Plus Ça Change

Gustav Mahler was born a Jew in Vienna in 1860. Having written symphonies and other important musical works, and acted as a conductor, he was appointed director of the Vienna Court Opera – assuming he would convert to Christianity in order to gain the post, since no Jew would be so appointed. He did. But despite his conversion he continued to receive abuse at the hands of an antisemitic press. And for similar reasons his music was banned by the Nazis. He was born a Jew and would always be a Jew.

Louis Armstrong, another musician, always claimed that he was born on the fourth of July in 1900. That, however, was primarily a publicity ploy. He was born on August 4, 1901, and the fourth of August would forever be his birthday, whether he celebrated it then or not.

People change their names, religions, and other defining features, often for professional reasons. Those causes are external. However they may feel about the changes, they're advantageous when it comes to dealing with the world around them. (And sometimes they're even pleased with them.)

But there are internal causes as well. More and more cases are arising of individuals not satisfied with their “birth sex” (they prefer to call it “gender” which is really a linguistic term, but many of them feel that the language is biased against them) as dictated by their genetic makeup, and duly recorded on their birth certificates. There are several ways of dealing with this dissatisfaction, but I will only raise one of them at this time (there'll be another a little later). It is the response of some who believe that their anatomy doesn't accurately reflect who they “are.” They are really members of the opposite sex. And they demand to be treated as members of that other sex.

The implication of this view most obvious to others is that the dissatisfied ones may seek to use the public toilets assigned to the sex of their choice. Although some jurisdictions have tried to limit toilet use to those whose birth certificates attest to membership in the group for whom the facility was designed and designated, the courts have tended to yield to the feelings of the afflicted or confused – a small “oppressed” minority with a discrepancy between their psychology and their chromosomes. The feelings of the majority are not relevant, nor have they the right to object (although it is undeniable that some “straight” people do accept their views). What is written on the birth certificates is not dispositive.

But why does society limit personal preference to sex alone? Actually we don't. We allow people to change their names and “divorce” their parents, so it would make sense to allow all those interested to alter their birth certificates to reflect desired places of birth, preferred dates of birth (which means their age), their parents, race, religion, doctor, and anything else that might appear on the certificate but wasn't consonant with their feelings. Because those feelings – their psychological needs – are of greater significance than reality. And if a thirty year-old considers himself fit for the presidency, shouldn't he be allowed to run – even if he wasn't born in this country? But the implications of such changes would be extensive, like those of sex changes, and would involve both the economy, detrimentally, and the legal profession, most positively.

Indeed, why should we limit those changes to birth certificates? Why can't we decide, if we so choose, that we're minority members, and entitled to the benefits of Affirmative Action; why can't we hold that our IQs are higher than what may be measured, or that we're qualified for a particular position because it is our belief that we are – and the refusal of that position is a challenge to our rights; why don't our passports, or our marriage licenses, or our credit reports, or, for that matter, our mortgages, contain the information we feel they should have? Why shouldn't others be obligated to accept our views? What's so great about reality that it should take precedence over what we feel or what we want?

But though you may alter and adjust matters more to your liking, you haven't really changed anything. Your “corrections,” alas, are irrelevant.

Even so, the choice of sex will remain while other choices will be denied. A ten-year-old who reads the newspapers and feels mature enough to vote will neither be able to change the state law that prescribes a higher lower limit, nor adjust his birth certificate to indicate a different birth date. There are vogues and prejudices that govern our behavior, and that's not one of them.

But vogues are not reality. Someone born with XX sex chromosomes is female; someone with XY is male. Period. All the rest is psychology and feelings. Albin Mougeotte (in La Cage aux Folles) had a healthier and more down-to-earth approach: "I Am What I Am." It is an acceptence of reality with a “rest-of-the-world-can-take-it-or-leave-it” attitude. Procaiming it proudly and loudly he doesn't require that others change their ways, but he has no hesitation about living his life as he sees fit. There's no need to revise their views or anything else.

If, however, society, with the imprimatur of the courts, decides that it is legitimate (and privileged) to alter what it says on a birth certificate and reinvent yourself, it's hard to justify limiting that “right” to sex, although it's hard to deny that our society is preoccupied with sex and our courts preoccupied with “rights,” actual or what it considers desirable. But it seems more logical to recognize reality and deal with it than bend to the winds of culture-war. Perhaps you believe in miracles. Perhaps you believe that “wishing will make it so.” But it won't, and you might as well get used to that truth.

