You may have heard about the guy who made some off-hand remark about President Obama's health. If I remember correctly, his Cato impression was delivered in the Timberline Tavern. So, social lubricants were undoubtedly involved.
The Secret Service was not amused. But after a bit of bully boy interrogations, the miscreant was exonerated.
And then there was the high school valedictorian. For whatever reason, she ended up showering with the boy's football team -- and was stripped of her valedictorian duties.
That last story is the text for today's sermon.
I was not shocked when I heard that story. In today's world, it struck me as being rather naive and innocent. No political agenda. No overt sexuality. Simply a high school romp.
That is why I have not been joining the hair-on-fire brigade over the emergence of the transsexual movement (wee the people). Teenagers are already confused about who they are. It simply appears that some are more confused than other.
We need to keep our terms straight here. We are not talking about people who have undergone a revision of the plumbing God gave them. Transsexuals retain all of the objective genitalia of the sex into which they were born. They just want to be treated as if they had different organs. Or maybe they just do not want to be identified that way at all.
And that sentence is the rub. "The sex they are not." The leaders of the transsexual movement claim it is the wrong statement of the question. It should be "the sex I think I am."
If I told you one state had already caved into the "I am who I am" bunch, you could guess it immediately. California. I have only glanced at the new law. It essentially forbids schools from segregating children by their genitalia. That means bathrooms and shower rooms. As far as I know, the shop-home economics segregation ended years ago.
So, no more Jim/Jane Crow when it comes to shower heads. A student may look as male as a Chippendale stripper. But if s/he thinks of her/himself as a girl, bring on the showering co-eds.
Yesterday morning, I read about a state striking back. A Republican legislator in Utah (he may as well have drawn a target on his chest) has proposed legislation for schools to provide separate locker room and bathroom facilities for students who identify themselves as a sex opposite of their -- well, sex.
That proposal is what several of you have suggested in the past. It is kind. It is elegant. It is a violation of civil liberties.
Or so says Sara Jade Woodhouse -- "a transgender Utah woman and adjunct film professor at Salt Lake Community College." I swear I did not make up any of that.
Sara claims the proposal would relegate transsexuals to secondary status. She sums up with this roundhouse punch.
"It's basically hanging a sign around someone's neck that says, 'I'm not like you.'"
There really should be a laugh track with these stories. If I am showering, I do not need a sign to make the point "I am not like you."
I feel sorry for the teenagers who are dealing with their own confused identities. Good grief! When I was in high school, I thought I was the Anti-Christ. But I never expected anyone else to revel in my delusion.
But it is the Sara Jade Woodhouses who cause me to raise an eyebrow. Adults who love imposing their own vocabulary of victimhood on children. But, as a film professor, she is probably an expert on projection.
Harvey Fierstein has a great line in his opening monolog of Torch Song Trilogy. In the role of Arnold Beckoff, he is musing about his life while he completes making up for his transvestite show:
"Well, once the ERA and gay civil rights bills have been passed, me and mine will be swept under the carpets. Just like the blacks done to Amos, Andy, and Aunt Jemima."
He really missed that one.
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