Vincent J. Curtis
26 Feb 16
After Bruce Jenner became “Caitlyn”, it hit me:
playing-pretend.
Bruce Jenner was a great Olympic athlete, the gold medal
winner of the decathlon in the 1976 Montreal Games. Then the news came out that he was becoming a woman. (Biologically, how is
that possible?)
Jenner had breast implants, took female hormones, and had
his picture taken in a merry widow corset by photographer Annie Leibowitz. He called himself “Caitlyn”, and it became avant garde to play-pretend with the
farce. Bruce Jenner became “Caitlyn”
Jenner, even though he still possessed the – ahem – equipment of a man. We were all supposed to play-pretend because
we mustn’t hurt feelings. He was only mutilating himself, after all,
though with great earnestness.
Fine, Bruce needed to be called “Caitlyn” - to his face. But
it became de rigueur to refer to him as
“Caitlyn” everywhere else. Playing-pretend
with Bruce was one thing, but why the playing-pretend when he’s not around? When could we drop the pretence, the lie, and
relax again? A farce earnestly performed
is not the reality it pretends to be; not being that reality is why it is a
farce.
Play-Pretend and Transgender
That there are some psychologically disturbed and confused
people, there is no doubt. But it is a
wonder how, from “Caitlyn”, concern for the so-called transgendered engulfed
the school systems of North America and society as a whole. For the sake of ‘inclusiveness,’ actual women
are going to have to allow physiological males who pretend to be women to use
their bathrooms. Women are going to have
to share bathrooms with men who have sex issues. It only has to be said to be laughed at, but
this is the public policy being forced on society by the avant garde who earnestly believe that playing-pretend is the
correct way of dealing with these disturbed individuals. And woe betide anyone who says that there is
something wrong with being disturbed in a transgendered way! By extension, the way of dealing with a
schizophrenic is play along and tell him that his demons are real.
Play-Pretend on Abortion
It is the law of the land to play-pretend about
abortion. We are supposed to play
pretend that a pre-born baby is not really a baby, a real human being. It is incoherent to think that a pre-born is
not a biological life separate from the mother.
No atheist can explain coherently how a clump of cells developed
continuously into the human being that he now is and that he once was a single
cell without admitting that that single cell he once was was human life from the
beginning. So, we play pretend around
the reality of pre-born human life so that the morality of it does not have to
be faced.
Play-Pretend and “Gay” Marriage
Playing-pretend with Bruce and his fantasy of being a woman
made obvious another occasion of playing-pretend. I mean “gay” marriage. Accurately, the gay mockery of marriage. Marriage is a state of affairs between a man
and a woman. Not between two men; not
between two women. Oh, there are such
pairings, but to equate homosexual pairings with husband and wife in marriage
is to engage in the grossest of reductionism.
That is not to say that such intellectual grossness is not
possible. This gross reductionism
actually became the law of the land in Canada and the United States. Who would have guessed that the 14th
Amendment of the United States, that was passed in 1868 to guarantee equal treatment
of the freed slaves, also meant reductionism of marriage – reducing in law the
meaning of marriage to between any two pairings whatsoever? Certainly not those who drafted the
Amendment!
Playing-pretend became the law of the land in respect of
marriage. It would hurt feelings to observe in the presence of a
gay pair that their relationship was not specifically the same as the one between
a husband and a wife. Yet, to pretend that
it was is neither intellectually honest nor intellectually sustainable. No matter how earnestly you want it to be,
you can’t make it so. The big lie, told
often enough, might become equivalent to the truth, but it can never be the truth. Truth is one with reality, while a lie is the
absence of reality and relies on the human imagination for what little reality
it has. That is why facts are stubborn
things, and the fact is that “gay” marriage is a mockery of the real thing.
It was a generational struggle by the so-called LGBTQ
community (or LGTBQWERTY as Mark Steyn refers to it, for inclusiveness) to gain
respect for their peculiarities and proclivities. They attacked with the tenacity of suicide
bombers. Often, LGBTQ have no children
and no concern for the afterlife, so they could devote their entire being to
the cause. This amounts to a powerful
force. When one has nothing else to live
for except the cause of personal validation, routine politics and routine legal
processes fall easily before the co-ordinated onslaught of seemingly
independent drives towards the same goal.
Collapse of resistance is especially easy in a society conditioned to
live and let live, to appease grievances, and otherwise to be intellectually
lazy. (Maybe old St. Paul was too tough
on sodomy….)
Fantasy meets Realism
With success comes corruption. It was one thing to have the legal
impediments to openly homosexual relationships removed; but mere tolerance was
not sufficient. Live and let live was
not enough, because homosexual pairings were still different – as they must be if one is intellectually honest. And so the drive turned from tolerance to acceptance,
meaning the complete rejection of obvious facts.
Anyone who dared deviate from complete acceptance had to be
taught a lesson. People’s lives and careers were destroyed, people’s savings
were filched, by harassment of all sorts.
Canadian and American societies were going to accept LGBTQ behaviors as
being perfectly normal, and if we didn’t go along with their game of
play-pretend that community was going to burn society down.
Canadian politicians were first to duck out of the line of
fire. Canada “legalized” gay marriages,
whatever that means. As a practical
matter, it does mean is that it is simpler to harass and destroy those who, based
on certain core principles - often Christian principles, won’t play-pretend the
complete normalcy of LGBTQ behaviors.
The Catholic Church, for one, will be made to eat dirt, or be destroyed.
The Supreme Court of the United States infamously voided all
state constitutions and laws which held that marriage was between one man and one
woman, on the grounds of the 14th Amendment and the
invented-for-the-occasion constitutional doctrine of dignity. The intellectual emptiness of that ruling was
exposed in the dissents of Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas.
The unrelenting hand of the LGTBQ community and their even
stranger avant garde allies in the
progressivist-modernist movement are behind this bizarre state of affairs in
public policy.
The Cruelty of Play-Pretend
The French have a saying, “Drive off nature and she returns
at a gallop.” Who knows when this
bizarre world of playing-pretend, of living lies, will collapse? Sooner or later, Toto will pull back the
curtain and Dorothy will see the reality of the Wizard of Oz. Reality is what it is regardless of what we
think of it. No playing pretend can
change the reality that Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, and Queer name
things that deviate from a norm. LGBTQ are not a norm. “Gay” marriage is a mockery of the real
thing, and has no reality of its own. By
his chromosomes, Bruce is a man. That
pre-born really is a human being.
As a child, I played children’s games. As an adult, I am disinclined to play-pretend,
a child’s game. Like “Caitlyn”, I have
feelings too, and they are offended when I am being lied to my face. My feelings are offended when I am instructed
to play pretend – or else! I think it is
cruel to play-pretend with a psychotic and tell him that the demons he sees are
real.
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