On July 2, 1863, Confederate forces approaching Gettysburg found the high ground already occupied. A Union Signal Corps was stationed atop the large, smooth hill known as Little Round Top, where they could observe troop movements and communicate that intelligence to battlefield commanders below.
Since this gave the Federals a distinct advantage, the Confederates resolved to take the lightly guarded hill. Signal Corps officers, seeing the soldiers in gray amass for an all-out assault, sent up a cry for help. It was answered by Maj. General George Sykes and Colonel Strong Vincent, whose combined divisions were able to beat back the Confederate attackers in some of the fiercest fighting of the war.
The Union held Little Round Top, though many of its finest sons perished in the effort. And that seemingly minor victory, one small “skirmish” in a long series of bloody engagements, helped them win the Battle of Gettysburg and stop the Confederate advance in its tracks. It turned the tide of the war.
Remember that story next time some squish Republican tells you, “This isn’t the hill to die on.” Sometimes, it is. And sometimes you don’t “die.” And if you do die, figuratively speaking, your sacrifice may still propel your side to victory. And even if that doesn’t happen, at least you “died” fighting for a worthwhile cause. There are far worse things.
Today, we battle a new form of oppression, “transgenderism,” which seeks to deny reality, erase women, and butcher children. If we surrender or succumb to those who would thus enslave us, we are lost. Our country is lost. Western culture, the greatest the world has ever known, effectively ceases to exist.
Much better to “die” fighting.
The “Gender Reality Movement” (as my Townhall colleague Scott Morefield has dubbed it) currently holds the moral high ground. We are in the right, on the side of truth and justice.
Yet the attacks are relentless, our defenses nearly overwhelmed. We desperately require reinforcements from across the political spectrum.
We certainly need other self-described conservatives to join the fight, including those who have so far remained silent while claiming to “agree in principle.” It’s time for them to put up or shut up. At the very least, they should stop sharing their “preferred pronouns.”
We need religious leaders to openly denounce transgenderism, reminding the faithful that, even while loving those who have fallen victim, we must utterly reject this pernicious pseudo-theology. (To see what that might look like, watch this video of North Carolina’s Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, who if not a religious leader probably ought to be.)
But we also need those who might be neither conservative nor religious yet recognize the harm transgenderism causes to our communities, schools, and children.
After all, the “activists” pushing transgenderism are not exactly hiding their agenda. They want to convince our kids that sex is malleable and biology doesn’t matter. Both are transparent lies, but young children lack that level of discernment. When an authority figure, like a teacher, tells them being born a girl or boy depends solely on some doctor’s “guess,” they’re inclined to accept it.
Not satisfied with mere indoctrination, the activists also want to “trans” as many children as possible by “providing gender-affirming care”—which, make no mistake, includes mutilating their sex organs and/or chemically castrating them. And they want to weaponize the federal government to make sure parents can’t even object to this barbarism, much less stop it, despite the horrific life-long consequences.
They want boys to compete in girls’ sports, which is fundamentally unfair, and would welcome males into females’ private spaces, like restrooms and locker rooms—a sure-fire recipe for sexual assault.
They want to privilege their personal delusions over our collective, Constitutionally-guaranteed religious liberty—and use the courts to codify that perverse inversion into law.
But most importantly, and most dangerously, they seek to completely unmoor us from truth. It’s not enough for them to deny objective reality—they demand the rest of us deny it, too. That’s unsustainable because reality always has the final word. But also, as Orwell taught us, a society in which people are forced to affirm lies is, by definition, not free.
That is what we’re up against. If you’re not okay with it, you must join the fight. There is no middle ground. Regardless of your stance on any other issue, if you recognize that people cannot change their sex, and foresee the utter ruin awaiting any society that rejects this basic fact of life, you are on our side, like it or not.
Volunteer or conscript, it's time to suit up and take the field. You must actively oppose transgenderism—vocally, forcefully, and publicly—regardless of the consequences, using whatever platforms you have, from social media to school board meetings.
Take heart, as you plunge into the fray, from Gandalf’s counsel to Frodo inThe Fellowship of the Ring: “I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
Despite his fears, Frodo braved the existential battle of his day—perhaps because his only other option was surrender to darkness. Our existential battle is against transgender ideology, which poses a greater threat than mask mandates, experimental vaccines, gun control, or rigged elections. We fight for our children, for our liberty, for our very way of life. The outcome will determine whether, moving forward, we will remain a free people residing in reality or languish as serfs in “progressive” la-la-land.
We didn’t choose to be attacked on this hill, this Little Round Top of Gender Reality. But here we are, and here we will stand, even if we go down fighting.
But that doesn’t mean we will. Together, we can win.