I'm bored by the fights over Pride month. I feel that the community (not going to use the absurd, never-ending acronym for the moment) has achieved a level of acceptance that is approaching complete equality, even if it's not entirely there yet. I'm not sure compelling public displays of pride move the ball.
The main sticking point today is a new issue: not just transgenderism, but youth transgenderism. It seems absurd to me that we are being told that underage children, who are not to be sexualized for any other purpose, must be urged to identify with alternative sexual or genders, with drugs and surgery if prescribed.
I think reasonable people harbor doubts about this issue, and about teaching children that the new dogmas of the left are somehow immutable truths. It is wrong and divisive to describe opposition to this indoctrination, or to trans women (biological men) competing with women in sports, as being "hateful."
Americans are not, in general, hateful people. Even institutionalized racism, when and where it existed in law and custom, was kept in place more by inertia and mistaken beliefs than by active hatred. It's just not who we are. So I'd like the White House in particular to stop making that incendiary accusation.
Other than that: I really don't care much about which brands are identifying with which gay or trans people; I don't care about public displays of bondage in West Hollywood Pride parades (you know what you're getting if you go there, though the city should't advertise the events as somehow "family-friendly" ).
I'm just too busy with my own life to care much about who is doing what with whom. Have fun -- it's what the "pursuit of happiness" in the Declaration is all about, in my view. I just don't like the relentless indoctrination of children by joyless people who don't know how to savor the freedoms they have won.
This week's show will be slightly different from the norm: we'll focus on clips and topics, rather than guests -- and that, hopefully, will mean more input from the callers (unless you are all watching football on opening weekend).
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This week's Torah portion includes several laws about conduct in civic and personal life, the common theme of which is boundaries -- setting bounds to what one may do at home, at work, and even in the battlefield.
One noteworthy passage concerns Amalek, the evil nation that attacked the Children of Israel as they made their Exodus from slavery to freedom. Deuteronomy 25:17-19 commands Jews to obliterate Amalek's memory.
The South African government accused Israel of genocide on the basis of a story about Amalek in the Book of Samuel, in which King Saul was commanded to wipe out the entire evil Amalekite nation.
Because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quoted this week's portion -- "Remember what Amalek did to you" (25:17), the South African government claimed he was commanding soldiers to commit genocide.
It was an absurd and malevolent misreading of the Bible and of Jewish tradition. The commandment, as observed by Jews today, is to remember the evil of Amalek and fight ...