Jolly Good Fellows, Which Nobody Can Deny . . .

Disciples of The Shapeshifting Serpent

We have pointed out several times that when a hip-entity like Facebook offers subscribers 45 different options (and counting) to identify their gender, a major transformation of religion, philosophy, and culture is underway.  Behind it lies deeper beliefs which are not changing at all: they are becoming merely more consistent, more "outworked", more logically aligned.  The tectonic plates have just shifted, but the magma has been building up underneath for a long time.

Here are some of the evidences that the plates are moving and re-aligning.  Firstly, Houston, 2014--where we clearly have a problem.

After nearly nine hours of chanting and tears from seas of opponents and supporters in color-coded T-shirts, Houston City Council passed an ordinance on Wednesday extending equal rights protections to gay and transgender residents.  Despite weeks of discussion and dissent over the measure, the final vote was 11-6, a count that matched guesses made months ago, when Mayor Annise Parker — the first openly lesbian mayor of a major American city — said she planned to bring forward such a measure.

The approval was greeted with thunderous applause from the audience, largely full of supporters, and chants of "HERO," for the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance. "While much of the debate has centered around the gay and transgender section of the ordinance, it is a comprehensive ordinance," Parker said after the vote. "It is a good step forward for the city of Houston."

Note the neologism "transgender" to which we will return shortly.
  Parker then went on to "demand her city’s pastors dutifully submit 'all speeches, presentations or sermons' related to HERO to her for approval."  [Glenn T. Stanton, writing in The Federalist]  Mmmm.  We think we can see where this might be going.

Secondly, the emergence of a heroine of the highest, new world order.  Rachel Soledad was "outed" as being white (you know, genetics and all that), whilst she was working for the NAACP as a black.  Some (in the black community) felt their racial identity had been raped by Ms Soledad's deception.  But Ms Soledad solemnly stood her ground.  The point, which nobody could deny, was she identified as black, and, hey presto, she therefore was black.  All were commanded, bludgeoned, forced to respect her gender "identity".  Houston Mayor Parker clapped with glee.

It turns out, now that the plates have shifted, gender is a fluid thing, as slippery as the proverbial eel.  But one hard fact, beyond dispute, is that one's gender is one's own, and none can gainsay it.  Of course this raises lots of epistemological conundrums.  If one's gender or sexual orientation is my own to define as in "my identity is mine; keep your grubby hands off it", your view of my gender or sexual orientation must be equally fixed, certain, and valid, and none can gainsay that identity either.  Identity equals view, right?  But let's not go there.

This leads us to consider how our Chattering Classes and reigning Commentariat are guilty of  breathtaking special pleading.  Gender is fluid, amorphous, and sovereignly subjective except that if you are a male changing to a female, there is no fluidity at all.  Bruce "I have always been this way" Jenner was rapturously applauded for confessing to the world that he was driven to come out as female because he really always has been.  Suddenly, Jenner's gender is absolutely resolute, fixed, certain, and categoric.

As Stanton points out:

Gender theorists confidently explain what gender is with this clever ditty: “Sex is what’s between your legs. Gender is what’s between your ears.” I think, therefore I am. He’s a man purely because he understands himself as such, regardless of what his original physical factory settings may indicate. She is a woman for the very same reasons. And no one can say otherwise. Does a better example of subjectivity exist? . . . .

My maleness, your femaleness—the way we understand ourselves, the way we believe we are—is merely an artificial “social construct.” Unless you’re trans. Then the male or female you believe yourself to be is natural, absolute, and beyond dispute. Gender spectrum believers don’t have a good answer for this conflict.

Returning to the celebrated case of Bruce Jenner to drive the point home:

. . . to how gender is related to identity. Bruce Jenner is a woman and always has been. Disagree at your own peril. But when did Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn? At birth? When he came to terms with it himself? When he first announced his news to the world? When he legally changed his name? When he appeared on the cover of Vogue?

Caitlyn Jenner’s gender, as with all other transgender folks, exists solely in what’s between his ears. Bruce is the only one who can tell us for sure, and this is  true for every trans individual. Even that could change from day to day, and we have to honor each new telling. People ask honest and sincere questions, wanting to truly understand what’s going on here: Can Caitlyn really be Caitlyn if he still has Bruce’s penis? Would Caitlyn be Cait if he kept a beard? What if he retained a total outer appearance suitable for the cover of GQ? Of course he would, because his gender, as with all other transgender folks, exists solely in what’s between his ears, his own understanding of himself, regardless of how he chooses to display it to the world. It is Jenner’s private business, but we all have to honor it.

Here is another manifestation that we are living through a perpetual performance of the Theatre of the Absurd, where the objective is to deconstruct, to tear down.  None of this has any hard, scientific basis whatsoever.  Perception trumps genetics every time.  Stanton, again:

Our culture uses the term “sexual orientation” with absolute confidence in its definition, such that to even raise the question would peg one as embarrassingly dull-witted. But this, even among LGBT leaders, is not clear at all. Professor Randall Sell, one of the leading scholars researching the nature of sexual orientation, observes, “At present it is clear that researchers are confused as to what they are studying when they assess sexual orientation in their research. …Today’s preferred terms and the term ‘sexual orientation’ itself have a wide variety of definitions in the literature…”The serious student of this topic need only enter “definition of sexual orientation” into a search engine to prove the fact.

Who knows what sexual orientations and gender identities will emerge?  Who knows what will come out of the space between the ears?  One thing we can be very sure of:  whatever comes out, it will not be holy, just or good.  For, the timeless ancient prophet tells us, "the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked."  [Jeremiah 17:10].  And so it rolls.

Salon recently published a provocative piece by a man who introduces himself this way: “I’ve been stuck with the most unfortunate of sexual orientations, a preference for a group of people who are legally, morally and psychologically unable to reciprocate my feelings and desires. It’s a curse of the first order, a completely unworkable sexuality, and it’s mine. Who am I? …I’m a pedophile.”

Now we can imagine a sea of eyes rolling at the supposed ridiculousness of his claim that his set of feelings is an orientation. But under what criteria should it be excluded?

How indeed?  The only certainty in the New World Order is that pederasty most definitely may not be excluded.  After all, it's a matter of human rights, non.  And we humans are sinuous and fluid, quintessential shapeshifters.  Behold the words and works of the Serpent, that Worm of old.