On the Networks, its Gender Optional

Transgender prom queens and homecoming kings, transsexual athletes, and "pregnant men" have all worked their way into major news network coverage over the past three years. The major news networks have waged a campaign to make gender interchangeable and odd sexual behavior acceptable to the general public.

The latest was a June 1 MSNBC profile that celebrated Andrew Viveros as the "first transgender student in the United States to be crowned prom queen at a public school."

Viveros, born a boy and retaining male reproductive organs, wants to be a girl - so he was treated as a girl by MSNBC, and no contrary voice was permitted on the show to say otherwise. As Andrew said, "It can open up a lot of doors for other people that maybe don't have as much encouragement as I had, that it's OK to be who you are, it's OK to do what you want to do."

Reporter Christina Hernandez of NBC noted that "Now, Andii [Andrew's chosen name] hopes his crown and sash pave the way for other teens like him."

A similar situation occurred in Michigan and was reported by both NBC and CNN. A Michigan student named Oakleigh Hannan, born female and wishing to be male, was voted homecoming king by the students of her school, but the school refused to recognize the result. School officials were quoted: "It's simple. The ballot gives two choices: Vote for a boy for king or a girl for queen. In the school records, Oakleigh is still listed as a female." Oakleigh was portrayed as "fighting back tears" at her graduation, and her mother Tracy declared, "he was voted for homecoming king, and according to the votes, he should have been homecoming king."

In both cases, the issue was presented as one of fairness. Students were voted in by their peers, and were either accepted by a tolerant school or opposed by a reactionary school. The biological identity of Andrew or Oakleigh was irrelevant.

But the mainstream media has a history of celebrating high-profile transgendered people as blazing a trail while simultaneously seeking to normalize them. In these stories, skeptics are either absent or presented as bigots.

NBC has celebrated a five-year-old Princess Boy and allowed his mother to hawk a children's book she wrote about him. CNN offered a sympathetic portrait of a transgender athlete.

The uncritical, unquestioning posture carries over onto the networks' websites.

ABCNews.com posted a link to resources in dealing with issues of transgenderism - resources that universally support a gay and lesbian agenda. Among the sources the website links to are the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network, the Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League, and Gender Spectrum Education and Training. CBSNews.com's medical expert, Dr. Jon Lapook, put out on CBS a 'Pro Bono Transgender Primer,' which quoted Stephanie Brill of Gender Spectrum claiming, "Today, gender can no longer really be considered a two-option category." This report also linked to transsexual propaganda.

But the most flagrant instance of transsexual promotion by the news media was in the case of Thomas Beatie, the first "pregnant man." ABC was particularly enamored of Beatie's story, devoting 9 segments in all to Beatie in 2008 and even publishing baby pictures online like a celebrity.

Even the networks were confused when they worked on the story, having trouble with the pronoun used to describe Beatie.

Born a woman, Beatie changed her name from Tracy to Thomas and received hormone treatments in order to become 'male.' But she kept her female reproductive organs and received artificial insemination in order to bear children. Beattie told Oprah Winfrey that, "I feel it's not a male or female desire to have a child. It's a human need. I'm a person and I have the right to have a biological child." Beatie also appeared with ABC's Barbara Walters, claiming that "I used my female reproductive organs to become a father."

Now, Beatie has given birth to three children, while claiming to be male. And she is now not the only person to declare herself a "pregnant man."

In 2010, Scott Moore became the latest self-proclaimed "pregnant man" to give birth, despite the fact that she too kept her female reproductive organs. And if the gender-bending phenomenon continues, others will assuredly do so as well.