The author, John Hawkins, begins his article as follows:<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to have an honest conversation about gay issues because liberals treat anything other than outright celebration of all things gay as \u201chate.\u201d That doesn\u2019t leave people much room to discuss a complicated issue that involves real human beings who often have to deal with a lot of challenges because of their sexual orientation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
How sad for Hawkins that\u00a0saying bigoted things about gay people is no longer socially acceptable! How hard it must be to be anti-gay in this day and age! I mean only three decades ago you could print stuff like this<\/a> with a straight face, and today you can\u2019t even equate gay people with pedophiles without people getting all upset!<\/p>\n
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Now, watch how different this rhetoric is:<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re a compassionate person, you have to feel some sympathy when you talk to people who are closeted because they\u2019re afraid that their relatives won\u2019t accept them or someone who feels isolated and alone because his sexual orientation makes it impossible for him to have a romantic relationship with 98% of the population. Life is hard for most of us \u2014 and if you know people who are gay, chances are you recognize that it\u2019s even harder for them.<\/p>\n
Yet and still, you can\u2019t deny reality because there may be a few people who don\u2019t want to hear it. Sure, you don\u2019t want to unnecessarily create pain in people\u2019s lives, but ultimately, nothing creates more misery than abandoning common sense because the obvious truth might hurt someone\u2019s feelings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This\u00a0is what bigotry looks like in the mid-2010s. It\u2019s couched in love, and even in compassion<\/em>, but beyond that veneer it\u2019s comprised of the same arguments and same concerns that have been rehashed for decades\u2014the claim that being gay is a choice, that converting people back to being straight is a worthy goal, that gay people have lives that are less fulfilling, and that gay people are a threat to children. It\u2019s not the content that has changed, it\u2019s the packaging\u2014and that distinction matters.<\/p>\n
And now let\u2019s get into the meat of the post:<\/p>\n
1) You can\u2019t change your gender:<\/strong>\u00a0Have you ever heard of Body Integrity Identity Disorder? Long story short, there are people out there who believe they\u2019re \u201csupposed to\u201d have less limbs. Maybe they want to get rid of an arm or a leg. The \u201cproblem\u201d these people run into is that surgeons consider it unethical to remove a healthy, functioning body part and refuse to saw off their limbs. Instead, they just refer these people to a psychologist. That seems to make sense, doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n
Yet, when we have people who want to mutilate themselves to \u201cchange their sex,\u201d we don\u2019t treat that as a mental disorder. Instead, we take it seriously. So seriously in fact, we have\u00a09 year olds getting hormone treatments<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0so they can pretend to be another gender.<\/p>\n
If a client went to a doctor and said he thought he was a cow, we wouldn\u2019t send him to a surgeon to get horns and udders attached. Yet, you can no more change your sex than you can change into a cow. Even if you have a \u201csex change,\u201d your sex hasn\u2019t actually changed. A man who mutilates himself to look like a woman, still isn\u2019t female. He can\u2019t have a child. Very few men are going to knowingly date a man who\u2019s surgically mutilated himself to look like a woman. This is a terrible, horrible thing we\u2019re doing as a society to these mentally ill people. Instead of getting them the mental help they need, we\u2019re catering to their pathology. It\u2019s cruel, it\u2019s wrong, and a more compassionate society wouldn\u2019t wallow so deeply in political correctness that we\u2019d allow people to do this to themselves.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Note that bigots are still bigots, they just start their posts with platitudes to how difficult<\/em> it must be to be a closeted gay person, how hard<\/em> life must be for them. Without, you know, the circumspection to realize that they\u00a0are the reason there are closeted gay people<\/em>. And frankly, that may be the most frustrating part of this.<\/p>\n
This entire section on trans people drips of an unfamiliarity with the issues that is likely born of life in an echo chamber. Look, we know that 40% of transgender people attempt suicide. We also know that transition decreases this number\u2014by a lot<\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0We know that transition decreases dysphoria and improves mental health, but Hawkins throws all of this away by insisting that \u201cyou can\u2019t change your gender\u201d and that the compassionate<\/em> thing to do\u2014somehow\u2014is to tell trans people they\u2019re mentally ill and need \u201chelp.\u201d And just what does this help look like, one wonders. Perhaps it looks something like gay conversion therapy? The sad thing is that Hawkins probably thinks he is actually being compassionate<\/em>.<\/p>\n
What about the nine-year-old girl Hawkins mentions? I followed the link he offered and I used this thing called google, and guess what? The child in question isn\u2019t scheduled to start hormone therapy until she\u2019s 15, and won\u2019t have gender reassignment surgery until she\u2019s 18. Yes, she\u2019s starting hormone blockers at age 9. But you know what? There is a big difference between hormone blockers (which temporarily suppress puberty by preventing the release of testosterone or estrogen) and hormone therapy (which involves taking cross-gender hormones, i.e. testosterone or estrogen).\u00a0But\u00a0you know what? The internet is full of articles on conservative news sites stating that the nine-year-old in question was starting hormone therapy<\/em> when in fact the video they linked to as proof stated that she was starting hormone blockers<\/em>. Nice fact checking there\u2014and again with the echo chamber.<\/p>\n
And now the next point:<\/p>\n
2) Some people do choose to be gay:<\/strong>\u00a0Most Americans tend to believe that people who are gay either choose it OR are born that way. However, the evidence suggests that there tends to more of a range of sexual behavior for people who are gay. Some people are clearly \u201cborn\u201d gay and have always been attracted to the same sex just like most heterosexuals are only interested in contact with the opposite sex. However, there are also people who are more sexually ambiguous and some of them CHOOSE to be gay.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It appears that Hawkins has never heard the term \u201cbisexual. The bi-erasure here is perhaps the most extreme I have ever seen. And it\u2019s not over.<\/p>\n