Imagine forming a movement that demands immediate fundamental change in how people act, talk, and think about something basic to the human experience. How do get your way quickly?
Accuse your opponents of hate.
It saves time and effort in arguing principles, facts, and logic – and avoids the likelihood that you’ll lose.
Several recent examples concerning homosexuality and transgenderism in Massachusetts jump out.
— In May, a sixth-grader in Middleborough named Liam Morrison wore a T-shirt to school that says “There are only two genders.” He was forced to remove it. Here’s the superintendent’s justification: “The content of Liam’s shirt targeted students of a protected class; namely in the area of gender identity.”
Actually, the T-shirt targets no one. It makes no reference to individuals. It’s an idea.
And it’s the idea that school officials object to. That it’s an old and obvious idea makes no difference to them. It can’t be stated in school.
Nor are school officials neutral on the issue the idea addresses.
Wearing “Pride gear” during “PRIDE Spirit Week” in June is encouraged in order to promote “self-affirmation, dignity, equality, and increased visibility of LGBTQIA+ people as a social group.”
In other words: One side of this social disagreement is promoted; the other one is defined as hateful and banned.
— On June 2, some middle school students in Burlington demonstrated against a Pride-theme event at the school.
The Burlington incident is murky and complicated. School officials say an unstated number of eighth-graders carried out a counter-protest of a Pride event on Friday, June 2 that included destroying rainbow decorations, wearing red, white, and blue clothing, and chanting something like “U.S.A. are my pronouns!”
If that is true, it’s important to make distinctions. Destroying property is not acceptable – even the odious rainbow flag. (The rainbow flag represents not people but destructive ideology.)
Bullying is also not acceptable. School officials have offered no clear evidence that bullying occurred, but if it did, it’s wrong.
Yet it’s clear from public comments that many observers are upset not so much about the details of what the eighth-grade students did, but that they did anything. It is the existence of a counter-protest that they find unacceptable.
Here’s what one town resident said during in a letter to the town’s selectmen: “How many children had a seed of homophobia planted in them yesterday?”
In other words: Disagreement equals hate.
Another resident asked public officials to “use this as a teachable moment to show the kids who counter-protested Pride that they can take responsibility for their actions and still become allies” — as if the point of school is to re-educate kids who don’t agree with this particular (and peculiar) point of view.
— On June 11, a Massachusetts state legislator announced that he is bisexual. State Senator Will Brownsberger (D-Belmont), 66, who is married to a woman, said: “I love, cherish, and enjoy her and I’m not about to change my lifestyle.”
Making the announcement during Pride month is important, he said, because it fosters “self-knowledge” and “self-acceptance.”
So far, this is a personal matter that Brownsberger felt an urge to make public. That’s his call.
But he also touted this year’s Pride month as particularly important.
Why?
He cited what he called “the resurgence of archaic hatreds, legitimized by all too many political leaders.”
Now, what does he mean by “archaic hatreds”?
NewBostonPost asked him that question last week. We haven’t heard back yet. So let’s try to fill in the blank.
It doesn’t mean neo-Nazis showing up at drag queen story hours. Nazism is not a very old phenomenon – it was invented in the 1920s — and it was never in vogue in this country. It can’t be considered “archaic,” which refers to something old-fashioned to the point where it’s no longer in everyday use. It was never in everyday use to begin with.
So what is very old, used to be in everyday use, and doesn’t accept homosexuality and gender switching as healthy expressions of human sexuality?
Why, Christianity.
The irony here is that Christianity has nothing to do with hatred. It’s based on Jesus of Nazareth, whom Christians worship as God, and who said, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.”
Christianity, therefore, is based not on hatred but on love.
But it also demands truth. The Christian view is that God created human sexuality and ordered it in such a way that if acting on it conforms to human nature it affirms who a person is meant to be and helps make that person happy; and if it goes against human nature it attacks who a person is meant to be and makes that person miserable. (Though not a necessary conclusion from Christianity, this teaching is a plausible explanation for the high rates of alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide among people who engage in same-sex sex acts or depart from the gender identity that conforms with their biological sex.)
Note that Brownsberger doesn’t express disagreement with this principle. Instead, he defines it as hatred, and therefore avoids having to argue against it.
Now, Brownsberger is an unusually responsive state legislator. If we have followed the breadcrumbs of his argument incorrectly, perhaps he will let us know, either by getting back to us or on his own web site.
Whatever Brownsberger’s intent, though, the approach described above is not unusual for advocates of homosexuality and transgenderism.
The Associated Press, for instance, recently tried to ban even the term “transgenderism,” because it “frames transgender identity as an ideology.”
If you just define one side of a disagreement as true, and the other side as false, there’s no need to argue.
How convenient.
People who feel same-sex attraction and gender confusion should be treated not just with tolerance but with dignity, respect, and love.
But dignity, respect, and love require telling the truth, even hard truths that some will not want to hear.
Many advocates of homosexuality and transgenderism, it appears, are bent on shutting down the message so it can’t be heard.
This is victory by assertion.
And it can’t prevail forever, because eventually people will start asking why, if it so correct, it can’t deal with criticism.
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