Church Sex Abuse Crisis and An Alleged Rape by a Birder

 

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Dear Daniel,

A woman named Aisha White alleged in a lengthy, detailed blog post that a prominent birder, Jason Ward, raped her.

 

White's blog post, if accurate, describes how something she had come to love, and regard as salvific, is now associated, in her mind and indeed her body, with one of the worst experiences of her life.

 

She was depressed by the COVID shutdown. She wanted more contact with nature. An African American woman, she made contact with Ward, an African American man. She was on a birding trip with him, in the woods, when the alleged assault occurred.

 

White wrote about the aftermath. "The week following the assault, I walked around in so much pain I’d have to shift my weight in creative ways to avoid the discomfort that came with simply sitting down. I was angry about what he did but I was also sad because it meant the end of a beautiful amount of time connecting with nature in a manner I had never done before …

 

The kind gesture of a man holding the door open for me now makes me nervous, as I’ve become hyper-aware of men standing behind me. I have trouble sleeping uninterrupted every single night and I sometimes experience nightmares…

 

To borrow a quote from a blog he wrote, 'One black person’s paradise can be another one’s terror.' He proved that to be true…

 

It should have been a safe space because nature does not belong to any one of us, yet it should be accessible to all of us in its many forms. He welcomed me into this beautiful world of birding but quickly stripped me of the enjoyment of it by altering my association with birds and the outdoors…

 

Although it takes deliberate – and sometimes failed – efforts from me to avoid associating birds with him or what he did, I keep trying every day. There have been many days where I felt like giving up. I felt like my voice would never be truly heard. I am trying to remember who I was before this happened – the freedom I felt, and the comfort of knowing the sound of birds signal that I am alive."

 

White's words bring me to tears. I love nature. As a rape survivor myself, I completely understand the somatic connection between surrounding circumstances and an event like rape. For me, the trigger is not birdsong, but the smell of alcohol on someone's breath.

 

Another disturbing news story is breaking. The Lincoln Project played a key role in defeating Donald Trump. I have donated to the Lincoln Project. Now it's come out that John Weaver, a co-founder, is an alleged serial sex harasser. According to accusations, though Weaver is a married man, he used his political power to attempt to coerce males as young as 14 to trade sexual contact for political access. At the same time, the Lincoln Project is accused of maintaining a sexist, homophobic, and financially corrupt workplace.

 

We were eating a delicious apple and we found a worm in it. What do we do?

 

The solution will discover and expose common denominators and shared cures. What links White's alleged assault with the alleged assaults on young men committed by Weaver with priests' assaults on children with child sex trafficking? What lies are all these rapists telling themselves? What power fuels their violations? What new narrative will decrease violations? What balm will heal all victims?

 

The Catholic Church sex abuse crisis? Get the information out there. All of it. Change the church so it never happens again.

 

But that is not enough. Please don't talk to me about sex abuse in the Catholic Church unless you want to talk to me about sex abuse, period. Please don't talk to me about Catholic children unless you also want to talk to me about Nepali or Cambodian or Thai children who are sexually trafficked throughout Asia by marketers who operate with impunity with what sellers and buyers believe is the sanction of their belief systems.

 

Don't talk to me about rape, and the association of rape with something you'd previously thought of as safe, as holy, as sacred, unless you want to talk to me about events like what allegedly happened to Aisha White or the teen boys harassed by John Weaver. Or the Atheist women raped by New Atheist celebrities, celebrities empowered by misogynist New Atheist culture.

 

Because selective outrage – I only want to talk about sex abuse in the Catholic Church but nowhere else – communicates to me that the speaker is NOT a compassionate savior who wants to right wrongs, but is, in fact, a stone-cold hater, whose goal is not helping victims but smearing Catholicism, who exploits victims' pain to that end.

 

This will be my last letter, I think, on the church sex abuse crisis.

 

I want to make a request of you. If you want to refer to something I said, please quote me. Please don't paraphrase. I ask this because in a couple of previous pieces, you paraphrase me as saying something I don't think and never said. As a survivor of child sex abuse myself, I'm sensitive about what words others put in my mouth on this topic.

 

We need to move on to talking about Darwin and evolution, so I'll go silent on church sex abuse after this, at least for the time being, and give you a chance to respond to my letters on the sex abuse crisis.

And then we can move on to Darwin and evolution. 

The Church Sex Abuse Crisis, Dialogue with an Atheist, Continued.

 

Dear Daniel,

 

On Thanksgiving, 2020, I posted a sixty-seven-year-old photo of my older brother Joe's graduation from kindergarten to first grade. Though I posted the photo on a holiday, the photo received a large number of likes, comments, and shares. It wasn't my brother, handsome tyke though he was, who generated such love. It was the woman with the slightly tilted head in the very back row, a woman I had never met, and whose name I did not know.

 

I remember seeing this woman in church. I remember the slight but permanent tilt of her head. I assumed it was a medical problem of some kind, but I somehow knew that this anatomical anomaly did not mark her as less; I somehow knew it was a minor martyrdom she carried with grace. Of the hundreds of people who, when I was a child, I watched walk up that aisle to receive communion, she stood out. There was something beatific about this woman I never met, never stood next to, and never heard speak.

 

Because I posted this photo on Facebook, I now know who she is. She's standing in back of my brother's kindergarten class of fifty-two students. There are no teacher aides standing with her; she's solely responsible for those kids. The following comments are cut and pasted from Facebook.

 

"Miss Gilpatrick was the best."

 

"She surely was!"

 

"What a great lady."

 

"My favorite teacher EVER."

 

"I learned to read with Miss Gilpatrick. She made a classroom in her garage to give kids extra help."

 

"When we were seniors I was a cashier in the Haskell A&P grocery store. One day Miss Gilpatrick came to my checkout. I felt like royalty was in my line. I didn't have to tell her who I was. She said, 'Little Marilyn Evans of course I remember you.' I bet she remembered many students. The very best teacher!!"

