First Spouse?

What should we call the husband of our first woman President? Notice I didn't use the phrase "female President." The ability to make this simple distinction has been lost on members of my generation (who consciously avoid it) and simply doesn't exist for later ones (from whom is has been deliberately kept by members of my generation).

To illustrate this stage in human evolution, simply read the Washington Times feature on The U.S. Mint. The story is a cutesy feature on how one federal agency is dealing with the possibility of a woman President. The cultural and intellectual vagrants at the Mint presented President Bush and the First lady with their first ever "First Spouse" series of commemorative coins.

My 10-year-old daughter and I were waiting for the train at Union Station when I decided to read it. I got to this point:

"What to call a male "first spouse" could be a hot topic if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat, is elected president next year.

So I asked my 10-year-old what should the husband of the President be called. After phrasing the question a few different ways, she finally came up with "The First Gentleman."

Why this is a cultural and not a clinical or biological issue is important because it marks a recent example of the real effects on society that attempts to erase from our perceptions and thoughts any and all differences between the sexes, or between social norms such as right and wrong.

The problem with such experimentation is that the differences are not erased. They are now and will always be real. What we have instead, is an entire generation of willing dupes and a new generation of people with no connection to their true cultural heritage except that which has been scrubbed clean of the truth, good and bad. The phrase" Ladies and Gentlemen" is simply just a sound that a person makes in addressing an audience, no more meaningful than a car alarm.

And so we have the Director of the U.S. Mint who has no concept of what a Lady is or was and why that term is used to distinguish one woman from another. If he does, and he appears to have the years to know better, then he falls into the "willing dupes" category.

In grappling with the problem presented by a woman holding the highest office in the land, one must come to grips with the differences between Ladies and Gentlemen, which Edmund Moy, the 38th Director of the Mint, seems to have abandoned. The solution, as with all things male and female (except in Montgomery County, MD of course) is to have separate commemorative series.

The First Gentlemen Series, will be small at first, while the First Ladies Series will continue to grow, God willing.