The Enforcer

The California legislature has passed and Governor Schwarzenegger has signed a law eliminating state funding or assistance to any entity or program that in any way expresses disapproval of homosexual, transsexual, bisexual and transgender lifestyles. There is no provision for religious exception or a conscience clause that would exempt those with moral misgivings. Since virtually every educational institution in the state receives at least some state assistance, the legislation means that Christian schools, for example, from kindergarten to college, will have to choose between funding cuts, sometimes painful ones, and moral principle.

The legislation, supported exclusively by state Democrats, moreover requires, not just acquiescence, but promotion. Any agency receiving state assistance will be required to support and promote “gender identity” (transsexuality) and “sexual orientation” (bisexuality and homosexuality). The state’s penal code now includes this:

“Gender” means sex, and includes a person’s gender identity and gender related appearance and behavior whether or not stereotypically associated with the person’s assigned sex at birth.

The word assigned in this penal code section is worth noting. If one’s sex is simply what some nodding hospital functionary arbitrarily “assigned” at birth, based on something as unreliable as the newborn’s physical genitalia, then later in life the person can re-assign his or her gender, basing the re-assignment on whatever he or she feels like at the moment. Like so much of the vacuous postmodern reality, it’s purely and simply a matter of paperwork. Reality is what we say it is. According to this law, a teacher can show up to teach second-graders in January as a man, in February as a woman, and in April as some combination of the two. Any principal or school administrator who raises an eyebrow had better make sure the school's lunch program is not receiving any states funds.

Regardless of how sincerely and earnestly we try to teach our children at home to be understanding of those who suffer from same-sex attraction, at school they will be taught that those (parents included) who refuse to regard, say, sodomy as morally, legally, and anthropologically indistinguishable from the nuptial embrace are vicious bigots, comparable in every respect to racists and hate mongers. Perhaps this Leninist program will advance to the stage where the young ones will be asked to report their parents for any signs of resistance to the program. Welcome to the world of diversity and tolerance now that power is in the hands of those who led the chorus.

Moral outrage is in order, but not primarily because a 3000 year-old principle of sexual morality is being waved away by the politically correct; who would have expected otherwise? The moral outrage should address the promethean presumption involved in yet again trying to alter reality with words. The 20^th century ideologues tried to do that, and the catastrophe that followed was incalculable. In this case, the catastrophe may not play out on the military battlefields, as it did then, but spiritual and moral devastation is certain to follow. Our children and their children will be paying the price for a long, long time.