An expansion too far
Leave Title IX alone, Joe.
A federal judge in Kentucky on Thursday struck down President Biden’s effort to expand protections for transgender students and make other changes to the rules governing sex discrimination in schools, ruling that the Education Department had overstepped and violated teachers’ rights by requiring them to use students’ preferred pronouns.
It’s not “sex discrimination” to decline to call a boy “she.” It’s more the other way around. Boys demanding to be called “she” are undercutting girls’ and women’s rights.
The ruling, which extends nationwide, came as a major blow to the Biden administration in its effort to provide new safeguards for L.G.B.T.Q. and pregnant students, among others, through Title IX of the Civil Rights Act.
The usual gibberish. Lesbian and gay students have different needs and issues from trans students. The T and the Q are stowaways and should be pushed out of the plane.
In a 15-page opinion, Chief Judge Danny C. Reeves of the Eastern District of Kentucky wrote that the Education Department could not lawfully expand the definition of Title IX to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity, as it had proposed last year.
“The entire point of Title IX is to prevent discrimination based on sex,” he wrote. “Throwing gender identity into the mix eviscerates the statute and renders it largely meaningless.”
Exactly. It’s ridiculous that the Education can’t or won’t grasp that.
Joe has been going around lately saying that he could have won the election.
The Democrats might well have won if they hadn’t been all-in on this nonsense.
The following screed is filled with questions that are only partially rhetorical. While they are indeed asked for effect, actual answers, however unlikely, would be welcome. Whether they are answered, or even answerable at all, I think they’re worth asking, even if only for catharsis.
As a student of history, I know that human events are full of inflection points where momentous consequences can flow from tiny events or decisions which, had they gone another way, would have changed “the course of history.”, resulting in a world different, possibly far removed, from the one we inhabit. What if the lookouts on the mast of Titanic had had a pair of binoculars, and the 1500 people who died that night had instead lived to reach New York? How would their lives (and those of their never-born descendants) have changed the world? Of course, counterfactuals are cheap and easy to entertain, but at some point in time they were potentialities, a path ready to be embarked upon, rather than one not taken. We live in a huge, continuous instantiation of a version of the butterfly effect which is not limited to weather. Every day the equivalent of shoes, horses, riders, messages, battles, and kindoms lost for the want of millions of horseshoe nails, or binoculars. How many of those moments pass us by each day, while we remain unaware? But history is not just the result of ignorance, negligence, or carelessness. It doesn’t all just “happen.” People make choices; choices have consequences. Not all choices are good ones. Sometimes people are pulling out horseshoe nails….
Who is it that determined that trans “rights” were a bona fide “progressive” cause, and why did so many supposed progressives stupidly agree and adopt it as such? I know that reflexive tribalism likely plays a part, but why didn’t anyone stop and think, “Hang on a minute, this isn’t on.” Certainly women have been pointing out the dangers for years, but what about the period of time before it became part of the Official, Orthodox, Progressive Stance?* There must have been some point in time where this was shepherded through the opposition of people who could read between the lines, past, around, through, or behind those who would have, or should have known enough to say “No.” This embracing of trans ideology didn’t just happen, it was decided upon and agreed to. So who did the deciding? Who inserted this noxious concept into progressive platforms? Clearly, now that it has spread and rooted, it’s going to be hard to pull out, but this wouldn’t now be the case if so many institutions hadn’t rolled over and played brain dead. Why were so many of them so easily fooled, gulled into promoting and protecting this delusional ideology? Did nobody do their homework? The resulting male invasion of women’s spaces should have been easily predictable; I can’t believe that nobody predicted it. Somewhere there has to be some record, or memory, the equivalent of an “internal memo” that details foreknowledge of the costs to women of this move, just like Ford knew of the Pinto’s lethally faulty fuel tank design, but decided to forgo the required modifications because it would have cost them money. Somebody decided that a horseshoe nail was just too expensive, not worth the trouble. The result? Death, injury and destruction. I wonder if those executives’ shares in Ford retained their value once the lawsuits and settlements started piling up? Was it worth it? Did they retire happy, wealthy men? Whose political profit margin would have been reduced by saying “No” to trans ideology at a time when their demands could have been more easily denied? Who decided the cost to women would be worth it? Why do those defending the original decision believe it is still worth it? Why are they still proud of having helped harm women?
You can only brand so many critics as hateful, bigoted, right-wing, genocidal bigots before people start to wonder what’s happening. Not all of those so tarred are among the usual suspects of the Other Tribe, as they don’t otherwise walk or talk like ducks on any other subject than trans over-reach. Yet somehow, any question or criticism they have is written down as “QUACK!” by True Believers. It becomes a matter of tribal identity, a demonstration of faith. How did this happen? How do we undo it? Now that the costs are manifest, “progressives” can no longer plead ignorance, but must instead stick their fingers in their ears and yell “LALALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!” Or, they just evade the matter altogether like the coward in the “Deep breaths” thread, at which point it becomes an example of the Sunk Cost Fallacy. Such is the price of Righteousness and Purity, a price, lucky for them, that is paid by someone else.
*Believe it or not, I didn’t notice this wspelled out OOPS until after I wrote it out.