Mahler was Jewish. And attempts to change that reality may have provided some benefits, but they came with damage as well – some in his lifetime and some after Mahler died. Some to him, and some to other Jews. The implications of an act often outweigh the intent of the act.  What is, is. The more things change, the more some of them change while others remain the same.

The Only Question

Note: This was begun a little over a year ago but I just found it on my computer. Please pardon the old news (an oxymoron, isn't it?). Also note that it was from the time I used end notes, so I'll continue with them as I finish this essay. And if the content is similar to that in one or more of my other essays, I'm sorry. I'm only conveying last year's thoughts.

I heard on the radio yesterdayⁱ that the odds on the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series in 2015 had dropped from one in forty to one in twelve. It seems that they had just spent one hundred fifty-five million dollars on a long term contract for pitcher Jon Lester and the team was expected to do far better with him on board. Ticket prices will also probably go up but I don't care. I'm a Mets fan, and I live in New York. (Anyway, an important question it raises – one for another time, though – is “What is reality?” Dealing with this situation, we all know that whatever the Cubs do they don't have a chance. They can spend all the money they want, or have – or hope to have, but a World Series win will always be out of their reach.ⁱⁱ The Mets, on the other hand, ...ⁱⁱⁱ)

(There was also a story about an asteroid that will pass within three million miles of earth^iv in 2047. The likelihood that I'll be around then is moderately low, so I'm not too worried about that either. At least not yet.)

Today's news had such important items items as these. There are other stories that have been in the news recently and they've made me think about all manner of things – some important and some of no consequence.

News reporting is supposed to raise questions. Depending on the nature of the reports the questions may be different. Variation will also relate to the perspective of the questioner. The poor, for example, ask different questions from the rich – questions sometimes echoed by their supporters, and even by people who think they are poor. The strident controversy involving the Occupy Wall Street Movement, its participants, and its spinoffs, typifies this kind of a situation. And I want to spend a little time discussing some of the issues that relate to particular groups. (But I won't bother with Wall Street. It's too much a matter of fad and fashion rather than substance. I'm more interested in controversies that are less populist-driven and will be around longer.)^v

So let me illustrate my point that different populations have different concerns and different questions by citing two controversies that seemingly involve relatively few people. At least directly. (But they really concern us all.) Both have been the sources for debate and disagreement – often vehement. They raise the a very basic question. The first deals with the right of citizens to refuse to pay for activities that they oppose. We've probably all read of instances when a citizen protested the use of his tax money for the military. He didn't believe in war – or perhaps a specific war – and chose to withhold that part of his taxes that would be credited to the Defense Department. He considered the tax a violation of his religion.

The second controversy regards the rights of individuals with gender dysphoria. At least one court has ruled that such people are entitled to use whatever rest room was most comfortable for them.^vi Their gender preference was accompanied by what was determined to be a constitutional right to express it by rest room choice.^vii

The stories are very different, and the matters that they raise as well. But there are some questions they raise that apply equally in both cases, as well as in numerous other contexts, and I shall try to discuss them. If I am successful it will become obvious that there is a single uncertainty – a single issue – which has to be considered irrespective of the scenario, if those problems are to be fully understood. And I am acutely aware of the difficulty faced. I know the question. But I don't know the answer.

Perhaps I don't know the answer because I'm not a lawyer, let alone a Supreme Court Justice, but the question involves the rights of our citizens. The Constitution – specifically the Bill of Rights – guarantees us certain freedoms and protections. One is the assurance that an individual's beliefs and religious practices are outside the ambit of Congress's power to legislate or control. The meaning of that freedom, like the meaning of the entire Constitution, is the subject of many interpretations and differences of opinion. Without discussing and dissecting them, without arguing about whether the interpretation should depend upon what those who formulated it said or what (we believe) they meant, our government and our courts have taken the approach (in terms of taxes for the military) that individuals cannot decide for themselves that they will not pay for the defense of our country, even if their religion seems threatened. We similarly don't allow an atheist to opt out of taxes that fund a chaplain for Congress. And we permit tax exemptions for religious institutions. We have chosen a practical, and politically acceptable, solution to the problem. Perhaps we “understand” our position to reflect what the Founders believed and wrote, but the reality is that we “understand” the original document to say whatever we believe, notwithstanding any claim that it actually represents the intent of those who wrote it.

