The controversy over transgenderism arose a few years ago seemingly out of nowhere. But when it did arise, it erupted like a cultural Mount St. Helens.

The transgender cause has not been part of the homosexual communities’ agenda until recently.

When Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen wrote their book, published in 1990, “After the Ball: How America will conquer its fear and hatred of Gays in the 90’s,” I do not recall they made any mention of the transgender issue. At that time, there were transvestites—men that dressed as women who were a recognized part of the community. They were still gay, saw themselves as men, and were still interested in men. And there were “butch” lesbians. Many dressed like men, but still saw themselves as women and were attracted to women. Such variety among homosexuals is not unusual.

While homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual as a mental illness in 1973, transgenderism was first categorized as a psychosexual disorder in 1980. In 1994, the classification was changed to gender identity disorder, and in 2013 it was changed to gender dysphoria. Today, gender dysphoria remains categorized as a mental illness.

The modern history of recognizing transgenderism as something different from homosexuality dates to the German doctor Magnus Hirschfeld, who founded the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin in 1919. In 1930 he performed the first known sexual reassignment surgery. Before Hirschfeld, not much clearly is known about the issue. The history is murky, to say the least. There isn’t even much known about the Institute for Sexual Research either since the Institute was destroyed by the Nazis in 1933 and all the Institute’s books and records were burned. Hirschfeld was forced into exile and he died in France two years later.

The first American to become widely known after having undergone sexual reassignment surgery was Christine Jorgensen, born George William Jorgensen, Jr. Jorgensen served in the U.S. Army in Europe during WWII and while there learned of fledgling practice of sex reassignment surgeries. Throughout his life he had been troubled by his “lack of male development,” but we don’t know what he meant by that. In any case, after returning from the war he began taking estrogen and in 1952 he received permission from doctors in Copenhagen to undergo a series of surgeries there.

A letter he later wrote to his parents announcing that he now was Christine somehow was leaked to the press. The story was widely circulated, and Christine Jorgensen became a household name. Jorgensen remained somewhat of a celebrity for the rest of his life—as an oddity, not as a norm. He died in San Clemente, CA in 1989 at the age of 62.

Until after 2010, there has been very little public awareness about the transgender issue. However, since 2006, a recent survey showed, there has been a 4,000% increase in youths seeking transgender treatment. Additionally, prior the to 2000’s a large majority  of those seeking transgender treatment were males seeking to transition to female. Today that has reversed. Now 70% of those seeking transgender care are female wanting to become male. During the early years the general public was completely unaware of the changes. Now most are aware of many issues involving transgenders’—biological males using female restrooms and locker rooms, biological males on female sports teams, hormone and surgical treatments, etc.—but few have greater than a superficial understanding.

Perhaps the first inkling that the general public got of the sexuality changes going on behind the scenes was in February, 2014, when the Amazon Original show, “Transparent,” (about a parent, Morton, coming out transwoman, Maura) was released to critical acclaim. The show centered on the characters exploring their sexuality and their reactions to others. In no way could the show be considered a real-life attempt to understand what a real-life mental illness is, gender dysphoria. It was an emotionally manipulative series aimed at normalizing transgenderism.

The awakening of the general public began to accelerate when the Obama Administration issued instructions to U.S. Schools that Title IX applied to trans girls, requiring schools to allow biological boys to play on girls’ teams and to use girls’ facilities. While the Trump Administration later rescinded those rules, the schools already were full speed ahead implementing the Obama Administration’s plan. The Biden Administration is accelerating the agenda even faster.

The pandemic and parents becoming more aware of what their children are being taught, the press coverage of the 4000% increase in the number of trans youths, Abigail Shrier’s 2020 bestselling book, “Irreversible Damage,” all have coalesced to make the issue seem like a freight train, thundering down a mountain, after losing its brakes.

To many of us the last five years has seemed out of control, that the world has lost it’s collective mind on this issue. Who could possibly think that when a child as young as four or five, or maybe even younger, says they were born in the wrong body we should accept that as true? That is insane. But we are told its settled science. Moreover, courts and schools and government at all levels have steamrolled any opposition.

Most people must believe this insane idea, right? It turns out, no.

Last month, Summit Ministries of Manitou Springs, CO, released the results of a poll it commissioned. McLaughlin and Associates conducted the poll of 1,000 likely voters from all over the country. It was a stratified random sample that covered all ages, parties, races, voting behavior, sex, ideology, education, population density, and region of the country. One of the questions that was asked was: “What is your reaction to efforts to expose children to the transgender movement using things like drag shows, school curriculum, and social media.” To my surprise, of the 92% that answered the question, 71% of the participants were concerned, while 29% were not upset or concerned. Of the 71%, 41% described themselves as very concerned or angry.

The other question that was asked was “Do you believe that pharmaceutical companies and doctors who promote puberty blockers and cross sex hormones for underage children seeking gender transition should be legally liable for any harmful side effects that arise?” There were 826 of the 1000 participants that answered that question, 83%. Of those, again 71% answered yes, while 29% replied, no.

It is encouraging that at least 71% of us have some common sense. So why are we electing legislators and hiring people for government jobs who don’t? That is a genuine mystery.

