J.J. McCullough's Transgender Compromise Suggestion -- Let's Not | National Review

J.J. McCullough's Transgender Compromise Suggestion -- Let's Not | National Review:

Michael Brendan Dougherty rebuts McCullough's tendentious column urging conservative capitulation on transgenderism.

'As I wrote in a recent cover story for NR, the demand to acknowledge someone's "existence" is a slippery bit of a double-talk. I would be an idiot to deny McCullough's existence. But if he said that he were a Camaroonian, rather than a Canadian, would it be his existence that I denied by contradicting him? McCullough goes on to say that we shouldn't be boorish. Okay. Fine. He cautions against, "[e]mbracing open prejudice." Sounds good. But are we allowed to tell the truth?

'I worry we are not, since we are now falsifying even recent history. McCullough refers to other recent changes in attitudes toward sexuality and says they are "not an attitude government has coerced Americans into." Au contraire. The very public firings of dissenters and their virtual economic blacklisting, are very directly inspired by fear of Title VII litigation. The government has merely outsourced thought-policing to corporate HR departments.

'Let me lay down my prediction, here. We are not headed toward some civilized modus vivendi but imminent tragedy. In the future, the current psychological theories and surgical enthusiasms associated with this movement will be regarded with open horror.'

Transgender Debate: Conservatives Can't Compromise the Truth | National Review

David French also responds to McCullough's proposal:

'While I'm utterly opposed to boorish behavior, the use of a pronoun isn't a matter of mere manners. It's a declaration of a fact. I won't call Chelsea Manning "she" for a very simple reason. He's a man.... We're on a dangerous road if we imply that treating a person with "basic human dignity" requires acquiescing to claims we know to be false.

'I don't know any serious social conservative who doesn't believe that a transgender man or woman is entitled to "basic human dignity." No one is claiming that they should be excluded from the blessings of American liberty or deprived of a single privilege or immunity of citizenship.... But that's not the contemporary legal controversy. Current legal battles revolve around the state's effort to force private and public entities to recognize and accommodate transgender identities. The justification for this coercive effort is often the state's alleged interest in preventing so-called "dignitary" harm. Thus, men are granted rights to enter a woman's restroom, even when gender-neutral options are available. Thus, private citizens are forced to use false pronouns. Girls are forced to allow a boy to stay in their room on an overnight school trip, or they're forced to compete against boys in athletic competition.

'But once you grant the premise that a man is, in fact, a woman, don't all these consequences flow directly from that concession? After all, existing nondiscrimination statutes are quite clear in their scope. And judicial precedents are increasingly aligning with this new fiction. To "compromise" on identity (including on pronouns) is to end the dispute.

'In his own response to J.J.'s piece, Michael Brendan Dougherty asks a key question, "[A]re we allowed to tell the truth?" Increasingly, the answer is no. J.J. compares the modern dispute over transgenderism to current and recent fights over homosexuality. The comparison is instructive, but not in the way that he hopes. There has been no "compromise" over homosexuality. Instead, we're locked in brutal legal fights over whether Christian bakers and florists can be compelled to use their artistic talents to celebrate gay weddings. Christian colleges have had to fend off challenges to their accreditation and funding (and the Obama administration raised the possibility of challenging their tax exemptions) for simply upholding basic standards of Christian sexual morality. And in California, the new sexual orthodoxy now threatens even the sale of books that deliver a disfavored message not just on sexual orientation but also on sexual conduct.

'I understand the desire for social peace. Truly I do. The culture wars are exhausting and divisive. But treating every single human being with dignity and respect means not just defending their constitutional liberties and showing them basic human kindness, it also means telling the truth -- even when the truth is hard. Any compromise that requires conservatives to grant the other side's false and harmful premise is no compromise at all.'

Those of us who understand the truth need to speak the truth in love, and to resist the pressure to conform or remain silent, because the lies of the LGBT movement wound, maim, kill, and damn.