Draft our daughters: political correctness strikes again

By Cathy Keim

Our elitist politicians show once again why so many Americans are rejecting their cries to “follow me.” At the New Hampshire debate last Saturday night, three Republican candidates for president, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and (the now withdrawn) Chris Christie, happily jumped into the PC-constructed world of equality for women by declaring they would support making it mandatory for women to register for the draft.

The other candidates were not asked to respond to that question and only Ted Cruz came out with a statement addressing it after the fact. From Politico:

“I have to admit, as I was sitting there listening to that conversation, my reaction was, ‘Are you guys nuts?'” Cruz said Sunday, speaking at a town hall here. “Listen, we have had enough with political correctness, especially in the military. Political correctness is dangerous. And the idea that we would draft our daughters to forcibly bring them into the military and put them in close combat, I think is wrong, it is immoral, and if I am president, we ain’t doing it.”

No one under sixty years of age has been subjected to the draft, as it has not been used since 1973, so the politicians have the comfort of not having the result of their imprudent statements coming home to haunt them too soon. But do we really want our daughters being forced to register for the draft?

Our mad dash for equality has pushed us over the edge. Our military has been badgered into opening combat roles to women because a few women feel they are being denied their opportunity for advancement in the military. Yet when they have tried to find women that can perform equally with men, the experiment has failed miserably.

Political correctness is staring reality in the face and PC is winning. Just as Bruce Jenner is not a woman, no matter how much makeup or surgery he may submit to, neither are women warriors in the mold of men. While some individual women may outperform some individual men in feats of physical prowess, as a general rule men are far stronger and bigger than women across the board.

PC has made it difficult for people to state the obvious. A man is immediately called a misogynist and a female is condemned to “a special place in hell” for not supporting women. But we must not be deterred from speaking the truth in the face of these lies – remember that the lies only work if we self-censor and refuse to speak the truth from fear of being labeled with the slur of the day.

We must return to some fundamental truths to be able to decide what must be done about our military and draft policies. The feminist movement has been trying for decades to make men and women equal. However, their criteria are incorrect because they are trying to make us equal as in being identical. While we are all created equal before God in that we are created in His image, we are not the same.

Men and women have different roles to play as evidenced by the fact that only women bear children. The current emphasis on transgender identities is just the latest attack on identity and roles in society. I will agree that there are instances where it can work for the man to stay at home with the children and the woman to be the breadwinner – that is their privilege to decide how they will live their lives. However, for the government to decide for every woman in America that she will register for the draft with the implicit possibility that she might be forced to join the military and serve in combat is a whole different category.

In the past women were excluded from registering with the Selective Service because they were excluded from serving in combat roles. That restriction, though, came to an end back in December, 2015:

In a historic transformation of the American military, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said on Thursday that the Pentagon would open all combat jobs to women.

“There will be no exceptions,” Mr. Carter said at a news conference. He added, “They’ll be allowed to drive tanks, fire mortars and lead infantry soldiers into combat. They’ll be able to serve as Army Rangers and Green Berets, Navy SEALs, Marine Corps infantry, Air Force parajumpers and everything else that was previously open only to men.”

This is the result of the Obama administration’s order to integrate the military within three years. The obvious next step will be to insist that women sign up for the draft – hence the question at the presidential debate.

These Republican candidates that are vying to lead the party missed an opportunity to clearly state why the policy to enforce gender neutrality in the military is wrong. They caved to the pressure to appeal to women voters by saying they believed in equality, but they should have pointed out that equality doesn’t mean being exactly the same.

If men and women were the same we would not have male and female competitions in sports. When money speaks, as in the world of professional football, baseball, and basketball, the fake equality falls away and men are hired by how fast they can run, how far they can throw, and how hard they can hit. Women are not hired because they cannot produce the same results. (Editor: Note that the one major professional sports league for women, the WNBA, has their brief season during the off-season for the NBA rather than competing directly.)

Now ask yourself why we are putting women in combat in trucks where they cannot lift the tires to change them, where they cannot carry a fellow soldier to safety if needed, and where the need to carry a 100-pound backpack could slow them down and endanger everybody?