 

"Naomi Gilpatrick was a wonderful teacher! Who else could teach more than 50 kindergarten children without an aide or two? She did science experiments, and taught us to read and write. She even had a pageant, at year's end, where our class sang and recited the Gettysburg Address. In her later years, she would cut the flowers she grew in her garden, put each one in a vase, and deliver them to nursing home residents. She was really an incredible woman!"

 

"Mrs. Gilpatrick kept everyone straight. Guess I was in kindergarten in 1958 with her. In the early 70s my security clearance was being raised and the security services talked to Mrs. Gilpatrick. I told them she has had hundreds of students since I was there. I was called into a major's office. He had done her interview and told me she not only could name EVERY student she ever had, she had our pictures also. He grinned and said I would get my clearance anyway. Not sure if he was busting my chops or what! She was a GREAT Lady and I'm sure heaven is now in line."

 

A Google search brought me to an obituary.

 

"GILPATRICK Dr. Naomi, 92 … Born to the late Honora (Sheehan) and Amisa Gilpatrick … Irish American, author, and professor, Naomi graduated Salutatorian from Pompton Lakes HS in 1935 and Summa Cum Laude from St. Elizabeth's College in 1939. She received her Master's Degree at the University of Michigan (Honors in English; Phi Beta Kappa) and her Doctorate in Education from Columbia University … She won the Avery Hopwood Award for Major Fiction with her novel, The Broken Pitcher (1943). This book was reviewed as 'The great Catholic American novel.' Naomi will be remembered for her deep dedication to family and friends, her skillful pen, her clever mind, her Irish wit and sense of humor, her love of children and her dedication to her Catholic faith."

 

Mexican American author Richard Rodriguez wrote, "I cannot overstate the influence of the Irish on my life and the lives of my family … All the nuns who taught me English and then introduced me to the idea that I was an American … were Irish – and the priests, too. The nuns made me learn the preamble to the Constitution. The nuns taught me confidence. There was no question about my belonging in America … There was no question about English being my language. The nuns were as unsentimental as the priests were sentimental. But they all assumed my American success."

 

My beloved friend Liron writes from Israel. "My mother-in-law's name is Theresa Rosendahl (nee Friedrich). She was born Yoheved, but the nuns gave her a new name: Theresa. She kept this Catholic name in gratitude to that towering heroine who saved her life." This heroine was Teresa Janina Kierocińska, one of many Polish nuns who hid Jewish children during the Holocaust.

 

I want the Church sex abuse story to be told in a way that inspires change. That has happened.

 

I want this story told, too. A story of thousands of not-famous, not-glamorous priests, nuns, and Catholic school teachers who shared the best, the truth, the heart of Catholicism with their students.

 

Higher-ups in the church hid the abuse. That's criminal and destructive.

 

It is no less criminal and destructive to hide the world that Mrs. Gilpatrick and others created for millions of children. They weren't just "nice" people who did "nice" things. They were Catholics, obedient to Christ's commands and a Catholic tradition of learning and love. Yes, we know about failures and errors. We also need to know about Catholicism's unique gifts.

 

 

The Church Sex Abuse Crisis. Dialogue with an Atheist

 

Dear Daniel,

I was sexually abused as a child. I have had lifelong health problems because of the damage.

 

I don't talk about this much. Here's one reason why. Listeners invariably rush to condemn my abusers. I recoil. I chastise these listeners. They don't understand. They assume that immediately condemning my abuser is the righteous thing to do. It's not. It's garbage. It's narcissistic, and it violates justice.

 

Visible bruises marked my body. I was unkempt. When I was in second or third grade, I reported a couple of the predictable health side effects – bleeding and rashes in private places – to a higher up and this higher up did nothing. Doctors, nurses, neighbors, elected officials, teachers, nice girls and boys, not only did nothing to help, they participated.

 

Abused kids are often overweight; fat is a form of insulation, like a wall around a besieged city. We are ugly, no matter our features, because we wear our fear, pain, and outsider status. Rather than helping, teachers called me "Big Ox" and chastised me for wearing sloppy attire. Other kids mocked me. "You got fleas," and "Minnesota Fats" were what two popular boys shouted whenever I was in view. A guidance counselor called me "weird" and "shy." A teacher, in whose class I slept soundly, to compensate for lack of a safe place to sleep, totally ignored my red-flag behavior. A professor, who also told Polak jokes in class, said I had "problems with authority."

 

A friend was also abused. A very popular teacher saw that this kid was alone and different and bullied him mercilessly. The teacher died recently and was praised in an obit and in a Facebook group. I finally said something that went against the cascade of encomiums. Emboldened by my post, another friend spoke up. She witnessed the abuse, but, of course, being just a school kid, she could do nothing. Most of these people were not Catholic. Some were non-white. Blaming Christianity or the West is hogwash.

 

That's why I can't stand it when people say, "Oh, your abuser was so bad." Humanity abuses children. I follow child abuse cases in the press. One thing they all have in common is people in power seeing and not acting. And I am part of that humanity, and I abused others. In addition to being bullied, I bullied others. I saw that I could make kids, including boys, cry, and I did. I have turned my back on people I could have helped, had I only spared a moment's more compassion.

 

Daniel, you wrote, "There is no club, however old or divine, which I would remain a member of … if that club did what the Church has done. There are limits to one's tolerance, I think, and the sexual torture of children, abetted at the highest levels, is way beyond all those limits … There is no organisation, no group, no club, no church, no faith, no community, none whatsoever, that I would continue to be a part of … however divine or meaningful it was to me, however ancient and venerable it was, if it was guilty of even a fraction of the crimes the Church is guilty of." One must "close the door in disgust." One must find "alternatives" "without the taint."

 

I am impatient with your position. I do not respect it. I also fear it, because it inevitably associates me, as a victim, with ineradicable "taint." Your approach does not help. The insistence that one is more pure, that one belongs to corporate bodies without taint, is part of the problem.

