If you’ve ever been to my office, then you know I have a palm tree. Jennifer bought it for me as a Christmas gift last year. It’s fake, of course, mainly because I’m no horticulturist. Even a cactus will see me coming and take its own life. Nevertheless, real or fake, the tree rises from my office’s corner, a few of its frons reaching toward and over my desk. I like it. It looks real enough for its purpose, which is to help with the winter doldrums.
I wrote a few years ago in an AngelsPortion.com post about wanting to grow a live palm tree here in Michigan. If you’re interested, you can read about it here. I researched the different kinds, eventually learning there is one capable of withstanding occasionally colder climates. Unfortunately, in this case, natural law reestablished itself. For starters, a palm tree that can withstand occasionally colder climates is not the same as one that can withstand cold climates. Occasionally colder and regularly cold are two very different things. The former assumes more warmth than chill. The latter understands the opposite. Michigan is not just occasionally colder than places like Florida. It’s cold, and it can be so for long periods—as many as eight months. I think the way I described it in the post was that snow does not exist in Michigan; instead, Michigan exists in snow.
I grew up in central Illinois. It gets cold there. It has snow, too. I read C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe as a kid, and I’ve since reread it to my children as an adult in Michigan. There is the following moment in the volume between Mr. Tumnus and Lucy, which reads:
“It is winter in Narnia,” said Mr. Tumnus, “and has been for ever so long….”
As a kid, I don’t remember reading that line and thinking, “Ugh, just like Illinois.” Maybe that’s because I thought a lot differently about winter as a child. I can assure you I absolutely do remember reading the story to my son, Joshua, and thinking, “Narnia must be located somewhere here in Michigan.”
I won’t drone on about this anymore. You already know my love affair with summer. Relative to real and fake palm trees, however, there is at least something to be mined from my complaint. Maybe think of it this relatively simple way.
A human with XY chromosomes, even as he may suffer characteristics or physical abnormalities that make him appear feminine, is a male, and as is usually the case, his baseline capabilities native to his chromosomal standard, if left to develop, will prove predominant. In the same way, a human with XX chromosomes, while she may suffer from abnormal masculine attributes, is a female, and her developmental trajectory will inevitably prove it.
Lin Yu-ting and Imane Khelif, two individuals with XY chromosomes who unsurprisingly dominated the female Olympic boxing scene and ultimately fought one another for the gold, are artificial palm trees in Michigan. To this very day, even after suffering the typical progressive rhetoric, the International Boxing Association (IBA) insists they are men, having disqualified them from participating in IBA-sanctioned bouts. Yu-ting and Khelif were tested chromosomally, and the results were unquestionable. They are men. Both were given the opportunity to appeal the results. Yu-ting did not. Khelif did at first but then withdrew the appeal.
Why? Because a second test, like the first, would have doubly certified both are artificial palm trees—fake women—and they do not belong in women’s sports.
“Then why were they allowed to compete in the Olympics?”
First, you’re asking why the same organization that gave us an opening ceremony awash in transgenders with uncovered genitalia parodying Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” would allow men pretending to be women to compete in female sports. That alone should answer your question. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was infected by the woke mind virus years ago, and gender has long since lost its meaning among its members. Second, while the IBA determines gender through testing, the IOC’s only gender determination comes from what’s printed on an athlete’s passport.
“But it’s not that simple, Pastor Thoma. These athletes are human beings suffering from a rare condition.”
And yet, strangely, these poor, marginalized human beings suffering from a rare condition handily destroyed every female boxer from every other country, eventually competing for gold in their individual weight divisions. What an underdog story this is. Or isn’t.
With respect, I’m not buying that argument. I’m convinced the “rare condition” discussion was popularized and used as a pity-generating excuse to make more room for gender confusion, especially since it didn’t emerge until much later in the controversy—and it was never fully substantiated. In addition, the IBA and its doctors—collectively, the recognized worldwide boxing authority—outright rejected the premise relative to women’s sports. Instead, they insisted XY boxers would always put XX boxers in danger. That’s no small thing.
Still, as blurry or unsubstantiated as the excuse may be, let’s say these men actually do have an abnormal condition. My response would not change, except maybe to say their condition saddens me. Such is sin’s dreadful fingerprint upon human flesh. Nevertheless, a person with no arms, for as unfortunate as his condition might be, cannot participate in an arm-wrestling competition. That is his lot. I have a terrible back. There are things I cannot do that others can. This is a thorn for me. I plead daily for relief. And yet, Saint Paul teaches: “I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’” (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). Paul carried on in his lot, unable to be or do anything other than what he was.
If Lin Yu-ting’s and Imane Khelif’s conditions prevent them from competing, then so be it. It’s tragic, but it’s a tragedy that exists within reality, and we all bear thorns that prevent us from one thing or another in that sphere.
And so, yes, it really is that simple. Behold the XY’s innate advantage over its XX counterpart. Blow after blow, it asserts its natural physical dominance over its female opponents, and it does so to the women’s danger. To micromanage and ultimately convolute the issue through supposed transgender or intersex equality excuse-making only demonstrates a cultural infection that threatens to uproot far more than women’s sports. It threatens humanity’s future.
A real palm tree will not grow in a Michigander’s front yard. If you see one, it’s fake. It does not belong.
Cruciform Stuff 