Once upon a time, in a small town in Ohio, there was a little girl who was very confused. She decided she was a boy one day, and later she used the boy’s bathroom in her local public school. You must forgive me for the fairytale beginning, but we have departed from the adult world of reason and standards, so this way of beginning is now as good as any other. “Oh my ears and whiskers!” said the large white rabbit of a school superintendent, “what will we do!?” What indeed? Just a few decades ago the answer would have been an easy one. A mental health professional would have been summoned.  The troubled girl would have been sat down and asked many questions very quietly and nicely. Her unfortunate mental state being diagnosed, she would have been ushered off to treatment. A social worker, perhaps, would have had an earnest conversation with the girl’s parents. In short, society would have conspired to return the child to a state of normalcy. Normalcy. You know. Try hard – it is still just possible to remember.  Now, of course, things are different:

“Title IX’s sex discrimination prohibition extends to claims of discrimination based on gender identity or failure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity and OCR accepts such complaints for investigation.  Similarly, the actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity of the parties does not change a school’s obligations.”  – U.S. Dept of Education, 4-29-2014

The large white rabbit of a school superintendent can actually do very little. Basically, he can quiver at the awesome might of the Federal government -- a small pretty bureaucrat laid prostrate before his deity.  In my little town he caved almost at once. The girl... er, boy... can use whatever restroom she... er, he... sees fit to. Gender identity is now a holy of holies. If a child draws a picture of a gun you can expel the little deviant from school, but if she -- or he, or it -- declares a different gender than anatomy would indicate we are now obligated to pretend the child is making an adult decision.  Really.  Scout’s honor -- I would not lie to you.

Instead of the angels of normalcy, my town got a bevy of gay and lesbian activists from GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Educational Network) to usher our backward hearts into this brave new liberal world. Their love and kindness surpasseth all understanding. Personally, I would have preferred a Mongol horde. If one is going to have one’s civilization crushed, it is better to have it crushed by enemies one can respect -- rather than by a self-appointed committee of flaccid, weepy, crusaders of the rainbow flag. But here I only show my ignorance, and my need for thorough liberal re-education. A lobotomy, in other words.

My town stands transfixed. A few parents protest at the expense of the hapless rabbit – who doesn’t have the power to act or the fortitude to do much if he did. Some parents buy home schooling books. Most just look the other way and pretend that this peculiarity will be a one-off, and everything will soon get back to normal. But of course it won’t. In addition to title IX, there are title VII (employment) cases in the works. In the eyes of the Federal bureaucracy, the genders are not only equal -- but a matter of personal choice.  You are what you say you are. If you insist that a six-foot-four, hairy-chested man with all the genitalia God gave him is, in fact, a male -- you’re a bigot. The left sneer at conservatives who are uncomfortable with Darwinian evolution –- and yet they have declared the recognition of the most basic fact of biology a crime. The only question left in Wonderland is -– what’s next?

I don’t have kids in school and, for the record, I don’t have any particular dislike for homosexuals. I consider them people with a form of mental illness – but it is neither charitable nor very pleasant to despise the sick. I do not like, however, to have my culture flattened to accommodate a small minority’s disease. What is most infuriating about the whole process is that the vast majority of us have been pushed into this social experiment without so much as a whisper of consent. No one asked us at the local, state, or even national level. Our legislators did not vote on this. It was not even imposed on us by black-robed justices whose names, at least, we know. The new regulation was signed into existence by some nameless uber-liberal in the Dept of Ed – and we have no more say about it than a laboratory rat in a cage. We are seen as merely nameless members of the ignorant herd. People in the flyover country, to be remade in someone else’s image.