In Support of Michael Knowles

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To his great credit, on March 4 at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles plainly said what every sane person thinks about the transgenderism circus: It needs to be eradicated from public life. Posthaste. Forever. Cue the intimidation tactics from megalomaniacs on the Left and the circular firing squad from the yellow-bellied prigs on the Right. This sequence of events is as predictable as it is intolerable. It's long past time to back our brothers when they conjure the pluck to stare down the mob, when they thumb their noses at the dystopian neo-Marxist machine and all its agitprop.

Knowles is right. Transgenderism is an irrational, antiscientific farce. It's hocus pocus that perverts have strongarmed the Western world into accepting so that they can make-believe their fetish is anything but disgusting and counternatural. The soul is the form of the body — if you have a male body, you are, metaphysically, a male (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, ¶365). As Cdl. Walter Kasper has so artfully said, "Christian anthropology sees the human body as a real symbol, as the 'excarnation' of the human spirit, the spirit being the form and life principle of the body" ("The Position of Woman as a Problem of Theological Anthropology," The Church and Women: A Compendium, ed. Helmut Moll, trans. John Saward [San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988], 58–59). A rupture between spirit and body is, therefore, an impossibility. Full stop.

Even on a strictly natural level, male brains and female brains are substantially different. Or, as Stanford Medicine Magazine puts it, "The neuroscience literature shows that the human brain is a sex-typed organ with distinct anatomical differences in neural structures and accompanying physiological differences in function." Men's brains, for example, are 10% larger than women's. They have larger inferior-parietal lobules, which have a function in mathematics and judging speed and time. Men's brains have distinctive amygdalae, which process threatening stimuli and aid in memory formation. Men's brains also have greater volume in the ventral temporal and occipital regions. On the other hand, women's brains feature comparatively larger hippocampi (when adjusted for brain size), which function differently from those found in their male counterparts. Women's brains have greater volume in their prefrontal cortices, orbitofrontal cortices, superior temporal cortices, lateral parietal cortices and insulae. And the two hemispheres of women's brains interact more than do the hemispheres of men's brains, while brain activity in men is more tightly and locally coordinated.

Long story short, people are biologically preordained to think and act like members of their respective sex. So you see, there is no special rainbow magic that leads to female spirits in male bodies, or vice versa. There's no queer "flying spaghetti monster" (to borrow the sophomoric phraseology of the sneering public-school-educated mediocrities) imprisoning hapless victims in a material circumstance that doesn't reflect reality. "Caitlyn" Jenner, take notice: In the epic words of South Park's Mr. Garrison, you're not really a woman, you're "just a guy with a mutilated penis." Truth lives — it doesn't matter how many "Women of Courage" awards Jill Biden condescends to placate your kind with.

The Left demands that we profess 2+2=5. And it holds in smoldering contempt those who dare to challenge its mendacity. So the attacks on Knowles have been calculated and frenetic. The general strategy has been to pretend that Knowles was calling for an actual trans pogrom (as opposed to the formulation of sensible policy that would interdict evangelistic transgenderism and all accommodations that enable the proliferation of the fetid lifestyle).

For example, one HuffPost author declared Knowles' comments to be "downright genocidal," after squinting to interpret them as meaning trans people "should not have a right to exist." Rolling Stone, in a piece originally titled "CPAC Speaker Calls for Transgender People to Be Eradicated," connected Knowles to a "transparently fascistic" right-wing cabal that wants to "drive LGBTQ people back into the closet and eliminate them from public life." Human Rights Campaign director Geoff Wetrosky claimed Knowles' words would spur "violence against LGBTQ+ people" because they were "hateful," "transphobic" and "discriminatory." Fake woman Erin Reed raged about Knowles' speech on his blog, "They are dehumanizing us, a necessary step to bringing about ... elimination." The libs of Twitter were, by all appearances, equally apoplectic. One particularly panicky useful idiot clucked, "They want my siblings gone. They said as much." 

The message is clear and foreboding: "Shut up, Michael Knowles, or we will torture the English language to make it seem like you're calling for people to be murdered, in order to get you canceled." But the only response Knowles should bother giving is what Art Garfunkel once unforgettably dubbed as "the old familiar suggestion." In other words, sod off — I won't do what you tell me. Or, in Christ's words, "Get behind me, Satan."

No one seriously thinks Knowles was calling for a trans holocaust. When people hear campaigns for the eradication of AIDS or cancer or obesity, they don't interpret them as advocating for the mass murder of AIDS patients, cancer patients or fat people. Rather, there's an understanding that it's the underlying pathology (not the person suffering from it) that's being targeted. The same intuition has import here. Transgenderism is a mental disease that every person should want to see eradicated in the name of authentic human flourishing. (In point of fact, only a few years back, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders classified "persistent discomfort and sense of inappropriateness about one's assigned sex" as "gender identity disorder.") So calls for its eradication are clearly directed at the affliction, not the afflicted. And it's nothing but charitable to want to see people cured of their disease. Yes, trannies, I hope you're cured one day, God love you.

