Forget about upholding the integrity of our borders, citizenship, etc.
Those of us with fealty to America’s founding ideals, those Judeo-Christian principles that undergirt our government system and pervasive cultural norms, need to resuscitate the bottom-line attack on corrosive practices.
Tearing unborn children to pieces? Unacceptable! They’re human beings.
Work is vital, nobody is owed a living courtesy of taxpayers; those who’ve earned their paychecks own that money. Able-bodied adults shouldn’t presume on the statist teat.
Of course a nation should concern itself with the character of those soliciting entry. Men and women predictably act on of what’s inside their hearts and minds.
And, yes – same-sex cavorting, “gender dysphoria” and the entire conga line of weirdo glandular inclinations currently so trendy are, let’s admit it, not good for anybody.
Being willing to announce those sentiments gives us a shot, at minimum, at checking their proliferation.
Really, it’s fundamental.
