My birth defect was caused by my mother's drug addiction when she was carrying me. They didn't realize in the 40s that drugs and babies don't mix.

I was slapped into a cast the day I was born. Now 70 plus years later, I still have that tiny cast in my box of memories. That aging white plaster-of-Paris cast, which is becoming fragile with age, is smaller than my Smartphone.

I had so many cast changes as a child that to this day I am terrified of the noise and vibration of a cast cutter. I realize it's an irrational fear born from the memory of being held down while screaming as another cast was cut off my right leg.

I spent all of my childhood in casts -- long leg casts and short leg casts; and braces -- the day braces and the night braces. I spent the summer in the children's hospital in Madison, Wisconsin having yet another surgery while my classmates were busy outside playing softball or going swimming or going to church camp in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

And now I am still dealing with the lingering effects of that birth defect. Walking -- or what passes as walking these days -- gets incrementally more difficult each passing day.

I have used the cane since 1980, and I have a wheelchair stashed behind my door. I am constantly making handicap adaptations within and outside of my home as I acquire more mobility equipment -- just to make life a little bit easier.

Medically, I am in good health. I take no medication and my numbers are good. I like to quip that "I am as healthy as a crippled horse -- I just don't walk."

This is a reality, not a trumped-up attempt to be "politically correct" in order to check a special "identity politics" box.

I feel for those who have "gender dysphoria." But it's not real. After all their surgeries to "correct" their "birth defects", they still will have to live on a lifelong regimen of hormones to try and force their bodies to accommodate who or what they "think" they are in their minds.

They refuse to accept the way God made them, how He knit them together in the secrecy of their mother's womb. (Ps. 139:13) They not only refuse to accept the way God created them, they refuse to accept that others see them in the way God obviously made them to be by His flawless design -- male or female.

Those who haven't accepted that twisted reality, have lost their jobs. They have been hauled into court, they have lost their businesses, they have lost their friends, and they are hounded and "cancelled" on social media.

I am a woman, dag nabbit! (Look it up.) I am not just a "Person with a Vagina" or "Person who Menstruates" or even if a "Person with a Cervix", much less a "Birthing Person."

I am a woman. All female with all my girl parts intact. And I have birthed a child -- a son.

The Virgin Mary was also a woman, created by God, who birthed a Child -- a Son, Who called her "Woman."

"Oh Woman, what have you to do with Me? My hour has not yet come." (John 2:4)

The transgendered try to force us to see them through their clouded rainbow-colored glasses. They want us to accept and affirm them in their life of lies: that "men are women" and "women are men" and "men can have babies."

The male of the species does not give birth because they do not have the necessary body parts such as ovaries, a womb or a birth canal. Men are the "Depositors of Sperm." But, of course, there is a male seahorse which does have a brood pouch and actually experiences pregnancy and gives birth to living seahorse fry, and it is the female seahorse who is the "depositor of eggs." But that is a unique instance in God's vast creation.

The transgendered are delusional in their thinking and the rest of us to are delusional if we support them in their delusions. The wider culture thinks it's okay to affirm them in their delusions and force that upon the rest of us.

Yes, there is occasionally a birth defect when it comes to biological sex (hermaphroditism) but that is an unusual occurrence and the result of a mistake Mother Nature made in the combining of chromosomes. And at that point, surgery may be needed to correct the problem.

My own birth defect is the result of damaged chromosomes due to drug addiction. Mother Nature did the best she could with what was offered her. I do not hold her, nor my own mother, or God at fault. It was just the result of fallen nature.

If someone is at fault look to Adam and Eve and the results of their Original Sin -- the cursing of the ground and the increase of pain in childbirth -- which I have felt.

Mother Nature herself is fallen due to the effects of Original Sin when the ground was cursed (Gen. 3:17) and now all creation groans as a result. (Rom. 8:22)

But the anomaly of fallen nature (hermaphroditism) is few and far between.

You and I are being held hostage in the culture wars. We are the ones who are told that we are wrong when we do not accept the falsities of gender dysphoria as reality. And we "misgender" the transgendered when we don't "honor" them by using their "preferred" pronouns: zie ... ver ... xyr ... or when Harry becomes Sally, or Chasity becomes Chaz, or Bruce becomes Caitlyn.

Sounds like gibberish to me.

No, it's not wrong for us to point out the obvious and to proclaim objective truth. It is wrong for the transgendered to perpetuate such a lie and teach it to vulnerable children and to politically, financially and legally punish those who don't embrace their subjective truth.

There is Absolute Truth which starts with God and that cannot be altered or changed.

CASE-IN-POINT: Bruce Jenner is now universally referred to as "Caitlyn." The media routinely refer to him as "she" or "her" or "hers." He has biologically fathered six children and won gold in the 1972 Olympics in the grueling decathlon competition. Sounds like all male activities to me. Something a 6'2" man would do.

In 2015, Jenner was provocatively featured on a "Call Me Caitlyn" Vanity Fair magazine cover, displaying his new breasts and cleavage. In 2017, Bruce Jenner had his "birth defect" removed, but that doesn't make him "Caitlyn." His male DNA is unaltered no matter how many hormones he takes trying to trick his body into thinking it is female.

God created him male, and his body knows it. It is because he is male, he was able to win gold in the Montreal Olympics and not give birth to children but beget them.

The transgendered say they are offended if we (you and I) do not accept them as they proclaim themselves to be: TransX, TransY, or TransZ. If we don't accept their "reality" as gospel truth. If we don't call them by their "proper" pronouns.

I AM OFFENDED when a minority -- a minuscule minority -- can force the capitulation of the majority, or an entire society or culture or nation, to Kowtow to their gender dysphoria and bend the knee at the altar of trans-rights -- altered birth certificates and reconfigured bodies; and trans-rites -- renaming ceremonies and rebaptism.

No, a little boy's penis is not a "birth defect" that can be removed later.

Years ago, Chiffon margarine had the tagline: "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature."

Well, Mother Nature is not fooled, nor is God mocked. And we should not be held hostage to the lies and falsehoods of transsexual manipulation of minds and the mutilation of bodies.

Mary Ann Mueller is a journalist living in Texas. She is a regular contributor to VirtueOnline.