 

You don't want to be a member of a corporate body that does terrible things? Give me a break. Look at this charming photo of Otto Wachter and his family. Are you categorically different from them in any way? No, and neither am I. The Holocaust, the megafauna extinction, slavery, My Lai, Rwanda, rape, female infanticide, you name it, we – humanity – did it. "Nothing human is alien to me." There is no label, not "Catholic" not "Atheist" not "Western" not "Oriental" not "The Huns" not "Them" that locates any of us in a pure category. When you study the perfect, diabolical, historical storm that conjured Nazism, you see that, under the same circumstances, many of us and those we love would be at the wrong end of the whip.

 

Tom Holland, an atheist, speaks with wisdom and appreciation of the Christian concept of original sin. He gets how democratic, and how helpful, this concept is. We are *all* sinners. We require a mechanism to work through our filth. Imagine a society that emphasizes the purity of an exalted few, and the impurity of others. This emphasis on purity requires that the pure act as if their filth does not exist. Only the impure may address tainted sewage. Actually, I lived in that society, in the Hindu sub-continent. Brahmins crap in public. Untouchables are assigned to address others' filth. It's a very bad situation.

 

Now imagine a society that isn't obsessed with dividing the pure from the impure, and allows plumbers to be highly paid. I prefer that culture, one without high-flying, unworkable ideas of the pure v the impure.

 

Christianity offers egalitarian plumbing: Christ's sacrifice, our confession, making of amends, and renewal of our commitment to live in accord with Christ's example.

 

Only Catholic priests molest children? What a lucky planet you live on. Boy Scouts, Orthodox Jews, popular show business figures, all have had their scandals.

 

I was raised Catholic, went to Catholic school, attended mass daily if not weekly, interacted with priests one-on-one and with friends, and never had an inkling of this behavior. After stories first came out, I asked Catholic friends. They had no idea, either. No, abuse is  not central, not essential, not exclusively Catholic. There are features of Catholicism that facilitated it, just as there are features of Boy Scouting and show business that facilitated abuse in those corporations. I want those features to change.

 

Whataboutism wants to turn attention away. I don't want to do that. I celebrate every New York Times article exposing church sex abuse. Rather, I mention abuse beyond the church to note the selective outrage of those who falsely and hatefully equate Catholicism with pedophilia.

 

How much does it cost to buy a girl in Hindu Nepal or Buddhist Cambodia or Thailand, a sex tourism hotspot? Child sex trafficking is rampant in these countries. Purchasers are often Muslim Arabs. One online source says that five to ten thousand Nepali women and girls are trafficked into sex slavery every year.

 

As a survivor of child sexual abuse, it bugs me no end that enemies of Catholicism focus exclusively on victims of Catholic priests, and ignore the much larger number of non-Catholic children openly bought and sold, often by Western tourists. I knew a family in Nepal who had thirteen children, the last a boy. The girls were all "mistakes." The Vedas tell the parents that only a boy can light the parents' funeral pyre, thus ensuring them a felicitous reincarnation. The girls? They're doomed. Muslim purchasers can fall back on Koran verses about "what your right hand possesses" and Mohammed's example for the sexual abuse of children. The New York Times would probably not publish these facts. Rather, we get another article about bad, bad Catholics.

 

Daniel, you are an Atheist. Atheists are a corporate body. Atheists commit sex abuses. For years now misogyny, actual rape, support for actual rapists, and disgusting, misogynist threats against women have been rampant in Atheist communities. Do you recognize Atheism's filthy taint? Are you closing the door on Atheism? No. You believe it to be true, you are not a rapist, and you do not believe rape to be essential to Atheism.

 

You cannot retire your humanity, though you share that identity with Nazis. You cannot retire from Atheism, though you share that belief and community with rapists and misogynists of the lowest type. I will not retire from Catholicism, though I know it to be imperfect, just as I am imperfect.

 

Again, as Holland points out, Christianity offers a mechanism for addressing humanity's fallen state. We accept Christ's salvific sacrifice on our behalf. We confess. We repent. We make amends. We change our behavior.

 

As Holland darkly warns, and Douglas Murray has written about this, too, the post-Christian West offers no such mechanism. In place of Christianity's system, the post-Christian West offers "cancel culture" and public shaming. If you said something stupid in a tweet ten years ago, you must be crucified for that tweet in perpetuity. You will never be allowed off your cross.

 

The thirst for purity is a red flag. It's the first stone on the path to atrocity. Look to the man who put into practice some of the Enlightenment ideas of men like Diderot, of "Mankind will never be free till the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." Robespierre was known as the Incorruptible One. Beware the Incorruptible One. Translate "purification" into German, Russian, Cambodian, Rwandan, Serbo-Croatian, and, indeed, The King's English, and the word you get is "genocide."

 

I used to give talks to groups of adults who had been abused as children. Afterward, listeners would ask, "How did you survive?" and "How did you not become a serial killer?" Christina, an Atheist, insisted that I had "one caring adult" in my childhood. She had read somewhere that that's how abused kids get through. She's wrong. Being wrong pissed her off so badly she "unfriended" me on Facebook.

 

I had no caring adult. God got me through. Atheist insistence on child abuse as the essential, exclusive feature of Catholicism, which now must be jettisoned, will hurt humanity. Christ offers healing.

I could tell you, in detail, details that would, indeed, make you cry, how I came to forgive my abusers, abusers who never asked for my forgiveness. Long story short. The God who created the universe became human, like me, suffered, like me, and, in extremis I can only imagine, said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." His death was my door to a different life than being, forever, a hunched, clenched, rageful, vengeful, blind, sadistic, incurable victim of abuse. Don't take that door away from others. 

Struggling to Be Heard / Dialogue with an Atheist, Continued

 

Dear Daniel,

 

This is a housekeeping missive, that is, one that addresses communication between you and me, not a substantive one, so I will address the housekeeping issue here, and strive for substance in the next letter.

