How Did We Get Here, And How Do We Get Back?
By TOM TAKASH
Heard repeatedly in a popular science fiction television series from the 1960s, the request “Beam me up, Scottie” was a command to transport characters via a beam of light back to their spaceship from another location, usually a planet below. The command was from a series called Star Trek, and it came immediately to my mind when I read about a guide published earlier this month on CNN. (My wife, Beth, says CNN must stand for “Competency Not Necessary.” She knows phonies when she sees them.)
The guide purports to explain various neopronouns used by “nonbinary and trans people.” The desire to remove myself from such nonsense was almost overwhelming. Oh, if only such a “transporter” did exist!
The guide is intended to provide substitutes for the usual words to describe genders, such as, he/him and she/her. Where else could such nonsense be promulgated but from the world of academia? An English and linguistics professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Dennis Baron, urges us to use these neopronouns and to use them with the same respect that we show when using any other pronoun.
I don’t know whether Professor Baron helped create them or just actively promotes them. Here are some of them for your enlightenment: xe/xyr, ze/zir, ze/hir, fae/faer, ey/em/eir, and ae/aer. I am not making these “neopronouns” up, and I have no idea how we are supposed to pronounce them. (They are so weird that the “spell-check” on my computer red-lined them.)
According to the guide, these are commonly used by nonbinary and trans people. One wonders how someone would respond to an introduction made by one of these people. Most probably, something like this: “Say that again. You’re a what? You’re not putting me on? Really?”
And just so we don’t box these nonbinaries and trans people into just those neopronouns, ones that you might find too restrictive or just too boring, the professor offers others. He assures us that creative designs are almost limitless.
The CNN article goes on to mention that for those who don’t want to be limited to those neopronouns, there are many alternatives. One can also choose from different group of pronouns known as “nounself neopronouns” which use “nature and other inspirations as nonbinary and genderless descriptors.” Pup, star, and leaf are examples that the professor suggests as possible comfortable gender choices from nature. But why stop there, Professor? Maybe I can provide a few additional natural gender descriptors. How about dirt, germ, and worm? You can’t get much more spontaneous than those little gems. And they are quite descriptive!
But not to be outdone by a mere English and linguistics professor, we have the expertise of Dr. Diane Ehrensaft, the director of Mental Health and Chief Psychologist at the University of California Benioff Children’s Hospital Gender Development Center expressing her views of the multiple gender phenomena, especially as it relates to children. (And with titles like hers, we had better listen up!) She, who is also a professor at UCSF School of Medicine, tells us in a slide deck on gender ideology that there are infinite genders, including one called a “gender Tootsie Roll pop.” She refers to the gender agenda as “The New Gender Wars.” She had previously called it a “Gender Revolution.”
Ehrensaft wants social transitions to begin in early childhood. She says, “Gender comes in an infinite variety, and children should get to live in their affirmed gender at such time they know it.” Genders listed by her include: “Pangender Youth,” “Proto-gay Children,” “Proto-transgender Youth,” “Gender Teslas” (I thought that was a car?), “Gender Ambidextrous Children,” and “Gender Smoothies.”
But she has not limited her claims to those above. She had once stated that kids can be “gender hybrids.” This includes a mythology inspired creature called a “Gender Minotaur.” For the uninitiated, a Minotaur is a creature in ancient Greek stories that has the body of a human and the head of a bull. But let’s not leave anyone out. She says that children can also change their genders by season and can have different identities depending on their location.
During a 2018 talk at the San Francisco Library, Ehrensaft said, “I totally agree we are in the midst of a gender revolution, and the children are leading it. And it’s a wonderful thing to see. And it’s also humbling to know children know more than we do about this topic of gender expansive.” Her obsession with the multiple gender fiasco is made clear when she proudly says, “Now, we’ve got genders moving boulders, and it makes a lot of people nervous.” Maybe, but I know one thing, Satan and his minions are cheering her on as they snicker behind her back.
