Boys will be boys, girls will be boys and boys will be girls?

Albert Mohler has weighed in on the Iowa wrestling kerfuffle and as usual he provides a sober, thoughtful and forceful response. Dr. Mohler makes clear the distinct worldviews that are on display here, worldviews that are so far apart that it is starting to seem, at least to me, as if we have two different nations within the borders of the United States. From Boys Wrestling Girls — A Clash of Worlds and Worldviews :

This is insanity masquerading as athletic competition. The controversy over the Iowa state wrestling tournament reveals the fact that this debate represents a clash of worlds and worldviews. In one world — the world that increasingly demands the total erasure of distinctions between men and women — Joel Northrup is considered to be a religious nut. In this world, it makes sense that girls wrestle against boys and that society should celebrate this new development as a milestone in the struggle to free ourselves from the limitations of all gender roles. As if to make this point impossible to miss, Bill Herkelman, Cassy’s father, said: “She’s my son. She’s always been my son.”

In the other world, Joel Northrup is seen as a young man of brave and noble conscience — a boy who defaulted a match rather than violate his conscience. The statements offered by Joel and his father are seen as moments of temporary sanity in a world going increasingly mad. The chivalry demonstrated at great personal cost by this boy athlete is to be celebrated, affirmed, and acknowledged as being deeply rooted in his Christian convictions — convictions about gender, modesty, the treatment of girls and women, propriety, decorum, and sexual purity.

That is precisely correct. America is increasingly divided into two camps, one that sees a teenage girl wrestling with teenaged boys as unthinkable for several reasons, not least the inherent violence in wrestling that runs counter to the way we raise our boys and the close proximity and grappling of two teens of the opposite sex. The other seems to think that anything that distinguishes between the genders is inherently discriminatory and condescending.

Why the focus and fuss about this? I agree with Dr, Mohler that this is ground zero of the cultural clash. When I was wrestling in high school, a mere twenty years ago, there weren’t any girls wrestling that I was aware of. The idea of people in their teens of the opposite sex grappling with one another in public was pretty implausible, primarily because few parents thought it was a remotely good idea to expose their daughters to this and likewise because once upon a time parents said "No" to their children once in a while instead of granting their every whim. I can’t imagine many parents of high school aged girls when I was in school saying to their daughter: “Hey, throw on a singlet and go join the wrestling team”. Today gender confusion and sexual permissiveness threaten to unravel the boundaries of civil society.

The decision by Joel Northrup and his parents is not the work of religious fanatics, it is simply common sense and common decency. Unfortunately simple common sense and common decency are both becoming an uncommon commodity in our world.