June is LGBTQI+ Pride Month, a month honoring those who are “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex.” This ever-expanding rubric revolves around a particular value system entirely embraced by the modern Left: the notion that a person’s core identity ought to lie not in the relationship between individual desires and societal duties, but instead ought to revolve around a subjective sense of self, unverifiable by the world at large and justified against all societal roles and rules.
White House President Joe Biden said the same thing. Biden said, “This month we remind the LGBTQI+ communities that they are loved, cherished, and respected.” My administration views you as who you really are and deserves respect, dignity, and support.
It is difficult to see people as they really are if you don’t have an objective standard. Biden is using Orwellian euphemisms in order to suggest that all of us should validate our own self-perceptions.
This view is completely incoherent. Ironically, this incoherence can be seen in the conflict between letters in the alphabet soup for the sexually marginalized. Tolerance of lesbians and gay Americans was once based on the belief that biological drives should not have to be controlled by society. This idea had the advantage of internal consistency. However, this idea is now being recast as the belief that biology does not hold us and that we should be able to choose our own biology and change our gender or sexual orientation. The continued distinction between the genders is what makes homosexuality possible. After all, why choose males over females if these sexes can only be used as social constructs? Transgenderism is based on the absolute flexibility of sex. This is why so-called “trans-exclusionary radical feminists”, or TERFs, are so confused by the mainstream belief that women should have equal rights to biological men.
Yet, here we are, being told by the White House to ignore the internal contradictions of Leftist sexual ideology and pretend that it is not there. The same people who insist Lia Thomas is a female tell us that we should stand up for women’s rights. We are also told that you don’t have to be biologically female to be lesbian. Biology dictates behavior but must not be used as an identifier. This makes no sense. We should be proud of this because it allows us to express our authentic selves, without society’s restrictions.
This kind of illogic quickly turns into chaos. Without objective meaning, there is no way to communicate coherently with others or even to reach a consensus. To suggest that the entire world owes us validation for our deepest desires is an invitation to chaos. Unity is only possible when there’s opposition to something, and this includes opposition to institutions, tradition, and roles that support human flourishing.