When it comes to gender dysphoria, however, the debate centers not on the “rights” of one group, but two, the first comprised of those who suffer from dysphoria and who wish everyone else to accept their new identity – after all, their gender is a private matter^viii – and accord it the recognition due one with a similar identity from birth. The second group includes those who believe their own rights are compromised when individuals who are unhappy with the sex into which they were born invade their privacy. The courts have adopted the position that the rights of the dysphoric take precedence over those of the euphoric. They can decide for themselves. It is hard to understand this to have been the position of the Founders since it is unlikely that they would have even given the concept any thought. Irrespective of any claims by members of the judiciary, the subject is not covered in the Constitution, no matter how you construe its words. But the bench has chosen sides and must find justification for it.

The basic uncertainty – and it will remain so for a long time – revolves around our rights as American citizens. It involves the question of beliefs, religious and otherwise. It is a basic constitutional issue. It bothered the Founders, and it was a question that they thought they had solved with the Bill of Rights. Both scenarios I have cited involve those rights and beliefs but suggest that we'll solve the questions day by day. Or, actually, they'll be decided for us.

The concept of gender dysphoria is a matter of deeper and more consequential belief than the Cubs winning a World Series, and that's saying something. People hope and pray for the Cubs. But they know that the ultimate outcome is out of their control. Not so those unhappy with their physiognomy, who prefer to take their beliefs and their sex into their own hands.

I        December 10, 2014.

ii       Actually the Cubs did pretty well last season. In fact they nearly made it to the World Series. “Nearly,” of course is the key word, and their failure to “close the deal” typifies their fate. “Wait 'til next year?” Don't bother. It won't help.

iii      Alright. They didn't win either. But they got closer.

iv      From an astronomical point of view that's apparently a “near-miss.” Actually it sounds to me more like a “near hit.”

v        It's a year later and I haven't heard much about it recently. People are protesting other things nowadays.

vi  https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/maine-high-court-orders-school-to-open-girls-restrooms-to-transgendered-boy

vii      More cases have been litigated subsequently with varied results.

viii     “Privacy,” though not ever found in the Constitution, is “understood” to be there by a majority of the Supreme Court. It is a Constitutional right. They are what they believe themselves to be.

Look At Me – I'm A Liberal

“I'll be all in clover,

And when they look you over,

I'll be the proudest fellow

In the Easter Parade.”ⁱ

Irving Berlin was a sexist. He also wrote:

“The girl that I marry will have to be

As soft and as pink as a nursery.

The girl I call my own

Will wear satin and laces and smell of cologne.”ⁱⁱ

His view of women obviously was that they were people who were created to give pride to men, and to be the “soft” and “pink” possessions you could find in a nursery.

That perspective, though, was not unique. In the Book of Esther, King Achashverosh wished to parade his wife, Vashti, in front of his guests at a party. Even today it is a common practice for men who can do so to marry and display a “trophy wife.”

But if men have always whistled at beautiful women, women have cherished that attention and eagerly participated in beauty contests and pageants, vying with each other to establish superiority among those who dare to consider themselves peers or betters. And the status of wife and mother are still sought by the majority of women. Whether that preference is inborn or the result of our culture is not the point. What is more significant is that Berlin's views were the predominant ones – at least until recent years. He was saying in a poetic way what almost everyone believed.

Nowadays there is a totally different view of sex. (I'll pursue this issue further in a future essay.)  What used to be a private affair, both in terms of people and practices, is now flaunted in the media. Free sex is good.ⁱⁱⁱ LGBTQ organizations and their members are the darlings of the courts and of the press, and failure to laud and to respond positively to the demands of those once viewed as displaying deviant behavior is evidence of prejudice. Not surprisingly, there are many who eat it up. They may loudly proclaim their own conventional sexuality, but applaud those with appetites different from theirs. They kvell^iv at each report of someone “coming out of the closet” and praise his (or her) courage for doing so publicly. They shep naches.^v They feel his pain. The Constitution may not have recognized this group of oppressed people, but they do. They are sensitive to the feelings of those who are in distress, and they want the world to know it.

They're also so understanding of the feelings of others that they identify with those having with gender dysphoria.^vi From their perspective, anyone who doesn't see things their way is displaying evidence of prejudice.^vii There is no room for difference of opinion; they are sensitive and understanding, and those who see things differently are biased. With the granting to school children with gender dysphoria of the “right” to use the bathroom of their choice,^viii notwithstanding the feelings of those already using them, the courts are giving, to the confused, “rights” which take precedence over those of people who are certain,^ix and whoever disagrees with that approach is reactionary and insensitive. He (or she) is probably a religious zealot – a fundamentalist or some other form of hypocrite. He certainly has no concern about the views or feelings of others – only his own. After all, the dysphoric's defender is open-minded, as opposed to someone who thinks differently.

