California leads the way in confusing our children

When I was a teenager, I was enamored with all things Greek: Greek antiquity, Greek music, Greek food. I wanted to be Greek! At some point a classmate remarked with smiling puzzlement, “Gee, Dave, I don’t think you can change your ethnic origin.” We all laughed and I came to my senses.

But California lawmakers have now made it a right to take leave of your senses. They have amended the Education Code to require that “… a pupil be permitted to participate in sex-segregated school programs and activities, including athletic teams and competitions, and use facilities consistent with his or her gender identity, irrespective of the gender listed on the pupil’s records.”

According to the state of California, one’s sex is simply a choice. A person is male or female because one self-identifies as such. It has nothing to do with how one was born or, in rare cases, with one’s naturally changing anatomy. This is what state law now teaches young Californians. So, for example, girls may use boys’ restrooms and locker rooms and play on boys’ sports teams if they simply indicate they consider themselves boys, despite all appearances and genetic evidence. There is no mention of parents.

Ben Hudson of the Gender Health Center explained, “In reality, this is about the safety of our trans students.” But we have separate restrooms and locker rooms not only for modesty’s sake, but also to keep girls safe from predatory boys. The emotional danger to self-conscious young men and women, whether from trauma or coarsening, is also worth our concern.

In a scientific poll of my children, my girls (9 and 13) said they would simply not use the restroom if a merely self-identified “girl” were allowed it use it. My boys (11 and 12) said they would tell a merely self-identified “boy” to “get out!” Then they plotted various pranks they would pull. Boys will be boys.

You really have to propagandize and punish the boy out of the boys and the girl out of the girls to make this arrangement work for the so-called transgendered. In other words, for the rare few to be comfortably transgendered, all children and eventually all adults have to become a little trans themselves.

This development should not surprise us. Once you make choice sovereign over sexual ethics, rather than a rationally or divinely determined sexual ethic sovereign over choices, this sort of nonsense follows. Once you understand liberty as autonomy, living only by self-given standards, receiving nothing by authority from God or men, living or dead, as a kind of self-creation, you encourage this kind of insanity. And as usual, it’s children who suffer.

The Apostle Paul urges us, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” But many Christians who continue using such schools will come to accept these accommodations as normal and as a suitable expression of Christian charity. If you let confused people teach your children, don’t be surprised if your children end up confused.