The Patriot Post® · Calling a Tail a Leg Doesn't Make It a Leg

The latest leftist assault on common sense and traditional norms brings us to Nebraska, where a training document titled “12 easy steps on the way to gender inclusiveness” instructs teachers at Irving Middle School in Lincoln to avoid using terms like “‘boys & girls,’ ‘you guys,’ ‘ladies and gentlemen,’ and similarly gendered expressions to get kids’ attention.” The general rule, the document states, is this: “Always ask yourself … ‘Will this configuration create a gendered space?’”

Ideologically instigated nonsense is more like it. Item No. 5 instructs teachers that when it becomes necessary to reference gender, “[S]ay ‘Boy, girl, both or neither.’” Item 7 instructs them to “call out” and “interrogate” media examples that “reinforce gender stereotypes of binary models of gender.”

Teachers were also supplied with a companion handout from the Center for Gender Sanity.“ It depicts a gingerbread-like character replete with four graphs explaining the ranges of gender identity (from women to genderqueer to man), gender expression (female-androgynous-masculine), biological sex (female-intersex-male), and sexual orientation (heterosexual-bisexual-homosexual).

Adding insult to injury, Lincoln Superintendent Steve Joel had the nerve to say, "We don’t get involved with politics.” After the predictable national outcry, Joel was far more defensive, insisting nothing had been “mandated,” adding, “There’s no policy, there’s no procedure, there’s [sic] no changes being made to bathrooms in schools.”

One suspects Joel and his ideological soul-mates were taking their cues from the epicenter of ideological insanity, more familiarly known as California. In August 2013, Democrat Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill allowing kindergarten through 12th grade students to use whichever bathroom and locker room they prefer, as well as the right “to participate in sex-segregated programs, activities and facilities” based on self-perception, irrespective of birth gender.

Yet even Governor Moonbeam and his California comrades are a bit behind the curve. At Bellevue College in Washington state, no less than seven gender choices are included in two questions about students’ sexuality contained in the school’s application form. They include bisexual, gay, lesbian, queer, straight/heterosexual, other and prefer not to answer.

This New World Order has attendant complications, especially when it comes to sports. A proposal to allow students to play on teams based on their preferred gender rather than the sex assigned to them at birth led to an outcry in Minnesota, temporarily delaying a vote on the policy until December. There’s also been blowback in the world of mixed martial arts. Fallon Fox, a male-to-female transsexual, is currently undefeated and some of his/her opponents have had the temerity to suggest that a former man successfully beating up women might be a tad unfair. One of them, UFC fighter Matt Mitrione, was suspended for “trans-phobic” remarks.

Apparently, acknowledging reality is now considered offensive.

Is anyone truly surprised? With the exception of extremely rare cases of hermaphroditism, there are only two genders: male or female. That such designations raise the ire of leftists speaks to their insidious efforts to impose their anything-goes agenda, even one that kicks nature to the curb. Even history can be “amended” – in 47 states and the District of Columbia, a person can change his or her birth certificate to reflect a sexual conversion.

Moreover, it is an agenda that knows no boundaries. A recent article in The New York Times insists current law with regard to pedophilia is “inconsistent and irrational,” and that it is time to “revisit” categorical exclusions contained in the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that prohibited pedophilia from receiving the same kind of protection afforded other mental disabilities. The writer is gracious enough to separate practicing pedophiles from “inactive” ones and even admits that, in making accommodations for employment, a pedophile “should not be hired as a grade-school teacher.” Yet given the incrementalist march of leftist insanity, one might be forgiven for thinking such a restriction might be temporary at best.

The doyens of “social justice,” who not only expect tolerance but approval of their agenda – with all the attendant contempt and vituperation aimed at those who dare to resist – will inevitably demand nothing less.

In Nebraska, the effort to deny gender instructs teachers to “Create classroom names and then ask all of the ‘purple penguins’ to meet at the rug.” They’ll have to do better than that: Penguins themselves are both male and female. Perhaps “amber amoebas” would work. Or perhaps Americans uninterested in having their children marinated in such despicable garbage will remember a relevant quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln: “How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”