Vice is a monster of so frightful mien
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen to ‘oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.
Alexander Pope, Essay on Man,
Epistle 11, lines 217-220
Those six or seven readers from last week will know that Comus wrote about the Women’s Privacy bill and the busload of courageous women who made the hour-plus-long trip to Columbia to convince the House to vote for HB 4756, the Women’s Privacy bill.
That trip was marvelously successful, and the House committee voted, 3-1mostly overwhelmingly (a Democrat, naturally, demurred), to move the bill to the House floor. When Comus wrote about the trip, he figured that would be the end of it. It appears we must continue to beg our elected officials to vote for virtue. Even as Comus repeated Twain’s line about politicians (here it is again for the sake of convenience: Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” ), insiders tell Comus that the Senate will not act unless a repeated trip to Columbia is made to support the bill’s passage out of committee.
Seriously? We have so many cowards in our legislature that they cannot make a moral decision based on principle without being certain it is the most publicly favorable one? It’s almost as if the majority of our legislators (there are some excluded) think virtue and vice are popularity contests, rather than a bright line dividing the two. It reminds Comus of that famous passage in Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson. Boswell relates it this way. “If a [man] said Johnson, does really think that there is no distinction between virtue and vice, why, Sir, when he leaves our houses let us count our spoons.” Apparently, we need to start counting!
Some readers may think that Comus is resorting to hyperbole, but some representatives appear to be tending to a thin line. Some have even argued that “These are difficult and emotional issues.” Difficult? It’s a difficult issue to try to determine whether or not to protect girls’ private spaces and keep biological men out of women’s locker rooms? Granted, some have gone on to say it is common sense yet dissemble over it as if it is a “difficult matter.” Why the dissembling?
Either you understand that no biological male should be in women’s private spaces, or you do not. It’s not a hard question. It doesn’t even need to be debated, especially since less than 0.5% make up the Palmetto transgender population, a little more than the number of South Carolina’s nudist population. Comus doubts very seriously that the legislators would have spent any time debating whether nudism should be allowed at every public beach statewide as a difficult question. (I know, never say never.)
If one needs further evidence, the whole matter of transgenderism is now medically proven to be deadly. It shortens the lives of those who undergo it, it makes its victims infertile, and it cannot be reversed. The real tragedy is that so many victims, because that is what they are, make this decision very early in life without fully understanding what is at stake and how this change will ruin their lives forever. What these misguided young people need is compassion and counseling, not life-eradicating surgery.
To argue that one must view both sides of the question is to argue that one must view both sides of the question about crossing the street to oncoming traffic. There is a right way and a wrong way to do that. The difference between virtue and vice is a very bright line. But some legislators are acting as if it is a distinction without a difference.
We are trapped in Pope’s dilemma, mentioned at the head of this article. Vice is a monster, and it has a terrible face. When we first see it, there is no question that we must resist as we run from it. We know instantly that it is a terrible thing that we must not abide. But like anything that we let linger about for too long, it becomes familiar to us, like an old coat or comfortable shoes. We begin to lose both our moral and rational senses. We begin to pity it as if it were something we should pet, or feed, or take home and care for. At that point, we are hooked and throw our mindless arms about it in a warm embrace. After that, it is like flypaper, and we cannot for the life of us get rid of it.
Before we get to that point—and too many in the State House, mostly Democrats but also some Republicans, are already at the pity stage–the House must pass this bill and move it to the Senate. It’s time that we let common sense reign, not the voices of the bewildered and confused.
