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Well, hold a circus and performing elephants will appear
And that's just what's happening at the University of Wyoming in regard to the saga of Rev. Schmidt and his poorly thought out approach to arguing on whether transgenderism is real or not. GOP politicians, from that party that adopted the elephant to remind people that they'd seen it in the form of the Civil War, have appeared in the form of legislative members of the "Freedom Caucus" and, of course, Chuck Gray.* The letter was written, in fact, by his successor in office, Jeanette Ward, recent arrival from Illinois.1
Let's recap this a bit.
Rev. Schmidt has been maintaining a table in the UW Student Union in which he has books to the effect that evolution is a fib and that Dr. Fauci is some sort of misguided personage.
Rev. Schmidt called out a person who is undergoing some sort of "gender reassignment" by name, noting that it's contrary to how God created humanity.
That latter item is correct, even if Schmidt is wrong on the fossil record and Dr. Fauci, but the apparent approach, which is based directly and perhaps even solely on his religious views, and which was very forward, was always more likely to create a flap and repel people rather than convince them.2 A wise way to approach this would have been to argue biology and science, rather than religion, but Schmidt took the latter approach and is now preaching on campus, which perhaps he always did.
UW, faced with an issue not of its own making and certainly not of its desire, booted Schmidt out of the Student Union.3
Now members of the Freedom Caucus, that body of legislators whose name would suggest they are Libertines, but whom are not, have entered the fray, accusing UW of squelching Schmidt's right to free speech.4 Given their entry and the presence of such notables as youthful Stolen Election Gray and Illinoisan Ward, who presumably have real tasks to do in their elective offices, this will become all the more circus like. Gray, of course, needs a new issue now that the Stolen Election Myth has gone down in flames and crashed all over the GOP outside of Wyoming, and Ward always campaigned from the extreme right, claiming she had to leave Illinois so that her youthful progeny didn't have to wear masks in school, among other things.
Sigh. . .
Nobody is going to talk the science at all.
There was a time, not all that long ago, when people claiming to be transgendered here would have simply been ignored, thereby being treated exactly the way they claim they want to be. Likewise, Rev. Schmidt would have been ignored, even at UW, of an earlier era also. Students wearing flannel and hiking boots would have simply walked on by.5
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.
Prior Related Threads:
Footnotes:
*I'm going to cite the Jimmy Akin citation rule here and ask why reporters don't upload a link to what they're writing about? Given as this is about a letter, and give that if we are reading about it, we can read, why don't they upload it so we can read it ourselves?
1. There is absolutely no way in any earlier era in which an Illinoisan who just arrived would have been elected to anything whatsoever in the state. Yes, that's provincialism, but sometimes provincialism is warranted.
For that matter, Gray couldn't get elected at first either, and in no earlier era would he have been elected Secretary of State.
2. And indeed this has sparked a counter student reaction, as was predictable.
Students can reliably be counted on to support any left wing cause, and pretty much always have. Communist spies of the 40s and 50s had been recruited out of campuses in the 20s and 30s. In the 30s, British university youth, who later defended the skies over the UK, publicly declared they wouldn't fight for Britain. People, who lament the treatment of Vietnam veterans today, protested the war in the 60s. Shoot, when I was at UW in the 80s nobody would ever say a good word about Ronald Reagan, who is now regarded by many as a hero.
There have been all sorts of students sign petitions on this matter, and not in the way that Ward and the Libertine, um no, the Freedom. . . um no, that doesn't seem right. . . oh, whatever it is, Caucus would like. And in a recent Trib article students proclaiming unconventional gender orientation, probably some of whom discovered that recently and will find it transitory, stated they were in fear, which if they are is probably because any hype tends to cause fear.
So Schmidt has managed not only to convince, he's done damage, as we said he was doing.
3. There might be a lesson in here in what happens when you convert a building from what was essentially offices, ancillary rooms and a bookstore into one that's a place for loitering of all types.
4. Is there any word more misused by movements than "freedom"?
5. A Palestinian protest at UW that occurred only shortly before I went there reportedly received that treatment. Students simply walked around it.
I don't recall any protests at all while I was there. While I was in law school, a big march by an out-of-state organization aimed at homosexuals resulted, fairly predictably at that time, in a big counterprotest by local residents who wanted the other group to just shut up and go away. I recall that surprising non-natives, but not natives, as the ethos of the state at the time was "I don't care what you do, just leave me alone". When people weren't called on to "celebrate" conduct they didn't support, or even were repelled by, they were pretty tolerant