The fact that women have stayed behind while the men went to war has never meant that women are weaker. Indeed, they have shouldered the responsibilities of maintaining the home front, raising the children, and praying for their loved ones on the battle field. They have dealt with losing husbands, fathers, and sons. They have coped with the adjustments from their injured loved ones returning from war.

The difference in roles doesn’t mean that women are weak and men are strong, but means that women and men have their strengths in different areas. We have been forced to swallow “fairness and equality” for so long that we are unable to see what is obvious.

The politicians that want to lead us should be bold enough to state the obvious rather than falling all over themselves to be politically correct.

It’s all been done before – so why is Jenner such a big deal?

Not that I have a whole lot of choice based on all the media attention, but the story of Caitlyn Jenner rebranding herself as a woman after 65 years of being Bruce and winning the Olympic decathlon in 1976 seems to be worth writing about today.

Ironically, a simmering story underneath the headlines around the time of Jenner’s gold medal victory was the story of Renee Richards. Her name has been dimmed somewhat by the passage of time, but in the late 1970s she became a symbol of the struggle between the sexes as a former man who had the gender reassignment surgery and therapy, then competed on the women’s tennis circuit. So the world of celebrity has already been touched by this procedure, and I found it interesting that the premier athletic achievements in the lives of these two former men occurred around the same time. The Grantland story by Michael Weinreb also came well before the Jenner saga became public, and points out how others who chose to change their gender (as much as one can, anyway) were inspired to do so by Richards.

Yet a lot has changed in nearly forty years. Instead of derision and having opponents walk off the court in protect, Jenner is being embraced and rewarded for her “courage.” I suppose it’s simply the byproduct of making one’s sexuality and gender preference a public spectacle and milking it to enhance your athletic talents for another 15 minutes of fame – so you get a guy like Michael Sam, who was thought at best to be a fringe NFL prospect, becoming the most talked-about 7th round pick to ever be placed on a practice squad. (After being cut twice by NFL teams, now Sam is trying out for the Montreal Alouettes of the CFL.) Without looking them up, can you tell me the names of any of the other 7th round picks from 2014?

Similarly, Jason Collins came out as gay at the tail end of a long NBA career which ended earlier this season. While his statistics weren’t Hall of Fame material, you would have thought he was the second coming of Michael Jordan when he came out. For all we know his “courage” may be enough to land him a place in the Basketball Hall of Fame where his career stats would leave him short.

Unfortunately, those breaking the preference barrier haven’t exactly been what Jackie Robinson was to major league baseball; instead, they have had career tracks more like Moses Fleetwood Walker, who actually integrated major league baseball in 1884. (A catcher, he played at the time for the Toledo Blue Stockings in their one and only season in the American Association, then a major league. So he’s a little more familiar to those of us from northwest Ohio.)

Jenner, though, has become a symbol of something. I’m just not sure if it’s courage, the milking of past fame into making a statement – after all, if he was a welder from Pittsburgh and not an Olympic athlete, no one would be putting his female alter ego on the cover of a magazine – or, simply a sign of our times.

One answer could be gleaned from this piece by Nate Jackson of the Patriot Post, as he looks at the Jenner story from a moral and religious perspective:

Leftists don’t care about Bruce “Caitlyn” Jenner; they care about an agenda to remake our culture without good or bad, right or wrong, up or down – and most certainly without God. To them, Jenner is merely a tool who normalizes aberration. Leftists are tired of feeling guilty, so, instead of turning to their Creator, they glory in their brokenness. Dysfunction becomes virtue.

Meanwhile, the Left has duped more than half the American public into thinking homosexuals make up a far bigger part of the population than is true. Therefore, Americans are left to conclude as they checkout at the supermarket next to all those tabloids that Jenner is perfectly normal.

I would hope that most Americans don’t think Jenner is normal, because he’s not. Nor will I apologize for saying so. The vast, vast majority of people are pleased with their gender and have no intention of changing it, so why is the exception to the rule the one being admired?

Since he is my Patriot Post editor, perhaps I should give Nate the last word:

We shouldn’t worship Jenner. We should pray for him, for he needs his Creator’s healing redemption.

I agree.