President Biden's Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson was asked a couple of questions yesterday that she declined to answer. There's no need for me to get into the detail, suffice it to say that she was asked to define 'woman', and also asked if school children should be taught that they are free to choose their own gender. Her empty verbal replies, body language and obvious uncomfortableness was all I needed to understand her position on the issues. Just as the questions asked by the questioners clearly stated their positions. I want to get back to the issues in a moment but first I'd like to throw in my two cents regarding regarding Jackson.
I don't know if she's qualified to sit on the Supreme Court or not, though I have my concerns about her impartiality. What bothers me more is Biden's criteria for a nominee. If I'm not mistaken he announced that he would nominate a black woman. How many better qualified candidates did he eliminate by making that determination? Shouldn't the nominating process have been to start with a list of candidates (I confess that I don't know where that list would come from), examine their judgements using the Constitution, reason and common sense as the benchmarks, and then pick the best qualified individual, regardless of race and gender? Anyway, back to the issues raised at the Senate's Judiciary Committee.
Should a man be allowed to declare himself to be a woman, and then enter a women's swimming contest? Years ago we knew the answer to that question. Our beliefs and values were firm, unquestionable, and one of them was that men were men and women were women. Our beliefs and values were absolute, that is to say, they were self-evident, independent of time, interpretation or judgement. But that seems not to be the case anymore. Now we're redefining our past beliefs and actions. We're stumbling all over ourselves apologizing for the perceived status of race relations and the white man's responsibility to set things right. We're apologizing and seeking forgiveness from the members of the LGBTQIA 'communities' and trying to accommodate their wishes and desires.
Personally I'm all for racial equality but also believe that inclusion needs to be earned. The gender issue is a little tougher for me to come to grasps with. I liken gender divergence to a manufacturing machine. A machine is designed to produce a product to within specified tolerance limits. Going back to my paper company days, a machine that makes cardboard boxes, called a flexo-folder-gluer was designed to produce what was/is(?) called the 'manufacture's gap' of 3/8" + or - 1/8". Equating that to mother nature, babies are born with differences but mostly within the usual tolerance limits. At times a flexo-folder-gluer would produce gaps outside of the allowed tolerances. That's just the nature of the process...any process. Mother nature is no different. Ancient literature shows us that nature has been producing lesbians, gays (I hate that they hijacked that word), bi-sexuals, etc. for eons...and probably since life first began. Intellectually I can understand and accept that fact. At the gut level it makes my stomach queasy.
If there is one thing I've learned, it's that beliefs and values - those things that we held to be eternal, are transient. There are no absolutes; no truths. There are only temporary beliefs and values held for the moment by a significant portion of any given society. At some level that realization saddens me...it somehow seems to detract from the human experience. A saving grace is that on an individual level we can still cling to the values and beliefs that shaped our being despite what psychologists, sociologists, news media and elected officials tell us. There is that.
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