12/8/2014 Slate just reached the height of madness with THIS insane article | Opinion | LifeSite

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GENDER
Mon Aug 11, 2014 - 6:21 pm EST
Slate just reached the height of
madness with THIS insane article
By Eric Metaxas
There are times when you have to read something two, three, maybe even four times to
make sure its actually serious and not a jokeand even then youre not certain. Such was
the case with Christin Scarlett Milloys recent article for Slate, breathlessly titled Dont Let
the Doctor Do This to Your Newborn.
Dont let the doctor do what?
Heres how Milloy describes it:
It's called infant gender assignment: When the doctor holds your child up to the harsh light
of the delivery room, looks between its legs, and declares his opinion: It's a boy or a girl,
based on nothing more than a cursory assessment of your offspring's genitals.
Yes, Christin Scarlett Milloy's sayingshes actually, seriously sayingthat a
doctor who tells you the sex of your baby could be doing the baby
irreparable harm.
12/8/2014 Slate just reached the height of madness with THIS insane article | Opinion | LifeSite
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Yes, shes sayingshes actually, seriously sayingthat a doctor who tells you the sex of
your baby could be doing the baby irreparable harm, by not taking into consideration that
in later years, that child might not want to belong to that sex.
In fact, Milloy suggests that infant gender assignment, that practice that takes place after
every birth, is playing Russian roulette with your babys life.
Why am I taking this kookiness seriously, even enough to mention it? Because I think we
need to recognize what got this culture to the point of such absurdityand where we might
go from here.
For years now weve been hearing ever louder arguments that we need to free children
and everyone else from the tyranny of gender, with all the practical implications that
argument haslaws that say that boys can use girls bathrooms if they identify as girls, for
instance. Or parents who trot out their five-year-old daughter and announce that shes
decided to be a boy.
Theres a reason, as my friend Karen Swallow Prior points out in a recent article at Think
Christian, that Facebook offers 56 gender options for user profiles. No kidding.
Prior goes on, While [Milloys] article is clearly intended to be shocking, its argument has,
in fact, been a long time coming. Theories about the constructedness (as opposed to
givenness) of human sexuality have been trickling down from the ivory tower for
decades.
And not just trickling down from the ivory tower. How about trickling down from the
highest court in the land? Chuck Colson often said that Justice Anthony Kennedys 1992
decision in Planned Parenthood v Casey was a watershed cultural moment. At the heart
of liberty, Kennedy wrote, is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of
meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.
As Chuck always said, Worldview matters. Ideas have consequences. What Chuck rightly
called Justice Kennedys absurd statement sums up the spirit of our age.
And Milloys article is simply taking all this to its logical conclusion.
And even people who get Milloys logic are appalled with that conclusion. Like the
commenter who wrote: I totally think it's wrong and weird to push a child to like boy
things or girl things, and I'd genuinely try to be open and accepting if my children turned
out to be transgendered. That being said . . . this article is bonkers, right? [Its] not just
me?
To that commenter and the others who expressed similar sentiments, I would say: It is
bonkers, and no, its not just you. But you may have helped us reach this point, whether
you meant to or not.
12/8/2014 Slate just reached the height of madness with THIS insane article | Opinion | LifeSite
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Maybe, in the long run, well all have cause to thank Christin Scarlett Milloy for ripping
away the blinders and making people face facts. Maybe, unwittingly, shes brought us to the
tipping point we so desperately need to reach.