TRANSGENDERISM HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH CIVIL RIGHTS!

Submitted by: Conservative 2 Conservative

Gender and sex: Defining our terms

Started by Robert M 

by Jenna Ellis • May 4, 2016

Much of the clash over transgender facilities accommodations has been in attempting to define (or redefine) the common understanding of “gender.” What does the term “gender” refer to? Is one’s gender, as LGBT supporters argue, different than one’s sex?

As any policy debater knows, defining critical terms up front is not only necessary to the productivity of a debate, but typically the advocate that successfully defines the terms favorably to their side wins.

In this debate, no one seems to have a clear understanding or agreed upon definition of “gender.” I’ve seen numerous contentions that gender (as opposed to sex) is not biologically determinable and based on the physical anatomy of the human body, but rather is the personal conception of one’s self as more or less male or female in personality. Thus, “gender identity” becomes tacitly defined as outward manifestations of personality that reflect one’s subjective gender choice.

So, goes the liberal argument, one’s physical sexual anatomy, or “sex,” is entirely irrelevant to the outcome of gender determination. A person can be a female in “gender” while having male physical anatomy. (Exhibit A: Bruce Jenner.)

This is the classic tactic used by the Left to achieve their social reconstruction: redefine the terms, and then argue according to the new “truth.” It’s the exact same way the Left was able to convince an entire nation and the majority of the Supreme Court that abortion should be legal. Once society redefined “life” and decided that “personhood” can be separated from the physical anatomy of a live infant human being in gestation, the argument was no longer about killing a person.

Understanding and responding to this asserted definition of gender is critical to the debate. We cannot allow this dualistic (and fundamentally wrong) definition of gender to stand, otherwise, this debate will follow the same course as all the redefinitions of truth and fact before it: “Gender” as a personality characteristic will trump biological facts. This is the end game of the redefinition of terms.

We have to stand firm that the new definition of gender employed by the Left is fundamentally flawed and must be rejected because it is inconsistent with the truth and fact about physical reality. The truth is that a person’s gender (i.e. the state of being male or female) is biologically and anatomically determined—even before birth. Ultrasounds show the physical anatomy sufficient to determine the biological gender of a person mere weeks into a pregnancy.

“Gender,” according to the accurate and standing definition, is the state of being male or female. This state of being is not contingent on how an individual person feels or looks, what he or she believes about his or her personality or “identity.” Gender is synonymous with “sex” in this context.

Linguistically, “gender” can also refer to a grammatical tool or classes of words syntactically associated with a feminine, masculine, or even “neutral” form of a word. Clearly, this meaning is separate from the meaning given to the human being. This is the difference between “gender” being used as a noun (the state of being male or female) and “gender” being used as a grammatical tool.

Similarly, “sex” also has various definitions, depending on the context. It can be a noun, referring synonymously to one’s biological anatomy, or it can be used as a verb to refer to specific physical acts.

But just because a word can have different meanings depending on the part of speech employed does not mean it can be so easily redefined and attributed a new meaning.

In this debate, we have to be clear that “gender” is the state of being male or female from before birth. Non-negotiable, non-changeable, and absolutely empirically ascertainable.

The idea that “transgender” is even a logical possibility should be immediately disregarded as a physical impossibility. An analogous physical impossibility would be the idea that a person can identify as a “trans-ageist”—deciding purely on the basis of their subjective assertion that they are no longer the age that is biologically determined at conception, but “feel” like they are either older or younger than they actually are.

This is positively ridiculous. A person’s age is an immutable characteristic—i.e. something a person cannot change about him or herself. I cannot change the day and year I was born. It is a physical impossibility.

Defining terms matters. Gender or sex, when those terms are used to designate a human being as either male or female, is an immutable characteristic and is the state of being male or female, empirically and biologically determined. Period.

Applying this to the current debate is essential. Just because a person “feels like” they are or want to be a different gender / sex does not give them the right to invade the facilities of their choosing. Any more than a 10-year-old who “feels like” being a 21-year-old may legally consume alcohol. A 10-year-old is factually not 21 in age.

