What is Wrong with the World?
The a probably apocryphal story the Times of London wrote famous authors asking them to answer the question “What is Wrong with the World?” GK Chesterton, a writer famous for is mystery novels replied “I am”.
Most of the large public calamities we face and many of the small private ones are caused by people. Sometimes they are self-inflicted. Sometimes they are done purposefully by others. Sometimes they are unintended. People are the problem.
Generations of ambition, nationalism, concerns for national security and a network of loyalty brought us World War I. The desire to teach Germany a lesson brought us World War II. The need to stop the bloody war in the Pacific and the ever marching fear of falling behind in science and technology brought us the bomb. The Nazi Holocaust brought us the state of Israel in the midst of an Arab world, and on and on we go.
You can fill in your own strong of solutions that brought bigger problems behind them. They might be the solution imagined by a friend, neighbor or enemy that brought trouble to your life. The junky needs his fix so he breaks into the house to steal to feed their habit but the owner is home and on and on and on.
People themselves need to change and to be changed but how can that happen? We know people do change for the better, but also for the worse.
The Long Story of the Bible
The long story of the Bible is about the divorce of heaven and earth and God’s mission to rescue humanity from itself. Various options were tried.
- Drown all the “bad people”, but even Noah, the best man in the world had a weakness for the bottle and it ruined his family.
- Give people rules. Reward them when the obey and punish them when they stray. Result? We learned what we already knew. People can’t obey rules, even the ones they impose on themselves.
The Advent of the God-Man Continue reading
From Bruce to Caitlyn to Mystique. Why the Bathroom Wars are all about Transcendence
The Bathroom-Culture War
It’s important to dive a little deeper into this debate to see a lot of the detail that is being passed over in the furor. The question is what is required to constitute one’s public sexual identity.
Most states by the mid 2000s allowed “transgender persons” to change their sex on their birth certificate. As is true with most state law details varied, but it usually involved some medical testimony or procedure. Once that was processed the birth certificate was changed and then the rest of the legal machinery followed. It would change on your driver’s licence. You’d be considered that sex by the military or prison system. Since up until now there was no real “checking” at bathrooms except in response to complaint one assumes that if there was legal cause to investigate an incident the sex on the birth certificate would determine the legal outcome.
A lot of the current hubbub then impacts two groups.
1. People who are trying to change their sex “off the books” or “on the fly” or are what we might called “undocumented trangenders”. These are people who may or may not be seeking medical treatment for reassignment but who wish to live within the legal, social or cultural framework of the other sex.
2. Minors. Minors are not full legal agents like adult citizens. They may be under a doctor’s care but any legal change in their sex status would have to be made be a parent or guardian.
Notice I’ve been avoiding the term “gender”. We’ll get to that. The best that I can see the “sex” of the person is what the state tracks and what has legal repercussions.
Sex vs. Gender Identity Continue reading →