Word Games

A student in Richmond, VA, has the ACLU on her side. They say she is facing unconstitutional censorship for being asked to cover up, remove, turn around, or otherwise hide a t-shirt she was wearing. The shirt, claims the student, is her favorite. It has a logo on it, two female symbols intertwined. Its lesbian overtones are important because the student declares herself to be a lesbian. Obliterating the message of the t-shirt is said to be silencing the political message “that lesbian identity should be celebrated and is a source of pride.”

"I don't feel like I should have to hide my sexuality," said the girl who was asked to hide her t-shirt. The ACLU agrees and is fast approaching court-speed against the teacher and the school on this one.

Give me a break. The girl wasn’t asked to strap down her breasts or stuff a rolled up pair of socks in her pants. She wasn’t asked to make herself appear to be something she clearly wasn’t. Her femaleness and what that mean with regard to sexual functioning was abundantly apparent whether she wore her favorite lesbian t-shirt or one with Hannah Montana on it. She’s a girl, for pity’s sake. She admits to that. Doesn’t run from it at all. It’s a God-given, created-in-the-womb, unalterable fact. She’s a she.

The school rules are simple: "The school's dress code prohibits 'bawdy, salacious or sexually suggestive messages.'" That would seem to include iconic symbols indicating a student's personal (and what ought to be private) preference regarding sexual intercourse. If not, I can imagine all sorts of icons that would eventually be allowed representing the same. At what point does an iconic symbol become political instead of merely bawdy or sexually suggestive? When it's homosexual instead of heterosexual? The irony is, homosexuals won the constitutional right to live together as a couple without legal incrimination in Texas by arguing that the government has no right to pry into the bedroom. Now why are the activities of the bedroom a political statement to be proudly displayed on the chest rather than one's own personal privacy? Is the defining line only when one wants to make a statement about one's homosexuality or lesbianism?

Is it possible that the incidence of free speech is being unfairly tipped toward a certain sector of society? If so, then there is more at play here than one woman’s right to free speech regarding her chosen style of sexual intercourse. What of the rights of other students to express their "political rights" regarding their preferences in sexual intercourse—such as misogyny? That one still exists in the minds and hearts of every male informed by and subscribing to the siren call of today’s media. Males are taught to bed as many women in and out of wedlock as they can. That’s the highest disregard for the welfare of women and any sacred duties of fatherhood. So how about a symbol of the male sign interlaced with several female signs?

Now let’s not leave the ladies out. Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and her younger sister, Jamie Lynn, have given a whole new interpretation to the model young woman. Marriage is passé. Bedding men early, often, and as publicly as possible is the new propriety. Women have learned to use men as well as men have used women. Call it misandrony for lack of a better word and in want of something that sounds fancy. So for these women, let’s fashion ourselves a female symbol with a whole mess of male symbols intertwined—and don’t forget the little tiny male and female “hangers-on” indicating the babies that come from these various unions.

Does anyone suppose t-shirts of these sorts would be viewed as political and not sexual? We could even get more specific. My granddaughter’s friend is pregnant at 16. She’s tried every sort of sex. Her t-shirt would include not just male intertwinings, but also female. I’m not certain she has yet decided what her so-called "sexual identity" is, even though it is obvious by her swollen belly that God knows what it is.

Word games. That’s what it is. Word games to hide, obfuscate or otherwise confuse the issue. God created sex. Sexuality comes from the sex God created and gives to each of us. Ripped from that realm, sexuality is an abusive tool used against our neighbor and ourselves. The word games are necessary to hide that sin. God’s work to bring us to repentance is a miracle in itself.