Monday, February 8, 2016
482 - Binary Code
Spirituality Column #482
February 9, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
“You are to bring onto the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you.” – God to Noah, Genesis 6:19
News of the 21st century’s latest politically correct, cultural insult – “binary” – was buried in a lower right hand corner of an inside page of an inside section of a recent weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal.
Brighton College in England, it seems, abolished gender distinction in its mandatory male-female school uniforms comprised of slacks, blazers, shirts, ties and skirts. Now any student can wear any uniform piece any time, depending upon how one is identifying, gender-wise, that day. That’s being “gender fluid.”
If you object? You’re being “binary.”
The WSJ item, tucked away in placement obscurity, quoted British journalist Melanie Phillips in the U.K. Spectator offering the following morsel of common sense: “It’s dangerous to tell all children they’re ‘gender fluid.’”
“Once upon a time,” Phillips began, “‘binary’ was a mathematical term. Now it is an insult on par with ‘racist,’ ‘sexist,’ or ‘homophobic,’ to be deployed as a weapon in our culture wars. The enemy is anyone who maintains that there are men and there are women, and that the difference between them is fundamental.”
So, “binary” is the new thing you don’t want to be called. I appreciate the linguistic heads-up for all of us who live as though God really, really wasn’t kidding when he made humans – and pretty much all animals – “male” and “female.” “Binary,” Phillips points out, is a “distinction accepted by the vast majority of the human race.”
To that I say, “Amen.” Before fairly recent days, I’m guessing the “gender fluidity” idea may have seemed too ridiculous to bother categorizing. Men, women, male, female…is how things are, going back to the ark, Adam and Eve and Creation. It’s how generations reproduce. Darwin and his evolutionary progeny have never improved upon, nor replaced, “binary” reproduction.
Arrange the test tubes, laboratories, science, ethics, academics and social engineering any way you want – it still takes male parts and female parts to make baby parts. Life isn’t “created” afresh; it’s regenerated, and the generators are male and female. Only God “creates” life.
The man-woman thing is a cosmological, biological truth some wish to redefine as sociological, psychological fiction. Gender confusion, same-sex sex, mixed sexual desires, etc., aren’t new; they are addressed in humanity’s best, oldest, most reliable handbook, the Bible. And never, we note, in a way that suggests “gender fluidity” is a good or “fluid” option.
Our fullest humanity requires biological function in agreement with psychological identity; sacrificing either for the sake of the other moves humanity toward death, not life.
Walters’ (rlwcom@aol.com) point here is life, not choices.
February 9, 2016
Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary
Binary Code
By Bob Walters“You are to bring onto the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you.” – God to Noah, Genesis 6:19
News of the 21st century’s latest politically correct, cultural insult – “binary” – was buried in a lower right hand corner of an inside page of an inside section of a recent weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal.
Brighton College in England, it seems, abolished gender distinction in its mandatory male-female school uniforms comprised of slacks, blazers, shirts, ties and skirts. Now any student can wear any uniform piece any time, depending upon how one is identifying, gender-wise, that day. That’s being “gender fluid.”
If you object? You’re being “binary.”
The WSJ item, tucked away in placement obscurity, quoted British journalist Melanie Phillips in the U.K. Spectator offering the following morsel of common sense: “It’s dangerous to tell all children they’re ‘gender fluid.’”
“Once upon a time,” Phillips began, “‘binary’ was a mathematical term. Now it is an insult on par with ‘racist,’ ‘sexist,’ or ‘homophobic,’ to be deployed as a weapon in our culture wars. The enemy is anyone who maintains that there are men and there are women, and that the difference between them is fundamental.”
So, “binary” is the new thing you don’t want to be called. I appreciate the linguistic heads-up for all of us who live as though God really, really wasn’t kidding when he made humans – and pretty much all animals – “male” and “female.” “Binary,” Phillips points out, is a “distinction accepted by the vast majority of the human race.”
To that I say, “Amen.” Before fairly recent days, I’m guessing the “gender fluidity” idea may have seemed too ridiculous to bother categorizing. Men, women, male, female…is how things are, going back to the ark, Adam and Eve and Creation. It’s how generations reproduce. Darwin and his evolutionary progeny have never improved upon, nor replaced, “binary” reproduction.
Arrange the test tubes, laboratories, science, ethics, academics and social engineering any way you want – it still takes male parts and female parts to make baby parts. Life isn’t “created” afresh; it’s regenerated, and the generators are male and female. Only God “creates” life.
The man-woman thing is a cosmological, biological truth some wish to redefine as sociological, psychological fiction. Gender confusion, same-sex sex, mixed sexual desires, etc., aren’t new; they are addressed in humanity’s best, oldest, most reliable handbook, the Bible. And never, we note, in a way that suggests “gender fluidity” is a good or “fluid” option.
Our fullest humanity requires biological function in agreement with psychological identity; sacrificing either for the sake of the other moves humanity toward death, not life.
Walters’ (rlwcom@aol.com) point here is life, not choices.
0 comments:
Post a Comment