Colleen Francis made himself right at home in the locker room at Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington. The forty-five year-old student showered, used the sauna and walked around naked in front of the other people using those facilities.<\/p>\n
Now if you\u2019re having trouble squaring the name \u201cColleen\u201d with the male pronoun \u201chimself,\u201d you\u2019re not the only one. Those present in the locker room also had trouble with the combination that the locker room in question was the women\u2019s room and \u201cColleen\u201d is anatomically a male.<\/p>\n
Thus when he showers, sits in the sauna, and walks around naked, Francis is exposing himself not only to his fellow students but students from local high schools and families who also use the college\u2019s swimming pool and locker room. Thus, among the females he has exposed himself to are minors, some as young as six.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re wondering, \u201cWhy doesn\u2019t someone stop Francis,\u201d well, they tried to, and that\u2019s when the story became surreal. The swimming coach from the local high school and the mother of one of the team members called the police. When the police arrived Francis informed them that he was a transsexual and that, under Washington State law, he was entitled to use the women\u2019s locker room.<\/p>\n
If that sounds ridiculous to you, well, it worked. The coach apologized and the college informed parents that state law, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of \u201cgender expression or identity,\u201d tied their hands. The best they could do was to provide screens for those made \u201cuncomfortable\u201d by Francis\u2019 presence.<\/p>\n
The Alliance Defending Freedom is representing the parents of the children and has promised to take action if any of the girls is harmed, but absent a change in the law, it may not make a difference.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s because what\u2019s happening in Olympia is the logical outcome of two very potent and destructive trends in American society.<\/p>\n
The first is what Harvard professor Mary Ann Glendon famously called \u201crights talk.\u201d This \u201ctalk\u201d is characterized by \u201cits legalistic character … exaggerated absoluteness … hyper-individualism … and its silence with respect to personal, civic, and collective responsibilities.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite these deficiencies, it\u2019s the \u201clanguage\u201d Americans, more than anyone else, speak when they discuss important issues, especially social ones driven by a culture increasingly marked by a sexual free-for-all camouflaged as sexual \u201cfreedom.\u201d<\/p>\n
The second trend is the transition from talking about the sexes to talking about gender. Until very recently a person was either male or female and the determination was based on objective physical criteria. While it isn\u2019t always as simple as I just made it sound, the rule generally held.<\/p>\n
Today, we speak in terms of \u201cgender identity,\u201d which \u201crefers to a person\u2019s private sense … and subjective experience.\u201d It doesn\u2019t matter if Francis has had sex-reassignment surgery or not \u2014 all that matters is his self-identification as \u201ctranssexual.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not an exaggeration to say that there are potentially as many gender identities as there are people. And under Washington law, each of these is protected from \u201cdiscrimination\u201d by state agencies such as Evergreen College.<\/p>\n
When Francis walked into the women\u2019s locker room, he was a rights-bearing individual whose \u201cright\u201d to use the facility trumped any other interest. Even the mental and sexual health interest of six-year-old girls.<\/p>\n
Obviously this is absurd, but it didn\u2019t come out of nowhere \u2014 it is where American law and culture have been headed for some time. And there aren\u2019t enough screens to cover this damage.<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
Copyright (c) 2012 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. “BreakPoint with Chuck Colson” is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Colleen Francis made himself right at home in the locker room at Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington. The forty-five year-old student showered, used the sauna and walked around naked in front of the other people using those facilities. Now if you\u2019re having trouble squaring the name \u201cColleen\u201d with the male pronoun \u201chimself,\u201d you\u2019re not the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3510,1310,4667,1862,4668,3508],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5390"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}