It’s approaching three months since the horrifying murders of three children and three adults at Nashville, Tennessee’s Covenant School, and no one really knows why they happened.
Well, there are theories, of course, most revolving around the contents of the so-called manifesto and other documents left by the killer, Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who fortunately was stopped before she continued her terrifying rampage. Additional deaths had apparently been the 28-year-old “transitioning” woman’s intention after she did her unholy work at the Christian school in Tennessee.
That “manifesto” and related materials, however, now appear headed for the memory hole despite objections from numerous quarters, including, most sympathetically, parents of the victims.
Surprising as it may be to say, that’s largely irrelevant.
You don’t have to be Dostoevsky to imagine the contents of those materials—and be right about them, or nearly.
They would include, among other things, ugly anti-Christian outbursts, accusations of childhood sexual and/or physical abuse, more adult versions of the same, intimations of love affairs (past and present, homosexual or heterosexual) spurned unfairly, and so forth.
Some or all of these might be true to one degree or another.
But, as I say, it isn’t very relevant.
All these motivations, evil as they no doubt are, are commonplace, having taken place many millions or billions of times across the globe, not only in religious institutions of all denominations but in the home, at school, at community centers, at stadiums, in locker rooms, and on and on, virtually everywhere people have congregated since time immemorial.
Fortunately, not everyone who has suffered from such abuse has gone out and shot six people, hoping to kill more. If they had, a fair percentage of the human race—a majority or more—would be gone. Life would be radically different and incredibly dangerous.
So we have to look elsewhere to explain why Hale, of all those multiple millions, maybe billions, of abused people—slightly, heavily, or even only in their imaginations—turned into what’s, in essence, a rage killer.
After some resistance, a toxicology report was finally released but with two startling omissions: testosterone and antidepressant levels.
Astonishingly, in this situation, they didn’t test for them—or so we’re told.
Let’s leave aside the antidepressant question—although many have become critical of the efficacy of SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) and what they may do—and concentrate on the more apposite, in this case, testosterone.
You would think since the Covenant School killer was transitioning—female to male—that the level of that male hormone in her body (whether by gel or injection) would be a key—if not the key—subject in any investigation that pretended to be scientific.
What if those levels were inordinately high for a body with 30 or so trillion cells, all containing the double-X chromosomes that have defined female sexuality since the beginning of our species and most probably before?
Normal levels of testosterone for males are 300 to 1000 nanograms per deciliter; normal for females is 15 to 70, a rather extreme difference.
Was there a, shall we say, rather extreme reaction to what would have been a medically induced high level of “T” in Audrey Hale? It would be interesting to know.
In fact, it could easily be the most important thing to know, because such knowledge could be the one thing that could prevent similar rage killings from occurring in the future or at least reduce their frequency.
What’s the reason for that?
In the instance of Nashville, at least, we'll now never know if testosterone was the trigger.
It’s unclear whether the omission of testosterone testing was a standard operating procedure for Nashville forensic toxicology reports or was deliberate obfuscation. Nevertheless, it occurred in a situation in which you don’t have to be a distinguished endocrinologist to understand why it might be necessary. All you need is common sense.
It’s also clear that there are numerous vested interests, national and international, that don’t want the transgender epidemic to be interrupted.
News that excessive testosterone treatments to the female body turn biological women into violent, rage-killing men, even some of the time, would certainly tend to give pause.
Meanwhile, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has scheduled a special session of the state assembly for August putatively to deal with these killings, so the likelihood of their happening in the future is diminished.
His solution appears to be the most traditional political compromises, looking for some version of gun control lite, ditto for so-called red flag laws.
None of this seems especially auspicious or, needless to say, new.
It’s also little more than a political dumbshow, scarcely worth whatever taxpayer money is involved.
High hopes that Lee might actually call it off.
As for the missing testosterone report, I suppose, as they say, what you don’t know won’t kill you.
Or will it?
