Accompanying the horrifying news today that a mass shooting took place at a Christian elementary school near Nashville, Tenn. was the bizarre background information about the alleged assailant.  A troubled young woman has been blamed for the killing of three adults and three children, and she identified herself as a transgender person, according to online profiles she left behind.

Audrey Elizabeth Hale, age 28, had once been a student at Covenant Presbyterian Church's school, which she returned to yesterday to gun down others.  Her motives for slaughtering six innocent people aren't clear, but it's obvious to anyone that she suffered from one or more mental illnesses.  Whether or not we find out what inner demons drove her to her fatal actions today, we know that her foray into transgenderism should've prompted those who knew her to seek competent psychological counseling.

YouTube screen grab.

In a sane society, people do not pretend to magically transform into the other sex (and yes, there are only two categories of reproductive sex for humans), nor do we allow people to dictate their "preferred pronouns."  Sexual identity is set at birth, and barring medical anomalies or a doctor's faulty vision, that is our actual sex until we die.  At least that was the case until recently, when the justifiably mentally ill and the radical left (and those categories often overlap) demanded that we play along with their twisted game of make-believe and agree that men and women can somehow scientifically "transition" to the other sex.

Of course, the fictional notion of transitioning to the other sex is complete nonsense, and up until 2013, it was accurately categorized as a mental illness by the American Psychiatric Associaion (APA).  In that year, the DSM-5 downgraded transgenderism to "gender dysphoria," and it's a safe bet that the leftists who control the APA will erase it completely in their next edition, much as they did when homosexuality was eliminated from their list of mental illnesses.  That sleight-of-hand was accomplished not by advances in science nor medicine, but by relentless lobbying from various pro-homosexual groups and the voting body of  the APA.  That was the first step in getting it accepted by mainstream society, and the issue of transgenderism is following a similar path.

In the following days, we'll be lectured by the usual leftists pretending to be journalists about all the evils of allowing guns in our modern society, but criticism of transgenderism will be strictly off limits.  We'll be told that this fantasy male that Audrey Hale was becoming would have been her "authentic self," and that any torment she suffered was the fault of a repressive and bigoted society that cannot accept the amazing people who discover their need to change.  No, they'll wail, it's not the fault of those confused few whose bodies don't match their imaginations, but rather, it's caused by everyone else who adheres to human biology and history since mankind began.

For the record, being transgender or having a host of other mental illnesses doesn't necessarily make someone a violent threat to society, and it's not meant to imply that Ms. Hale killed others because of her apparent transgender preference.  Nevertheless, being diagnosed or self-identifying as transgender makes someone mentally ill, and no amount of leftist spin, or brightly colored flags in a parade, can change that.

Mental illness categories overlap, and those who identify as transgender also experience higher rates of anxiety, substance abuse, psychosis, suicidal thoughts and actions, depression, etc.  The left claims that this is due to "bullying" and stigmatization by the rest of society, and that studies which clearly draw that conclusion were somehow flawed.  That is the smokescreen they present when faced with inconvenient facts.

For those who believe they are another sex, against biological proof otherwise, we should demand they undergo competent psychological treatment, and not change everyone's definition of pronouns, bathroom usage, sports team criteria, and alleged rights.  While transgenderism didn't drive Audrey Hall to murder random adults and children, it was one of her mental illnesses and it shouldn't be dismissed or accepted as anything less than a psychological malady.  We need to treat mental illness, not condone it.