William & Mary & Williamary

The College of William & Mary, the country's second-oldest university, in a year  chockablock with historic firsts for the United States of America, has elected its first transgender homecoming queen.

"I think it's a mark of how progressive our values are here," stated the Junior Class President.

Making me thankful once again that not one of our four children spent even one day being educated in State-funded, State-run educational institutions.

And making me re-assert my firm position that I would rather all four of my children had been illiterate than spend even one day being educated in State-funded, State-run educational institutions.

But I digress. Back to our homecoming queen.

And ze is not alone in zis confusion.

Jessee Vasold, who describes himself as "gender queer," was quoted as saying: "I don't identify as a woman. It really just depends on the day and the occasion."

In conversation, Jessee takes care to use "gender neutral" pronouns such as "ze" instead of "he" and "zir" instead of the traditional -- and peskily gender-specific -- "him" or "her."

Ze must not have felt like a woman last weekend in Williamsburg, Virginia, where there was nary a sequin, a strapless, a stiletto, or a scepter in sight as Jessee took the field at halftime of the William & Mary homecoming game.

Zis costume consisted of black pants, a red shirt, and lower-lip jewelry.

If a tiara is part of the deal, Jessee was not wearing it on zis long blondish hair.

The queen is apparently no stranger to the spotlight. Jessee serves as the Student Assembly Undersecretary of Diversity Initiatives for William & Mary's Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Affairs.

(If you can say that quickly five times, you may be a little light in your loafers too.)

Jessee is also past co-president of the Lambda Alliance, William & Mary's GLBT advocacy group.

Happily, whatever else he may lack, our Jessee came equipped with a sense of humor. (Ze is going to need it.) Ze maintains a Facebook page under the name "Kathy Middlesex."

And ze is not alone in zis confusion. In the midst of one particularly spirited on-line comment exchange regarding the hot-button issue, a clever reader threw this anecdote on the heap:

My sister suffers from Body Integrity Identity Disorder. She felt she was a one-legged person born in a two-legged person’s body. After years of searching, we found a doctor willing to perform the surgery.

Afterwards, she changed her name to Eileen.

I really have only one question, because I know that if I had ever been elected homecoming queen, it would have been my first priority:

If there does turn out to be a tiara, does ze plan to wear it to class? 

O Come Angel Band

My BiblesRecently our family had the privilege of spending the weekend in Powell, Tennessee, home of the great Temple Baptist Church and The Crown College, where our son is a student.

On Sunday the choir sang the old hymn O Come Angel Band, said to have been sung to Dr. R.G. Lee by family and friends as he lay dying, anticipating his homegoing. Although Dr. Lee's favorite hymn was famously Majestic Sweetness Sits Enthroned, it was the tenderly evocative lyric O bear me away on your snowy wings/to my immortal home that he wanted to hear as he left this world.

Greg Gray sang the solo part on that day, backed by the 200-member choir which included female voices, one of which was our daughter Audrey. I'll be honest: it was so beautiful that by the time they were finished, I was fairly weak with emotion.

Earlier this year, at Temple Baptist Church's annual Faithful Men meeting, Greg Gray sang O Come Angel Band with an all-male choir. But this time he was joined by William McCrea, a member of British Parliament who is also a well-known singer of gospel music.

Here's a YouTube of that performance. It was better in person and (in my opinion) with the female voices, but I hope you receive a blessing.

Half & Half & Half

Size mattersThe longer I live, the more impossible it becomes for me to become fully functional in the morning until I have consumed a fairly large quantity of fresh, hot, strong coffee.

With a very generous serving of Half & Half.

Now, if you've been paying attention, you may recall that for a long time, all I would pour into my coffee was Original CoffeeMate liquid -- no powders, no funny flavors, and don't bring that fat-free stuff anywhere near me.

Then, inexplicably, about a year ago, they changed it.  The liquid Original CoffeeMate, that is.

One day, out of nowhere, it tasted as though they'd added sugar to it.

Oddly, as much as I love sugar (I have a sweet tooth roughly the size of the Philippines), I cannot handle even a hint of sugar in my coffee.

Boggling, that is, to a mind like mine which has nearly reached the allowable boggling threshold.

At first I thought it was just me. I had no clue why, all things being equal, suddenly a cup of coffee would taste markedly different than it had been tasting for two to three years.  Was I going crazy?  What were those voices saying?

So I wondered if maybe the folks who spend their days producing liquid CoffeeMate had gotten confused and mixed up a bad batch. It could happen to anyone! Wanting to give them the benefit of the doubt, I bought another container of liquid CoffeeMate, original flavor.

Same deal.

*sigh*

Perilously near despair, I forsook CoffeeMate and turned to the only substance I knew would approximate the texture and flavor of liquid CoffeeMate, original flavor, with no chance of corruption by sugar: Half & Half. Half milk, half heavy cream, nothing else. How could I go wrong?

It took some getting used to, but now I cannot imagine drinking my morning coffee any other way. I eye the fancy-shmancy liquid CoffeeMate original flavor on the cold-case shelf next to the milk and say, "Hah! Who needs you? It never would have worked out between us!"

Except, first I had to find a brand of Half & Half that I could rely upon to be reasonably economical and to be sold in quantities that wouldn't have me or a family member trotting to the store every other day to replenish my supply.

Because I'm more afraid of running out of coffee supplies than I am of running out of toothpaste. Or hairspray. Well, maybe not hairspray.

