Metro-North, the biggest commuter railroad in the country, which serves southwestern Connecticut and the lower Hudson River Valley, announced the other week that it no longer will note a purchaser's gender identification on month-long train tickets.
The railroad said it used gender identification to discourage people from letting others use their monthly passes. But that did not impair people in lending their passes to others of the same sex -- and what harm would have come from that anyway? If ticket sharing increased ridership, the railroad could have increased the price of the monthly passes. Besides, unlike airline passengers, train passengers are not carefully screened. Screening them would require a lot more train staff and would impossibly lengthen boarding times.
But in praising the railroad for dropping gender identification on the monthly passes, Gov. Dannel Malloy drew a cosmic conclusion in pursuit of the political correctness that has characterized his administration. "We should not be using antiquated gender norms as a method of personal identification," the governor said.
Yes, some men want to be and dress as women, some women want to be and dress as men, and some people don't want to identify with either sex. But do such people number even one in every thousand? And what about everyone else, the overwhelming numbers who, antiquated as the governor may view them, continue to choose to identify as men or women, a choice in which they are supported by biology?
Given those numbers, how can the governor be sure that there are no longer any circumstances in which it is useful to distinguish male from female? While the governor seems to think that the right of anyone to assume either gender at any time trumps the right of sexual privacy in bathrooms, he strangely has not yet insisted on erasing the divisions between boys and girls and men's and women's sports. (That might take the University of Connecticut's women's basketball team down a peg.) And what would become of bird watching?
Of course public policy should not seek to make life harder for those who are uncomfortable in their biological gender. But even if the governor really thinks that gender norms are "antiquated," there's not enough time left in his term for him both to run Connecticut's creaky old government and to convince the rest of the world that there are no longer boys and girls and men and women, just undifferentiated life forms. He should leave that task to his successor, assuming that he, she, or it is another Democrat.
Higher education isn't that high
While the governor was hailing the supposed end of gender, his president of the Connecticut State Universities and Colleges system, Mark Ojakian, was striking another politically correct pose.
In a letter to students and faculty, Ojakian called "devastating" President Trump's phasing out the official amnesty given to about 800,000 young people living illegally in the country. Ojakian added: "We once again pledge our commitment to our students who feel targeted based on their immigration status."
"Feel targeted"? That sounds like what is illegitimate is not to enter the country illegally but to enforce immigration law.
It would have been one thing for Ojakian to say the university system supports the efforts of the students at issue to legalize their residency. But such students are not being "targeted" any more than any other lawbreakers are.
Instead Ojakian said in effect that the university system supports those of its students who claim that their pursuit of higher education puts them above the law. But higher education is not yet that high.
Chris Powell is managing editor of the Journal Inquirer, in Manchester, Conn.
