It has been established that the “transgender” agenda isn’t based on science but ideology, yet this hasn’t stopped entities such as retailer Target from allowing men to use women’s restrooms.
And it didn’t stop sports network ESPN from firing former MLB pitcher and game analyst Curt Schilling for criticizing that very policy.
The controversy began Tuesday when Schilling weighed in on the North Carolina “bathroom bill” and shared a satirical meme critical of the transgender agenda on Facebook. He also posted a comment with which most Americans agree:
But it was the meme (shown below), which was ultimately removed from Schilling’s Facebook page, that supposedly raised the thought police’s ire.
Of course, satire has always been a part of American politics, and portrayals of President George W. Bush could be particularly vicious. Nonetheless, Schilling disavowed the image, though not the sentiment, writing at his blog, “This latest brew ha ha [sic] is beyond hilarious. I didn’t post that ugly looking picture. I made a comment about the basic functionality of mens and womens restrooms, period.”
Unfortunately, this didn’t stop cowardly ESPN from putting a period on Schilling’s analyst job. As the Hollywood Reporter related yesterday, “‘ESPN is an inclusive company,’ said the network in a statement on Wednesday. ‘Curt Schilling has been advised that his conduct was unacceptable and his employment with ESPN has been terminated.’”
In reality, though, this is hypocrisy. After all, ESPN certainly isn’t inclusive of people with Schilling’s views (which happens to be most of America), is it? This general attitude on the part of the Left didn’t elude Schilling, either, as he also noted at his blog, “You frauds out there ranting and screaming about my ‘opinions’ (even if it isn’t) and comments are screaming for ‘tolerance’ and ‘acceptance’ while you refuse to do and be either.”
Of course, cries of “tolerance, “inclusiveness,” and “acceptance” are always more ploy than principle. As philosopher G.K. Chesterton once noted, “In truth, there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogma and know it, and those who accept dogma and don’t know it.” “Dogma” refers to a set of beliefs, and beliefs establish standards — and standards, by definition, exclude that which doesn’t meet them. Everyone is intolerant and exclusive of certain things; it’s only a matter of where the lines are drawn.
One man who apparently understands this, at least when it feels right to do so, is USA Today writer Andrew Joseph. In a critical and simplistic article, he complained that “after all the outrage” Schilling “still doesn’t realize what’s expected of him as a sports broadcaster.” But is it expected that he should participate in a lie and a delusion?
As I’ve pointed out time and again, the “transgender” agenda is based on emotion-driven ideology, not science. As I wrote in 2014:
“Gender dysphoria” (GD), we’re told, is a condition in which a person’s body doesn’t match his true “gender.” But there is no blood test for it. There is no identifiable genetic marker. There is no medical exam at all. Rather, the diagnosis is made based on, as PsychCentral.com puts it, “strong and persistent cross-gender identification”; in other words, strong and persistent feelings that you actually are a member of the opposite sex.
Now, this might be okay if psychiatrists were merely making a psychological diagnosis; after all, psychological problems are largely defined by disordered feelings. The problem is that on this basis — and this basis alone — these doctors will advocate having a boy live as a girl and will even prescribe so-called gender-reassignment surgery. Yet such a diagnostic standard would constitute malpractice in any other branch of medicine. Could you imagine a patient telling a cardiologist he has strong and persistent feelings he has heart disease and the doctor, on that basis alone, performing bypass surgery? Thus, whatever one thinks of the soundness of the “gender dysphoria” diagnosis, the basis on which it’s made certainly is not medically sound.
Those in the know understand the above well. Australian ex-“transsexual” Alan Finch, after undergoing, as he put it, “genital mutilation” surgery, said “You fundamentally can’t change sex…. Transsexualism was invented by psychiatrists.” And Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital and its current Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry, has said “that sex change is ‘biologically impossible,’ and that people who promote sexual reassignment surgery are collaborating with and promoting a mental disorder,” wrote CNS News last year.
Despite this, it has become so de rigueur to accept the “transgender” agenda that you can lose your job for saying a man shouldn’t use a women’s bathroom — a position the vast majority of the country supports. This brings us to an ominous truth, one American Thinker editor Thomas Lifson addressed while treating the Schilling case yesterday:
We are in the midst of a top-down sexual revolution, being forced on the public by the massed power of media, corporations, and governments in thrall to the small but powerful sexual minority intent on redefining sexuality. Those who dare to oppose them, especially with mockery, can see their livelihoods destroyed. They cannot handle mockery, because their latest cause is absurd and based on lies.
… [And] in assaulting women’s right to modesty, privacy, and safety, they have chosen a battleground that, if they are victorious, will give them total power over society’s sexual norms.
This is a type of tyranny. Consider: Under a despotic regime such as Nazi Germany’s or the USSR’s, it wasn’t surprising when the majority of the population disagreed with a policy. In fact, many government functionaries might have disagreed or been indifferent to it, but it didn’t matter. They were controlled by powerful pseudo-elites from the top.
What’s occurring today is precisely the same, except most of the pseudo-elites are not in government but in academia, the media, business, and entertainment; the laws being enforced aren’t governmental but social; and the method of enforcement isn’t physical coercion but scorn, ostracism, and career destruction. It’s effective because, as Ambassador Alan Keyes once put it (I’m paraphrasing), “Social pressure is the greatest force there has ever been for controlling human behavior.” As for the career aspect, even the intrepid Schilling admits that he wouldn’t be commenting on politics if he needed a job to support his family.
And how is it that people can be herded so easily, like sheep? We might as well ask why those living under the Nazis or Soviets didn’t all rise up simultaneously against their oppressors. It’s the same reason why, though many will often say “we” (the American people) should all just go Galt or conduct a tax strike, it never happens: Even with the vast majority in agreement, it never acts in unison and with such organization.
It’s sort of as with lions and Cape buffalo. As the famous wildlife video “Battle at Kruger” proves, if the buffalo — far larger and more numerous — simply descended on the predators as a group, they’d be unstoppable. But fear allows the lions to virtually always control the massive masses. As for Bathroom Bolshevism, even most within business either oppose it or are indifferent on the matter. But apathy and fear govern them, and they flee instead of banding together to crush their oppressors.
And now we know why Benjamin Franklin once warned, “We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
