On Monday, there was a looong article in the Chicago Tribune’s business section on Starbucks “unconscious bias” training (which, unless Starbucks’ employees are unconscious at work, should probably be called “subconscious-bias training,” but—to borrow from millennials—whatever).

For those sub-rock dwellers among us, some background: Last month, one young white barista in Philadelphia told a black Starbucks visitor—who bought nothing—that he couldn’t use the restroom as per policies in some Starbucks’ stores.  Subsequently, he and his friend—who also purchased nothing—were asked to leave and refused, after which the store manager called the police who arrested them. Calling the police seems an odd response since many people linger for hours doing work at Starbucks after buying one cup of overpriced coffee, but the response of the corporate office seems equally odd.

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I was part of an extended Facebook conversation with Chuck Colbert, a homosexual journalist from the Boston area who graduated from Notre Dame University but has renounced his Catholic faith and converted to Reform Judaism. He expressed virtually every fallacious claim that homosexual ideologues everywhere express—claims that conservatives should be prepared to refute. In the service of helping to equip IFI readers for such conversations, here are some of his claims (in boldface) followed by rebuttals.

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Dahleen Glanton, columnist for the Chicago Tribune, recently penned a column about homosexuality that began with this ironic statement: “It is painful to acknowledge one’s own intolerance.” Glanton doesn’t say who’s experiencing this pain, but one thing’s for sure: It’s not her. Her entire column is an exercise in religious intolerance.

Glanton condemns as “intolerant” those who believe that “two men or two women joined in holy matrimony is somehow unnatural,” or who believe that “such an act makes a mockery of the institution of marriage.”

Glanton-the-Tolerant writes that theologically orthodox Christians who accept as true the clear teaching of Scripture on homosexuality and marriage “don’t even recognize their own bigotry,” suggesting they contribute to a “climate of hatred” and “are wallowing in self-righteous oblivion.”

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As I said in an interview with Elizabeth Economou, who writes for Laura Ingraham’s Lifezette, “The Left likes to think that every belief with which they disagree is a product of social conditioning, never questioning whether their ideology is a product of conditioning.” There is no better evidence for that claim than the science-denying “trans” mythology—a profoundly destructive mythology—that is a messy stickywicket of contradictions.

“Trans”-identifying persons claim to be persons of the opposite sex, but how do they arrive at such a bizarre notion? Well, they usually say they know they are the sex they are not because they fancy the socially constructed styles and activities that society has arbitrarily assigned to and associated with the opposite sex. But if such styles and activities are socially constructed and arbitrary, how can fancying them mean anything intrinsic about their sexual identities? The “trans”-wicket denies both the meaning of biological sex and the value of stereotypes even as their mythology depends on both.

There are three important truths that get lost in “progressive” discussions of “stereotyping”…

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There’s a troubling piece titled “Time for a Compromise on Transgenderism” posted on National Review online and written by purportedly conservative, “gay vegetarian”  J. J. McCullough. In condescending language, McCullough argues that it’s time for Americans to hop on the fast train to the Shangri-la of polymorphous perversity. In McCullough’s view, now that Americans have ceased “judging” homosexuality, they should cease “judging” the science-denying “trans” ideology.

He engages in the worst kind of demagoguery in his unholy effort to normalize the “trans” ideology by insulting those who find the ideology destructive and the demands of its advocates tyrannical.

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Let’s try a little thought experiment: Let’s imagine that now, after legally recognizing intrinsically non-marital same-sex unions as “marriages,” we notice that there remains a unique type of relationship that is identified by the following features: it is composed of two people of major age who are not closely related by blood, are of opposite sexes, and engage in the only kind of sexual act that is naturally procreative. We decide that as language-users there must be a term to identify this particular, commonplace, and cross-cultural type of relationship. Let’s call it “huwelijk.”

In this thought experiment in which the term “marriage” would denote the union of two people of the same sex and “huwelijk” would denote the union of two people of opposite sexes—both of which provide the same legal protections, benefits, and obligations—does anyone believe that homosexuals would accept such a distinction?

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Our “progressive” Springfield swampsters have found another way to waste the money of taxpayers and the time of bureaucrats in bankrupt, debt-ridden Illinois: a bill to create the Illinois Women & Girls Council sponsored in the Illinois House (HB 5544) by none other than Anna Moeller (D-Elgin), the sponsor of the school sexuality-indoctrination bill. The Women & Girls Council bill is flying through the Illinois House and Senate aided and abetted by even Republicans.

This council will “advise the Governor and the General Assembly” on everything the bill’s sponsors can think of pertaining to women and girls, including—”but not limited to”—the following (take a deep breath):

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Want to know who “progressives” in Springfield fear? They fear parents with kids in private schools. The rest of you are merely annoying gadflies to be swatted down with a rolled-up copy of their school sexuality-indoctrination bill and haughty flick of their wrists.

