Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily columnist Michael Brown tries to portray himself has a reasonable person among the anti-gay right -- but he does tend to relapse. For instance, Brown writes in his Feb. 15 column about transgenders:
I’m aware, of course, that there are people who struggle deeply with gender identity issues, people who find themselves between a rock and a hard place when it comes to which bathroom or locker room to use, people who are doing their best to fit in and ignore the people looking at them as if they were some kind of freak.
As I’ve said many times before, I do not minimize their struggles, and I long to see them find true and lasting wholeness.
Yet Brown is all too willing to trade in transgender stereotypes -- that transgenders are nothing but cross-dressing boys wanting to perv on girls in the bathroom -- to pander to his right-wing audience. This what he writes immediately before the above sympathetic words:
Let’s say that 16-year-old John identifies as a girl but is heterosexual, and he wants to play on the girls’ sports team and share their bathrooms, locker rooms and shower stalls (a “right” for which the Obama administration fought vigorously). That means that John, who perhaps wants to be called Jane, will still be attracted to girls – the very ones he’ll be playing with and undressing with and showering with.
This doesn’t mean he’s a sexual predator. It just means that he’s a male teenager, naturally attracted to females, which is one reason why he’s supposed to use the boys’ bathroom, locker room and shower stalls.
Yet to say this is to be transphobic and insensitive.
Similarly, let’s say that 30-year-old Charlie, who identifies as Charlene but remains a biological, heterosexual male, wants to change in the ladies’ locker room at the YMCA. This means that Charlie will be checking out the ladies there, since he’s heterosexual, and if the women complain to management that they feel uncomfortable, they will be branded troublemakers.
And most of Brown's column is focused on a transgender convicted of murder in the United Kingdom; he's irked that the media refers to the criminal by her gender identity rather than her male biology and makes a big deal out of how the prisoner had to be "moved from a female prison for allegedly having sex with the female inmates."
He huffs at the beginning of his column, "Welcome to the world of transanity"; he concludes, "This societal madness must stop. There must surely be a better way."
Does this sound like someone who's not minimizing transgender struggles? Doesn't it sound instead like someone who has no problem exploiting those struggles for the salacious and hateful purview of his right-wing WND audience?
