Michael Coren Journalist for Life
I can’t pretend to understand transsexuals and those who believe they are born into the wrong gender but I don’t have the right to tell people how to behave and what to do with their own bodies once they reach the age of maturity, as long as they spend their own money on any surgery they request and do not break the law. I’ve interviewed several people in this state and while some of them seemed emotionally unstable and desperately needy, others were in profound pain and almost moved me to tears. We must always be compassionate and empathetic around this issue.
What I cannot tolerate, however, is the cloak of political correctness and censorship currently thrown over the entire subject, and the attempt to silence anybody who asks vital questions. It’s not really about bathrooms or so-called “bathroom bills” but about an adult and open conversation about what is going on here. The British rock band The Who probably had it right with their iconic song. “I’m a boy, I’m a boy, But my ma won’t admit it, I’m a boy, I’m a boy, But if I say I am I get it.”
It all becomes even more troubling when children are involved. Back in 2009 we had the case of a lesbian couple indoctrinating their little boy that he was a girl, to the point of giving him puberty-delaying drugs. Then in 2011 we had a less severe, but equally worrying case in Denver, Colorado, where a seven-year old, Bobby Montoya, won the right to join the Girl Scouts. His mother – have you noticed that it’s always the mums who speak to the media about this – told the press that little Bobby has always self-identified as a girl (there’s a phrase kids use naturally), and that he plays with dolls, dresses in girl’s clothes and keeps his shoulder-length hair neatly closed.
Okay love, here’s some advice. Cut his hair, take away his hairbrush, burn the girl’s clothes, and throw away the dolls. It’s not brain surgery you know. Mind you, it is brain manipulation. We’ve seen it over and over again – the strong mothers, the weak or absent father, the challenges of birth order, the sister as a role model. None of this is new, but in the past we could comment on it; now if laypeople do they are accused of homophobia, and if doctors do, they can lose their medical license.
In this particular case, the mother may well be abusive. She has either encouraged, or allowed through indifference, her son’s eccentric if not dangerous behaviour. That she then pushed to have him become a girl scout, then spoke so vociferously to the media, and had her son do the same – not a good idea at such a young age – leads us to believe that it’s not indifference, but an agenda.
Look, kids want to be Superman, Batman, dinosaurs, dogs, and cats, anything and everything. They also want to play with matches, run into the road – any number of things that might hurt them. It’s our job as parents to lovingly control this behaviour, not to selfishly encourage it. We know that children are not qualified to vote, drink, or drive a car, but we suddenly think they are qualified to decide what gender they are. There is no such thing as self-identification. It‘s a modern, modernist phrase invented by activists to legitimize their neuroses, supported by bogus psychiatrists to extend their influence and field of alleged expertise.
Nobody asked in this case – and there have been more since then – how the girls in the scouts group feel, and you can be assured that those girls who are not at all comfortable will be told that they are threatened, old-fashioned, and that they and not the boy and his mother are the problem here. We are meant to raise children, but now we experiment with them; we are meant to love children, but instead we indulge ourselves by indulging them. We cannot change our gender, even with surgery and drugs; all we can do is kick out against reality, glorifying some push me pull you creation of weird science and weirder morality.
As I said, I don’t understand all that is going on here, and perhaps never will, but I am not prepared to allow political fashion to triumph over natural law and common sense. If we’re going to have a dialogue about this, all opinions must be invited to the table – yes, even those of the terrible social conservatives.
Michael Coren’s latest book is Hatred: Islam’s War on Christianity. He can be booked for speeches at mcoren@sympatico.ca