SCARBOROUGH — “Dear Colleague”: This is the salutation used by two Obama administration officials who followed up a federal appellate ruling siding with G.G., a teenage Virginia girl who identifies as male, by sending a “guidance” letter May 13 that cites Title IX and calls on all public colleges and schools that get federal funding to make single-sex restrooms, locker rooms, showers, housing and sports teams available to “transgender students consistent with their gender identity.”

Enacted in 1972, Title IX is a one-sentence federal statute prohibiting sexual discrimination at a public or private institution that gets federal funding.

The intention of this law was to ensure that women had the access and opportunity to participate in what traditionally had been male-only sports programs and athletic activities. There is nothing in Title IX that empowers anyone to individually decide to expand that statute.

Making significant changes to existing laws – after open hearings to a properly notified public for comment – is the constitutional prerogative of Congress. Although the “guidance” letter does not have the force of law, it employs the word “must” in threatening loss of federal funding for noncompliance. This is an executive edict, not a legislative act, from two federal functionaries with a political agenda – a classic example of the law of unintended consequences as well as bullying.

If schools that receive federal funding must make single-sex bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, housing and sports teams available to “transgender students consistent with their gender identity,” consider these possible scenarios: a 19-year-old male who self-identifies as female must be offered a dormitory room with females regardless of their discomfort; a 6-foot-2, 250-pound male must be allowed to compete for women’s sports teams if he self-identifies as female. And high school boys can use the girls’ locker rooms and showers consistent with their “gender identity.” No medical diagnosis required.

Tenured professors of gender studies at our overpriced colleges and universities teach our fragile students that gender (now a synonym for sex) is merely a “social construct,” while equally certain gay activists proclaim that sex is hard-wired in our DNA. So, on the one hand gender is nothing, and on the other hand gender is all. And both sides ignore science and empirical evidence for their hare-brained theories – the sex-obsessed, politically correct culture of our time run amok.

I quote from a May 23 National Review blog post by Edward Whelan: “A person discriminates on the basis of a trait when it makes that trait relevant to how a person is treated, and doesn’t discriminate when it treats that trait as irrelevant. A baker (my example) discriminates on the basis of homosexuality when he factors that trait into his decision whether to bake a cake for a same-sex couple’s wedding, but doesn’t discriminate when he disregards their sexual orientation. In this context, a school is non-discriminatory on the basis of a student’s gender identity when it disregards that trait and assigns the student to the bathroom or facilities that correspond with his or her biological sex.”

And I paraphrase from a piece in the online magazine Slate by Michael Goldberg: There is no coherent ideology in which transgender students have a right to be shielded from facilities that may upset them, but non-transgender students do not have the same right. If we’ve decided that certain people have the right to feel safe, then what’s the standard for refusing that right to gender-stable people who may feel unsafe? Is it simply that we don’t believe them when they describe their trauma? Aren’t we supposed to believe all victims – no matter what?

I think a better case can be made for one to feel a different age than a birth certificate would show if all this means is that you’re only as old as you feel. I have no major ailments, low blood pressure and take only one medication for a hiatal hernia I’ve had since my 40s.

By affixing a rug to my bald head, substituting contact lenses for my eyeglasses, getting a face-lift and a shot of testosterone (without plumbing alterations), I could self-identify as as a member of the baby boom generation rather than the generation that came of age during World War II. Like Popeye the Sailor, I might say: “I am what I feel I am, and that’s who I am.” But I wouldn’t expect preferential treatment.

 

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