Forrest Gump was a good man with personal morals, integrity and a love for others, especially Lieutenant Dan and Bubba. But he had a low I.Q. and other people often called him stupid. He always responded with what his mother had said to encourage him when he was a child: “Stupid is as stupid does.”
Mrs. Gump had the correct idea. Someone who is not very intelligent can be a very good person because of how he or she acts toward others. True wisdom comes from a generous and selfless place in the heart.
Yet, other persons with education and success may be really mean. They cannot see beyond the narrow boundaries of their own self-interest. They are not smart because they mistreat others. That seems to be the case with Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Robert Sellers
The Georgia representative’s ridiculous statements and assertions are well-known. One political opinion piece, titled “Marjorie Taylor Greene Makes Comment So Dumb, It Hurts,” illustrates how outrageous she can be:
You have to accept the fact that the government totally wants to provide surveillance on every part of your life. They want to know when you’re eating. They want to know if you’re eating a cheeseburger, which is very bad because Bill Gates wants you to eat his fake meat that grows in a peach tree (sic) dish. So, you’ll probably get a little zap inside your body and that’s saying “no, no, don’t eat a real cheeseburger, you need to eat the fake, the fake burger, the fake meat from Bill Gates.” They probably also want to know when you go to the bathroom and if your bowel movements are on time or consistent.
Molly Jong-Fast, co-host of The Daily Beast’s show “The New Abnormal,” notes it is only “performative moronic when MIT graduate Thomas Massie tried to blame COVID-19 deaths on Medicaid or Sen. John Kennedy, who attended Oxford, circulated fake news about President Biden handing out crack pipes. On the other hand, when Marjorie Taylor Greene accuses Nancy Pelosi of leading the ‘Gazpacho police,’ she’s just a moron — albeit one cunning enough to turn around and promptly raise money off of her own stupidity.”
Newsweek claims that “Marjorie Taylor Greene predicts straight people will soon be extinct,” citing a view she offered on MTG Live:
They just want you to think that all of a sudden the entire population is steadily turning gay or turning trans. Just generation, generation. Probably in about four or five generations, no one will be straight anymore. Everyone will be either gay or trans or non-conforming or whatever the list of 50 or 60 different options there are.
“Democrats literally hate all police officers,” Taylor Greene claimed, baiting her MAGA audience with a red meat issue she knew would anger them.
And, infamously, in November 2018, during the Camp Fire — the worst wildfire in California’s history — she wrote a Facebook post saying the real culprit behind the devastating destruction was a space laser financed by the Jewish Rothschild family.
“These absurd views cause one to wonder how a United States congresswoman can be so outrageous.”
These absurd views cause one to wonder how a United States congresswoman can be so outrageous. But now, with a recent public announcement, Greene has made hurtful statements that satisfy Mrs. Gump’s definition of real stupidity.
She has proposed a bill in Congress called the Protect Children’s Innocence Act. She says it is intended to “stop horrible things like child abuse and like so-called (she gestures air quotes) gender-affirming care. This is really genital mutilation. It’s puberty blockers that cause chemical castration. It is teenage girls actually having their breasts chopped off, teenage boys being castrated.”
This bill would make “providing gender-affirming health care to transgender people under 18-years-old a class C felony, punishable by up to 25 years in prison.” Health care providers who “knowingly perform any gender-affirming care on a minor” could also receive “a maximum fine of $250,000.”
A popular magazine with a largely female readership highlights the callousness of the congresswoman’s proposal:
U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
According to the language of the legislation, gender-affirming care includes surgery “for the purpose of changing the body of such (an) individual to correspond to a sex that differs from their biological sex,” plastic surgery that “feminizes or masculinizes the facial features,” hormone therapy and puberty blockers, among other interventions. … Not only would the Protect Children’s Innocence Act prohibit many medical procedures and interventions, like hormone therapy from being performed, but also would prohibit federal funds from being used for such care. … Greene said on “Tucker Carlson Tonight”: “This practice should never happen. It’s so disgusting and appalling and it’s an embarrassment to our country.”
This proposal by Rep. Greene is not only mean-spirited and punitive but also foolish and uninformed.
We know a family who would be penalized by this bill were it to become the law of the nation. Their beloved grandson experienced gender dysphoria at a very early age and has been in the process of transitioning to become fully their beloved granddaughter. She is on this journey with the total support of her parents, siblings and grandparents. Her life is finally meaningful and happy. She is completely at peace with her gender identity today. No adult forced her to comply or abused her as a child by providing information, counseling or healthcare.
This young person, still not yet 18 years old, represents some 300,000 teenagers in America who identify as trans, while tens of thousands more may still be secretly struggling to explain who they are.
“She doesn’t act like Jesus, who was inclusive and compassionate.”
Greene claimed to be a Christian in an interview last July at Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in Florida. But she doesn’t act like Jesus, who was inclusive and compassionate.
As Dan McGee — ordained Baptist minister and clinical sexologist — has written, the stipulations for inclusion that many contemporary Christians place upon those who are sexually different are “incomprehensible.” One of the most “onerous,” he insists, is that “if you are a transgender … person, you must live in denial, accept your biological birth condition and never seek relationships or practice behaviors that deviate from the gender ascribed to you at birth.”
It is this group that the Georgia Republican is willing to sacrifice on the altar of her own political ambitions. Her presentation is slanted. Her reasoning is fallacious. Her conclusions are misleading. Her motivation is suspect. Her tone is cruel.
What she has proposed is genuinely wrong on many levels. About her, Forrest Gump would most certainly say, “Stupid is as stupid does!”
Rob Sellers is professor of theology and missions emeritus at Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon Seminary in Abilene, Texas. He is a past chair of the board of the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago. He and his wife, Janie, served a quarter century as missionary teachers in Indonesia. They have two children and five grandchildren.
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