Friday morning, Illinois Family Institute (IFI) was unpleasantly greeted with JB Pritzker’s deceitful, divisive, anti-Christian screed—er, press release—that uses IFI to besmirch his gubernatorial opponent, the exceptional Darren Bailey. Through this screed/press release Pritzker unwittingly besmirched every conservative Illinoisan—including theologically orthodox Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox, Orthodox Jews, and Muslims.
For those who haven’t yet read Pritzker’s poisonous press release—in which he glowingly and oxymoronically refers to a “family-friendly drag show”—please allow me to take you on a brief guided tour.
It began like this:
After confessing to his deeply-rooted belief that victims of rape or incest should be forced to carry their pregnancy to term, Darren Bailey’s campaign now plans to attend a fundraiser with a radically anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ+ hate group. The Illinois Family Institute has a long history of opposing reproductive rights, marriage equality, and peddling dangerous anti-trans conspiracy theories.
Darren Bailey along with thousands of people all across the nation hold the deeply rooted belief that the product of conception between two humans is a human and as such has the right not to be exterminated—not even if conceived in the commission of a heinous crime. The good end of alleviating suffering does not justify the means of killing innocent humans.
IFI does not oppose “reproductive rights.” Rather, IFI doesn’t believe “reproductive rights” are absolute rights that include the right of powerful humans to exterminate weaker humans. We believe that when the right to control one’s reproduction comes into direct conflict with the right of another human merely to exist, the right to exist is a right of a higher moral order.
The number of people who hold these views would likely be much higher if not for the unconstitutional Roe v. Wade decision and the subsequent ideological pummeling that two generations of Americans have endured. Laws teach. In addition, our government school system controlled by leftists has been indoctrinating children with leftist views on sexuality for decades. And our myth-making machinery (i.e., the industrial entertainment complex) controlled by leftists has been propagandizing for libertinism and hedonism for even longer.
IFI’s position on the intrinsic worth of incipient human life can only be deemed “radical” by radicals in thrall to the radical belief that humans in their mothers’ wombs have no worth. The radical views of radicals like Pritzker have no objective standards regarding—well, anything. That is why they have now abandoned their prior view that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” Now they embrace the view that it is morally defensible to kill a human up to the moment of her birth for any or no reason, and that Americans should be forced to pay for the execution. That’s the radical view of the radical Pritzker.
Next came Pritzker’s gripe that IFI opposes “marriage equality,” which is more linguistic gimcrackery. In plain English, IFI believes that marriage has a nature that government merely recognizes and regulates but does not create. And the central constituent feature is sexual differentiation. Leftists decided to jettison in law the most enduring, cross-cultural feature of marriage—sexual differentiation—while retaining all the others.
Does Pritzker believe that those who oppose the legalization of polyandrous, polygynous, and polyamorous marriages are opposed to “marriage equality”? Does he believe those who oppose the legalization of incestuous marriage are opposed to “marriage equality”? Does he believe those who oppose the legalization of marriage between adults and minors are opposed to “marriage equality”?
Let’s move on now to Pritzker’s tiresome, specious, and ugly allegation that IFI is an “anti-LGBTQ+” hate group.
First, Pritzker engages in some tricksy rhetorical maneuvering. He has redefined “hate” without providing his spanking new definition, and he conflates strong opposition to ideas with hatred of persons.
For cynical political utility, leftists like Pritzker call moral and ontological beliefs they detest “hate.” And they falsely claim that expressing disapproval of beliefs and volitional acts that leftists embrace constitutes hatred (i.e., detestation) of persons who embrace those beliefs and acts.
Does Pritzker apply his definition of “hate” consistently? Does he hate all IFI employees and all other Illinoisans who share the same views as IFI on the rights of the unborn, marriage, homosexuality, and cross-sex identification?
Maybe Pritzker detests people who embrace beliefs and ideas he rejects, but most people are fully capable of loving and delighting in the company of people who hold different beliefs and create lives based on those beliefs. In fact, most of us do it every day with friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues.
What a sad life Pritzker must live if he hates everyone who disagrees with his moral views. What a danger he is to the Republic if he is in a position to implement policies based on his hatred of conservatives.
Methinks leftists proclaim too much about their love of diversity and commitment to tolerance.
