Liberal Pushback on Transgender Bathrooms
Last week I attended the annual National Hispanic Christian Leadership
Conference, which is said to be the largest Hispanic evangelical
organization in the US. When the issue of transgender bathrooms/locker
rooms came up, the frustration and anger of this traditional socially
conservative group was palpable. That was to be expected. What's less
expected, but welcome from my point of view, is the reaction of many on
the more liberal side of the spectrum.
Self-identified liberal Damon Linker at The Week, recently wrote:
In purely political terms, the decision seems inexplicable. The number of transgendered people in the United States is vanishingly small — something on the order of 0.3 percent of the population. Many people, like me, who have no problem with allowing transgendered adults to use the bathroom of their choice nonetheless think it misguided to indulge the decisions of children in this area. (Kids aren't allowed to drink alcohol, drive, vote, work, or volunteer to fight in the military, but they should be permitted to change their birth gender?)
And then there's this article
from an "urban Christian," whose struggle for justice in the inner city
likely includes sympathy with some progressive ideas, but who decidedly
questions the morality of many of Obama's moves.
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Colleges Losing Touch with Reality
Speaking of insanity, Nathan Heller's longish New Yorker
article "The Big Uneasy" describes his experiences at one of America's
elite institutions of higher learning, Oberlin College. He notes how the
school mimicks a larger trend in which "schools across the country have
been roiling with activism that has seemed to shift the meaning of
contemporary liberalism." He gives a recent example from Emory
University,
...when students complained of being traumatized after finding "TRUMP 2016" chalked on sidewalks around campus. The Trump-averse protesters chanted, "Come speak to us, we are in pain!" until Emory's president wrote a letter promising to "honor the concerns of these students."
A key paragraph reads:
Such reports flummoxed many people who had always thought of themselves as devout liberals. Wasn't free self-expression the whole point of social progressivism? Wasn't liberal academe a way for ideas, good and bad, to be subjected to enlightened reason? Generations of professors and students imagined the university to be a temple for productive challenge and perpetually questioned certainties. Now, some feared, schools were being reimagined as safe spaces for coddled youths and the self-defined, untested truths that they held dear. Disorientingly, too, none of the disputes followed normal ideological divides: both the activists and their opponents were multicultural, educated, and true of heart. At some point, it seemed, the American left on campus stopped being able to hear itself think.
Rod Dreher's commentary will give you the gist of Heller's piece, if you don't have the time to read the original.
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The Fruit of Peace
On the good news front, there's Ethiopia. It's not completely good news
because, due to a recent drought, 20 million Ethiopians are desperately
short of food. But wheat is being imported and getting to hungry people,
water is delivered to towns whose wells have dried up, and malnourished
children are being treated.
The author of this New York Times article
answers his own question, "How did Ethiopia go from being the world's
symbol of mass famines to fending off starvation?" The answer has less
to do with good farming than good politics.
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Grace and peace,
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P.S. Father's Day is around the corner. This year, order dad a Father's Day Gift Box including Andy Crouch's new book, Strong and Weak, plus a year of CT magazine: OrderCT.com/giftbox
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