Journal: Eikon
Volume: EIKON 06:2 (Fall 2024)
Article: Editorial: Enduring Natural Differences
Author: Jonathan E. Swan

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Editorial: Enduring Natural Differences

Jonathan E. Swan

Jonathan E. Swan is Executive Editor of Eikon

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A very strange thing happened a couple of years ago. During Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Senate hearings for her appointment to the Supreme Court, Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee read an excerpt from former Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s majority opinion in The United States v. Virginia (1996). Her citation reveals just how much ground the sexual revolution has covered. In her opinion, Ginsburg wrote, “physical differences between men and women, however, are enduring. ‘[T]he two sexes are not fungible.’”1 Senator Backburn then asked Justice Jackson whether or not she agreed with Justice Ginsburg that “there are physical differences between men and women that are enduring.” After a long pause, Jackson responded that she did not know enough about the case to provide an answer. When pressed about whether she agreed with Ginsburg’s “meaning of men and women as male and female,” she again pleaded ignorance. Unsatisfied with Jackson’s obvious evasion, Senator Blackburn asked Justice Jackson a question whose answer exemplifies our current cultural moment. The exchange went like this:

Senator Blackburn: “Can you provide a definition for the word, woman?”

Justice Jackson: “Can I provide a definition? No. I can’t”

Senator Blackburn: “You can’t?”

Justice Jackson: “Not in this context. I’m not a biologist.”

This back-and-forth demonstrates that we have apparently reached that point in civilizational history when the social

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and educated elite who are tasked with analyzing sophisticated texts in order to interpret the law are unable to interpret the basic realities of human nature. As ethicist J. Alan Branch begins his essay in the subsequent pages of this journal, “Defining male and a female has become difficult for educated people.”

But defining the sexes has also become difficult for powerful people, as the appointment of transgender Richard L. Devine (known now as Rachel) to Secretary for Health and Human Services illustrates. Dr. Devine’s appointment clearly represented President Joe Biden’s attempt to virtue signal to the left and normalize transgender ideology in the highest halls of power. It seems rather difficult, however, for an institution whose mission is “to enhance the health and well-being of all Americans” to succeed when its executive seems not to discern the enduring natural differe...