RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/trump-administration-isnt-dehumanizing-transgender-americans/

The administration is proposing to conform the law to the truth.

Today I learned something truly new. I’d lived my life on this earth almost 49 years before I understood that federal anti-discrimination law defines human existence. Changing that law can thus literally “negate the humanity of people.”

At least that’s what I’m learning in response to the news that the Trump administration is considering rolling back the Obama administration’s lawless expansion of Title IX, the federal civil-rights statute banning sex discrimination in federally funded education programs. At issue is the definition of the word “sex.”

In April 2014, the Obama administration quietly expanded the definition — without an act of Congress or even a regulatory rulemaking process. In a document called “Questions and Answers on Title IX and Sexual Violence” it stated that “Title IX’s sex discrimination prohibition extends to claims of discrimination based on gender identity or failure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity.”

Empowered by this new definition, the Obama administration issued extraordinarily aggressive mandates to schools across the nation, requiring that schools use a transgender student’s chosen pronouns and that they open bathrooms, locker rooms, overnight accommodations, and even some sports teams to students based not on their biological sex but their chosen gender identity.

The Trump administration is moving forward with efforts to define gender on the basis of biological sex, reversing decisions under the Obama administration that essentially allowed individuals to choose their own sex for federal government purposes. A new memo from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services argues federal agencies need a definition of sex and gender that is defined “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.”

The changes are to take place under Title IX section of a 1972 law that bars sex-based discrimination in federally funded education institutions, but could have far broader implications, in areas such as single sex settings and set aside programs.

Progressives are predictably outraged by the fact that the Trump administration will no longer allow pseudoscience to define the words “man” and “woman,” but this is a common-sense move that will help the government better protect women’s rights and avoid the confusion of trying to regulate the myriad genders that have been invented in the past several years.

It is important to understand that this change will in no way affect how trans people or anybody else choose to label themselves. Rather, it will allow the government to have an objective standard when implementing federal programs. Without such a standard, a haphazard set of rules exists as to who qualifies for legal protections under Title IX.

Frankly, this move has been a long time coming and is very obviously needed. Our government and governments around the world have been struggling to keep up with new definitions of gender that seem to pop up every day. In recent years many advocates of the idea that people can choose, or self identify, their gender have argued that its nobody’s business but the person making the choice. But this is patently false.

Questions were always bound to arise that would require the state to make a determination about a person’s sex. College athletics, where men who identify as women have unfair advantages, is one example; another is set-aside or quota programs. If government contracts require that a certain number of subcontractors on a project have to be women-run businesses, for example, then there needs to be a definition of “woman.”

Both of the above examples show how this move really does protect women. The set-aside programs are a particularly good example, as their entire point is to ensure that women, who supposedly face disadvantages in male-dominated fields, receive a leg up. It makes no sense at all that a 40- or 50-year-old man, who has enjoyed the benefits of his sex for his entire career, can decide he is a woman and receive the benefit of the set-aside at the expense of a firm helmed by a woman who is more likely to have experienced the circumstances the law aims to compensate for.

The fact of the matter is that while academics and activists have been running around willy nilly changing the definition of sex and inventing 72 (at least) new pronouns, none of this has been rooted in any kind of confirmable science. It is farcical to think that the state can somehow keep up with such changes or pursue policies regarding sex without a workable and consistent definition.

The move also means that those with the most radical views about the sexes will not be able to impose them on our society and laws. In effect, it will mean that this objective standard will replace a hodgepodge of rules, regulations, and definitions of gender as it pertains to the federal government.

What will not and should not change is individuals and non-government related institutions’ abilities to pursue whatever policies in regard to gender they choose to appear as. Nobody is being told that he can’t identify or accept the gender identity of a person however he wishes. Newspaper style guides will still be free to define gender however they wish, and obviously private individuals can make their own choices as well.

The simple fact is that there is no compelling scientific basis upon which to believe a person can change sexes. While many believe that one can do so, it’s just that: a belief. And many do not share that belief. Foisting this metaphysical assertion on all of the federal government’s actions in absence of any actual legal text to support it, as the Obama administration tried to do, was the wrong decision.

Some will call the Trump administration’s decision discriminatory or bigoted, but nothing could be farther from the truth. For government purposes, using the scientific, historical, and standard definition of sex and gender is the only sensible path, and the administration is right to follow it.

http://swtotd.blogspot.com/

Most days, I read or skim five newspapers. Like many, I strive for some sort of balance. But it is difficult. Families and friends avoid politics for fear personal animosities will subsume relationships. Partisanship is everywhere, especially in the media. Either we, as a people, have become reflective of the them, or they of us. We read and listen to one side; we ignore (and condemn)those who think differently. Think of our universities, network TV and late-night comedians. The consequence is that real news is hard to discern. We all have examples of a news item picked up by The Wall Street Journalthat is ignored or exaggerated by The New York Times, or vice versa. Editorial pages smack of hypocrisy, sanctimony, mendacity and schadenfreude, depending on which side of the story the editor finds him or herself. Often, I find myself – and I am sure I am not alone – tossing the papers aside in frustration and picking up a novel, a Wodehouse for its comic relief, or a Times crossword puzzle for its mental stimulation. I am not without prejudice, as you all know, so find myself wondering:why is the Left so consumed with hate? I know many of these people and many are friends. And I know they wonder:why am I so stupid, insensitive and obtuse? I don’t think I am, and my guess is that most of my friends are not filled with hate. But we have allowed extremists to define our opinions; and politicians, watching which way the clouds move, sail with the wind.

The problem, as I see it, is that both sides fail to recognize that we, generally, have the same ends – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (and all that encompasses). It is in the means to achieve common goals where we differ. In recent years, as rhetoric has amplified, a desired political end has justified not only nasty words but acts of violence, “whatever it takes,” as one Democrat put it. We saw it in the Senate Visitor’s Gallery during the Kavanaugh hearings and in restaurants that forced out Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Ted Cruz, among others. Listening to the bickering of Senators last month reminded one of Matthew Arnold’s poem “Dover Beach,” “…where ignorant armies clash by night.” “Never argue with a fool,”my father used to say, “for a passer-by could not tell which was the fool.” Like a lover’s quarrel, both parties may be at fault, but both parties are not equally at fault. Despite a mainstream media that would have us believe otherwise, it is the left that has elevated hateful discourse to new levels.

In a Wall Street Journalop-ed last September titled “Why the Left is Consumed with Hate,” Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institute explained what he thought was the answer: “The great crisis for the left today – the source of its angst and hatefulness – is its encroaching obsolescence.” Perhaps? I don’t know. In my opinion, part of that angst stems from the failure of the progressive Presidency of Barack Obama to leave a lasting legacy. Despite being elected President twice and remaining popular as an ex-President, Mr. Obama, over the course of his eight years in office, saw Democrats lose the House in 2010 and the Senate in 2014. Worse, Democrats lost heavily in state and local elections. In 2008, there were twenty-eight Democrat governors and twenty-two Republican governors. Eight years later, Democrats had lost twelve governorships and Republicans had gained eleven. (Bill Walker of Alaska is an Independent.) During those same years, Democrats lost over a thousand state legislative seats. Mr. Obama may remain personally popular, but he destroyed the Democrat Party.