Sometimes you have to follow an idea to its logical conclusion to find out if it\u2019s crazy. And a recent article on gender proves the point.<\/p>\n
There are times when you have to read something two, three, maybe even four times to make sure it\u2019s actually serious and not a joke \u2014 and even then you\u2019re not certain. Such was the case with Christin Scarlett Milloy\u2019s recent article for Slate, breathlessly titled \u201cDon\u2019t Let the Doctor Do This to Your Newborn.\u201d<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t let the doctor do what?<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s how Milloy describes it:
\n \u201cIt\u2019s called infant gender assignment: When the doctor holds your child up to the harsh light of the delivery room, looks between its legs, and declares his opinion: It\u2019s a boy or a girl, based on nothing more than a cursory assessment of your offspring\u2019s genitals.\u201d
\nYes, she\u2019s saying \u2014 she\u2019s actually, seriously saying \u2014 that a doctor who tells you the sex of your baby could be doing the baby irreparable harm, by not taking into consideration that in later years, that child might not want to belong to that sex.<\/p>\n
In fact, Milloy suggests that infant gender assignment, that practice that takes place after every birth, is playing \u201cRussian roulette with your baby\u2019s life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why am I taking this kookiness seriously, even enough to mention it? Because I think we need to recognize what got this culture to the point of such absurdity \u2014 and where we might go from here.<\/p>\n
For years now we\u2019ve been hearing ever louder arguments that we need to free children and everyone else from the tyranny of gender, with all the practical implications that argument has \u2014 laws that say that boys can use girls\u2019 bathrooms if they identify as girls, for instance. Or parents who trot out their five-year-old daughter and announce that she\u2019s decided to be a boy.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a reason, as my friend Karen Swallow Prior points out in a recent article at Think Christian , that \u201cFacebook offers 56 gender options for user profiles.\u201d No kidding.<\/p>\n
Prior goes on, \u201cWhile [Milloy\u2019s] article is clearly intended to be shocking, its argument has, in fact, been a long time coming. Theories about the \u2018constructedness\u2019 (as opposed to givenness) of human sexuality … have been trickling down from the ivory tower for decades.\u201d<\/p>\n
And not just trickling down from the ivory tower. How about trickling down from the highest court in the land? Chuck Colson often said that Justice Anthony Kennedy\u2019s 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v Casey was a watershed cultural moment. \u201cAt the heart of liberty,\u201d Kennedy wrote, \u201cis the right to define one\u2019s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.\u201d<\/p>\n
As Chuck always said, \u201cWorldview matters.\u201d Ideas have consequences. What Chuck rightly called \u201cJustice Kennedy\u2019s absurd statement\u201d sums up the spirit of our age.<\/p>\n
And Milloy\u2019s article is simply taking all this to its logical conclusion.<\/p>\n
And even people who get Milloy\u2019s logic are appalled with that conclusion. Like the commenter who wrote: \u201cI totally think it\u2019s wrong and weird to push a child to like \u2018boy things\u2019 or \u2018girl things,\u2019 and I\u2019d genuinely try to be open and accepting if my children turned out to be transgendered. That being said … this article is bonkers, right? [It\u2019s] not just me?\u201d<\/p>\n
To that commenter and the others who expressed similar sentiments, I would say: It is bonkers, and no, it\u2019s not just you. But you may have helped us reach this point, whether you meant to or not.<\/p>\n
Maybe, in the long run, we\u2019ll all have cause to thank Christin Scarlett Milloy for ripping away the blinders and making people face facts. Maybe, unwittingly, she\u2019s brought us to the tipping point we so desperately need to reach.<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
Copyright (c) 2014 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. “BreakPoint” is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sometimes you have to follow an idea to its logical conclusion to find out if it\u2019s crazy. And a recent article on gender proves the point. There are times when you have to read something two, three, maybe even four times to make sure it\u2019s actually serious and not a joke \u2014 and even then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3510,64,3508],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5470"}],"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=5470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5470\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}