To be is to be contingent: nothing of which it can be said that "it is" can be alone and independent. But being is a member of paticca-samuppada as arising which contains ignorance. Being is only invertible by ignorance.

Destruction of ignorance destroys the illusion of being. When ignorance is no more, than consciousness no longer can attribute being (pahoti) at all. But that is not all for when consciousness is predicated of one who has no ignorance than it is no more indicatable (as it was indicated in M Sutta 22)

Nanamoli Thera

Sunday, November 20, 2022

Love at first scent - say "yes" to transspecies marriage, the forces of hate and intolerance should be defeated


Harry Hay’s LGBT universe rests upon two basic ideas. First, all sex acts are morally neutral. No one variety is any better than another; there is no moral difference between the traditional marriage bed and a bathhouse orgy of fifty homosexuals. The purpose of any sex act is what they call the “pair-bonding experience,” not procreation. How you and your partner or partners achieve the pair-bonding experience is left entirely to your imagination. Gay sex, group sex, sadomasochism, coprophilia – all are legitimate means of achieving the pair-bonding experience. The concept of morally neutral sex acts adopts a perspective of moral relativism, which basically holds that there are no objective standards of morality.

Whatever you feel is right, is right.

The second idea central to the LGBT worldview is that sex and gender are two different things: the former is determined by biology, the latter by culture and individual perception. When it comes to determining your “gender identity,” it is your perception that counts, not your anatomy. If you perceive yourself to be a woman, then you are a woman, regardless of whether you were born with a penis or a vagina. In transgendered persons, there is a conflict between sex and gender. Like six-year-old Coy, the male transgender-transsexual is not a confused little boy who wants to become a girl; “she” is a girl trapped inside the body of a boy. And in order to bring congruity between “her” sex and gender, “she” often chooses to undergo a sex change operation. The sex/gender dichotomy, which applies not just to transsexualism but to all of the other LGBT lifestyles, adopts philosophical subjectivism. At its extreme, subjectivism asserts that there is no such thing as objective reality. Reality consists of individual perception and experience. You have your reality, and I have mine.

Both moral relativism and philosophical subjectivism defy rational criticism. The reason is that, to criticize an idea, there must be rational criteria for reaching an agreement. If perception is reality, then reality is whatever you want it to be. After reading a little LGBT literature, this perspective becomes readily apparent. Like falling down a rabbit hole into Wonderland, the LGBT universe is a place where reason doesn’t exist, where up is down, black is white, and little boys are actually little girls.

My original intention was to write a critique of homosexuality from a natural law perspective. But after perusing the pertinent literature, I realized it made no sense to use rational arguments against a worldview that is essentially irrational. The appropriate medium is satire. To make my point, I decided to follow these LGBT ideas to their logical conclusion, reductio ad absurdum. If anatomy is irrelevant in determining your gender identity, then it’s equally irrelevant in determining your species identity. So I introduce you to Melvin and Maude, the story of a donkey trapped inside the body of a man.

Although the characters in Melvin and Maude are fictional, the arguments are quite real, for they are the same arguments being used before the Supreme Court to advance causes such as same-sex marriage.

Policies are only as good as the ideas on which they are based. Both moral relativism and philosophical subjectivism are very bad ideas. Relying upon them as the basis for major social policies such as marriage will inevitably lead to disaster.

As for Coy, the “transgendered” six-year-old, the door to the girls’ restroom is now open. On June 17, 2013, the Colorado Civil Rights Division issued a decree that the school district “discriminatorily denied” Coy “full and equal enjoyment of goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodations in a place of public accommodation due to (her) sex and sexual orientation.” (Denver Post, June 25, 2013) The family held a celebratory news conference on the steps of the state capitol.

Sporting a pair of pink sneakers and a sparkly tank-top, Coy sat quietly in front of the news cameras, biting “her” fingernails. The parents were later asked about the next step in the process of Coy’s transgenderism. They said Coy will probably be given female sex hormones, which will prevent the development of male features (facial hair) and promote the growth of female features (breasts). At some point down the road, Coy will have the option of sex reassignment surgery. In this procedure, the surgeons will first remove Coy’s testicles, then hollow out his penis and invert it into a “vagina.” Welcome to the new normal.

One beautiful morning in the summer of 2024, a friendly young donkey named Melvin decided to cut off his feet with a chainsaw. Melvin’s problem wasn’t physical handicap; his feet worked just fine. 

His problem was identity. Melvin felt trapped inside a human body and wanted to cut his way out. 

Melvin had never heard of the term “species role,” a word that defined the way Melvin was supposed to behave in public just because he had been born with human anatomy. Because of his human anatomy, Melvin was pressured by society to look, act, and talk like a human. Because of his body, he was given a human name by his human parents. But Melvin wanted none of it, not the human name, not the human parents, least of all the human anatomy. 

Deep down in his soul, Melvin knew he was a donkey. It was true, he didn’t have hooves or long furry ears; he couldn’t bray like an ass. But Melvin longed to be a donkey, he craved the pleasure of acting like a donkey, at first in the privacy of his basement, eventually in the company of other donkeys who lived in the pasture behind his home. Melvin was convinced that he was in fact a donkey and this whole human business was all a horrible mistake. There had somehow been a mix-up, he wanted to tell the whole world about it, yet he was forced to keep it a secret, even though he didn’t know why. 

