Transgender rights: One side’s sense of fairness hurts, not helps women

transgender

What do you feel when you look at this photo? I feel pity. Pity for the girl who’s being manhandled by a bigger, stronger transgender girl who wants to be a boy. Pity for the girl who’s dissatisfied with how she’s made and is trying to remake herself. But mostly I pity the girl who, for the sake of fairness, is unfairly overmatched. If I saw this happening in person, my instinct would be to step in and stop it.

Why is it happening? It’s happening because the party in power and a minority of Americans embrace an ideology that elevates “fairness” to the level of virtue.

Look again at the photo. Does it look fair to you? It’s certainly not fair to female athletes whose dreams—and in some cases, bones—are being shattered for the sake of a misguided sense of fairness.

Let’s grapple with some biological realities. Male hormone therapy produces stronger bones and muscles. It also provides significant advantages in testosterone, which powers aggression. Testosterone produces physical advantages—just as performance enhancing drugs do. Look at the photo once more. Notice the size and strength disparity in the arms, shoulders and overall musculature.

Our cells are coded with gender-specific chromosomes—no amount of hormone therapy can change the code. All that changes is physical appearance and levels of strength and aggression. In short, hormone therapy produces masculine women and feminine men and, in women’s sports, unfair advantages.

In light of these scientific truths, is it fair to pit chemically- and physically-altered girls against other girls? If I saw my daughter in a mismatch like this, those sanctioning the mismatch would find themselves facing 185 pounds of fatherly fury.

Fair play

To be fair, what if we created a separate competition for transgender athletes? We separate boys and girls in virtually every sport and have done so, commonsensically, for centuries. Why not give transgender athletes their own competitions and every fair opportunity to excel in their sports? Sociologists assign them their own gender categories beyond male and female—why not do the same for competition?

An obvious question arises: What if there aren’t enough transgender athletes to provide robust competition? This scenario is likely because biological transgenderism is exceedingly rare, but in the name of true fairness, isn’t it worth exploring? After all, sports dreams are at stake. So are bones. So is equality for women, ironically.

To our president: Please stop pushing your party’s version of fairness on us. You may elevate it beyond virtue and into dogma, but you cannot force those who disagree with you to accept its dangerous detriment to their daughters and sisters. Same goes for locker rooms and restrooms. You’re not helping women move forward; you’re hurting them and setting them back.

To those who are trying to be something they’re not: God says you’re fearfully and wonderfully made. He created you in his heart before he created the world and everything in it. If you were born to be a woman or man, it’s because that’s how he made you. He loves you deeply—as you are—so much so that he died for you.

Our national unity is only possible by loving God, so we can love one another

unity

In his inaugural address, President Joe Biden spoke of national unity and used words from St. Augustine. Augustine wrote that we can discern the character of a nation’s people by their shared loves, Biden spoke of rallying around those loves.

St. Augustine: “it will be a superior people in proportion as it is bound together by higher interests, inferior in proportion as it is bound together by lower.”

Augustine describes the consequences of a people who are unified by their love for the wrong things and their failure to direct their love toward God. He tells of Romans, Athenians, Egyptians and Assyrians—all once great nations that fell because of common loves of vice, selfishness, strife and disunity.

Augustine encourages us to be a people of shared higher loves, the highest being our love for God. He warns us of the fates of republics whose people loved poorly—and beneath themselves—as bearers of their Creator’s image.

By using St. Augustine’s words, but missing their meaning, the president lost an opportunity to encourage us to be a better people. When read and applied contextually, the passage challenges us to soften our bitter hearts toward each other by loving the lover of our souls.

Unity means nothing when we unite behind just anything. It means everything when we come together powered by the greatest loves—our love for God and for one another.

Wordplay: Dismissing voter fraud with a phrase

“There is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.”

How many times have you heard this phrase parroted by pundits and partisans in media and politics? They say it and repeat it for one purpose—to convince Americans that the 2020 election was free and fair.
 
By using the word “widespread,” they create an artificial bar to imply that, absent of widespread voter fraud, our 2020 election is legit and Joe Biden is our president-elect.
 
In contrast, I have a better, fair and responsible statement:
 
“There is alleged evidence of strategic voter fraud in the 2020 election. The question is whether it exists and, if so, does it rise to the legal level necessary to affect the outcome of the 2020 election.”
 
That media members are tripping over themselves to quash all mention of voter fraud is DEEPLY disturbing. This is not how truth-seeking objective journalists pursue their vocation. Instead of acting as our watchdog over people in power, they’re acting like one party’s attack dog.
 
Additionally, there is no constitutional office or designation of “president-elect.” This term is a media creation. In the 2000 election, apparent winner George W. Bush became the president-elect only when all results in all states were verified and electors had cast their votes.
 
Joe Biden is the apparent winner of the 2020 election. He is not the president-elect. The votes have not been certified and electors have not cast their votes.
 
Finally, if our government does not overhaul our election system to restore trust in future elections, we’ll forever lose faith in our most essential freedom.