Can Indiana reverse its recent flirtation with narcissistic, infantile delusion?

LITD recently - I'll check into exactly where; I think it was part of a roundup - noted that the Indiana BMV has started granting license applicants the option of identifying as something other than what they actually are (male or female).

Some other states have done this, too, as have some private businesses, such as United Airlines, so Indiana's moves don't occur in a vacuum.

But this one may not be a done deal:

Some lawmakers, however, are already having second thoughts. (CBS Chicago)

Republican Rep. Matt Hostettler filed an amendment to a senate bill Tuesday that would have eliminated the option. The amendment was ultimately not called up for a vote.

A different bill that passed out of committee Wednesday would make it harder to prove a new gender identity, requiring applicants to change their birth certificates first.

“I don’t think I need to prove that I go by an X gender,” Dutour said. “Nobody has asked me to prove that I go by an ‘F’ gender before.”

It would be shocking if Indiana actually mustered the votes to roll this back. Once states start drinking this particular Koolaid it’s hard to kick the habit. But unless we’re just going to throw out the science books entirely, it’s at least worth the effort to try. 

Our local state legislatures make themselves available to the public on the last Monday morning of every month in a forum called Third House. I'm going to go tomorrow and see that this gets discussed. I know our districts's representative personally and know he and his wife to be solid Christians and people with their heads on straight generally. I'm pretty certain he's on board with what Hostettler is initiating, but I'd like to be sure.

One of the most recurring themes in punditry these days is the attempt to prove that our nation is either experiencing a renaissance  or plunging into an ever-more dire situation.

The first camp likes to point to the unemployment rate, the shift in the ideological tilt of the federal courts and the ubiquitousness of technological advancements that would have astounded any citizen even twenty years ago.

These two camps overlap somewhat with political leanings, but not completely. Particularly among those holding the second view, what might, for want of convenient shorthand, be called "social conservatives" point to developments such as the subject of this post, along with the recently passed legalization of infanticide in New York and Vermont, as well as rampant drug addiction, declining church attendance and the disappearance of the study of history in American education as substantiation for their position. Lefties also can be found sounding the alarm, however, albeit for markedly different reasons. Their inability to accept the reality of a Trump presidency drives their sense that the landscape is darkening.

LITD is, of course, of the first camp. And among the social ills cited in the paragraph above, this business about perpetuating the utter delusion that gender is fluid or that there are more than two genders may be the most destructive. There is nothing more basic than one's maleness or femaleness. It colors everything about a human being's approach to existence, whether he or she thinks so or not.

Our time is nothing short of horrifying when state legislatures and major corporations are codifying this infantile fantasy and indulging not just feelings generally, but feelings utterly divorced from reality. There is no counting on an assertion of objective reality about anything else once that has become a norm.

So, yes, I'll be in the audience tomorrow morning. It's in seemingly low-key settings such as that that the struggle to rescue the nation's soul is either won or lost.