There can be no doubt that Dr. Ehrensaft believes that children are never just children. Either the thought that a child can just be an innocent young boy or girl, devoid of complicated agonies has never crossed her mind, or if it has, she has rejected the idea, as naive. She cannot accept the possibility that when they act out different scenarios that they are just using a wonderful God-given imagination. It couldn’t be that they are just experiencing normal growth and having fun? It must not be possible in her mind that all their actions, and all their pretend identities, are just good, clean, and joyful play that has the added benefit of enhancing their knowledge and fulfilling an inner need to learn.
As a child of six, I can remember playing in the school yard before classes began. There were many fun games, but one in particular is clearly in my memory. We boys were thrilled by playing war games. (I know that would be frowned on today.) Often, we extended our arms out and ran around shouting that we were a certain type of World War II military plane, and we made weird noises, imitating gunfire, while pretending to shoot each other down. I usually claimed to be a German Stuka. No, I was not an admirer of Nazis. I didn’t even know what a Nazi was. I just thought the photos I saw of that airplane looked cool.
I don’t know how Dr. Ehrensaft would interpret my impression of an airplane, but I can assure her, I am not one. And, despite my youthful attraction to German warplanes, I have not become a Germanophile. And I prefer to be identified by the classic pronouns “he or him.”
I have kept in touch with several of those childhood airplanes, and she might be surprised to learn that those same kids that played those fun war games with me grew up to be happy and successful males. None had any trouble with their gender. They all married biological women and had families. Building on their childhood experiences, one became an electrical engineer, another became a nuclear scientist, another, an imaginative entrepreneur, and yet another the CEO of an Air Freight Company. (Never lost his wings, I guess.) Maybe just having fun as a child was part of the Creator’s plan.
The Ehrensafts of our universities may prefer to psychoanalyze each and every child’s dreams, games, and manner of dress and insist that our children are countless odd “Genders,” but in doing so, they fail to see the dangers of labeling and how it stifles their imagination and destroys their innocence, along with their desire to have fun without a preconceived plan.
I am reminded of words of wisdom from Albert Einstein, who once said, “Imagination is more important than Knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” My imagination was not clouded when I was still a child and, as I remember watching a Tarzan movie and hearing these words, “Me Tarzan, you Jane.” I got it at once. Boy meets girl. He was a guy. She was a girl. Things were uncomplicated, inoffensive, and obvious in those days.
But that was before I had ever heard of professors of English and linguistics or of sanctimonious psychologists.
Attempts to reinterpret and twist the imagination of our children are, in fact, attacks on their God-given talents and can only cripple and ultimately destroy the lives of any unfortunate ones who are indoctrinated by the Professor Barons and the Dr. Ehrensafts of our world. Sadly, there are far too many of them, and they have infected not just our universities, but our entire education system, along with our medical facilities, and they are spreading their diseases daily, promoting faith in man, rather than God, through our news media, our social media, and even through many of our churches.
Winning back the future of our children means winning back respect for God, and with it, respect for the children that He gives us. Our country was built on Christian values whether our educators or pseudo-psychologists want to admit it. To rebuild our country, to return it to “One Nation, under God…” will require Christians to step up to confronting evil, and our Catholic bishops must lead that confrontation, not choose to “get along” as has happened too often in the past. Through faith in Our Lord’s promises, and only with the intersession of His Mother and ours, will we win.
To say no to an atheistic nation that is striving to destroy the beauty of childhood, and replace it with endless gender dysphoria, requires returning to God and rejecting the culture of death that is trying to convince us that we are not made in His image and likeness, but are mere animals, stumbling aimlessly on a meaningless planet.
Finally, and this is most important, our Catholic Church, must return to dependence on Our Savior and reject the dependence it has come to rely on from our federal and state governments. These almost countless and faceless agencies gladly offer the Church seemingly endless funding, but in exchange for those dollars secular control always follows. Only when the Church returns to the belief that God can provide everything that we need, will success follow. And with that success, the faithful will once again remember that “God created man in His image, in the divine image He created Him; male and female He created them” (Gen. 1:27).
There are clearly only two genders given to us by Him, and no satanic propaganda, no matter how often forced on us, will ever change God’s eternal plan for them.