“Look at me.” Advertising their virtue is all they have to do. Once everyone else is aware of their bravery they can move on to another windmill.

For example, there is another situation in which some people seem to place their own feelings and views above those of others, though they claim the opposite and take pride in flaunting it. They make a point of adopting children who are not of their own race. At times they will adopt several children of different races. And at times they do so even though they are fertile and could have children of their own.

There are two messages^x that their actions declare: first that while others simply don't care, they are concerned over the sad fate of children who are not being reared by their own parents, and they are generous, brave, and sensitive to the needs of those children; and second, they are above making distinctions between people based on race or ethnicity. Indeed, they choose to advertise that disdain by a public act. They select the children they adopt because of their race, something which everyone else must notice.^xi It's a brave act and they are making a statement.

However they may see themselves, though, and whatever message they want to express about their views, they do not seem to take into consideration the feelings of the child, who will be reared by those parents and who will have to introduce them to his friends of all races. It will be obvious to him, and to them, that they are “other,” that he's adopted. And however they may try, they will not be able to teach him the customs and the heritage of his own race and those of his birth parents. His loyalties will forever be split, and he will live neither in the world of those who bore him nor those who reared him.^xii But the parent will have demonstrated to the world that he cares. As William Voegeli^xiii noted in The Case Against Liberal Compassion,^xiv “ … liberals care about helping much less than they care about caring.” He also notes,^xv “If you’re trying to prove your heart is in the right place, it isn’t.”

That's the problem. The details of the cases I described are very different,^xvi but in these instances someone was trying to show the world that he cared about the suffering of others and proudly he did his part to right the wrong. His heart was in the right place. But of course he was more interested in displaying his own sensitivity than looking for the best solution to the problem – especially if that way his own moral excellence would not be appreciated by all.

Our concerns and our culture have changed since Irving Berlin's day, and we are quick to criticize our predecessors' lack of sensitivity as we brag about our own. But what we're really doing is advertising ourselves as the purveyors of the current culture as we denigrate the culture of the past. And as we ignore the fact that our descendents will criticize our society and us for all our “isms.”

Next episode: “They The People” – It's time for a change? Well, yes and no.

I        From “As Thousands Cheer,” 1935.

ii       “Annie Get Your Gun,” 1946.

iii      Although women who charge for it are the victims of men.

iv       Boast, take pride, gloat. According to the OED this is US slang. I learned it as a Yiddish expression which focused more specifically on taking pride.

v        Another Yiddish expression. It's similar in meaning to kvell. However you usually shep naches over the accomplishments of a family member (usually a child) and bask in the reflected glory.

vi       Presumably if you “Enjoy Being a Girl” (“Flower Drum Song,” 1958) you have gender euphoria.

           Unless you're a boy.

vii      From their perspective G-d got it wrong, and they are obliged to set things right.

viii    See http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/31/22520422-bathroom-ban-violated-transgender-students-rights-court

ix       Actually a girl doesn't have a specific right to use the Girls' Room nor a boy the Boys' Room, so there's no competition of rights. How that child or his parents feel is a secondary issue.

x        Three if they're fertile. They also show that they're concerned about overpopulation, and would prefer to adopt children already here than bring any more into being. (Incidentally, homosexual unions are a good way to limit population growth. Perhaps that's why they support them.  More on that subject in a few weeks.)

xi       Actually they do make distinctions between people based on their race or ethnicity. Their affirmative action in child selection is evidence of that.

xii      Perhaps his rejection by members of both races is an indictment of our society, but it is a reflection of the reality of the life we live. There is prejudice among all groups, and ignoring it puts those we love at risk. The same difficulty exists for the children of intermarried couples who also face prejudice and identity problems.

xiii     Senior Editor, Claremont Review of Books.

xiv      “Imprimis,” Volume 23, Number 10, October, 2014.

xv       Citing Philosophy Professor David Schmidtz

xvi     They're just two random points in the long spectrum of advocacy for the oppressed. Many others could have been cited and it's likely the reader is aware of some. But in these and in others, the guilt-ridden have no higher priority than standing up for what is politically correct. They care.