The Death of Sexuality

Through legal alchemy the Supreme Court in Bostock v Clayton County has rendered the word “sex” meaningless.

Traditionally “sex” referred to the complementary conditions of being either male or female, which in turn referred to complementary abilities to beget or bear offspring. Modern usage has moved the emphasis from something based on biologically verifiable traits to something we do with our biologically verifiable parts. Whereas we once were able to refer to “the better sex” without a hint of the erotic, now we speak of “better sex” assuming only the erotic. Having already lost in the transition any real sense of male and female rooted in procreation, the Supreme Court has delivered the coup de grâce to the word “sex” with a “definition” that stems from neither tradition nor current fad. In doing so, it has not created new law, because law requires definition. Rather, it has simply destroyed existing law and replaced it with an anarchical emptiness.

In considering “gay” and “transgender” as simply variants of the word “sex” similar to “male” and “female” the Court’s ruling has forced the square pegs of the former into the round holes where the latter comfortably fit. “Male” and “Female” are inherently physiological terms describing a materially verifiable state of being. “Gay” and “transgender” describe psychological states that cannot be materially verified.

Objections will be raised that though they are psychological states, to be gay or transgender is no more freely chosen than male or female. Since they are given conditions, they cannot be discriminated against. Yet they are different, particularly in regard to the law, which should not discriminate on the basis of mere being but necessarily discriminates when men and women begin doing. To be male or female is a state of objective existence. To be gay or transgendered in the modern world no longer indicates mere inclinations but a subjective existence expressed in a lifestyle full of choices, a lifestyle that may or may not coexist well with the public good. The ruling of Bostock v. Clayton County was not about states of existence but about lifestyle choices lived out.

The art of sophistry is not to prove two equal things equal but to prove two unequal things equal. Though sophistry may make a lawyer wildly successful, it can simultaneously destroy the law. Justice Gorsuch, in playing the sophist in this case, has not added meaning to “sex” but rendered it meaningless, reducing even “male” and “female” from objective realities to subjective expressions equal to “gay” and “transgender.” Ultimately, as the alphabet soup that extends beyond LGBQT… makes clear, the list goes on ad infinitum.

To say that every man can define his own sexuality is simply another way of saying that sexuality actually has no meaning at all. The upbeat idea that we each define our own meaning is nothing more than nihilism hidden behind the façade of a happy face.

While the LGBQT community is reveling in the new ruling, it should be advised not only that good law protects all while bad law ultimately only destroys, but lives lived meaningfully lead to happiness and fulfillment while lives without meaning trend toward misery and its various pathologies, including suicide. But the destruction is even greater than that. A world that can no longer see that being born into a condition over which we have no control differs significantly from the actions we consciously choose is a world that rejects the very possibility of freedom, morality, or love.

A man whose actions are predetermined by the condition of his birth is not free but a slave to his biology. He cannot love because he cannot freely give what is not his to control. Without freedom of action there is no possible morality. Those who oppose and persecute him can no more be judged and found wanting than he can. In such a world law does not exist to regulate relations among men who have equal claims to life. Rather, it exists so the powerful can exert their will over the less powerful.

Bostock v. Clayton County is the ultimate triumph of the Sexual Revolution. In our drive to live out our sexual urges without guilt, we have slaughtered children in the womb, destroyed the lives of many who survive the womb, destroyed our marriages, and destroyed our families. Rather than seeing that our sexual desires should lead us beyond ourselves into the joys of creation, family and gift, we have reduced them to an itch that must be scratched. Rather than draw us out of ourselves toward others, our sexual desires draw us into ourselves. In doing so pleasure has replaced purpose and our feelings have mastered us (one might say enslaved us).

Even our caring has succumbed. Instead of a concern for the other, one that begins with the gift of one’s self rather than the wealth of another man, we are now masters of a preening self-righteousness that makes us feel good about ourselves. Instead of a seeing those we disagree with as fellow travelers seeking truth, we can judge and condemn them as deplorable. In this new self-created righteousness, we no longer see ourselves as justified by God’s love but by our own goodness. Instead of an infinite and transcendent goodness we now seek a goodness so small that it may disappear altogether.

The Sexual Revolution was never about sexuality’s redemption. It was always about its destruction. As it approached its final victory we ignored the simple realization that if a man could be a woman it no longer meant anything to be either. But we chose not to see it because it blended so well with everything else we chose not to see, especially the holocaust of the unborn. We could not see because we have been driving nails into the coffin of our sexuality from the time we accepted contraception as a norm.

Once we divorced sexuality from procreation we divorced it from life. Since then the only thing it could do was die. As a culture we killed it before transgenderism was vogue. On Monday, June 15th the Supreme Court of the United States declared it legally dead.