Why do I say that? Because the Springfield swampsters, fearing the wrath of private schoolers, just introduced an amendment to their “Inclusive Curriculum” bill that exempts private schools from the mandate that schools teach about the disordered sexuality of cultural contributors.

You heard that right. Springfield swampsters couldn’t care less how conservative parents with kids ages 5-18 in government schools feel about their children being forced to learn that not only was Sally Ride the first woman in space but that she was also a LESBIAN! Hurray for homosexuality!

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Full disclosure: I hate roasts of any kind.

White House Correspondents’ Dinner gut-busting pasquinade by jokester Michelle Wolf makes it difficult to refrain from being as despicable as she was.

First, some of her jokes:

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For decades homosexual and “trans” activists have used schools to indoctrinate children with the disordered and destructive “LGBTQ” ideology. Thirteen years ago, the Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education published an article titled “Trans-Friendly Preschool” by recently ordained Rev. Laurel A. Dykstra a “bisexual Christian activist” who has twins via a sperm donor. I wrote about her article for IFI in 2008—a decade ago. Here are some of Dykstra’s ideas for training up children in the way they should go:

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With each horrific mass killing, “progressives” preach against guns. Again and again, when a man mows down innocent people, liberals put gun-ownership in their sights, which is like looking at the problem of teens who cut themselves and angrily proclaiming that the problem is easy access to razor blades. Women have access to guns too. If guns were the problem, then why aren’t any mass killers women?

Of course, gun control and the Left’s obsession with killing the Second Amendment by a thousand regulatory cuts are political issues, but if the Left truly cared about protecting society from gun violence, they would look beyond the cheap, superficial, but good-for-rallying the troops issue of gun control. They would look at the deeper issue of family dysfunction that likely contributes in some and perhaps many cases to mass killings and most certainly contributes to gang violence that plagues all large American cities.

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Reason #__ (oh, heck, I’ve lost count) for grabbing your kids and fleeing public schools: “teachable moments” and out and proud homosexuals in legal but fake marriages.

Seeing a big front-page Chicago Tribune photo of 30-year-old homosexual hipster Nathan Etter, who teaches music at Prairie View Grade School in Elgin, with a wee little boy holding Etter in a bear-cub hug was not a good way to start Wednesday. I should clarify: the little tyke appears to be a boy. I guess it could be a girl or a human who rejects the binary.

The photo—obviously designed to pull on the heartstrings of readers before they read—accompanies the story of Etter, whose “husband’’ sent him a bouquet of flowers on Valentine’s Day, which, Etter evidently placed where his first-grade students could see it. When some 7- year-old kids asked if the flowers were from his wife, Etter said no, they were from his husband. According to the Trib, Etter “answered honestly,” to which some students responded equally honestly, saying “ewww” and “gross.”

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Here’s something many Illinoisans don’t know about the school sexuality-indoctrination bill created by Illinois’ premier homosexual and “trans” activist organizations: Equality Illinois and the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance (formerly part of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network).* This bill, which requires that the “teaching of history shall include a study of the role and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the history of this country and this state,” also mandates the following:

 [N]o pupils shall be graduated from the eighth grade of any public school unless he has received such instruction in the history of the United States and gives evidence of having a comprehensive knowledge thereof.

Did you get that? Leftists in Springfield, controlled by outside organizations whose sole raison d’être is to transform the ontological and moral beliefs of Americans, seek to require that children be inculcated with Leftist assumptions about deviant sexuality and be tested on them in order to move on to high school. Exploiting taxpayer funds and captive audiences of children constitutes the most egregious form of propaganda imaginable. This outrageous effort to use children and public monies to advance a Leftist ideology must be opposed with the kind of fervor and tenacity usually demonstrated only by Leftists.

The bill also has a troubling section on the state’s textbook block grant program…

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This afternoon, we witnessed again an arrogant Leftist lawmaker demonstrate his disregard for constitutional principles—specifically for the First Amendment’s religious protections and the prohibition of a religious test for holding office.

In the U.S. Senate inquisition confirmation hearing for Secretary of State nominee and current CIA Director Mike Pompeo, U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) both interrogated and lectured Director Pompeo on sexual ethics.

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In a stunning display of ignorance, the Illinois State Senate just voted 43-12 in favor of the resolution to adopt the Equal Rights Amendment. What makes this vote even more enraging is that Republicans Pam Althoff (R-Crystal Lake), Jason Barickman (R-Pontiac), Mike Connelly (R-Wheaton), Karen McConnaughay (R-West Dundee), Chris Nybo (R-Hinsdale), Sue Rezin (R-Morris), and Tom Rooney (R-Palatine) voted with Democrats on this partisan resolution. (Updated at 7:30 pm)

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