Haters

I came across this post a few days ago on Facebook:

When a person chooses hate, it is difficult to turn around and choose not to hate. Hate is not always the label they would choose for the emotion they put out. Usually, it is more as if they feel that they are right, no matter what.

OK. Basically I agree with that. But this particular statement is more than just a bit ironic. Here’s some background.

Several months ago, ahead of the November election, I posted my ballot recommendations, as I usually do. Unlike most of my posts, these occasional ones are meant for local/state friends that are looking at the same ballot I am and want more information before they vote. In this post I included a short section about the Houston mayoral race. I’m just outside the city of Houston, so I didn’t delve into the race, but I did point out some basic information:

 photo from David Bro/Zuma Press/Newscom,found here

The mayor, as well as city council races are non-partisan. That is, the candidates don’t run from a party, with a primary putting up a chosen candidate. The candidates themselves, however, generally have a strong party affiliation. And Houston hasn’t had a Republican mayor since 1938[i]….

Then we got Mayor Anise Parker, who ran as a businesswoman. She sounded sensible. You’re supposed to vote for the best person. I don’t vote in Houston city elections, but she seemed reasonable, and I wasn’t against her. As soon as she was elected, the news announced how remarkable it was that a lesbian had been elected.

During her campaign her sexual orientation had not been an issue. Suddenly it was. And she conducted her administration as an activist for homosexuality. HERO (the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance), Prop 1 on the city ballot, is an example—which you must vote AGAINST if you're in Houston; it adds no equal rights protections to anyone, but does take away the right to believe women and children are put at risk if men are allowed in their bathrooms. If you followed that issue, you know Mayor Parker threw out tens of thousands of signatures intended to put it on the ballot, rather than just going along with her. And she subpoenaed pastors for their sermons and communications to see if they said anything about LGBT issues. She was legally slapped down for that.

So now, maybe it’s time to forget about who appears to be the best person, cross off everyone that is a Democrat, a liberal, or a progressive (or any other code word). And from whomever is left, find the best conservative and vote for that person.

That commentary was a trigger. Was I wrong to say we shouldn’t vote for that sort of leadership? The writer of the anti-hate words I quoted above thinks so. Disapproval came as a late-night Facebook attack, even though he had known me since my teenage years—and had not that long ago told me I was one of the kindest, sweetest people he remembered from high school. Suddenly I was one of the most hateful people he’d ever encountered. “So much hate,” and “homophobia,” and “How is this not defending hate?”

What had I done to deserve that epithet? Only write the above portion of a story on local politics—which I had posted where he could go read them, but I had not invited him to do so.

Family and friends messaged me and said to block the jerk (worse word was used). I disengaged, went to bed, and didn’t block him until I saw that he had gone on through hours of the night, and still tried to bait me the afternoon of the next day.

Because I’m hateful? For not approving of the former mayor of Houston’s illegal attack on local churches and anyone who disagreed with her?

A reasonable person would see that, in actual fact, I didn’t say anything anti-gay or hateful; I noted that the former mayor was elected even though she was a lesbian, because people didn’t care about that if she was going to be a good mayor. But she wasn’t a good mayor. And she betrayed the people who voted for her by using her platform as mayor to favor a segment of the population and attacking people who disagreed.

Writers get this kind of attack. Why bother about this one? Only to illustrate about the definition of hate that is being forced on reasonable people. Truth and people who speak truth are attacked louder and louder as haters.

Matt Walsh summed up the situation earlier this week:

But it’s one thing to fail in your pursuit of holiness, and it’s another to call holiness ”hateful.” It’s one thing to sin, it’s another to say that sinning is not sinful. It’s one thing to disobey the Commandments, it’s another to categorically reject the authority of the Commandments. It’s one thing to crawl back to God and beg for forgiveness, it’s another to stand there and say you don’t need forgiveness because God was wrong when he called your sin a sin. It’s one thing to follow Christian teachings imperfectly, it’s another to loudly denounce them. It’s one thing to fall short of the faith, it’s another to change the faith to suit you.

He was speaking at Catholic University on religious liberty. One would think that would be a safe place to speak on such a topic. But, it’s a university, not the safest place for free speech these days, maybe especially religious free speech. Walsh talks about the Q&A afterward:

Nobody shouted or heckled during my speech, which was nice, but the Q&A afterwards was mostly dominated by one student after another fishing for applause by calmly explaining why I’m a mean, hateful bigot, and so forth. I argued with as many of them as I could before they kicked us out of the room, then I stood in the hallway and argued for another hour.

Most of the kids offended by my arguments and my very presence were upset that I don’t believe in “marriage equality.” Some said they agreed with me but believe my approach is hateful. The word hate was tossed around quite a bit. My words are hateful, my ideas are hateful, my beliefs are hateful. Everything is hateful. Except for a crowd of people pointing at me and calling me hateful. They’re not hateful, remember. Just me.