Immutable characteristics cannot change based on a subjective feeling, nor should the law entertain accommodations of “feelings” over facts.

Jenna Ellis is an attorney, professor of law at Colorado Christian University, and international speaker.

She is the author of the book, The Legal Basis for a Moral Constitution. You can read more about her at www.jennaellis.org.

Transgender bathroom wars have nothing to do with civil rights

Started by Robert M 

by David Leach • May 10, 2016

Google or Bing “LGBT” and “Strident Conservative” and you’ll see pages of news and opinion on how the political agenda of homosexual, bisexual and transgender groups have systematically destroyed American culture. But more than that, you’ll see how the movement has deceitfully used the rallying cry of equality as their motivation for the change they seek while, in the end, equality has nothing to do with it.

During the same-sex marriage debate we documented how the Supreme Court decision to constitutionally recognize the unnatural arrangement could eventually lead to the end of freedom of speech and freedom of religion as a consequence.

When we expressed our concerns over how the same-sex case could be used to redefine marriage in other ways, the LGBT activists cried “homophobe.” However, we documented in August 2015 new attempts to use the Obergefell v. Hodges decision as precedent to have polygamy legalized. And, under the guise of the “born that way” excuse used by homosexuals to defend their sexual preferences, there has been a renewed movement to legalize pedophilia.

Lately we’ve been dealing with the “T” part of the LGBT agenda. The Obama administration has “aggressively engaged” the Department of Education to actively promote the so-called right for boys to use the girls bathroom, locker room and showers under an unconstitutional application of Title IX under the Civil Rights Act.

And speaking of unconstitutional applications of the law, Obama’s Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against North Carolina yesterday for passing a “bathroom law” requiring the public to use facilities based on their genetics instead of their sexually-confused perceptions.

And just as was the case with same-sex marriage, the transgender agenda goes beyond cries of equality from the left, as we learn in an article from LifeSiteNews.com. In an article by Riki Wilchins for the homosexual publication The Advocate, who has undergone “sex change” surgery and is a far-left social change activist, we learn that the “bathroom wars” are just the first steps in the direction of a bigger goal.

There are many “genderqueer” or “non-binary” people, Wilchins wrote, pointing to a student who recently “came out” to President Obama as “non-binary” at a London town hall as a notable example.

“Non-binary” people don’t identify as male or female and they often want to be referred to as “they” or “hir” or “zer.”  So the fact that there are even intimate facilities that reflect the “binary” truth about gender should change, Wilchins wrote.

In the eyes of LGBT advocates, the notion of only two genders (which one can pick, of course) is antiquated.

Peter Sprigg, Senior Fellow for Policy Studies at the Family Research Council, interprets Wilchins’ article this way:

“The long-term goals of many LGBT activists are actually not just access to the restrooms of their preferred gender identity, but actually destroying the concept of gender or the separation of the genders altogether. They present this framework...that a transgender person is just born in the wrong body...[they say] the woman born in a man’s body is really a woman and therefore should be allowed to use the women’s room. But then, if you dig down...you find actually these acknowledgements that they want to do away with the gender binary altogether.”

Rob Dreher at The American Conservative issued this warning:

“They want to destroy the concepts of male and female entirely. This is what they’re after, and they’re not going to stop until it is accomplished.”

And Stella Morabito, senior contributor to The Federalist and an expert on cults and propaganda summed it up this way:

“What we are really talking about is the abolition of sex, and it is sex that the trans project is serving to abolish legally, under the guise of something called ‘the gender binary.’  Its endgame is a society in which everyone is legally de-sexed.  No longer legally male or female.  And once you basically redefine humanity as sexless you end up with a de-humanized society in which there can be no legal ‘mother’ or ‘father’ or ‘son’ or ‘daughter’ or ‘husband’ or ‘wife’ without permission from the State.  Government documents are already erasing the terms.  In such a society, the most intimate human relationships take a hit. The family ends up abolished.” (emphasis mine)

It’s time to be vigilant because our freedom to believe may not last much longer.