Quodlibet
Transgenderism: What the Biology Professor Must Say
Whatever political pressures the university may bring to bear upon it, biological science proceeds on the premise that sex is binary, genetic, and ineradicable. When a human being does not identify with his or her sex, it is a matter of personal desire and imagination, not of science.
The object of science is the attainment of universal knowledge, so to demand or coerce assent to subjective "personal realities" is to require its suicide—or that it in some way go into hiding to avoid eradication.
A school's requirement that all those connected with it admit into the world of knowledge—truth as science can perceive it—personal, subjective realities with regard to sex, will doubtless make those who demand release from scientific dealing with reality feel the happy comfort of "inclusion." But the price that must be paid for this policy in a university is ruinous, being nothing less than its death as an institution devoted to the universal. It now becomes, by the instrument of its inclusion policy, a mass of competing ideologies, with no compass except that provided by the greatest will to power.
In such a context, as we should have learned from watching the universities under the totalitarianisms of the twentieth century, an academic community not only quarters itself in the Shinar Plain to serve a politically inspired idol, but academic freedom, as we have known it, is gone.
S. M. Hutchens is a senior editor and longtime writer for Touchstone.
subscription options
Order
Print/Online Subscription
Get six issues (one year) of Touchstone PLUS full online access including pdf downloads for only $39.95. That's only $3.34 per month!
Order
Online Only
Subscription
Get a one-year full-access subscription to the Touchstone online archives for only $19.95. That's only $1.66 per month!
bulk subscriptions
Order Touchstone subscriptions in bulk and save $10 per sub! Each subscription includes 6 issues of Touchstone plus full online access to touchstonemag.com—including archives, videos, and pdf downloads of recent issues for only $29.95 each! Great for churches or study groups.
Transactions will be processed on a secure server.
more on education from the online archives
27.2—March/April 2014
Higher Education Should Advance the Glorious Liberty of the Sons of God by Anthony Esolen
20.8—October 2007
The Deep & Abiding Biblical Roots of Western Liberal Education by David Lyle Jeffrey
more from the online archives
20.8—October 2007
The Deep & Abiding Biblical Roots of Western Liberal Education by David Lyle Jeffrey
30.5—Sept/Oct 2017
The Critical History Before, During & After Martin Luther by James Hitchcock
calling all readers
Please Donate
"There are magazines worth reading but few worth saving . . . Touchstone is just such a magazine."
—Alice von Hildebrand
"Here we do not concede one square millimeter of territory to falsehood, folly, contemporary sentimentality, or fashion. We speak the truth, and let God be our judge. . . . Touchstone is the one committedly Christian conservative journal."
—Anthony Esolen, Touchstone senior editor
