The Truth About Hate

This has got to be the dumbest piece of news I’ve heard all month, perhaps even all year and that’s really saying a lot.  A faith based women’s shelter in Alaska called Downtown Hope Center is currently embroiled in a nasty battle with a city agency over a discrimination complaint filed against the shelter for refusing to take in a biological man who identifies as a woman.

Timothy Coyle, who now goes by Samantha, had been ejected from a nearby homeless shelter for fighting before showing up drunk and wounded at the Hope Center’s door. He was denied admittance, but was provided cab fare and sent to the ER for treatment.  When he came back the next day and again was turned away, he filed a complaint with the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission,  claiming he is female and transgender and so belongs to a protected class that the Hope Center discriminated against by refusing to let him stay there.

Folks, this is where denial of truth goes off the rails and becomes dangerous.  And, as usual with these types of things, it’s the most defenseless members of society who end up taking the hit.

Downtown Hope Center’s mission is to provide battered women and sex trafficking escapees a safe place to stay, while they get resources in place to move up and out of their volatile  situations.  It goes without saying that many of its residents live in constant fear of their abusers and that just being near any man can trigger severe emotional distress; thus shelter inhabitants are understandably limited to females only.  Men can be offered assistance but are not allowed to live there.

Bettering the lives of vulnerable women however is not what a Social Justice Warrior bent on a cause cares one whit about, nor, really, are transgender people.  You see this is not about letting people live their lives as they see fit, but compulsion. As Kevin D. Williamson states brilliantly in this NRO column about Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips:

“After winning his case at the Supreme Court, Phillips was again targeted by Colorado activists, one of whom asked him to make a cake to celebrate coming out as transgender. Phillips declined, and was ordered to the state to compulsory mediation. He is countersuing.

Liberalism has always struggled to balance the protection of minority rights against majoritarian institutions and — less often appreciated — the protection of individual rights. The American Left has liberated itself from such considerations by abandoning liberalism for identity politics and a might-makes-right ethic.

Why compel Jack Phillips to knuckle under? Because you can, and because you hate him. Hate is an inescapable part of tribalism, and hate is now the single most important organizing principle of the American Left.”

Hate. Such a small word, but one that holds enormous influence over our country’s political, cultural and social discourse. For some time now, most folks have accepted transgender people and their wish to change genders. While it’s probably impossible for outsiders to fully understand why a person would do this, most of us generally don’t like to see others suffer and are fine with people changing their sex if it offers some relief.

Live and let live is fine up to a point.  It becomes a problem when it bleeds over in to threatening the safety and rights of others.  Common sense tells us that a biological man staying at a shelter for battered women is a bad idea, as is allowing him access to female locker rooms and bathrooms just because he identifies as a woman.  Again, whose interests are really being served here by compelling society to accept this as normal?

Certainly not women and girls and most people know this.  Yet, those who push back get labeled as intolerant haters, facing social ostracism and even possible job loss for holding such “archaic” views. Most understandably end up shutting up and keeping their heads down.  Normal people don’t have the time and emotional energy to spend days on end defending themselves on social media, plus no one wants to lose friends or put their jobs in jeopardy over stuff like this.

And that is the exact reaction the identity politics crowd wants.  The majority of the country may not agree with them, but they know their loud and relentless bullying and cries of hater thrown at anyone who disagrees shuts down debate and allows their agenda to creep forward.  Complex issues that require open and honest conversations, now get dumbed down to two opposing sides; the good, right side of history crowd vs those bad traditional values folks.

A free and democratic society that values truth cannot function under such tactics. A some point people will either decide they’ve had enough and stop catering to this social justice nonsense or draconian speech laws will eventually take root and religious freedoms will be greatly curtailed.

The transgender community needs acknowledgement from outsiders that they too are just regular people trying to forge a happy and fulfilling life.  Balancing their needs with society as a whole requires great empathy, and grace plus an understanding that there are no easy answers.

The denial of truth however should not be tolerated, nor should anyone be shamed in to thinking it should.