By J Tyler Ballance
I used to do volunteer work for the Washington D.C. trans rights group, GenderPAC (now part of HRC). I wasn’t engaged in transitioning myself, I just wanted people who were trans to not be beaten or killed for their decision to live as transmen or transwomen.
In recent years though, some people in the queer, lesbian and trans community have become militant in their behavior. I agree with the pundit, Blaire White (who is also a transwoman) that pushing the queer agenda on kids or inducing or “grooming” young people into the queer or lesbian lifestyle is dead wrong.
I think that Christian fundamentalists, such as Mr. Schmidt should be regularly heard on campus, and be every bit as celebrated as the various groups waving rainbow and other multicolored flags in our faces, all while demanding tolerance and acceptance.
When I was a young undergrad, once someone turned eighteen, they could legally buy and consume 3.2 percent alcohol beer (aka light beer). While I was not a big drinker, I enjoyed fraternity parties and consumed my share of the watered down brew. Back in those days, the evangelicals would show-up at the parties (even at beach parties) and they would literally stand on wooden boxes and begin preaching about the evils of alcohol, drugs and extramarital sex. The homosexuals were not even on the radar of the evangelicals back in those days.
We would listen to some of the preachers, ignore others and in most cases just go about our partying business. The difference on our campus in those times from today is that we were encouraged to interact and actively debate. The idea was that all ideas were to be welcomed into the public square and then let those ideas stand on their own merit in the bright light of the public square, so to speak.
On the Wyoming campus, I am glad to learn that Mr. Schmidt was not entirely censored. However, whoever told him that he had to cover the name of the person that he was citing, erred. If someone is transitioning, at some point that is a matter of public record and hence there is no reason to censor that information or attempt to quash any debate regarding transition or the societal impact of transwomen and transmen. If we reflect for a moment on what a University is for; the pursuit of truth, then open, candid debate is not only desirable, but essential to the proper functioning of the University community.
Mr. Schmidt should be applauded for having the courage to go into the den of iniquity that our State’s University has become and dare to say something akin to, “The emperor has no clothes!” Only he is just saying that men are men and women are women. I think that Mr. Schmidt would be quite surprised that most of the trans community entirely agrees with him on that point. Most transwomen and transmen acknowledge their biological gender. All they are asking of society is to let them live in the gender to which they feel more closely identified. In the distant past this proposition was moot since there were no medical alternatives to allow people to cross the gender divide, however today there are some, rather crude medical procedures, that allow some to make the transition between genders. None of the transwomen and transmen who I personally know consider themselves exactly the same as a natural born woman or man, in spite of the few activists who like to claim that transwomen are women, etc. In the future, we may be able to change genders on a genetic and molecular basis. If that happens, it will surely be confounding to those who up until that time held the position that one’s gender is irrevocably fixed during fetal development.
So is Mr. Schmidt right in that transwomen and transmen are all going to Hell, along with anyone who condones their transition to the opposite gender? Only God knows, for sure. I think that what Mr. Schmidt is trying to tell everyone who will listen is that the scriptures tell us a lot about what to expect from God and how He shall judge our actions here on Earth. Mr. Schmidt’s faith based approach also brings to light a reminder to us all, that perhaps just because we can do something using the tools of science and technology, that doesn’t necessarily mean we should do it. This is exactly the healthy sort of debate and discussion of ethical issues that should go on at our colleges, universities and in the public square of every American community.
