Have you all signed up to help the American Family Association boycott Target? It’s the hottest thing right now! Over 500,000 people have signed a pledge saying that, due to how Target says it is okay for people to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity, they will never ever darken the doors of a Target, not never again! (As if they were not already redneck Walmart loyalists who think Target is for liberals.) And as is the case with these sorts of things, wingnuts are out in public saying hilariously stupid things about it.
Sometimes stupid people say and/or do stupid things for stupid reason. Sometimes hateful people say and/or do hateful things for hateful reasons. Sometimes those people are one and the same. Sometimes those people have gigs as talking heads on Fox News Channel (FNC), where they’re paid handsomely to spew their particular brand of stupid and hateful to brain-dead acolytes eagerly awaiting instructions on whom they must hate and fear. In the case of Dr. Keith Ablow, we should probably be beyond frightened that this intellectual/moral misfit is telling people he’s a doctor, a certified mental health professional (who is himself certifiable). I’m not certain I’d be comfortable with him prescribing Band-Aids…much less helping people figure out why they’re so messed up.
Ablow is the sort of doctor who, if he was a family practitioner, would be bleeding people with leeches and practicing phrenology. He’d be treating cancer by cutting off limbs. If he was a mental health professional, he’d be telling patients to get over themselves and stop sniveling.
Oh, wait…Ablow IS (allegedly) a mental health professional. Be afraid. Be VERY afraid.
The moral of the story: Even someone with an M.D. behind their name can be a Grade A, world class moron.
KEITH ABLOW: It represents more than bathrooms. We’re not just talking about who’s going to use which restroom. We’re talking about whether closely held opinion of an individual will be allowed to overcome scientific data and history … So if you believe that you are of one gender, but your DNA and your physical appearance and your physical anatomy are evidence that you are of another gender, then there’s that conflict. Then if we allow people culturally to dictate terms in our culture, then we also by extension may be in a position where we allow people to say they’re 65 when they’re 45 and get Medicare. Allow people to get tattooed head to foot and say “I’m a black person.” Now, would that be offensive to black people if that person got affirmative action preferences at school? […]
I don’t know; would it be offensive to intelligent people if Ablow were allowed to keeping talking and spewing his pointless, intellectually vacant argument? I’d have to say yes, because listening to Ablow attempting to explain virtually anything is to endanger large numbers of previously functional brain cells. The man’s an authority on human emotional stability in the same way Dennis Hastert is a brave protector of the innocence of children.
As a mental health professional, you’d think Ablow would have some idea of the struggles faced by transgender individuals. Instead, he’s proven himself just another doctrinaire Conservative ideologue convinced those with gender identity issues are best reduced to stereotypes portraying them as self-absorbed, whiny brats dissatisfied with themselves and the physical accoutrements they were born with.
DOOCY: So you’re suggesting that people can select their gender, they could select their race, they could select their age. HOW DID WE GET TO THIS PLACE?
ABLOW: We got to this place because we care about people.
We got to this place because Dr. Keith Ablow is a fraud, a delusional moron who shouldn’t be allowed within 100 feet of a patient in need of mental health care. In his case, “We care about people” seems to be code for “some people just can’t be happy with what they were born with.” It’s not about caring about and for people; Ablow’s philosophy seems devoid of anything even faintly redolent of compassion.
The truth is that Conservatives like Ablow- the same fine, upstanding beacons of morality who preach freedom, liberty, and getting government off the backs of Americans- are perfectly comfortable with forcing their moral/ideological/theological agenda on those not enlightened enough to think as they do. They believe they- and ONLY they- know what’s best for transgender individuals and society in general. They’re all atwitter about “transgender men in dresses” invading women’s restrooms in order to satisfy their deviant, perverted sexual urges…yet they refuse to recognize that this “threat” is nonexistent. They ignore the truth that the vast majority of “perverts” invading women’s restrooms are heterosexual males…and that there are already laws on the books proscribing this sort of behavior. They ignore the far greater clear and present danger posed by pedophile Catholic priests.
Truth be told, “bathroom laws” like North Carolina’s HB2 have nothing to do with any desire to “protect the sanctity of public restrooms” or “defend the safety of women and children.” These laws are a solution in search of a problem that simply doesn’t exist…except in the fever dreams of the American Taliban- socially conservative Christians disgusted by the idea that the LGBT community should enjoy any rights at all.
It’s not about wondering how it is that “people can select their gender, they could select their race, they could select their age.” It’s about allowing people the right to be who they feel themselves to truly be. It’s about a minority class of people simply wanting to be allowed to live in whatever manner they determine to be genuine and authentic.
More than anything, it’s about a group of arch-Conservative, hyper-religious, intolerant, judgmental busybodies who believe they possess the God-given right to tell others how they may or may not live. It’s about the American Taliban- “small government” Conservatives in any other context- seeing no conflict inherent in their legislating which restroom transgender individuals may use.
Because “freedom” and “liberty” only apply to good, God-fearing, Bible-believing, socially Conservative, heterosexual White Christians. No others need apply.
