Jim Geraghty of National Review observed yesterday in his "Morning Jolt" newsletter that "More and more of our public debates feel like we’re trying to reason with people who are simply insane." He was referring to a dispute between the city of Chicago and the teacher's union, in which the head of the latter referred to the governor of Illinois as "the new ISIS recruit." But that strikes me as only a step or two beyond what has become normal for political rhetoric. What really makes me feel like I'm dealing with simply insane people is the sudden demand that women's restrooms, locker rooms, etc., be open to men. That is what, in the end, the controversy over "transgender" access to these facilities amounts to.
Suddenly a notion that would just recently have struck almost everyone as at best questionable and at worst crazy and dangerous is being treated as the moral and political equivalent of the struggle against racial segregation. Suddenly Bruce Springsteen, that champion of working-class values, believes that as a matter of principle he cannot play a concert in North Carolina because North Carolinians are resisting the demand. Suddenly Curt Schilling, a former major-league baseball star working for ESPN, is not fit to be employed by them because he thinks the demand is crazy. The president himself condemns efforts at the state level to pass laws resisting it. Even the concern for the safety of children, and the worry expressed by women who have been victims of sexual abuse of various kinds, which would normally trump most other considerations, is suddenly treated as a form of bigotry.
You simply can't argue against this. It's not just that your argument will not be considered, but that the fact that you are making it marks you as bigot who shouldn't be talking in the first place. Even to point that out makes you pretty suspect; it's one of the things Curt Schilling is being criticized for. As with same-sex marriage, you may have a legal right to argue against this practice, but you have no moral right; you will be shunned and deservedly punished in whatever extra-legal ways are available.
It really seems as if some sort of mania has seized most of the country's progressives. Although I never like bringing the demonic into a discussion of human folly or wickedness, because human nature itself generally seems a more than adequate explanation, I can't help thinking about the Gadarene swine. Or maybe just lemmings. I also can't help thinking about the Objective Room described in C.S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength: a place specifically designed to break down any sense of right order.
Part of the psychology behind the mania is no doubt what someone cleverly called Selma Envy: a desire–no, a deep need–to appropriate to oneself the imagined pure righteousness of the struggle against racial segregation. It may be irrational to say that a man who wants you to say that he is a woman is in the same moral position as a man who wants you to treat him like a man. But if you can get people to accept that equivalence you have an invincible weapon. All you have to say to your opponent is "You're just like the segregationists," and the most prestigious and powerful elements of our society will join you in denouncing him and possibly attempting to marshal the legal system against him.
But I don't think even Selma Envy entirely explains the phenomenon. There is some sort of sexual mania at work in our culture, and its origins are mysterious. Where is it leading? Will this particular controversy about restrooms burn out and subside, or will it become established, like so many other elements of the culture wars, as a permanent source of rancor? At the moment the latter seems likely. It certainly is bringing out, again, the growing authoritarianism of the left. For someone who was a leftist during the late '60s there's a great deal of irony, amusing only at first glance, in the fact it's now the left demanding Law and order! I had a conversation recently with a liberal who was passionately against the idea that the law could or should provide any sort of conscientious objection for bakeries, florists, and the like who do not want to provide their services for same-sex weddings. As with same-sex marriage, so with male access to places heretofore considered private to women: it's not enough that the new practice should be established in New York and San Francisco and anywhere else where most people favor it, while other parts of the country may do as they like. Only total uniformity will suffice.
Light On Dark Water 
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