Species was still something of a mystery when Melvin was growing up. Except for a handful of radical psychiatrists, the medical community was in agreement that human anatomy was destiny, and the only acceptable outlet for someone born with human anatomy was to behave like a human being. But for Melvin, having to deny himself the pleasure of acting like a jackass was intolerable. Driven to the verge of suicide, Melvin took the desperate step of trying to remove his hated human appendages with a chainsaw. 

Before the chain cut into his alien flesh, Melvin chickened out. In utter despair, he fell to his knees and beseeched the heavens: “Why am I cursed with this body? How can I get rid of it?” His whole life, Melvin had been trapped inside a human body, like a prisoner languishing in the cruelest kind of solitary confinement. Melvin didn’t know it at the time but he wasn’t alone, there were many others just like him, each confined to their own anatomical prison cell, desperately wanting to escape. Melvin didn’t know it but he was also a genetic Argonaut, destined to become one of the first transspecie. With the help of a few visionary psychiatrists and physicians, Melvin would become living proof that anatomy wasn’t destiny. 

He was born on December 1, 2001, a balmy Tuesday. Seeing the attributes of a male child, the doctors declared him a “boy” and his parents, Bill and Betty White, promptly named him Melvin. Life was hard growing up on the red hills of central Mississippi. Melvin refused to play with the human boys because they liked football and video games. Melvin would sneak out at night to the pasture to be with the long-eared donkeys. He was bullied and excluded by the human boys. “Donkey Boy,” they called him. 

During high school, Melvin wanted to learn how to pull a plow, but sadly he was forced to take classes on math and science. Forced into the society of humans, Melvin desperately wanted to escape. But how? he wondered.

After graduation Melvin married a human female. It was an unhappy marriage and soon fell apart after she realized Melvin had no interest in human sex. She grew tired of Melvin coming home late at night, smelling of livestock, grass wedged between his teeth. A divorce followed. 

It was during this period that Melvin read a magazine article about Bill Baxter, a former New York City firefighter who in 2022 went to Johns Hopkins Medical Center, underwent surgical treatment, and returned home a German shepherd named “Bruno.” Baxter’s species reassignment was a logical progression from sex reassignment. Back in the 1960s Dr. John Money, head of the Psychohormonal and Gender Identity Clinic of Johns Hopkins University, pioneered research into what he called “transsexualism.” Born anatomically male or female, the transsexual prefers the gender role of the opposite sex. In order to bring anatomical congruity with their gender role preference, Dr. Money believed that transsexuals needed surgery and hormone treatment. The first sex change operation was performed at Johns Hopkins in September 1965. A woman trapped inside a man’s body, the patient gave up her penis and testicles in order to achieve her goal of becoming a complete woman. 

Bill Baxter (“Bruno”) was the logical next step. His case was the first time the public became aware of transspecieism and the fact that it was possible for a human to actually change species. Inspired by Baxter, Melvin Allen White entered the new transspecies program at Johns Hopkins. He was scheduled for a species change operation for the spring of 2025. 

A team of Baltimore surgeons removed Melvin’s feet and hands, the skin and muscle were rolled back upon the appendages like tube socks, the bony stumps were squared and sanded smooth. 

Medicine had come a long way since the days of Dr. Money’s first sex change operations. One of the major advances was the ability to splice human and animal DNA in order to grow organs for species reassignment surgery. 

Melvin’s specially grown donkey hide and long ears were surgically attached. When he awoke on April 5, 2025, Melvin was a complete jackass. 

Returning to rural Mississippi, Melvin moved to the pasture behind his old house. The excitement he felt grazing alongside his fellow donkeys is difficult to describe in human terms. Finally liberated from the prison of his human body, Melvin emitted a loud Hee-Haw. 

Digesting grass and raw oats took some getting used to. At first the other donkeys shunned poor Melvin. But after a while he was treated as one of the herd. 

One day Melvin caught wind of a female donkey loping through the fields of new alfalfa. Her stink floated on the early morning breeze like perfume. It was love at first scent. 

A two-year-old donkey, Maude was ready for breeding. Initially, she played hard-to-get with love-struck Melvin. But Melvin’s persistence paid off. Pretty soon the pair was inseparable. They grazed together. They dusted for insects together. They brayed beneath the stars: Hee-Haw- Hee-Haw. Their love was equal to any human love. Melvin figured the only appropriate way to express their love for one another was to go get hitched. 

Sadly a lot of people in America frowned upon such relationships. Unfortunately for Melvin and Maude, jurisprudence had failed to keep pace with progress. In the eyes of the law Melvin was a human being, despite his recent operation, and Maude was still a donkey, which made their affair a “crime.” Although marriage had long since been extended to all manner of human relationships – gay, polygamous, incestuous – transspecies marriage was still illegal in all fifty states. A few reactionary states in the Deep South even had anti-bestiality statutes on their books. 

But Melvin knew that the arc of the universe bent toward justice. He was certain that those who were fighting for transspecies liberation were on the right side of history. In the end, the forces of hate and intolerance would be defeated.

From Melvin and Maude

by ERIC RUDOLPH


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