One terrible manifestation of . . . relativism is the tragic acceptance of transgenderism. People who claim to be a different sex from the one assigned by God and nature at birth deserve to be accorded the same respect and justice due all of us. But the acceptance of the concept of transgenderism, whether in science or in law, is absurd. And yet it’s happening. As Colin M. Wright and Emma N. Hilton wrote in the Wall Street Journal on February 13, 2020, “it’s one thing to claim that a man can ‘identify’ as a woman or vice versa. Increasingly, we see a dangerous and antiscientific trend toward the outright denial of biological sex.” And in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia (June 5, 2020), the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that “homosexual” and “transgender” are actually sexes, not just sexual preferences, and—since Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars discrimination based on sex—“gays” and transgender people may not be fired from their jobs if the reason for dismissal has to with their newly defined “sex,” now firmly enshrined as equal to heterosexuality. This is despite the fact that nobody really believes such equality was in the minds of those who wrote and approved the original law.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wrote the 6–3 majority opinion, states that “homosexuality and transgender status are inextricably bound up with sex,” but Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote tellingly in dissent, “The majority opinion insists that it is not rewriting or updating Title VII, but instead is just humbly reading the text of the statute as written. But that assertion is tough to accept.”
And judicial fiat does not make it a fact in biology. Gender, in the cases decided by the Court, is an assertion of preference—absolutely so in the case of transgenderism—and one that until recently was known as gender dysphoria. In 2017, that disorder was banished from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), the Bible, if you will pardon the expression, of the American Psychiatric Association. The APA had opted in 2012 for gender dysphoria over “gender identity disorder.” And, until 1973, the APA had listed homosexuality as a treatable disorder.
Neither the DSM-5 nor the Supreme Court has said anything about who shall compete in sports. Only when the lawsuits come and restraining orders are issued—sending cases up through the appeals process (perhaps to land again in the laps of the SCOTUS justices)— will we know whether the hard-won right of women athletes to compete against other women at the elite level (it has already happened in high school and college) will be compromised by the inclusion of opportunistic men who’ll say, now with the force of law, “You cannot exclude me. The Court has affirmed I’m a woman!”
What a cruelty to real women. And what a cruelty to transsexuals to confirm their dysphoria as just another form of normal. —from The Compleat Gentleman: The Modern Man’s Guide to Chivalry
