Concerning minding-my-own-business Americans who’d just as soon stay away from particular hot-potato social issues, conservative talk host Erick Erickson wrote ominously back in 2015, “You will be made to care”. That is: positioning oneself on the sidelines of mere “tolerance” is no longer permitted (if it ever was) by the decidedly intolerant and authoritarian Left.
A confirmation of Erickson’s maxim would be the “politically correct” crowd’s refusal to allow anyone to speak aloud that anything on the sexual front is bizarre or strange or unpleasant. Nowadays, to mutter that nearly any genital-related practice or attitude isn’t “normal” is to heave your reputation, perhaps even your career, into jeopardy. Again, the average Joe is barely permitted to stay mum on, let alone criticize, the panoply of grotesques that have been disgorged upon society in the half-century since the sexual revolution. No, no, we’re all to act as if practically every deviancy and gender-oddity — no matter how unnerving — is positively ducky.
The latest kerfuffle involving The Babylon Bee illustrates this poisonous trend. Seeds for the controversy were sown when the sophisticates over at USA Today tagged transgender government health official “Rachel Levine” one of 2022’s … drumroll please … “Women of the Year”. The Hill fills in other pertinent details:
Twitter suspended the account of right-leaning parody site The Babylon Bee after a tweet misgendered U.S. Assistant Health Secretary Rachel Levine in violation of the platform’s hateful conduct policy. … The tweet that triggered the temporary lock misgendered Levine by stating, “The Babylon Bee’s Man Of The Year is Rachel Levine,” according to a screenshot tweeted by Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon on his personal account. … Levine, 64, was honored for her work in the Biden administration leading 6,000 uniformed public health officers during a pandemic.
Despite the convoluted language, if one reads between that summary’s lines and successfully deciphers its brain-cramping “woke” code, an accurate picture emerges: Levine is a biological male, but declares himself a lady. He has landed a rather sweet and prominent gig in Joe Biden’s administration. The Bee had the effrontery (read: courage) to lampoon the ludicrousness of this arrangement; thus, oh-so-progressive Twitter is making the website pay a penalty for it.
Little surprise, a high-ranking occupant of the Biden Brain Trust chimed in rhapsodically: Domestic Policy Council Director Susan Rice tweeted, “Congratulations to the trailblazing @HHS-ASH Admiral Rachel Levine on being named one of @USATODAY’s Women of the Year.”
Meanwhile, amidst all this rainbow-colored confetti-throwing, take a gander at any online photo of “Rachel Levine”. Pick one, any one. Next, try to sincerely convince yourself: “Nothing at all weird or off-kilter about that.” Go ahead, just try.
USA Today also bestowed the annual honorific upon Vice President Kamala Harris, gymnast Simone Biles, and Melinda Gates. Say what you will about that trio, at least they are authentic, biological ladies. No coerced self-delusion regarding their femininity required of observers there.
Then there’s Sam Brinton. Since January last, he’s been working at Biden’s Office of Nuclear Energy (specifically, as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition).
Tony Perkins provides the additional tidbits that Britton is: “a stiletto-wearing, Kink 101 enthusiast who likes tying up his sexual partners.” Reputedly, a photo of Brinton “standing over a man in a dog collar” has been lately making the rounds.
He’s an MIT graduate who was last working in LGBTQ advocacy. … [Recently] people stumbled on his graphic social media accounts, where his sexual fetishes were spelled out for everyone to see. [Washington Times reporters] were forced to explain the controversy over Brinton with examples like his fondness for “simulated sex with men posing as dogs.”
There’s more, per Rod Dreher:
Brinton has openly bragged about wearing women’s clothes to work to provoke people into “having ‘conversations’ about LGBT matters,” … Imagine if he were a “loud, aggressive fundamentalist Christian evangelist who bragged that he enjoyed provoking people into having conversations about their religious beliefs, he wouldn’t get hired by most places because he would constantly be stirring up trouble. I’m a conservative Christian, and I wouldn’t hire such a person.
The 34-year-old nuclear physicist has long been a vociferous critic of any sort of sexual orientation change efforts (so-called “conversion therapy”), which is actually voluntary counseling for those struggling with their same-sex attractions. Not to be countenanced! thunders this freshly minted member of Team Biden.
On Twitter, Brinton gloated he would be “(to [his] knowledge) the first gender-fluid person in federal government leadership.” It’s a safe bet he’s not fretting over that social network’s possibly shuttering his page (i.e., subjecting him to the Babylon Bee treatment).
With his shaved head, vaguely mustachioed or bearded visage, and favored neon lipstick, Brinton’s image can be found across cyberspace striking fey poses while rocking a wardrobe that could alternately be described as epicene-steampunk or thrift-shop glam.
Stir in shots of his creepy canine-leather fixation? Well, it’s not exactly a portrait of psychological stability which unfolds. As high-IQ as Brinton may be — the guy is a nuclear engineer for crying out loud — what he conspicuously lacks is rationality, level-headedness. Definitely, a catawampus alert!
I’m not one to run down public figures based on their physical appearance. Such polemical tactics — sadly, increasingly popular in even conservative and “Christian”(!) circles — are usually lazy, cruel, gratuitous; I deplore them. Leveling ad hominem assaults against an ideological opponent for his/her unflattering body type, other-worldly hairstyle, or uncomely facial features is usually nasty; nothing more.
That said? I make an intentional exception — with Levin and Brinton, for instance — when an individual’s flaky outward look is the result of his/her destructive personal philosophy or policy hobbyhorses. Both the aforementioned Biden appointees look absurd because they defiantly and obnoxiously insist on an absurdity; to wit: a dude can be deemed a chick just because he feels like it, and the rest of the populace must be bludgeoned into going along with their reality-upending farce.
Again, all together, slowly: “Rachel Levine” is a male. Sam Brinton, the same; not some sort of “gender fluid” she-male. They’re both XY chromosome-toting fellas. Neither can magic-wand away biological bottom lines with their contrary pronouncements or girly costumes.
Any onlooker possessing a functioning cerebral cortex ought to be able to acknowledge as much.
Addressing the Sam Brinton situation — but he could just as soon be commenting on “Rachel Levine” — Tony Perkins concludes: “[I]n this presidency of perversion, Brinton is just another step toward mainstreaming a behavior that, as [Carl] Trueman points out, used to be regarded ‘as a sign of deep mental illness.’ Now, he laments, ‘it walks the corridors of Biden’s administration.'”
As I read somewhere else recently, the Leftist mindset is: “Deviancy must be normalized.”
Once it was decreed sensible folk were no longer granted leave to disapprove of any lifestyle or behavior, no matter how freakish, a precipitous slide commenced toward the clownishness and ghoulishness currently churning from every sector.
Leon Kass has written about “the wisdom of repugnance” – academic-speak for what some deride more folksily as “the yuck factor”. But instinctive revulsion at things that deserve it, we are finding out, serves a fundamentally salubrious purpose. A culture quashes it at its own peril.
People caught up in these “yucky” behaviors are owed some level of patience and compassion. They need healing — emotionally, mentally, relationally, spiritually. What will not help them or serve civilization’s best interests, however? Everyone else’s rubber-stamping their pathologies; fueling them; playing along — passively or enthusiastically — with them.
It develops, the little boy who broadcast the King has no clothes needs to become the grown-up shouting the federal appointee wearing women’s clothes is really a man — and it’s unsettling. After that occurs, we all ought to thank him for it.