 

You see "God through Binoculars" as a defense of the Catholic Church. Please have a look at the Amazon reviews. I don't think any reviewer describes "God through Binoculars" as "a defense of the Catholic Church."

 

Why this matters: I think sometimes Atheists are prejudiced against persons of faith, and one stereotype is that we are all knocking on your door, handing you religious tracts, trying to get you to believe what we believe. I think you may be mis-seeing me and my work, and, yes, I want to be seen accurately. And I want you to recognize that not all persons of faith comply with Atheist stereotypes.

 

You insist that, since I was defending the church, I should have mentioned the abuse crisis. But that's not what the book is! Really. But you want me to talk about the abuse crisis again, and I will, in my next letter.

 

Daniel you quote me as saying this "the consolation granted by the Church outweighs the Church's crimes." Daniel I NEVER SAID THIS. I do not believe it! I think it's obscene!

 

The Catholic Church does not offer me "consolation." The Catholic Church offers me, and anyone else who wants it, the central truth of the universe. That isn't "consolation." It's the sine qua non of life and eternity. "Consolation" is what you get from a sappy song on the radio. A sappy song on the radio does not "outweigh" child abuse and never could.

 

The central truth of the universe, the sine qua non, is the only thing that offers what one needs to overcome a history of having been abused.

 

Okay. So much for housekeeping. Next letter, God willing, will address your questions.

 

PS: I'm posting my responses to you on my blog. For this letter, I chose a photo of one person following another on a hiking trail in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. I hope we can "follow" each other, that is, understand each other. Here's the photo.

Exchange with an Atheist, Continued

 

Dear Daniel,

Two weeks ago, on January 31^st, snow began to fall. Three days later, I think, it stopped, at twenty inches. Within days another six inches or so fell. Paterson is a poor city and that snow is still clogging traffic, melting a tad and then refreezing, not as fluffy, unique, six-pointed stars, but rather as black ice, the slickest ice that slips up over-eager pedestrians. I fear cracking open my skull and mince slowly, staring at the ground, assessing each surface as if it were mined. My hunched mono-focus increases the claustrophobia.

 

We remain encased in rapidly decaying whiteness. I walked around Garret Mountain the other day and did not see one single deer. This is unheard of. I wonder what they are eating. Here is a sound file from that walk. I came across dozens of crows spread across the ridge, making a racket. Perhaps there was an owl about?

 

My soul is feeling encased in rapidly decaying whiteness. Donald Trump's impeachment trial ended yesterday with a bizarre acquittal. I write "bizarre" because Mitch McConnell, an old-white-male Republican from the South, who, in a devil's bargain, while secretly despising Trump, promoted him, voted to acquit and then delivered a scathing rebuke that would have snuggly fit in the prosecution's briefcase.

 

McConnell is thought of as a master politician. I think he blew it big time. He is now hated by both sides, as flames on his Facebook page attest. Whatever you, atheist Daniel, think of Jesus, he was a master of the pithy quote. "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, but lose his soul?" Not a rhetorical question. Ask Mitch McConnell.

 

The House Managers, lead by Jamie Raskin, who buried his son the day before Trump supporters assaulted the Capitol, were brilliant and heroic. But they lost. My tears insist that the world really doesn't need another noble lost cause. The managers did, though, create an historic record: the beating to death of a police officer, the crushing of another police officer, the trampling to death of a Trump supporter, by her own comrades – yes she really was carrying a "Don't Tread on Me" flag as she died – Trump's callous refusal to call off his goons.

 

Back in 2015, when Trump was running for president, a slew of Facebook friends supported him. I tried to talk to them. I really thought, back in those innocent days, that civil discourse and objective facts would defeat any obstacle. No such luck. I was presented with a master class in logical fallacies and ad hominem invective. Six years later, millions of Americans believe that Hillary Clinton drinks children's blood. So much for objective facts. A canard, both ancient and primitive, that has been used to justify hatred of Christians and murder of Jews and others has achieved demonic resurrection.

 

I learned, through my attempts to interact in a fact-based, civil manner with Trump supporters, that sometimes interaction with those who choose to define themselves as my enemies is impossible. My Christianity places demands on me. I don't know how to carry out those demands in a country where tens of millions of people support killers who smeared feces on my country's temple to democracy.

 

I used to try to approach Facebook as a sort of Benedictine monastery. Someone said that civility means that you talk to people as if they will be here tomorrow. In other words, if you insult them, you cannot escape the consequences of your intemperance. So it is in a monastery. You have to live cheek-by-jowl with others, so you treat them carefully. You can't escape your rudeness.

 

The other day, "Dorothy," a Trump supporter, repeatedly insulted me. Her posts contained no facts, and, indeed, no opinions about anything beyond her insults directed at me. I sent her a private message asking her to stop. She refused, insisting, again, that I'm a terrible person because I don't support Trump. And "terrible person" is a euphemism. These folks are as foul-mouthed as their cult leader.

 

I realized: sure, I can approach my Facebook "friends" as if they are my colleagues, but they don't approach me that way. To Dorothy, I am not a fellow citizen. I am a punching bag. I am a toilet. I am, possibly, a drinker of children's blood. Volunteering myself to Dorothy is merely an exercise in pointless masochism. Jesus gave us Matthew 5:44, but he also gave us Matthew 10:16 and Matthew 7:6. Quite a lot to juggle. I don't know how to do this.  

 

What has this got to do with you and me? I've lost faith in civil discourse. I see society dividing into enemy camps. Not just combatants, but words, reason, logic, cannot make it across no-man's-land. I have no idea of your stance on Trump, but we've established that you are an atheist and I am Catholic. Can we really talk?

 

I'm struggling to break out of the decaying whiteness encasing me, and communicate with hope and faith. I'll move the way I move when I'm coming into shore when swimming in the Atlantic Ocean that borders New Jersey. The tide draws you back into the immensity and, of course, ultimate death, and you resist that overwhelmingly powerful pull, and drag your wet thighs and calves, bound with frighteningly insistent, rope-like water, toward land. You do this, not, necessarily, because of faith, but because you are terrestrial, and you need it. We are humans, and we must connect.

