The ACLU complained that the school district challenged their "client's identity as a girl," which is true because their client is not a girl, but a boy. According to the ACLU, all "she wants to be accepted for who she is." The problem is that he wants to be accepted for who he is not. Their client claims that not allowing him to change with the girls stigmatizes him, "making me feel like I was not a normal person." The simple answer is that it is not normal for a male to want to be accepted as female.

The Bruce Jenner celebrity blitz and the battle over bathrooms, have brought the issue of gender to the fore and people are wondering how we got to the point where boys who think they are girls can use the girls' locker room. What happened to common sense?

Unfortunately, many people thought that gender was just a synonym for sex, and could be substituted for it without causing any harm. However, for activists on the far left, sex and gender are not the same. Sex is biologically determined. Gender is socially constructed and does not have to correspond to sex. There are two sexes --male and female, but an unlimited number of genders. Once identity is divorced from reality, chaos ensues, fantasy rules.

The Obama administration is determined to force everyone to accept the demands of transgender activists. Girls would have to pretend that they are comfortable with a boy who wants to be a girl using the girls' locker room, because if girls complain or show any sign of disapproval, they will be judged guilty of "transphobic discrimination". Everyone would have to accept that wanting to be the other sex or believing that one can become the other sex is just normal diversity, when in fact it is a symptom of disordered thinking. Even if a person doesn't believe that people can change their sex, he would have to pretend they do and call what is obviously a male a woman. The media has accepted this demand, using feminine pronouns for Bruce Jenner, who in spite of all the make-up, surgery, clothes and fancy photographers is still male.

Transgendered persons point to the psychological suffering they endure because people don't accept them. Their suffering is real. They are engaged in a comprehensive denial of reality. Such a denial is hard to sustain as they must continually shut out the truth. The transgendered delight in "passing" -- being accepted as the opposite sex in public. It hurts to be told that even if they can pass they are not and can never truly be the other sex.

The government does not have the right to force a citizen to say something he knows is a lie or to be silent in the face of evil. The people have a right to freedom of speech, which includes the right to speak the truth, even if the truth hurts another person's feelings. So-called "hate speech" rules are unacceptable because they allow one group to veto the speech of another.

Some may argue that this is just about words, but as G.K. Chesterton said, words "are the only thing worth fighting about." Careless use of language caused this mess and needs to be remedied, first by never saying gender when you mean sex.

The school under attack tried to accommodate the boy who wanted to be a girl. This was a mistake. They should have told the parents that their son is a boy and must use the boys' facilities. If this is not possible, he needs counseling. Halfway accommodation won't work; the Department of Education demands total capitulation. The defenders of the reality of sex difference should learn from this mistake. They cannot compromise the truth. They should not force the other students to accept the lie that gender trumps sex, just to avoid hurting a troubled boy's feelings.

The LGBTQ activists and their ACLU lawyers are not tolerant liberals who respect other people's rights. They are pushing a type of political correctness which is a manifestation of a totalitarian, Marxist-influenced ideology. Theodore Dalrymple, an expert on totalitarian societies explains how activists triumph:

In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed.

The girls forced to accept a boy in their private space are being targeted for just this kind of humiliation. This is about much more than bathrooms.

*****

Episcopal Church Leaders Weigh in on Transgender Bill passed in North Carolina

Jesus tells us to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves

Letter to the Episcopal Church
From Presiding Bishop, President of House of Deputies
June 28, 2016

Dear People of God in the Episcopal Church:

We all know that some things in holy Scripture can be confusing, hard to understand, or open to various ways of understanding. But some essential teachings are clear and incontrovertible. Jesus tells us to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves, and he tells us over and over again not to be afraid (Matthew 10:31, Mark 5:36, Luke 8:50, John 14:27).

There's no confusion about what Jesus is telling us, but it often requires courage to embody it in the real world. Again and again, we become afraid, and mired in that fear, we turn against Jesus and one another.

This age-old cycle of fear and hatred plays out again and again in our broken world, in sickening and shocking events like the massacre targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in Orlando, but also in the rules we make and the laws we pass. Most recently, we've seen fear at work in North Carolina, a state dear to both of our hearts, where a law called the "Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act" has decimated the civil rights and God-given dignity of transgender people and, by extension, drastically curtailed protections against discrimination for women, people of color, and many others. We are thankful for the prayerful and pastoral public leadership of the North Carolina bishops on this law, which is known as House Bill 2.

North Carolina is not the only place where fear has gotten the better of us. Lawmakers in other jurisdictions have also threatened to introduce legislation that would have us believe that protecting the rights of transgender people--even a right as basic as going to the bathroom--somehow puts the rest of us at risk.

This is not the first time that the segregation of bathrooms and public facilities has been used to discriminate unjustly against minority groups. And just as in our painful racial past, it is even being claimed that the "bathroom bills," as they are sometimes called, ensure the safety of women and children--the same reason so often given to justify Jim Crow racial segregation.

But we believe that, as the New Testament says, "perfect love casts out fear." On June 10, the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church stood against fear and for God's love by passing a resolution that reaffirms the Episcopal Church's support of local, state and federal laws that prevent discrimination based on gender identity or gender expression and voices our opposition to all legislation that seeks to deny the God-given dignity, the legal equality, and the civil rights of transgender people.

The need is urgent, because laws like the one in North Carolina prey on some of the most vulnerable people in our communities--some of the very same people who were targeted in the Orlando attack. In a 2011 survey, 78 percent of transgender people said that they had been bullied or harassed in childhood; 41 percent said they had attempted suicide; 35 percent had been assaulted, and 12 percent had suffered a sexual assault. Almost half of transgender people who responded to the survey said they had suffered job discrimination, and almost a fifth had lost housing or been denied health care due to their gender identity or expression.

In keeping with Executive Council's resolution, we are sending a letter to the governor and members of the North Carolina General Assembly calling on them to repeal the "Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act." When legislation that discriminates against transgender people arises in other places, we will also voice our opposition and ask Episcopalians to join us. We will also support legislation, like a bill recently passed in the Massachusetts state legislature, that prevents discrimination of all kinds based on gender identity or gender expression.

As Christians, we bear a particular responsibility to speak out in these situations, because attempts to deny transgender people their dignity and humanity as children of God are too often being made in the name of God. This way of fear is not the way of Jesus Christ, and at these times, we have the opportunity to demonstrate our belief that Christianity is not a way of judgment, but a way of following Jesus in casting out fear.

In the face of the violence and injustice we see all around us, what can we do? We can start by choosing to get to know one another. TransEpiscopal, an organization of transgender Episcopalians and their allies, has posted on their website a video called "Voices of Witness: Out of the Box" that can help you get to know some transgender Episcopalians and hear their stories. Integrity USA, which produced the video, and theChicago Consultation are two other organizations working for the full inclusion of LGBT people in the church. Their websites also have online materials that you can use to learn more about the stories of transgender Christians and our church's long journey to understand that they are children of God and created in God's image.

When we are born anew through baptism, we promise to respect the dignity of every human being. Today, transgender people and, indeed, the entire LGBT community, need us to keep that promise. By doing so, we can bear witness to the world that Jesus has shown us another way--the way of love.

Faithfully,

The Most Rev. Michael B. Curry The Rev. Gay Clark Jennings
Presiding Bishop and Primate President, House of Deputies