Transgender Debate Weighting Down LGBT Rights Effort

Indiana lawmakers appear to be getting cold feet when it comes to including gender identity protection in a proposed civil rights law aimed at protecting the state's LGBT community from discrimination. A decade ago when Indianapolis adopted its human rights ordinance to protect persons from discrimination based upon their sexual orientation or gender identity, the transgender inclusion in the law wasn't that difficult for council members to swallow, perhaps for no other reason than the incidence of a person being transgender appeared to minuscule. Since the enactment of Indianapolis' HRO, there has been little to suggest that people are taking advantage of the law to make specious claims of discrimination based on gender identity.

When I first studied gender identity disorder, it seemed that the best medical research indicated that persons who truly felt trapped inside the body of a person of the opposite gender could be traced back to their birth. It's not talked a lot about, but as I understand it, about 1 in every 1,000 births produces a child of indeterminate sex because of deformities in the child's sex organs that don't permit a doctor to affirmatively identity the child as male or female. At one time, doctors asked parents to pick the sex of their choice and performed whatever medical procedures and treatments were necessary to affect that choice. The problem with that procedure is that if you have a 50-50 chance of guessing the right sex, there is probably a 90% chance you will get it wrong. Nowadays, doctors recommend parents wait a few years and let their child in such cases communicate their sex to them in their own way before undergoing any reassignment procedures.

The transgender debate has changed dramatically over the past year, particularly with the highly-publicized sex change of Bruce Jenner. "I'm now the new normal," Jenner declared as he re-introduced himself as Caitlyn Jenner, albeit without actually undergoing sex re-assignement surgery. Jenner's transformation is a difficult concept for many people to accept. He epitomized the all-American male as one of the greatest athletes of his era. When he re-appeared on the Kardashian reality TV shows as the husband of Kris Jenner, many of his fans were shocked by the way the women of this family appeared to have completely emasculated him and any other male members of the family who interact with them on their reality series, including Kris' son, Rob, who has reportedly been suicidal and has turned to a life of drugs. Rob's older sisters like joking about how they dressed him like a girl when they were kids and seem to fuel his and their step-father's insecurities at every turn. NBA player Lamar Odom, the estranged spouse of another one of the daughters, Khloe, barely escaped death after a prostitute-fueled drug overdose in Nevada. Scott Disick, the significant other of another daughter, Kourtney, has reportedly contemplated suicide according to some news reports.

Now we're being told about a new concept of gender fluidity, which suggests that parents should never assume their children are either male or female. Gender is a moving target we're now told. This seems to fit an overall agenda to strip our society of any distinction between genders, and to many people, that either means violating God's commands or nature itself. American pop culture seems to be overtly conditioning us to accept gender fluidity. Another very popular male celebrity, Will Smith, has exhibited a very unnatural relationship with his children, particularly his 17-year old son, Jaden, who recently began wearing women's clothes and is now modeling women's clothing for Luis Vuitton. During public appearances, Will can't seem to keep his hands off his gender-bending son, insisting on kissing him on the mouth against his son's wishes because of the deep love he has for him. The media eats this up even as the cases of child sexual exploitation seem to be popping up everywhere around us, particularly in Hollywood where it seems to be an accepted practice to allow older members of the industry to sexually abuse child actors.

I've included a video of Paul Romano of Pockets of the Future, who I think captures perfectly the feeling of many Americans about cultural transformations that are probably not good for mankind. Unfortunately, I think pop culture in this country has made a mess of things by their campaign to promote gender fluidity to the detriment of those who truly suffer from gender identity disorder. The debate is now being weighted down by news stories of male high school students announcing they now want to shower and change with the girls because they feel like a woman. It's ironic that ERA opponent Phyllis Schaffly used to warn about gender-neutral bathrooms and locker rooms being forced on everyone if it became a part of the U.S. Constitution during that debate back in the 1970s. How many times have you watched a Hollywood film of the future where men and women share locker rooms and showers and wear the same clothing, and it's presented as normal?