The dissonance was palpable. There I was, laying on my bed, watching television with my wife while scrolling through Twitter to check the news. We had stopped flipping channels for a while and settled on the classic psychological thriller Silence of the Lambs.
It wasn't that long after watching the disturbing scene where the movie's antagonist, a severely mentally disturbed serial killer known in the film as Buffalo Bill, outs himself as a gender-confused madman who has perhaps snapped after not receiving the psychiatric help and mental counseling he needed, I scrolled right into this bizarre scene on my phone:
From what I gather, after just some brief research, the man in the skirt and suspenders flopping onto the bed like a little child, a mentally disturbed man named Dylan Mulvaney, isn't the kindest or most genial person in the world, particularly when dealing with people who disagree with his social agenda. That said, he's no Buffalo Bill.
And maybe this makes me a chump or an easy mark for cultural revolutionaries, but I can't help it… I feel bad for Dylan Mulvaney. I feel bad for him just like I feel bad for Sam Brinton, the former Biden administration official who lost his job after multiple infractions of stealing women's suitcases.
Several months ago it was commentator Michael Knowles who contemplated a scenario that of course was considered controversial, but still reverberates in my mind whenever I see another painfully deluded individual being fully exploited for political reasons.
Knowles proposed how much better things would be "if our culture dispelled and discouraged lunatics' delusions and disordered desires instead of celebrating and encouraging them at every single turn from the cradle to the grave."
How much different life could be for Dylan Mulvaney and those who love him.
Gender dysphoria is a mental health condition. It is not a sexual orientation, nor is it an identity anymore than other misaligned self delusions like anorexia. Yet, to aid and abet a progressive political revolution that seems to take precedence over basic humanity, transgender individuals have their distressing thoughts affirmed and reinforced, rather than treated and corrected.
For the record, I would not expect someone suffering severe dysphoria to agree with me that their thoughts need to be corrected. I would and do, however, expect those who care about such individuals to agree with me. Having taught high school students for 21 years, I have encountered my fair share of young people with eating disorders. Thankfully, no one in our culture has found it politically expedient to start an affirmation campaign for anorexics.
Instead, compassionate people intervene and provide them help and hope. This entire issue has become so convoluted and multifaceted that it's become very easy to lose sight of the fact that, at the heart of all of our conversations and debate about public policy, rest human beings who bear the image of God. They, like all of us, are battling demons that whisper a relentless drumbeat of lies into the depths of their soul about what they can become, who they really are, and whose they really are.
Count me among those who just want to tell them what I want others to speak into my life: the truth.
