An Alternate Universe

by Larry Johnson

Could it be that I’m the only one feeling as if I’m living in some kind of alternate universe these days?  There’s a vague feeling of imbalance, like I’m maybe falling off the edge of the world.  Defining moments of life and moral issues swirl around like a hot wind, leaving impressions and mental images that almost refuse to coalesce into some kind of coherent thought.  Even the most articulate and expressive ones among us can be driven to mumbling and muttering under the breath.  Am I the only one?  No, there must be others dealing with this maelstrom of madness in society that leaves one hanging on by the fingertips at times.

A case in point is the current and ongoing story of the woman named Tracy who became a man named Thomas, who had her breasts cut off yet kept her female genitalia, who married a woman named Nancy under his/her guise as a man, who then got pregnant (Tracy/Thomas, that is) with donated sperm and subsequently gave birth to three children, who has been seeking to get a divorce from Nancy, which a judge denied because “same-sex” marriage is not valid in Arizona, and the judge said he could find no legal authority for defining a man as someone who could give birth, and he/she got married in Hawaii under false pretenses of his/her real gender anyway, and Tracy/Thomas has a new girlfriend now so you’ve got to wonder if that makes the girlfriend gay or straight since he/she is still part woman, and also whether Tracy/Thomas is considered to be the mother or the father of the children since he has to pay child support to Nancy.  Did you get all that? Are you dizzy yet?  Do you perceive a certain madness here?  A twisting of the moral universe?

The distraction and noise gets even worse, if you can believe it.  Thomas the pregnant man is lionized by Oprah and feted by Larry King on those television talk shows.  These people and others in the media present themselves as arbiters of modern fashion and morality.  Are you scared yet?  This transgender mother/father also published a book,  “Labor of Love: The Story of One Man’s Extraordinary Pregnancy.”  The only love here is love of self, expressive of  the extreme egoism that lies at the heart of our modern popular culture.   Our protagonist even gained a spot on Barbara Walters’ list of “10 Most Fascinating People” back in 2008 — right alongside President Obama. Come to think of it, maybe Tracy/Thomas is just the most perfect metaphor for Obama’s corrosive social policies as moralist-in-chief. But that’s another story.  It’s enough to say at this point that it’s all part of the same noise.

Life is complicated enough without adding on layers of makeup to hide behind and avoid the truth.  And even though it’s definitely not a popular thing today to take the stand that there is such a thing as unchanging truth, we know even in the darkness that there is something called “natural law” that resides deep in our hearts.  This truth tells us that a man is a man, a woman is a woman, and when the twain meets there ought to be an outflow of love that points to life.  Not to destruction and despair and a brokenness that seems almost beyond healing.

And one does not have to be a Thomistic philosopher, a Catholic Christian, a Protestant Christian, or a person of any another faith, to understand that we can stand on firm ground in the midst of all this cacophony. Even though the ground shakes and falls away from beneath us sometimes as we travel down life’s road, we can still trust that God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world.

So, okay, everyone take a deep breath.