Resisting Trans Tyranny: Science, Not Religion?
By Rod Dreher, The American Conservative:
In the case of Peter Vlaming (see here for background), the Virginia high school teacher fired for “misgendering” a biological female student who now presents as male, a reader says we should stop framing this as a religious liberty issue:
Just STOP IT with calling this a religious issue. You see how far that got Christians in the gay marriage thing. There were all sorts of good non-religious arguments in favor of putting the brakes on gay marriage, but opponents insisted on getting all religious and Bible about it. That just won’t cut it in a secular society, and it was totally uncreative.
This is about biological reality, the integrity of the English language, the stability of the language we use to orient ourselves in the world, compelled speech vs free speech…
ANYTHING other than religion. Nothing constructive will come from framing this as a religious issue. We will lose.
There is maybe 5-10% of people in the country who are strongly traditional Christians, and I am one of them, but I know how to do math.
To be fair to Vlaming, he’s a teacher of the French language, and the source of his own deep discomfort with transgenderism is no doubt his religious faith. I agree, though, that it is probably better to treat this as a scientific issue. After all, a science teacher who claimed a religious liberty right to only teach Young Earth Creationism wouldn’t get far at all, nor should he.
There are solid scientific reasons to resist the claim that biological males and females who consider themselves to be of the other gender, and who demand that everyone else recognize that, should be accommodated. Unfortunately, science itself is being coopted by the cultural revolution. The authoritative science magazine Nature published an editorial in October strongly denouncing a reported initiative by the Department of HHS to define male and female by biological characteristics. The editorial takes the line that people ought to be defined by the gender they choose. Nature is a very big deal.
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