Greg Hengler at Townhall caught this troubling Today show segment where Meredith Vieira celebrates Cheryl Kilodavis, author of My Princess Boy, and her son, Dyson, a five-year-old who dresses up in pink tutus and sparkles:
What’s upsetting about this video is not that there is a boy in America that dresses like a girl and his parents are cool with it, it’s that he’s being encouraged by an American society (i.e the media) gradually losing sight of the Judeo-Christian values on which it was founded; these values are being replaced by the politically correct axiom of acceptance. Not until the latter half of the 20th century were we foolish enough to consider “acceptance” a value. There are infinite human tendencies we choose not to accept as a society — we don’t accept people who eat too many carbs or who don’t want to pay for health insurance, much less people inclined to extreme violence or pedophilia. The idea that we are to practice “acceptance” without considering what it is we are being asked to accept is so poorly thought through, it could only emanate from the left.
As opposed to blindly accepting/cashing in on her son’s behavior, Kilodavis has two perfectly acceptable options to deal with it:
The first, and this one is probably most appealing to more traditional parents, is simply setting boundaries for the child and enforcing them. The fact that five-year-olds are now calling the shots and essentially raising themselves while the parents simply observe and write children’s books about them is stranger than fiction.
The second option, the one probably more appealing to “progressive” parents, is indifference. Dyson is simply too young to have his sexuality made an issue of, especially in the public sphere. Dyson’s mother can allow the boy the opportunity to live out his childhood and determine whether or not this behavior is merely a phase. She can accept his behavior, is she so chooses, without glorifying it. We all had phases when we were children, and chances are cross-dressing is one of them for five-year-old Dyson.
Striaght, gay, cross-dresser, or otherwise, Dyson will grow up and learn that his mother dragged him out onto national televison so that Meredith Vieira could coo as he twirled like a princess while America looked on. This is an indignity no man should ever have to suffer, no matter his sexuality. Thank goodness every phase of my development wasn’t broadcast on television!
As to the undermining of Judeo-Christian values, Dennis Prager provides historical perspective:
One of the major values of the Old Testament, the primary source of Judeo-Christian values, is the notion of a divinely ordained order based on separation. What God has created distinct, man shall not tamper with.
As examples, good is separate from evil (attempts to blur their differences are known as moral relativism and are anathema to Judeo-Christian values); life is separate from death (in part a reaction to ancient Egypt, which blurred the distinction between life and death); God is separate from nature (see part XVI); humans are separate from animals (see part XV); and man is separate from woman. Blurring any of these distinctions is tampering with the order of the world as created by God and leads to chaos. So important is the notion of separation that the very word for “holy” in biblical Hebrew (kadosh) means “separate,” “distinct.”
[…]
The war waged by cultural radicals at universities, in state legislatures and in courtrooms against the very distinction between male and female is one of their most significant attempts to undo the Judeo-Christian foundations of American and Western culture. And they know it. That’s why fighting to blur gender distinctions is so important to them.
If you are on the right or a religious person, you’ll likely find Prager’s analysis persuasive; if you’re on the left, you likely won’t. Either way, it’s clear young Dyson has been weaponized by those at NBC and his book-peddling mother to push a cultural acceptance that, for better or for worse, runs in contrast to the standard order of things as we have known them in American life. Hopefully we can all agree that these issues are best worked out in the home, sans giddy, agenda-pushing news networks celebrating the sexuality of our youngest and most innocent.