(Or, as ladies called it when I was a kid: "spray net." I always thought that was a charming term.)

Since we shop for groceries primarily at Kroger and Wal-Mart, but TG prefers to shop at Kroger and I prefer that TG do the grocery shopping, I soon settled on Kroger brand Half & Half. It's good stuff. The packaging is white and purple, which I think is mighty attractive. So far, no complaints.

Except, it comes in a mind-boggling array of sizes. Boggling, that is, to a mind like mine which has nearly reached the allowable boggling threshold.

I'll have to open a coffee shop. Another charming term from my childhood.

At first I bought Kroger Half & Half by the quart bottles because that's all that was available. I would buy two at a time because they didn't seem to last all that long. Then they came out with a half-gallon carton which was actually cheaper per ounce! Bingo! For some reason, a half-gallon carton seemed to last longer than two quart bottles. 

But sadly, they only had half-gallon cartons of Half & Half on the shelf about half the time.

Welcome to mi vida loca.

Recently I said to Erica, who was venturing out to Kroger: "Get me some Half & Half! If they only have quart bottles, get me two!"

She came home with TWO half-gallon cartons. A gallon of Half & Half! She said they didn't have any quart bottles. 

???????

That's the day I began drinking heavily. Good thing I had so much Half & Half at hand.

Even more recently I said to TG, who was venturing out to Kroger: "Get me some Half & Half! If they only have quart bottles, get me two!"

He came home with two tiny PINT bottles (which until that day I never even knew existed) AND a half-gallon carton.

???????

Even MORE recently I said to TG, who was venturing out to Kroger: "Get me some Half & Half! If they only have quart bottles, get me two!"

He came home with FOUR quart bottles.

? ? ? ? ? ? ?

More than half my life is behind me. If I send TG and Erica on only half the shopping trips, it will take at least half of the time I have left to drink even half of the Half & Half they bring home. I'll have to open a coffee shop. Another charming term from my childhood.

During which, come to think of it, at least half the time I was already half crazy. 

Abortion: Addiction Or Affliction?

Lissy's TearsYou've heard of addictions to drugs, tobacco, food, shopping ... even love. But an addiction to abortion?

That's the condition to which Irene Vilar lays claim in her new book, Impossible Motherhood: Testimony of an Abortion Addict published this week by Other Press.

Ms. Vilar pitched her controversial manuscript to 52 publishers before finding one that would print and promote the book.

According to the UK's Mail Online in an article you can read for yourself here, Vilar, 40, terminated 15 out of 17 pregnancies. She has two living children, in addition to two teenaged stepchildren, with her current husband.

Vilar's first husband, a man of 50 when she married him at age 16, was vehemently opposed to fathering children. So each time Vilar came up pregnant, she had an abortion. Fifteen in all.

Sadly, there are those who will validate and compound -- dare I say reward? -- her actions by buying the book.

She explains in her book that her actions were a form of rebellion against her husband.

If you can figure that one out, you are smarter than most. Her husband did not want children, so she got pregnant anyway, but then killed the children. Hmmm ...

For further mystification, if you make time to read the online article, check out some of the comments. Ms. Vilar has been widely vilified for her behavior ... even by those who insist they are "pro-choice."

Pro-choice is a euphemism for "pro-abort" and it is interesting that those who have no problem with a woman murdering one or even two of her children, use the word "egregious" when the same woman takes out a hit on fifteen of her kids.

Ostensibly these same people do not flinch when fifteen women -- or for that matter, thirty women or fifty women or one hundred women -- who have each aborted one child, pass by them in the street.

Why is that not considered egregious? Where is the outrage for each of those women's defenseless dead children?

Even the fact of fifty-three million (and counting) American women who have aborted their children since 1973 has no discernible adverse effect on the pro-aborts; on the contrary, they continue to applaud each woman's "right to choose" and to excoriate those who would oppose it.

But if the hundreds of comments on the article about Irene Vilar's new book are any indication, ONE woman aborting FIFTEEN children is more than many pro-aborts can stand. Apparently somewhere between the numbers one and fifteen, abortion becomes less palatable to these free thinkers.

That is, if only one mother is involved.

A photograph of this particular mother accompanies the online article. An open, all-American face grins directly into the camera, strikingly reminiscent of Peggy Lipton's hippie-chick-gone-straight Julie Barnes character from the late '60s-early '70s TV hit The Mod Squad.

Begging the question, how does one smile so brightly for the camera after years of paying others to abuse one's children to the point of death?

And how is it that this woman -- this mother -- not only walks free, but is given the opportunity to profit from the deaths of those children by writing a "memoir" of the experience?

Come to think of it, Irene Vilar invested a fair amount of money in those abortions. Perhaps she would like to recoup some of her losses. Sadly, there are those who will validate and compound -- dare I say reward? -- her actions by buying the book.

But after all she has put herself, her body, and her precious children through, amazingly Ms. Vilar is anything but opposed to abortion. She comments: "Motherhood has made me feel accountable. It hasn't made me less pro-choice. It's just that I understand and feel the weight of the privilege we have in exercising our right to choose."

The fifteen babies -- the ones who had no choices -- are safe in Heaven, together with the tens of millions of others who have been aborted. The only hope for Ms. Vilar is to repent, obtain forgiveness for her sins, and trust Christ for salvation.

No matter how successful, her book and its proceeds will not bring Ms. Vilar the healing and resolution she desperately needs. Only God can do that.