It is axiomatic that a sound understanding of the nature of the human person is essential to a rational system of morality and public policy. The converse of that principle is equally true: an incoherent misunderstanding of the nature of the human person leads to nonsensical morality and public policy
The best evidence for this are the ongoing lawless actions by the Administration to impose gender ideology on our nation, not by making law in the legitimate way established in the Constitution, but by issuing arbitrary edicts that purport to find new meanings in existing law, in ways that no rational person could ever consider sensible
Let me be specific. Over the past several years, minor unelected officials in federal agencies (no doubt acting with the approval of high-ranking members of the Administration) have issued letters claiming that existing prohibitions against sex discrimination also ban any differential treatment of persons who consider themselves to be "transgender". No acts of Congress have been enacted saying this, and no regulations have been issued through the normal course of rule-making. But that hasn't stopped the Administration from making up law as it goes along, arbitrarily arrogating power to itself to re-define what it means to be human
The most recent example is a threatening letter sent by the Justice Department to the State of North Carolina. That state recently passed a law declaring that multiple use bathrooms and locker rooms could only be used by persons of the appropriate sex, as determined by their biological sex as stated on their birth certificate. The Justice Department has decided that this law violates the federal civil rights statute, usually referred to as "Title VII", and that the entire state could lose all federal funding as a result. Their reasoning, if you can call it that, is the bizarre notion that Title VII's prohibition of discrimination on the basis of "sex" also includes a ban on any differential treatment of "transgender individuals" due to their "gender identity"
Of course, Title VII says nothing about "gender identity" or "transgender individuals". Nobody understood it that way at the time it was passed in 1964. And nobody interpreted it in that way until this current Administration decided to do so. In fact, Congress has flatly refused the Administration's request that they amend Title VII to include "gender identity", an amendment that would surely not be necessary if the term "sex" already included that meaning as well. This is not an isolated case, by the way. The Administration has also pushed this agenda in other areas — education, health care, and government contracting
The whole idea makes no sense at all. Set aside for a moment the fundamental nonsense of gender ideology, which I have written about before. In this case, the government is arguing that acting on the basis of biological sex is discriminatory against people who think that biological sex is meaningless, and who are defining their identity in a way that they feel has no relationship with their biological sex. They also claim that the state is treating people badly on account of their "gender identity", even though the state is completely disregarding the person's claimed identity, and is instead using the person's undisputed biological sex as the relevant standard
There is no way to extract any intellectual coherence from the Administration's position. But reason has little force when people in power are pursuing an ideological crusade to re-make man in their own image and likeness, when they have no trouble running rough-shod over the rule of law in order to impose this new orthodoxy, and when they will brook no opposition or dissent