 

Catholic I will address the atheist points in your recent letter in a subsequent missive. Stay well.

The Hateful v The Kind: A Letter from the Middle to the Left

 

A Letter from the Middle to the Left about Healing and Unity

 

"The Hateful" Versus "The Kind"

 

A very big family in a very small house: my childhood home. The youngest of six, fights terrified me. Four older brothers, all over six feet, athletes, hunters, trappers, and archers. When the borscht hit the fan, crimson spattered the walls. Smaller and softer than they, less angry, eager to please, I shuddered. What sparked these swift, hard fists, these over-the-top curses? We had food, shelter, chicken on Sunday, school, church, friends, movies; life was good. I was just a lump of dough, praying for quiet to return.

 

I'm feeling the same fear again, of witnessing irrational hostility and fraternal violence, the despair that I am a bystander who has no power to influence events that terrify and depress me.

 

As far as I know, I am the only one of my Facebook friends who condemned both the BLM riots of 2020 and the January 6^th assault on the Capitol. To the left-wing tribe, BLM violence was sanctioned. To the other, right-wing violence did not call for condemnation. My right-wing Facebook friends call me "liberal." The left-wingers call me "conservative." I think of myself as neither, but rather as a Christian, a patriotic American in awe of the Founding Fathers, a grateful inheritor of Western Civilization, and a capitalist. I lack the language to reach either side. We are all in the same boat, and a hole in your end sinks me. I don't know enough other people who feel the same way, so I feel alone.  

 

On January 27, in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof published a letter to conservatives, attempting to reassure them that, now that the presidency, the House and the Senate are all in Democratic hands, no one is out to get them. Team Biden says they are all about "healing" and "unity." I support both healing and unity and I wish our new president well. But Team Biden is planting landmines that will spark future conflict. I will discuss some of the more prominent landmines, below.

 

Biden nominated Dr. Rachel Levine as Assistant Secretary of Health. Levine has been accused of bungling Pennsylvania's COVID-19 response, and practicing a double standard when it came to Levine's own mother. Anyone who points this out risks being canceled as "transphobic."

 

Levine was born a man, and now wishes to be regarded as a woman. There are already calls for a schoolboard member to resign after tweeting an understated criticism of Levine's physical appearance. Mentioning that the plainly masculine Dr. Levine, with a double chin, scraggly hair, and flabby flesh, is hardly the picture of vigorous, glowing health, is a career-ending offense. Rabbi Jennifer Schlosberg, who began the petition calling for the firing, compared a tweet commenting on a public physician's physical appearance to "this hate … that lead to the murdering of MILLIONS of people" that is, the Holocaust. "Thank God we have each other," Schlosberg wrote.

 

Schlosberg's hyperbolic invocation of the Nazis reflects a liberal double standard. An obese man, John Goodman, depicted Linda Tripp on SNL. Liberals repeatedly mocked Republican governor Sarah Palin's Down syndrome son. Michelle Wolf was praised for flaying Sarah Huckabee Sanders' physical appearance at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. During that cruel verbal assault, Huckabee Sanders sat feet away from Wolf, and the camera was on her as she squirmed. The most brutal depiction I found online of Dr. Levine was in fact a political cartoon skewering Levine for the alleged bungling of COVID-19.

 

Dr. Levine delivered a censorious sermon about "transphobic" commentary. Everyone, in both public and private life, faces hurtful comments, and Dr. Levine's depiction of helpless victims v. evil haters is not the healing or unifying approach. Rather, this approach is polarizing. When liberal talk show host David Letterman confronted Republican governor Chris Christie about his obesity, Christie responded humorously, by eating a donut. In effect, Christie reassured voters: Yes, I am obese. I'm aware of it, but I am qualified to meet your needs as an elected official.

 

What if Dr. Levine, rather than emphasizing personal victimization at the hands of murderous "transphobes," had said, "I was born a man. I am most comfortable living as a woman. I know this is a challenge to many of you, and I am truly sorry for any discomfort my appearance causes you. I prefer to be called 'she,' but I understand that your beliefs may prevent you from doing that, and I accept it and honor your choice in the same way that I hope that you accept and honor my choice. I hope that my excellent job performance, protecting and advancing your health, wins you over, and reduces my transgenderism to a non-issue."

 

That approach, of respecting one's fellow citizens, even those with which one disagrees, rather than resorting to identities of victim on the one hand and "haters" on the other, and focusing on the job one performs, rather than the identity one adheres to, is one the left could benefit from adopting.

 

During the presidential campaign and in her Twitter bio, Kamala Harris introduced herself by saying, "My pronouns are she, her, and hers." On his first day in office, Biden issued an executive order stating, "Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports." This sounds very kind, doesn't it? No worried children! No discrimination!

 

This is what I mean when I say I lack the language even to penetrate the minds of those with whom I disagree. Using "he" to refer to a human with XX chromosomes is "kind." Using "she" is "hateful." 

 

The left criticized the Trump administration, and people on the right generally, as being anti-science. They point to the COVID-19 response, and to teaching Intelligent Design in schools. My Church teaches that there is no conflict between science and faith. In fact it is leftism-as-religion that cultivates conflict between belief and science, and between believers, who are all virtuous, and non-believers, who must be burned at the stake as heretics.

 

Team Pro-Choice still, in the age of detailed photos of fetal development, insists on referring to the fetus as a "clump of cells," as merely the "product of conception," and never as a human life. Abortion is called "healthcare," when in most cases, abortion has nothing to do with healthcare.

