Against Civil Rights
No, not everyone deserves them for every reason they claim. And it's important that we're able to explain why.
I’m violating doctor’s orders and placing myself in a good deal of pain typing this out thru an avulsion fracture in my wrist, but a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. In this case, a man’s gotta critique another man. Along with his female counterpart. For freedom and individual liberty and such.
Having myself re-watched “What Is A Woman” over the recent holiday weekend, I’ve noticed that the YouTube algorithm deciding my recommendations is of late pushing a lot of content addressing various trans issues — from a variety of perspectives — whether that’s a video claiming to “debunk” the Matt Walsh film, or one offering to review it through a particular ideological lens.
One such suggestion was the provocatively titled “OUR REACTION To Satan's Demonic LGBTQ+ Agenda And What Is A Woman Documentary w/ @MelissaDougherty,” a video discussion offered on a channel called The Beat by Allen Parr, which bills itself as “the #1 online Christian Community on the Internet.” With well over 1 million subscribers, it’s difficult to argue with the channel’s likely influence — and with the sphere in which that influence most likely lies. It’s a lengthy video, but the discussion between host Allen Parr and his guest Melissa Dougherty, who hosts her own popular eponymous Christian channel, is a substantive one, and I recommend it to you if you have the time and are interested in a traditional Christian take on trans issues.
That said, one strand of the discussion between Parr and Dougherty touched on the question of civil rights, and Parr’s arguments against civil rights legislation protecting the trans identifying — the Equality Act gets mentioned in passing and provides the impetus for this particular digression in the video — fall into various logical and rhetorical traps it is absolutely crucial we who agree with his conclusion nevertheless avoid. As I’ve noted elsewhere and often, when it comes to the rigor of an argument, how you get there matters. And here, though Parr and Dougherty reach what I would assert is the correct end, the way they get there — the path they choose to map out for others whom they no doubt influence — is, in my view, unnecessarily treacherous, and potentially even deadly. Rhetorically and figuratively speaking, of course. At least, for now.
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