Beyond human rights.

Well, I suppose it simply had to happen. The Ontario Human Rights Commission has issued a report calling for greater public education on the subject of transsexuals so that we can all understand this poor, persecuted community. In other words, we have to know more about people who want sex-change operations.

"Education about gender identity is crucial to both transgendered and non-transgendered people," says the report. Funny, I seem to have got along fine so far without too much information on this issue. The paper goes on to state that education is imperative because there are so many myths about the subject.

For education, read clumsy and unbridled propaganda. That the report is based on a radical agenda is obvious to everyone. The only people who seem to be promoting all this rubbish are those intent on smashing gender differences and doctors who make a great deal of money telling mentally ill men that its okay to want to have your genitalia cut off.

Some fundamental points. There is no such thing as a transsexual. There is no such thing as a man in a woman's body or a woman in a man's body. There are, however, some very sick people whose deep mental illness deserves our compassion and care. Any man who wants to have his parts surgically removed and some grotesque imitation of a female organ put in their place requires years of therapy and medication. Or, frankly, needs to put in a hard week's work fifty times a year so that he stops concocting neurotic nightmares and gets on with leading a meaningful life.

Many of us indulged in fantasies at some time or another, usually when we were very young. Then we matured and put away childish things. I, for example, always wanted to be a great soccer player, but I simply wasn't good enough. Surgery would have done nothing to alter that condition and surgery will do nothing to turn a man into a woman. These poor wretches will merely become monstrous results of weird science, walking examples of the triumph of technology over common sense.

I pity them, but I also oppose them. What they demand is wrong, dangerous and unnatural. That they also want public funding for such gruesome exercises, which they had until very recently, is beyond belief. Next time I meet an unemployed nurse, a child counting the days until life-and-death treatment or an old man on an MRI waiting list, I'll assure them that they have to be more understanding.

The handful of men and women I have met who are convinced that they were born in the wrong bodies have been profoundly messed up and have had a legion of painful issues with which to deal. The debate over which bathroom to use was in some cases the least of their problems. How cruel it is to keep patting them on the head and saying "Have whatever you want, It'll all be fine." We should not be encouraging them.

Remember, the possibility or even tendency towards perversion is nothing new. We are of a fallen nature and are capable of the most obscene and ridiculous desires. This is why natural law and Church teaching is vital to a human and humane life. What is unique to this age is the affirmation of these base desires, even to the point of obliging the rest of the community to pay for such sins. More than this, when the members of that community object to such antics they may be liable to prosecution.

So contemporary North America differs in its decadence even from the ancient, pagan civilisations. They allowed immoral behaviour, we make it the norm. Will transsexuals be protected under the law? They already are to a certain extent and this will probably only increase. The state doesn't need a Praetorian Guard when it has the Supreme Court.

This would all be very funny if it wasn't so very sad. For the people involved, for their families, for the taxpayer and for the greater society that doesn't know what is hitting it and why it is happening. Genuine Christian love sometimes means saying, in a loud and clear voice, no, no and never.