 

In September, 2020, former Sports Illustrated swimsuit-issue cover model Chrissie Teigen had a miscarriage at twenty weeks. Teigen is a person of color, she's married to an African American man, and she is a Trump critic. In short, the media love Teigen. CNN, The Guardian, the BBC and the New York Times all told us that she lost a "baby." Candace Owens is a conservative black woman who has encouraged her fellow African Americans to rethink their fealty to the Democratic Party. If Owens had had a miscarriage at twenty weeks and publicly mourned the loss, we all know the  media would treat her differently than it treated Teigen. When is a fetus not "a clump of cells" but a "baby"? When a celebrity whose identity earns her points has a miscarriage. So much for science.

 

Not religion, but hard science, determines that a human with XX chromosomes is female, and a human with XY chromosomes is male. In healthcare and in law enforcement, the difference between "he" and "she" is the difference between life and death. Feminists labored for years to get doctors to address how differently women's and men's bodies respond to disease, drugs, and treatments. Feminists pointed out that these differences might cause women to die of America's leading killer, heart disease. "A general lack of awareness of women’s heart disease may lead to doctors or patients missing heart attacks in women or delaying their diagnosis."

 

Given their different anatomies, differences corelated with women's role as mothers, males and females have different gaits. Doctors know this, and tailor treatments for muscles and bones to the gender of the patient. Good law enforcement officers intuitively grasp this as well. If they are seeking a "he" suspect or a "she" suspect, they will peruse pedestrians differently. Now, though, the words "he" and "she" are hate speech, and cannot be used accurately.  

 

Years ago, a liberal friend told me that "Heather," who was only an adolescent at the time, was, now, a man. Henceforth, I was to use the pronouns "he, him, his," when referring to "Harv." In fact, I barely knew "Harv" and never talked about "Harv" at all. My friend told me that calling this girl "she" would be "hateful." "Aren't Christians supposed to be kind?" I've thought about that conversation ever since. The reduction of our disagreement to "the hateful" versus "the kind."

 

Peter Vlaming was a beloved schoolteacher. He was ordered to use male pronouns to refer to a female student. He agreed to address the student by her new name, but he declined to use any pronouns when referring to the student. His avoidance of using any pronouns at all was blameworthy. He was fired. Maya Forstater, a researcher at a British thinktank, lost her job because she tweeted that "men cannot change into women." Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling stood up for Forstater, and has been canceled. Government agencies are disempowering and demonizing parents and pushing for "transition" of underage children while actively working to keep parents out of decision-making. A male rapist was placed in a women's prison, and allegedly assaulted a female prisoner. Men claiming to be transgender have harassed women and girls in public restrooms. The left adopted trans rights only recently, and the left is already using that concept to destroy lives. How is any of this "kind?"

 

Was it really kind for my liberal friend and her allies to tell Heather/Harv that she was a boy? Heather was doing okay till she hit puberty. As is the case for every girl I've ever known, puberty was hard. When I was her age, I dreamed of being a Hollywood star. A high school teacher informed me that I lacked the looks or the luck to make my fantasy real. I hated the sudden need for a bra and sanitary pads, and the onset of cramps. I wanted to surgically remove my womb and breasts. My mother and her friends told me that that wasn't an option, that I just had to deal. These adults hurt my childish feelings, but they saved me from wasted years trying to be something I can never be.

 

Heather was a vulnerable child. She had grown up without a father and with a very loving but imperfect mother. Before Heather reached the age when the human brain attains full maturity, she had amputated her breasts, and begun a lifelong dependence on potentially dangerous drugs (see here, here, here, here.) Was it "kind" for adults to encourage a girl to batter her body just because it was female?

 

When I was younger, bullies mocked me as a "he-she" because I liked to read and hike, and didn't like to wear make-up or high-heeled shoes. But feminists insisted that, yes, girls like me were no less valid. Women scientists were women. Women athletes were women. Women who never married or had kids were women. Women like me face a lifetime of struggle to communicate that we, though we are, by some measures, traditionally "masculine," are, in fact, women. Worthy women. Part of what it means to be a woman. Petite blondes who take spa days, who sing "I enjoy being a girl," who defer to men, are not the be-all and end-all of womanhood. We are part of the mix, too. Tall and assertive Eleanor Roosevelt was a real woman. Dowdy Marie Sklodowska Curie, who excelled in "masculine" STEM fields and won one Nobel Prize in physics and another in chemistry, was a real woman. Ink-stained spinster Louisa May Alcott, with neither husband nor children, was a real woman. Frances A. Seward, an activist in the Underground Railroad and wife of Lincoln's Secretary of State, wrote that "The moral and intellectual degradation of woman increases in proportion to the homage paid by men to external charms." Feminism tried to exchange focus on "external charms" to inner worth.

 

Now liberals are turning back the clock. They insist that there is a "male brain," devoted to war, barbecues, and car repair, and a "female brain," that's all about flirtation and Manolo Blahnik heels. The flirty, superficial, and vain are "real women" see Ru Paul. In the leftists' "kind" definition, a "real woman" is Kaitlyn Jenner on the cover of Vanity Fair, displaying impressive cleavage, almost a hundred thousand dollars in plastic surgery, and a coquettish head tilt.

 

If I were a kid today, some school counselor and liberal "concerned family friends" would be insisting that I am transgender. Chop off her breasts. She clearly doesn't have a "female brain." She's not living up to stereotypes. Heather liked animals, the outdoors, and other girls. So rather than letting her keep her body and her hair, the liberal adults around her encouraged her futile effort to turn into a boy, so she'd conform to their idea of what a girl and a boy are supposed to be.

 

How is any of this "kind," "unifying," or "healing"? Ask Keira Bell, who sued the Tavistock clinic for pushing her to "transition" when she was too young to decide. She called what she went through a "harmful experiment on vulnerable children" that "seriously harmed me in more ways than one." What did she, and other girls like her, need? Not "transition" but "better mental health services" "for children suffering with gender dysphoria" "to reconcile with their sex."

 

Ask the young ladies of the Pique Resilience Project. They were encouraged, as children, to "transition." They were part of a trend, Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, affecting young girls. They regretted their transition, and are now speaking out. They are not alone. Go to YouTube and type in "detransition." You will see video after video, like this one, of people in incredible pain.

