You Can’t Make This Stuff Up Dept.

     Well, we’re finally there. It’s no longer a distant image shimmering ominously on the horizon. It’s no longer possible that it’s a mirage caused by the heat. You won’t need the wind at your back to spit and hit it. You’re standing in it.

     This is Hell, nor are we out of it:

     On Tuesday, the Fourth Circuit Court ruled against a Virginia school district that sought to accommodate a transgender student while also protecting the privacy rights of other students.

     The court concluded that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972—which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex—should be interpreted as prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity, as a Department of Education letter suggested in 2015. The ruling allows a lawsuit brought by a transgender student to proceed.

     The case involves a biological girl who identifies as a boy. The court’s majority explains it this way: “G.G.’s birth-assigned sex, or so-called ‘biological sex,’” is female, but G.G.’s gender identity is male.” Note the scare quotes around what the court calls “so-called ‘biological sex.” Biological sex, in fact, is precisely what Congress protected in 1972.

     Does anyone expect the Supreme Court to overturn this? Given that with Scalia gone, the four left-wing justices can tie the Court, which would leave the Court of Appeals’ decision in place? Given that John Roberts interpreted a law whose backers said isn’t a tax to be a tax? Given that he disregarded the explicit text of that same law to reach a ruling contrary to its clear intent?

     This is it, folks. Not only is the law whatever the political elite says it is; reality is what the political elite says it is.

     John Derbyshire is right. We’re doomed.

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     Normally I don’t write merely to vent some outrage. This, plainly, is not a normal occasion. But the point of venting is to “get it out” – and so far, I find that I can’t.

     The problem might be linguistic: i.e., that I don’t have words sufficient unto the task. I find that proposition dubious.

     Perhaps it’s epistemological. For the life of me I can’t understand how men learned enough to be put on a federal bench could possibly ratify so insane a notion. That would indicate an insufficiency in my intellect compared to theirs. Excuse me for saying so, but I don’t think that’s the case.

     And perhaps it’s perceptual. Maybe I just can’t see the reality the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has decreed. Maybe my sense organs are defective. Or maybe I’ve been hallucinating this business of “so-called ‘biological sex’” all these years. Such a hallucination would have to have one hell of a lot of staying power, but there are precedents.

     What do you think, Gentle Reader? Is your humble commentator verbally, intellectually, or perceptually challenged? Perhaps some combination of the three?

     I can’t wait to hear from the peanut gallery on this one.

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     Victimism – the demand for special accommodations or privileges in the law on account of claimed “oppression,” past or present – has proved to be more powerful than even I could have imagined. And I have a vivid imagination; it’s a requirement for one who writes my sort of fiction.

     But it needn’t start with a direct assault on the law or on social customs. Indeed, it seldom starts there. In recent years the lunacies rampant among us have germinated among the “mental health professionals.”

     Psychologists and psychiatrists have “normalized” many behaviors once deemed perverse and destructive, and many beliefs that were once recognized as absurd. Until about forty years ago, for a born male to maintain that he is nevertheless female would result in a course of therapy, possibly involuntary, to reacquaint him with reality. Needless to say, that’s no longer the case. In fact, there have been attempts to outlaw such courses of therapy, even when voluntarily sought and accepted.

     “They’re sick and need help” has been replaced by “We should be kind and accommodate them,” and thereafter by “We must punish those who insist that they’re sick or who refuse to accommodate them.” Pop culture has lionized these lunatics and their demands. Normal persons who perceive reality as it is, rather than through an LSD-induced kaleidoscope of transformations and mutations, are now considered antisocial at best, criminals at worst. The fear of being condemned as an ist, if not an outright phobe, is so pervasive that seemingly normal, rational people prostrate themselves in abasement before the most bizarre imaginable claims and demands. We get encounters like this:

     ...daily, in innumerable walks of life, out of that fear. And of course, once the law gets involved – as, in our age of the Omnipotent State, it eventually will – the fear becomes much, much greater.

     Inventoried your ammunition stocks lately, Gentle Reader?

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     I have two stepdaughters. I’m glad they’re fully grown adults. I’d hate for them to be subjected to the sort of educational environment that will allow teenage boys who claim to be girls to share a restroom with them. Anyone with three functioning brain cells will be able to predict the sort of hijinks that will ensue.

     But wait: one of the girls is a public-school biology teacher. So she’s not safe after all. What should I tell her? Advise her to carry a weapon? That probably wouldn’t be allowed. Watch who’s going into and coming out of the restroom for a few minutes before she enters? That might result in charges of stalking or “discrimination.” Tell her not to drink anything on a school morning, so she won’t need to use the school’s restrooms? That’s unhealthful, and besides, it’s “error-prone.”

     Are there any sane places left on Earth? Where reality isn’t subject to court decisions and you don’t need to be a penguin to survive and flourish? Give me your thoughts, Gentle Readers. I’m all ears.

     It’s time for Mass.