Have you heard of this development? New York City is moving forward with a plan to let people alter the sex on their birth certificates.
Here's how it works. If you're a man but feel like a woman, you can be one. No sex change required. You just need a note from your doctor. You get your birth certificate changed, and you can now wear a skirt and blouse and not feel funny about it. You can even keep your Merle Haggard beard.
You can also go into women's restrooms and locker rooms. The rule change would also probably allow the "woman" to marry a man. Want to adopt a child by posing as a childless woman? No problem, the adoption agency can't find out about your maleness without a court order (though you'd probably want to shave the Haggard before the interview).
It's a good development, if you like government to provide freedom from reality (here, the reality of your gender). You don't need to drink yourself into a coma or smoke more dope than a Jamaican during a Rastafarian holiday to escape reality. You can just locate to New York City.
I'm hoping this trend isn't limited to gender decisions. I, for instance, would like the freedom to be a horse. I guess I have that freedom now: I could walk around on all fours, snort, and try to get people to ride me. But it'd be a lot better if I could force my local Health Board to recognize it and give me Mr. Ed status. That way, I'd be entitled to a public servant to scoop up the streets after me.
The advocates of laws that give people freedom from reality don't just want that freedom for themselves. I, after all, can wear my wife's underwear and weep while watching the Soap Opera channel. I don't need a new law for that. I just need my own apartment.
But if I want to force the rest of society to say (without mockery), "That's a nice bra you're wearing today, Mr. Scheske," I need a rule change. Without it, societal attitudes don't change, with the result that someone might think I'm a freak.
It's all related to the gay marriage debate, if you haven't figured it out. It isn't about civil rights or freedom. It's about forcing the rest of society to accept the freedom from reality that you desire. It would be like a drunk demanding that the rest of society honor his drinking problem. "Whatta grand thing that Mr. Fields drank so much at the bar that now he's staggering down main street with little command of his bodily fluids. If he wants to get that drunk, people shouldn't snicker at him." (He also shouldn't have to deal with a hangover, but that one might be out of legislative reach, even for the NYC Board of Health.)
The folks who want gay marriage don't want it for themselves. They want it for the rest of society. They want everyone to say, "Whatta grand thing that Chuck and Bob are having relations." They don't want the inconvenience of society (or reality) saying, "Marriage is by nature man and woman." They want freedom from that reality, and they want the rest of us to go along with the farce.
It makes me kinda wonder. All the sexual civil rights stuff started with the privacy mantra: "What two consenting adults do in their own bedroom is their own business." Privacy this, privacy that. It had a ring to it that Americans intuitively sympathize with.
But it didn't take long before the privacy theme got translated into a public one. The gays didn't just want privacy. They wanted public affirmation of their gayness. And now the "transgender" folks don't want to wear women's clothing in private. They want to wear it in public, and they want everyone to say it's cool.