 

The left is pro-science? Then why did the left try to bury the research that could be saving countless girls? In 2018, Lisa Littman published on Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, a social contagion or fad striking vulnerable girls who were suddenly convinced, often through social media pressure, with adult reinforcement, that they were transgender. In response to pressure from trans activists, Littman's work was suppressed.

 

What should we be doing? We should be talking about this, in a free exchange of ideas. They left won't have it. Posie Parker, aka Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, is a British feminist, wife, and mother. She paid for a billboard that said, in its entirety, "woman noun adult human female." The billboard was removed as "hate speech." She is now denounced as a hater and police have interrogated and warned her. When asked about her activism, Parker said that forcing people to call a man a woman is "the thin edge of the wedge." "A trans man rapes a woman, and we call him 'she.'" Men who identify as women were filmed drop-kicking and stomping on a victim in a tube station in June, 2108. Referring to the assailants as "she," Parker said, robs women's ability accurately to describe reality, including male violence against women.

 

Biden wants children with gender dysphoria to be allowed access to school sports. That is "kind." Girls are different from boys. Acknowledging that is "hateful." In the past, girls competed against other girls. When girls win against other girls, they sometimes get scholarships. Now boys compete as girls, and, in those mixed-sex competitions, no girls win. Girl athletes thus lose scholarships. Sabotaging girls' athletics is "kind." Protesting this is "hateful." See this video, and this one and this one.

 

I lived for a time in the old Soviet Empire. Like many Americans whose families came from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other Iron Curtain countries, I am ready to fight when someone tries to do to me what the two totalitarian powers, Nazism and Communism, did to my elders: force us to lie. Totalitarians don't necessarily march into town and force you to renounce your faith on day one. On day one, you can still go to church. But, see this apple here? From now on, we will call it a pear. It's a small thing, right? No big loss. Just call apples pears. Through intermediate steps, we will advance towards your renunciation of your faith, your family, your personal dignity.

 

Tadeusz Rozewicz fought, and survived, the Nazis. Afterward, he wrote a poem, "Saved," expressing his wish, only, just, to call things by their true names again – "niech jeszcze ras nazwie rzeczy i pojecia" That's what I'll be marched to the Gulag for. The integrity to say "he" and "she."

 

The "kind" versus the "hateful," continued. The New York Times reports that in Khartoum, Sudan, "when Mr. Trump was eventually declared to have lost the vote, Monzir Hashim and his wife, Alaa Jamal, hugged with joy and erupted in wedding-style ululations … Joseph R. Biden Jr., hours after being sworn in as president, rescinded the entire raft of Trump-era orders that had blocked … mostly Muslims … from entering the United States."

 

Monzir and Alaa are ecstatic that they can leave Sudan. Sudan is one of the worst places on earth to be a woman. Sudan's government commits massive human rights violations. There is no freedom of speech or press in Sudan. About 90% of Sudanese women have undergone Female Genital Mutilation, and over a third were married as children. Sudan is one of the most violent countries on earth, with a relatively low literacy rate. Life expectancy is 65.

 

Sudan is not unique. Between 2002 and 2009, the UN published a series of devastating Arab Human Development Reports. The Arab, largely Muslim, world lags behind comparable nations in everything from peace and security to technological innovation to production of new scholarship or even translations of scholarship published elsewhere. As The Economist put it, The Arab world's "autocratic rulers, whether presidents or kings, give up their authority only when they die; its elections are a sick joke; [women] are treated as lesser legal and economic beings, and more than half its young, burdened by joblessness and stifled by conservative religious tradition, are said to want to get out of the place as soon as they can."

 

During Biden's inauguration, Amanda Gorman announced that

 

"we are striving to form a union that is perfect

 

We are striving to forge a union with purpose

 

To compose a country committed to all cultures."

 

If we are committed to all cultures, are we committed to allowing child marriage, the suppression of free speech, and FGM in the United States? American Muslims have called for the suppression of free speech, see here, here and here, and Biden team members have as well. Muslim immigrants to the US do practice FGM here. Jumana Nagarwala performed FGM. All charges against her, and against the mothers who "tricked" their "screaming" seven-year-old daughters into having their external sex organs removed, were dropped on the grounds that the law banning FGM was unconstitutional. And of course a New Jersey judge denied a petition for a restraining order from a teen Muslim arranged bride whose husband beat, raped, and tortured her. The judge said that the man had the right to do these things; it was his religion. Muslim leaders, citing the example of "the perfect human," Mohammed, who married his favorite bride when he was over fifty and she was six, have declared child marriage to be unassailably Islamic. Is committing ourselves, as the Biden inauguration announced, to "all cultures," including cultures that mandate FGM, wife-beating, and child marriage, "kind"?

 

If any liberal reads this, they will scream at the above paragraph. How dare I suggest that some cultures are different from others, that some are less felicitous for women's rights, intellectual activity, free speech, than others? In fact liberals do this all the time. The front page of the New York Times is doing that as I write this. The Capitol insurrection was the fault of Christians, a Times headline announces. The blacks and Hispanics who participated in the insurrection are really white, the Washington Post told us. White women are instruments of terror, Charles M. Blow wrote in May, 2020. Liberals, as easily as they breathe, blame white skin and Western civilization for every evil, yet they can't find evil in the most overt Koranic exhortations to violence cited by Osama bin Laden himself.

 

Kindness? Here's kindness. On December 2, 2015, Shannon Johnson, a 45 year old Christian and former truck driver from Georgia, was at a boring workplace Christmas training session and luncheon, seated next to his coworker, 27-year-old Denise Peraza. Two jihadis entered the room and began shooting. Johnson and Peraza ducked under a table. Johnson wrapped his arms around Peraza. "I got you," he told her. Indeed, he did have her. He took the bullets and died. She survived.

 

"While I cannot recall every single second that played out that morning, I will always remember his left arm wrapped around me, holding me as close as possible next to him behind that chair." Shannon Johnson, a white, male truck driver from Georgia, is the kind of person liberals stereotype as worthy of hatred. He was truly "kind."

