The Superman Syndrome Gone Haywire

Boys of my generation wanted to be one of three things: a professional athlete, a soldier, or – when we were really young – a superhero. And so, whenever we played baseball, we pretended we were Carl Yastrzemski with our hands held high or Pete Rose, batting from a crouched position and sliding headfirst into every base. Likewise, when we hit the hardwood, we were instantaneously transformed into Nate Archibald if we were small or Wilt Chamberlain if we were tall. On the gridiron, we identified with Joe Namath, Roger Staubach, Roman Gabriel, and Daryle Lamonica, especially if we played quarterback in our pick-up games.

When we weren’t playing sports, we lived in the fantasy world of superheroes. My favorites were Superman, Iron Man, and Captain America… and I devoured any comic book that featured their various adventures. We also played "Army," lobbing dirt bomb grenades at each other from behind rocks and trees.

However, when I reached a certain age, I stopped pretending that I was a comic book character, a professional athlete, or Sgt. Saunders from the TV series “Combat” and started to concentrate on becoming the best possible version of me. The Apostle Paul addressed that transformation in I Corinthians 13:11 when he wrote, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

So, what does this have to do with modern-day politics? Well, hear me out, because I am about to connect some very important dots.

It is one thing for a 5-year-old to think he is the Incredible Hulk or for a 6-year-old to believe that she is Wonder Woman. However, if those same two kids reach their teen years and still have the same delusions, it is no longer cute. On the contrary, we would diagnose them as needing a cold dose of reality or, in a worst-case scenario, as suffering from a mental illness that required treatment.

And yet, Progressive teachers, sociologists, and politicians think there is nothing wrong with a 10-year-old boy thinking he is a girl or a 12-year-old girl believing she is a boy and then stopping puberty in its tracks with hormone infusions or forever mutilating their bodies via gender-reassignment surgery. There are even multiple cases of teenagers self-identifying as horses, cats, and other animals… and school administrators requiring staff and other students to address them as such.

As far-fetched as it sounds, students called ‘furries’ populate the hallways at schools in Meade County, Kentucky, not exactly a liberal bastion. As one grandmother put it, "They identify with animals. These people will hiss at you or scratch at you if they don’t like something you’re doing.”

"The students are told they can’t wear hats or Budweiser shirts in school, but they can wear cat ears, cat tails, masks, leashes. It doesn’t make sense," she added.

Lest you think this is an isolated event, an 8th grader in Midland, Michigan told the school board at a recent meeting that she saw a student walking around the school with a long cat tail, cat ears and "little bells that jingled everywhere she went."

“I was also walking down the hallway three weeks ago when a boy wearing dog ears barked at me and my friend as we passed,” she said, adding that the boy left the school building on all fours.

And then there is the 9th grader in Melbourne, Australia who school administrators are allegedly supporting as she “begins her journey of identifying as a cat.” According to Wellness magazine, “The non-verbal student is supposedly very bright and identifies with what is now known as the ‘furries’ subculture online.” An unidentified source added that “No one seems to have a protocol for students identifying as animals, but the approach has been that if it doesn’t disrupt the school, everyone is being supportive.”

Not disruptive? The young lady doesn’t talk, she meows… seriously! She also paints her face with fake whiskers and a black nose while wearing furry ears. Will someone please help this girl instead of exacerbating her mental illness?

Obviously, these students are crying out for attention and/or help. But so are kids who are “gender-confused,” a clinical diagnosis that used to be called gender identity disorder by the American Psychiatric Association, which classified it as a mental illness that could and should be treated with counseling and medication, if necessary. Today, cowardly school administrators and parents who have lost control of their kids enable these children’s irrational thinking and behavior.

Dr. Sharon Roberts at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada says that her research shows between 12 and 17 per cent of ‘furries’ identify as trans and between 5 and 15 are autistic. Some data has even shown as much as 70 per cent of ‘furries’ identify with the LGBTQIA+ community.

A friend of mine named Mike recently put this entire situation into the proper perspective. “If you had a child who was convinced that he was Superman – or who self-identified as a bird and said he could fly – would you allow him to climb on top of your roof and jump off?”

“Of course not,” Mike answered his own question. “You would correct their behavior yourself if possible or seek professional help for them. But the one thing you wouldn’t do is allow your child to continue in their delusion.”

And yet, that is exactly what our schools – and far too many well-meaning but misguided parents – are doing today. Some call it gender-affirming care, but I call it reckless child abuse of the highest order.

Tragically and far too often, the end result of not confronting, containing, and correcting such behavior is a man-child acting out his fantasies and delusions via mass shootings in churches, schools, and shopping malls across America. Delayed help for a mental illness almost always has catastrophic consequences.