Yes, there’s the irony.

There’s been a lot of that hate word in the news lately. North Carolina’s HB2 bill was similar to Houston’s anti-HERO fight. The bill intended to keep things the way they had been since about the time public restrooms were invented, a month after the Charlotte City Council imposed transgendered bathrooms on people there.

In Washington State female victims of sexual abuse are speaking out against a transgender bathroom policy there. They’re getting called hateful, but the people who disregard their realistic fears are supposedly the caring, open-minded, tolerant ones.

Are their fears realistic? These incidents lead to a yes:

·         A sexual predator in Toronto was jailed after claiming to be “transgender” as a ruse to assault women in a shelter.

·         In southern California, a perpetrator dressed as a women, spent two hours in a women’s restroom to video women going to the bathroom before being caught.

·         A man who had victimized grade school girls was caught in a women’s changing room where girls were changing into swim suits. He was caught in similar acts two years later.

·         A man put on a bra and wig to spy on women in a community college women’s bathroom. This was not his first voyeurism incident.

·         A self-identified transgender boy dressed as a girl, and insisted on accommodations by the school district, including using the girls’ locker room.

·         A 24-year-old transgender male youth minister is guilty of dozens of counts of sexual abuse of a 9-year-old girl.

·         A man was arrested for multiple counts of indecent exposure was dressed as a woman in the women’s section of a Walmart.

·         A prisoner guilty of second-degree murder and beating up women decided he was a woman during his 28-year sentence and has been paroled.

·         A 6’3” 280-lb. martial arts expert decided he was transgender. A woman questioned his presence in a women’s bathroom and he knocked out five of her teeth.

·         A man was caught twice on voyeurism charges in a women’s bathroom of a public library.

These last eight are among many more compiled on a 23-minute video. There are plenty of examples, not for the squeamish.

“Transgendered” individuals are an extremely small subset of society—an estimated 3 per 1000, while women who are victims of sexual predators in their lifetime are estimated to be about 20%, and those who feel uncomfortable when subjected to possible voyeurism is almost universal. We ought to be able to come up with an agreeable practice that doesn’t ignore the concerns of half of the population and those who care about them. I believe we had one until agenda-driven activists started imposing this unacceptable new LGBT “right.”

The American College of Pediatricians recently called it child abuse to submit children to gender reassignment, since 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty[ii]. Of adults who have gone through surgical and hormonal reassignment suffer 20 times greater rates of suicide than those who don’t undergo a chemical and/or surgical change.[iii]

It is possible, even probable, that “transgenderism” is more accurately a mental illness. It was put like this, by Michael Brown, in an “open letter to Bruce Springsteen,” who has decided to boycott North Carolina over the issue, while not worrying about much greater violence to LGBT people in other parts of the world:

First, how do you know if someone is really “transgender” or not? Is it determined entirely by how they feel about themselves? If so, do you think that it might be hard to make laws based entirely on how people feel? Did you ever stop to consider that?

Second, what’s the difference between someone with “gender dysphoria” (or, as it used to be called, “gender identity disorder”) and someone, say, with schizophrenia or “multiple personality disorder” or some other psychological condition? In other words, if a man is a biological and chromosomal male but believes he is a woman, is he actually a woman, or does he have a psychological disorder?...

Since you don’t like HB2 — indeed, your guitarist called it an “evil virus” — what’s your plan to keep the predators out? How can we tell the difference between a “genuine” transgender person and a sexual predator?

I like his final question to Springsteen—about the irony:

When you booked the concert in Greenboro, the laws in North Carolina were just as they are today: In public facilities, people had to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that corresponded to their biological sex. Why, then, did you agree to come in the first place? Why cancel the concert when things today are just what they were six months ago?

I suggest that the answer is a knee-jerk assumption. By definition, they believe anyone who disagrees with their currently trendy yet ironically illiberal political correctness couldn’t possibly have any motive for their beliefs except hatred and bigotry. And they hate those different believers for it; they will not tolerate opposing beliefs or the people who hold them.

I do not accept their definition of hate.

I can tell I’m not hating. I’m calm; I’m feeling compassion toward all sides. I’ve considered the arguments on all sides and come down where I think God is guiding me to believe, which happens to be also where the scientific evidence is leading.

I think my belief is more compassionate all around. And when I find old friends who believe otherwise, I don’t throw away years of positive interactions to call them hateful sinners. Only the real haters do that.

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[i] This detail was in error. I had misread some information on Wikipedia. Later I learned that the last Republican mayor of Houston was James Joseph McConn, from 1978 to 1982. My basic point still holds; the city has rarely had a Republican (even a moderate Republican) mayor in its long history.

