I Was There When the World Went Mad

I heard it with my own ears. If I believe I’m a woman, even though I’m a male in every other way, then I’m a woman and can use the women’s restroom. And if I believe I’m a horse, I can use the stable. After all I’m not hurting anyone.

I heard it with my own ears.

The LGBT protesters in Charlotte, North Carolina, were chanting, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, transphobia’s got to go.”

They were seeking to disrupt our Christian rally where we called on the City Council to vote “no” to the so-called nondiscrimination bill, one which would actually discriminate against Christians and other people of conservative moral values and one which would make all public bathrooms and locker rooms gender neutral.

I had just finished speaking and tried to engage some of the protesters, asking them what “transphobia” was.

When I didn’t fit their definition of having an irrational fear of individuals who identify as transgender, I was told that my failure to embrace their identity made me transphobic.

I asked one young man, an African-American, if he would consider me black if I really believed I was black.

He explained that skin color was outwardly determined but that it was “primitive” to claim that gender was determined by one’s biological and chromosomal sex. Primitive!

No, gender was determined entirely by how you felt in your own mind, regardless of biology and anatomy.

When I pressed him on the matter of racial identity, he conceded my point. If I genuinely believed I was black, then I was black.

That prompted me to ask the City Council members when I had my turn to speak later that night (I was one of more than 115 people who signed up to address the issue) if I should be entitled to minority housing benefits if I was convinced I was really black.

This was not meant to mock but to underscore the absurdity of dismissing all external tests and claiming that reality is determined by whatever I believe it to be. How can human society even exist with such social madness?

Most frightening of all was the passion with which these protesters presented their views. To call them intensely close-minded and dogmatic would be a severe understatement.

When I asked a young lady if I could use a stable if I believed I was a horse, she said “yes” without slightest hesitation. And while she didn’t have children of her own (she said she’s unable to) she wanted me to know that she teaches 90 young children and would be perfectly at home with them sharing a bathroom with, say, a biological male who believed he was female.

For me even to question her was absurd in her eyes, and yet this young woman is influencing our little ones.

As for the comments about being a horse, there are actually people who suffer from what is called “species dysphoria,” being convinced that they are part animal.

What makes this all the more bizarre is that they don’t believe they have a disorder. They actually celebrate their animal identity.

If you don’t believe me, just do a search for “Otherkin,” defined on Wikipedia as “those who identify as partially or entirely nonhuman. They contend that they are, in spirit if not in body, not human.” (Some also believe they are part extra-terrestrial.)

And they are dead serious about it, also claiming that their numbers are in the hundreds of thousands. There was even a reality TV show about them that aired on a gay channel in 2013.

Of course, I’ve known about these subjects and written on them for some time now, but it was still a bit of a shocker to hear people arguing with me so passionately about the meaninglessness of all physical realities—and it was all quite sad to see.

It really feels like the world is going completely mad.

I was there when it happened.

 Michael Brown is the author of 25 books, including Can You Be Gay and Christian? and host of the nationally syndicated talk radio show “The Line of Fire.” He is also president of FIRE School of Ministry and director of the Coalition of Conscience.