If you’ve been reading Valley Viewpoint for any length of time, you know a theme runs through my writing like a fault line beneath the surface:
The growing absurdity of our justice system.
Not the ideal. The ideal is sacred. Equal justice under law. Blindfolded. Balanced scales.
But the execution? Increasingly political. Increasingly detached from common sense.
And before anyone says, “That’s happening somewhere else,” let me say this clearly: cultural shifts do not stop at the Hudson River.
What begins in California courtrooms finds its way to New York. What is normalized in national headlines eventually filters into state courts, local courtrooms, and yes — even here in the Hudson Valley.
The latest controversy involves a ruling requiring prosecutors to use a defendant’s preferred pronouns in a rape trial — referring to a biological male as “she.”
Pause there.
A rape trial.
Not a workplace seminar. Not a campus discussion. Not a social media debate.
A courtroom — where liberty is on the line and trauma is examined under oath.
This is not about being unkind. It is not about scoring political points. It is about clarity in the most serious setting our society has.
Sexual assault cases hinge on physical facts. On biological realities. On who did what to whom. When language begins to obscure those realities, confusion is not just possible — it is predictable.
Imagine a jury drawn from Poughkeepsie. Pleasant Valley. LaGrange. Hyde Park. Fishkill. Ordinary Hudson Valley residents fulfilling their civic duty.
They are asked to weigh credibility, evaluate evidence, and render judgment in a case that could alter lives forever.
They should not be asked to untangle semantic gymnastics at the same time.
Jurors are not there to referee social philosophy.
They are there to determine guilt or innocence.
For those who have followed my own writing on the justice system, you know I have chronicled procedural delays, unanswered filings, bureaucratic silence, and selective responsiveness. The pattern is familiar: institutions increasingly protecting narratives instead of protecting truth.
When courts begin compelling speech in criminal trials, we are no longer adjusting etiquette. We are reshaping the foundation of due process.
Today it is pronouns in a California rape case.
Tomorrow it is policy guidance in Albany.
And the day after that, it is precedent cited in a New York courtroom.
The Hudson Valley is not insulated from national currents. We feel them in our schools, our municipal policies, and yes — potentially in our courts.
The question is not whether individuals have the right to live as they choose. That debate will continue in many arenas.
The question is whether a criminal trial — especially one involving violence — is the place to advance linguistic ideology.
Our courts should be the last place where reality becomes negotiable.
Justice requires clarity.
And if stating biological facts in a criminal proceeding is now controversial, then the question is unavoidable:
How absurd does justice have to get?
The Valley Viewpoint 