[ii] American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Arlington, VA, American Psychiatric Association, 2013 (451-459). See page 455 re: rates of persistence of gender dysphoria.

[iii] Dhejne, C, et.al. “Long-Term Follow-Up of Transsexual Persons Undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery: Cohort Study in Sweden.” PLoS ONE, 2011; 6(2). Affiliation: Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Division of Psychiatry, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. Accessed 3.20.16 from http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885.

Character Trumps Tribe, Part I

The attack on freedom of religion by Houston Mayor Annise Parker brought to mind a point about identity politics. Or, to frame it from a better position, character trumps tribe.


Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his speech on the steps of the Lincoln Monument.
His dream was that we would judge each other by the content of our character,
rather than the color of our skin.

I mentioned last week that, when Annise Parker was running for mayor, she downplayed her connection to the LGBT community. She ran as a sensible businessperson with skills the city needed. And she just happened to be a lesbian, but that didn’t affect her skills. That, however, was a lie to get elected. She did not have adequate skills to overcome her tribal connection.

She has reigned as the first openly homosexual mayor of a major American city. Ah, the glory! And she has used the power of her position, time and again, to press the agenda of her tribe, rather than the overall needs of all the citizens. She may even believe that putting forward her tribal agenda is best for all. But it isn’t. She’s blinded by that overriding agenda.

She can’t see that pressing her agenda at the risk of giving sexual predators legal, unquestioned access to women’s bathrooms is not good for the community as a whole. She can’t even hear the huge outcry from the community who see that obvious danger. And she’s so sure she’s right that she arbitrarily throws out the 55,000 signatures of the people who want to put the question on the ballot. When she’s called on that illegality and must defend her actions in a lawsuit, she uses that opportunity to intimidate churches for speaking on this moral issue.

So, now that we have had a first openly homosexual mayor of a major US city, what do we know? The agenda of the tribe trumps the character of the candidate. Will that always be true? Perhaps not, but she has given us reason to beware. If her actual goal was to move members of her tribe into acceptance among the broader community, she set back that work a generation or more.

We have a similar situation with our first black president. [Style note: I do not know which changing term is best to use for the race previously referred to as black. Referring to it as African-American is inaccurate, since not all Africans are of the black race, nor are all blacks from Africa, nor are all people of that race Americans. So, for simplicity, I use the term black, meaning no disrespect or offense.]

He ran as post-racial. Many people succumbed to that. It’s a positive thing to show what so many of us already felt—race doesn’t matter; character and capability matter. Unfortunately, he was voted in because of his race, regardless of lack of character and capability. And, six years in I think it’s safe to say that his is the most racist administration we have had since Woodrow Wilson (who separated blacks serving in the military and encouraged eugenics that have led to a higher percentage of blacks being aborted than any other race—possibly more being aborted than being born).

Almost immediately after his election, he appointed a racist Attorney General, Eric Holder, who refused to prosecute Black Panthers for voter intimidation, because they were black. And it was his policy that anything racist that blacks do is fair, and only non-blacks will be prosecuted for racist (or perceived racist) offenses. See J. Christian Adams’s book Injustice.

The president has tried to construe disagreement with him and his policies as racism—just as Mayor Parker has tried to construe disagreement with her as being homophobic. He uses his tribalism as a power tool against numerous other segments of the people: Constitution respecters, religious people, people who assert their second amendment rights, people who respect the military….

Now that we have had a first black president, what do we know? The agenda of the tribe trumps the character of the candidate. With blacks, this may set things back even further than you might think. We have the additional data that more than 9 out of 10 blacks voted for this man—because of his race. In other words, we have clear evidence that an overwhelming majority of the black “tribe” identify with the tribal connection more than with the American connection. This is where stereotypes come from—a probable truth. Most of the blacks we meet failed to vote in favor of American freedom and constitution, because they had a chance to vote for someone of their color. Most blacks, we can conclude safely from the overwhelming data, are racist. Tribal.

This means racism is a bigger issue than before the Obama elections. I’m expanding this discussion to “tribalism,” because race isn’t the only group with an agenda. Tribalism isn’t a good thing.

Think back to high school. Your school had a cross-town rival. Were all the people in your school better than all the people in the rival school? No. Was your school better than theirs because you had a better football team? Or even because you had more graduates go on to college? There might be some useful measures, but chances are you rooted for your school team out of loyalty. You went there; you belonged. And that’s all that matters.

But in grown-up world, loyalty by happenstance isn’t a good enough reason for supporting a person or policy.

There’s more to cover here, to fully understand our divisions, and possibly to find some way out. So we’ll continue this in part II.