Second, from the link provided in his press screed, we learn that Pritzker gets his information about “hate groups” from the virulently hateful, anti-Christian Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which shares Pritzker’s penchant for prevarication. For those interested in the true story of IFI’s interactions with the deceitful SPLC, click HERE.
IFI is baffled about Prevaricating Pritzker’s curious and unsubstantiated claim about IFI “peddling dangerous anti-trans conspiracy theories.” We understand that the word “conspiracy” is an effective dog-whistle that beckons obedient leftists, but we would still like to know to what “anti-trans conspiracies” Pritzker is referring.
Is one of the alleged “anti-trans conspiracy theories” our claim that the deep-pocketed Pritzkers are funding the transnational pro-“trans” movement? If so, that’s not a conspiracy, and it’s not held by IFI alone.
New York City investigative journalist Jennifer Bilek has written a superb exposé of the creepy Pritzker family’s efforts to advance the “trans”-cultic metaphysical nonsense that is destroying bodies, hearts, minds, and families—an exposé that everyone should read.
Or perhaps the family-unfriendly Pritzker is referring to our criticism of his cross-dressing cousin, James Nicholas Pritzker (aka “Jennifer”), a former Republican who publicly threatened the GOP that he would take his deep frock-pockets and flounce home if the GOP didn’t adopt leftist positions on sexuality. But that’s not a conspiracy theory. He really did that.
Or perhaps Pritzker’s reference to “anti-trans conspiracy theories” is about IFI’s (and countless other people’s) claims that leftists are ideologically grooming children to embrace “trans”-cultic beliefs. If that’s what he calls a conspiracy theory, he doesn’t read nearly enough.
Pritzker knows that Illinois has passed laws mandating that teachers present material embedded with “trans”-cultic beliefs to children starting in kindergarten. And he himself created a task force composed of leftists to tell schools how to implement “trans”-cultic beliefs in policies, practices, and curricula. Maybe he should spend some time watching the hair-raising videos posted on Libs of TikTok in which public school teachers boast about their efforts to indoctrinate young children with “trans”-cultic beliefs.
But IFI doesn’t know what he’s talking about because he provided no evidence, and as of this writing, his campaign has not responded to our question about their allegation.
The press release from hell also included this peculiar criticism:
Bailey and his running mate, Stephanie Trussell, have repeatedly used social media to disparage the LGBTQ+ community. He denigrated transgender individuals, writing, “When a young girl decides she is too fat and develops an eating disorder, we get her psychological help. When a young girl decides she is a boy, we adjust reality to fit her desires.”
Demonstrating the wildly different ways we treat children with delusional beliefs about their weight as opposed to those with delusional beliefs about their sex does not denigrate children with gender dysphoria. It respects both reality and children’s beautiful embodiment as boys or girls. Tragically, leftists like Pritzker believe it’s loving to facilitate bodily mutilation and hateful to help children accept their bodies.
Pritzker’s anti-Christian hatred is revealed in this sentence from his press release:
Bailey has also stated that he “believe[s] in biblical marriage between a man and a woman.”
That’s it. Christian friends, remember this when you vote. In Pritzker’s view no one who believes in biblical marriage between a man and a woman is fit for elected office. Sounds remarkably like Pritzker supports an unconstitutional religious test for holding office.
Through his press release, Pritzker does what leftists have been doing for decades, and it’s a two-fer strategy: 1. Libel and malign organizations that speak politically incorrect truth boldly (that would be IFI in this case), 2. Associate conservative threats (that would be Bailey in this case) to leftist power with those organizations, thereby taking out both.
What leftists like Pritzker assume is that conservatives will continue to be intimidated by leftist name-calling. What leftists like Pritzker don’t expect is that one day conservatives will cease to care about being stigmatized and rejected by the name-calling cool kids. Leftists don’t expect conservatives to heed the words of Martin Luther King Jr. who urged those who embraced truth to refuse to be intimidated:
There was a time when the church was very powerful. It was during that period that the early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was the thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Wherever the early Christians entered a town the power structure got disturbed and immediately sought to convict them for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.” But they went on with the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven” and had to obey God rather than man. They were small in number but big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” They brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contest.
If leftist assumptions about incipient human life, abortion, marriage, homosexuality, and cross-sex identification are false—and they’re inarguably not objective or fact-based—then opposing them is good and right. In order to know what a loving act is as opposed to a hateful act, we first need to know what is true. All adults should understand that those who embrace lies will always hate hearing truth and hate those speaking it.
