OPINION:
Have we completely lost our minds? In a word: Yes.
Cosmopolitan Magazine has released its February issue, featuring the most recent transgender poster child Laverne Cox on its cover. There is so much wrong on this one page that it makes one’s head spin. Let me count the ways:
• The misogynistic insult of women by denying the biological fact of the female.
• The diminishing of the human being to little more than delusion and fantasy.
• The blatant disregard for science, i.e. genetics and physiology.
• The elevation of special “knowledge” (gnosis) that supersedes the natural and material.
This is little more than a placard for a culture — a cult — of deception and deceit; a snapshot of a people who have literally lost their mind.
When you dumb down the definition of the person to “being” gay, lesbian, queer, or straight; to “being” a homosexual, a transsexual or even heterosexual, you have just admitted you think those who have a given sexual appetite are actually defined by that desire. You are admitting you think “that’s just who they are” and that their very identity is nothing more than the sum total of their libidinous inclinations. Is this not the ultimate insult to the human being?
If the march for human dignity and human freedom means anything, it means we are the imago Dei! We are not the imago dog. We are not defined by our bellies or our libidos. We are not animals but, rather, we are men and women who have freewill in our behaviors, sexual or otherwise.
Even Gore Vidal understood this. He said, “There is no more such a thing as a homosexual person than there is a heterosexual person. These are behavioral adjectives,” Even though he was anything but a conservative, biblical Christian, Vidal knew no logically sound ontology or anthropology suggests the human being is defined merely by his or her behaviors or the adjectives used to describe him. He understood that the dignity of the person could not be diminished to merely what he or she wants to do.
Peter Beaulieu tells us that, “St. Augustine warned of … what he termed ’fantastica fornicatio’ — the prostitution of the mind to its own fantasies.”
Glenn Stanton writes, “To identify people principally by their sexuality is to reduce people. … We should all reject this with great force. A person’s inherent and undeniable value is rooted in his membership in humanity, not his particularity, sexual or otherwise.”
“Central to my thesis,” says Daniel C. Mattson, “is that it is a mistake for anyone to say that he is … any sexual identity label currently in vogue today. I view these as graffiti painted on the side of the Holy of Holies, which deface human dignity and mock the image of God. …”
And Pope Francis declares, “It’s idolatry when a man or woman loses his or her ’identity card’ as a child of God, and prefers to seek a god more to their own liking.”
Yes, we have lost our minds. Not only that, but we have lost our dignity and even our identity! In rejecting the obvious, we have most certainly exchanged the truth for a lie and sadly begun to worship the created rather than the Creator. In doing so, we have been given over to a reprobate mind and, thereby, can’t think our way out of a paper bag.
George Orwell is calling and he wants his royalties.
Endnote: It never ceases to amaze me how those who wave the rainbow banner of “love trumps hate” become so vitriolic and vengeful when presented with a logical, cogent argument challenging the vacuity of their own moral paradigm. The comments which will inevitably follow this article will be textbook examples of such self-refuting duplicity.
There will be shouts of “I can’t tolerate your intolerance. I hate you hateful people. I’m sure that nothing is sure, and I am absolutely confident there are no absolutes!” These inane responses are as predictable as the sunrise. Church leaders who fancy themselves as “progressives’ will respond with ad hominem attacks dripping with mockery and sarcasm. The Southern Poverty Law Center will label this commentary “hate speech.” Right-Wing Watch will once again construct a straw man that it can easily knock down, marginalize and malign. Those who claim to be champions of science will ignore science. Feminists will deny the biological fact of the feminine.
It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. Do these detractors not see the irony in their attitudes and action? Are they blind to the fact that they are sawing off the very rhetorical branch upon which they sit? Isaiah comes to mind: “Woe unto him who calls good evil and evil good…” and dare I add, woe unto him who calls love hate and hate love?
But, I suppose if this particular column does nothing else, it will serve to expose the fact that those who pretend to be champions of inclusion are really those most quick to exclude anyone who dares to suggest the obvious: Their emperor has no clothes, and their god is naked.
• Everett Piper, president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, is the author of “Not A Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery 2017).
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