But while every leftist is an extremist, the majority of right-wingers are militant moderates. And when you venture out of the Overton window, these supposed allies don't hesitate to turn on you and attack, hastening to announce to the world that their refined (read: diffident, feckless and approval-seeking) kind of conservatism is the true kind, whereas your blunt (read: confident, effective and purposeful) kind is a dangerous bastardization. They try to shame you for having the moxie and vision they lack due to poor formation, dearth of fortitude or personal compromise in the moral realm. Moreover, since moderates are unprincipled, they begrudge you for exposing their tidy, impotent conservative platform to controversy. In their eyes, nudging the political needle rightward ever so slightly is not worth the social capital that it costs. They've never been told that "friendship with the world makes you an enemy of God" (James 4:4).

So in the wake of Knowles' CPAC comments, one reporter for The Daily Wire, Christina Buttons, announced she was resigning from the outfit after a distinguished tenure of six whole months. Her reasons? Well, beyond her obvious ill-conceived soft spot for homosexuality (which she contends is "innate and biological") little Christina Buttons just doesn't care for Michael Knowles' mean old tone. "Winning over hearts and minds is difficult enough without inflammatory statements such as 'transgenderism must be eradicated from public life.' There is a critical distinction between speaking truth and being tactless, between sticking to the facts and sticking it to the libs," grumbles Buttons.

The lukewarm hate when you speak the truth in plain, straightforward English. It's too decisive. It has too high a chance of actually resonating with people and eventuating in their conversion. But most of all, it makes enemies, something weaklings view as inherently problematic (in reality, the only way to have no enemies is to have no principles).

What's pathetic is that cowards on the Right are draconian with internal policing but complacent about the actual outrages of the Left. They're more comfortable with the Left redefining marriage —which has been recognized as a covenant between a man and a woman since the dawn of the race — than hearing a compatriot proclaim that sodomy is an abomination so objectively despicable that it cries to Heaven for vengeance. It's truly bizarre. Either way, good riddance to Miss Buttons. Organizations are only as strong as their weakest links, so vigorously purge the interlopers. 

Self-proclaimed libertarian–conservative journalist Brad Polumbo has also piled on Knowles, labeling the commentator's sentiments "authoritarian, impractical, illiberal, and frankly evil." Polumbo warns that if the Right proposes "a complete elimination of transgenderism, a zero-tolerance, authoritarian approach, many more people will not be on board with that." He also asserts a ban on public transgenderism would not be "in line with traditional conservative principles of limited government and individual liberty." 

Let's put aside the fact that the latter proposition is just demonstrably false, that it betrays an ignorance of basic political philosophy, so we can train our focus on the former. Where were these fence-sitting advocates of restraint when the Left — in defiance of overwhelming popular disgust and authentic grassroots resistance — was pushing the trans freak show into popular culture in the first place? Where were they when state and local governments were pursuing the "authoritarian" insertion of trans deviancy into primary school curricula and helping kids transition behind their parents' backs? Oh yeah, they were silent, as meek as lambs. If only the moderates had the same passion for quashing evil as they have for censoring all truth that isn't imparted with the cloying, impuissant style of a 65-year-old church lady, then maybe, just maybe, American culture wouldn't have become the feculent cesspool that it has. But alas, the virtue-signaling Benedict Arnolds couldn't be bothered to lift a finger. Because they don't really care. 

When you speak the truth, you come under attack. The truer your statement and the bigger your platform, the more savage you can expect the attack to be. The Left gives no quarter to dissenters, and the Right is replete with poseurs who will gladly throw you — and truth — under the bus in the name of "prudence" and "tone," the watchwords of cowards everywhere. But this is immaterial. The Christian is a natural-born soldier. To hell with the irenicism that's come to be falsely associated with discipleship. In the epic words of Pope Leo XIII, "To recoil before an enemy, or to keep silence when from all sides such clamors are raised against truth, is the part of a man either devoid of character or who entertains doubt as to the truth of what he professes to believe" (Sapientiae Christianae, §14). So keep close to your heart this parting exhortation of the holy pontiff as you go forth and conquer under the banner of Christ: 

No one can be prevented from putting forth that strength of soul which is the characteristic of true Christians, and very frequently by such display of courage our enemies lose heart and their designs are thwarted. Christians are ... born for combat, whereof the greater the vehemence, the more assured, God aiding, the triumph (ibid.).

You spoke the truth, Michael Knowles: Transgenderism is false, and we should never indulge it; especially since that indulgence requires taking away the rights and customs of so many people. You deserve fraternal encouragement from all Christians. Hold fast, no matter what comes your way, no matter what the lords of this world muster. Real Christian men have got your six.

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