How Modern Labels Dehumanize Us

Written by Dr. Everett Piper

Last week in this column, I argued that if we truly respect our neighbors, we should stop using all of the LGBTQ labels that have become endemic to the month of June and its corresponding celebration of “pride.” More specifically, I wrote,

“Don’t you realize that by calling people ‘gay’ (or lesbian, transgender, queer, homosexual or even heterosexual, for that matter) you are parroting the lie that our desires define us and that people can be pigeonholed into categories of appetites, proclivities, drives and desires? Don’t you see that your labels consign fellow human beings to little more than the status of animals who are driven insatiably by their inclinations and instincts? When you accept this definition of a man or woman, you are admitting that you believe people are nothing more than what they are inclined to do. You are stating that if someone wants to do something, ‘that’s just who they are’ and they can’t do anything about it. You are implying their personhood is nothing more than the sum total of their proclivities and passions.”

As you can imagine, many readers lost their minds. “Show some empathy,” some wrote. “Call people whatever they want to be called. What’s your problem?”

Well, unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 40 years, the problem should be obvious.

When we start granting “identity” based on feelings rather than biological facts, we open Pandora’s box to a nearly endless list of subjectively defined groups that then require legal recognition and official minority status simply because of the way they “feel.”

Let me give you a couple of examples.

If we accept that there’s a minority group of men called “gay” for no reason other than they feel like having sex with other men, then why not grant minority status to those who feel like having “minor-attracted” sex, consensual incest, cross-species sex or necrophilia?

If we’re going to grant legal identity to all these “communities,” then why stop with sexual inclinations? Why not also grant minority recognition to Caucasians who feel like they’re Black, Asians who feel like they’re Hispanic and Anglos who feel like they’re American Indians?

Or what about adults who feel like they are children and teenagers who feel like they’re cats?

Where does it end?

The answer is that it doesn’t.

These categorical errors are why some are now literally arguing that there are 57 genders and why the daily news is rife with stories of fully intact biological men demanding full access to women’s bathrooms, showers, scholarships and sports.

The term “homosexual” didn’t even exist before the 1860s. It was first coined in 1869 by Karl Kertbeny, who acknowledged that he invented the word to shift the debate from same-sex activity (i.e., a verb) to same-sex identity (i.e., a noun) — from something you did to something you were.

Thus, by calling people either heterosexual or homosexual, the conversation moved. When we allowed activists such as Kertbeny to change the focus, we became complicit in the assumption that a person’s desires were synonymous with their definition, and the result was the negation of free will, personal responsibility, moral culpability and the millennia-old mandate for self-restraint.

Even sexual agitators such as Gore Vidal and Michel Foucault understood this when they said, “There is no more such a thing as a homosexual person than there is a heterosexual person. These are behavioral adjectives” (Vidal). “We are creating a hermaphroditism; a false species” (Foucault).

Rosaria Butterfield, the former LGBTQ activist of Syracuse University who is now a Christian author and speaker, says it well.

“The 19th century ushered in a new measure of man, one for whom sexuality and sexual pleasure became a defining marker. Thus, the category of sexual orientation is what we in theology call a ‘neologism,’ and it creates fictional identities that rob [us] of [our] true one — male and female image bearers.”

She goes on:

“With secular society rendering classical religious beliefs publicly illegitimate, pseudoscience stepped in and replaced religion as the moral foundation for venereal norms. Sexuality moved from a verb (practice) to a noun (people), and with this grammatical move, a new concept of humanity was born. Indeed, sexual orientation went from a categorical invention to heralded, immortal truth in 100 years.”

It’s been said that he who defines the terms wins the debate. Pride Month proves that when we presume to redefine what it means to be human, we lose not only our sense of shared humanity but also our common sense. In other words, we become animals rather than people.

This article was originally published by The Washington Times.