 

Years ago, I fell in love with an eight-year-old boy just through his photo. I get a lot from photos; I feel I can look into someone's soul. I look at that photo of Martin Richard at a hockey game, and I see pure innocence, pure sweetness, a precious gift from Heaven that every adult is honor-bound to protect and nurture. Except we didn't protect Martin. As a photo shows, jihadis stood mere feet from Martin when they planted their pressure-cooker bomb. The Tsarnaev brothers knew what they were about to do to Martin. Their act would not be kind.

 

"Shrapnel - including small nails, plastic, pellets and wood - from one of the homemade pressure cooker bombs set off by Tsarnaev and his older brother had punched through the boy's 69-pound body. He suffered a six-inch-by-six-inch wound to his left abdomen, which exposed his intestines, and caused damage to his liver, left kidney, spleen and two ribs … His left arm had also nearly been torn off and his left leg suffered a broken bone and lacerations. The youngster also suffered third-degree burns as well as scrapes to his head and neck. 'Overall, the injuries... would be painful,'" testified a doctor.

 

Martin's soul lives on. "The Martin Richard Foundation works to advance the values of inclusion, kindness, justice and peace."

 

Trump announced his plans for a Muslim ban on December 7, 2015, five days after the San Bernardino shooting. I do not believe that his ban was inspired by "hate." I believe it was inspired by the deaths of Americans he hoped to protect.

 

What should be done? We should have a free, open, national conversation. I want to see Hatun Tash engaging with Linda Sarsour. Robert Spencer debating Reza Aslan. David Wood probing Keith Ellison. Ayaan Hirsi Ali taking on Wajahat Ali. Ridvan Aydemir challenging Ilhan Omar. Yasmine Mohammed chatting with Ingrid Mattson. Why can't I live out this fantasy? Liberal media's illiberal suppression of thought and speech. The former of the two pairs, above, is an Islam-critical person. While the latter, pro-Islam voices are cherished in media, elected to Congress, and appointed to powerful positions, Islam-critical persons have yet to receive their invites to powerful media. Instead, they receive death threats, live off of Go-Fund-Me donations, and are demonized by the SPLC.

 

Americans experience, over and over again, what Bill Maher and Sam Harris experienced from Ben Affleck when Maher and Harris tried to talk about Islam. Affleck shut them down. In fact, Nick Kristof, in his open letter to conservatives, scoffs at "hate and hysteria while grabbing at your wallet," in reference to reservations about Islam as it is taught in the schools. Again, the liberal playbook. Disagree with someone? Call them "hateful." And don't address any facts.

 

If I could, I'd say this to Joe Biden, or to Nick Kristof. Shannon Johnson and Martin Richard are not the last kind people to die in a hateful jihadi attack. If, in the future, you were sitting across from the mourning loved ones of the next victim, what would you say you did in an attempt to forfend that attack and keep their loved one safe?

 

Brian Sicknick was a kind guy. "There was a shared humanity. My job was very much dependent on him keeping me safe," said Caroline Behringer, a Hillary Clinton supporter and Capitol worker, of Capitol Officer Sicknick, who supported Donald Trump. Sicknick died after being injured at he Capitol on January 6. I mourn him.

 

I also mourn Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, shot and killed by Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley, who believed BLM-style narratives about allegations of white police officers killing unarmed black men without cause. Neither Ramos nor Liu was white. I mourn the five police officers killed in Dallas in 2016 by yet another killer who believed anti-police propaganda. I mourn David Dorn, a 77-year-old retired police officer, who was attempting to guard a friend's pawn shop during a BLM riot. A rioter shot him dead during a Facebook livestream.

 

The Wikipedia entry devoted to Dorn's killing is barely four pages long. The Wikipedia entry devoted to the police shooting of Michael Brown, a known criminal, is fifty-one pages long. America has decided that a black man who serves his community rather than preys on it is less worthy of attention.

 

My liberal friends on Facebook insisted, during BLM violence, that "A riot is the language of the unheard," a Martin Luther King quote. I asked them why they thought that African Americans were unheard. African Americans have occupied all levels of power in the United States, from president to the mayor's office. There are, and have been for decades, government and private programs devoted to the needs of African Americans, exclusive of all other groups. There are scholarships, recruitment offices, hiring quotas, publishing houses, congressional caucuses, holidays, curricula. I received no answer. No such comments were made after January 6. No liberal on my page said that pro-Trump protesters needed to be heard or understood or placated with new government programs.

 

Broken glass, Molotov cocktails, screamed slogans, injuries, blood, and death: features of both a BLM event and the January 6 protest. In one incident, these features arouse sympathy and concern. In another incident, these same features arouse rejection and condemnation. Why, if not a skewed double standard? My team's violence is good; your team's violence is bad.

 

Numerous, highly disturbing videos reveal violence at BLM events, including a Portland man being kicked in the head by a BLM supporter. In another video, a man in Dallas was stoned in the street until the blood from his head stained the pavement, and his assailants believed him to be dead. One "kind" but never "hateful" liberal Facebook friend said, "As ye sow, so shall ye reap. America has had this coming for a long time." America was being punished for slavery, you see. My "kind" liberal Facebook friends erased the 364,511 Union soldiers who gave their lives to end slavery. In fact, BLM activists desecrated and tore down a statue to one such casualty, Hans Christian Heg, a Norwegian immigrant and dedicated abolitionist who died a hero's death at the Battle of Chickamauga.

 

Just like Joe Biden, I want healing and unity. Suppression of free speech, demonization of persons based on their thoughts, rather than on any destructive behavior, unilateral and dictatorial social engineering from above, double standards, virtue signaling, and a refusal to act on proven security threats will not lead to the unity and healing that will benefit us all.

 

Danusha Goska is the author of God through Binoculars: A Hitchhiker at a Monastery

You can read this essay at Front Page Magazine here