When it comes to truth, though, who believes what makes no difference. Just because the whole world believes a lie, that does not make it true. The challenge for us today is to find the closest proximity to truth that we can on this issue. Some experts believe that chemically and surgically mutilating healthy sex organs is the best course of action. Other experts are repelled by the thought, instead favoring talk therapy.

My research points to more experts being repelled than being in favor of the mutilating chemical and surgical interventions. In these circumstances, doesn’t the solution seem clear? Shouldn’t treatment be that which causes the least harm, while allowing the experts to continue researching and debating the issue?

It seems to me that would be the best practice for decision making, as well as the least divisive. Let’s end the eruption and toxic hostility . . . on this issue, at least.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom,
it was the age of foolishness. … it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness.”

With regard to public schools and sexuality, this is the worst of times. It is an age of incomprehensible and destructive foolishness. It is a season of darkness into which America has been plunged by sexual anarchists like Maia Kobabe whose creepy adult comic book graphic memoir continues to divide communities.

For those unfamiliar with Kobabe’s book Gender Queer: A Memoir, click here to see images that librarians in public school and community libraries all across the country believe are appropriate for preteens and teens to see and for taxpayers to be forced to subsidize.

In obscene images, Kobabe, who has a lesbian aunt and a sister who dates a woman who pretends to be a man, tells the disturbing story of her journey to her disordered “identity” as a genderqueer, asexual person.

In January 2022, two courageous middle school teachers in Community United School District 200 (CUSD 200) in Wheaton, Illinois filed a “Request for Reconsideration of Media” in which they rightly assert that Kobabe’s memoir Gender Queer is “pornographic” and “vulgar” and doesn’t belong in the district’s high school libraries.

Assistant Superintendent of Administrative Services Charles Kyle selected ten staff members to serve on a committee to evaluate the book challenge. The two middle school teachers shared their reasons for the book challenge with the committee, which was composed of Craig Lawrence, John Disanza, Kristin Diaz, Laine Pehta, Melissa Murphy, Traci Burnham, Matt Biscan, and Erica Valenti, after which the committee met twice and then presented their recommendation to retain the obscene book. Some Wheaton taxpayers should find out the vote of each of these CUSD 200 employees.

In their excellent presentation, middle school teachers Brian Wiewiaro and John Ferguson made clear that their opposition to Gender Queer was not born of book-banning impulses or bigotry:

To be clear, we are not here to remove every book that might possibly be the slightest bit objectionable. We are not here to remove every book with LGBTQ+ themes or characters. This is not the beginning of some crusade to empty our libraries. This is also not a fight against a specific group of people. We have both taught many students throughout our careers, some of whom are LGBTQ+ students. We value all students and welcome them into our classrooms.

They also pointed out that the CUSD 200 Board of Education policy says,

Students are prohibited from … accessing at school any publication that is socially inappropriate or inappropriate due to maturity level of the students, including but not limited to material that is obscene, pornographic, or pervasively lewd and vulgar, contains indecent and vulgar language.

Wiewiora and Ferguson posed several questions to the committee, including these:

• Would you be comfortable posting these images in our high schools? On the district web page? At a Board meeting? In your own office?

• If these images had been drawn by a student for a class project, would they be appropriate?

Apparently, the committee members are comfortable with making available to other people’s minor children a book with drawings depicting strap-on dildos and dialogue about tasting one’s own vaginal secretions. If so, then students should be free to draw such pictures in art class and write such dialogue in English papers.

Either those committee members are ignorant or they’re too cowardly to stand for truth in a tyrannical public school culture rife with systemic leftist bigotry.

But it gets worse. The book challenge then moved on to the board of education where six of the seven board members voted to retain Gender Queer. Here are some of the rationalizations offered by adults who lack the courage, wisdom, and intelligence to serve in any school leadership position.

First up was Brad Paulsen who said this:

One of the data points I’ve heard recently, um, that I believe is true—I haven’t validated this, but I’ve seen it in a couple different locations—that 70 percent of our LGBTQ youth are more likely to commit suicide. And so, I thought about the consequences of our vote on those students and those members of our community. And so, I … I kind of asked myself, you know, depending on our vote, can we just help one person, one student that’s going through this, and if we can, that makes me feel good. And so, with those, um, with that thinking and all the conversations we had, when I vote, I’m going to say yes.

I kid you not, Paulsen said that.

Maybe the fact that I’m not a statistician explains why I have no idea what “70 percent of LGBTQ youth are more likely to commit suicide” means. Perhaps at the next board meeting, Paulsen could explain to his community exactly what it means. That should give him ample time to validate the data point he cited.

And perhaps at the next board meeting, he could answer these questions:

Since he used this data point as justification for retaining Gender Queer, should he have “validated” it?

Does he have conclusive, research-based evidence for his bizarre contention that reading Gender Queer will prevent suicides of “LGBTQ” youth?

Since many young adults are detransitioning; telling their tragic stories of suffering and regret; and blaming social media, doctors, and schools for affirming their “trans” identities, should school libraries request from publishing companies books that tell those stories? Wouldn’t Paulsen feel good if one person could be spared such suffering by reading them?

What if reading Gender Queer harms one person? What if reading it exacerbates confusion or contributes to a decision that has permanent and lifelong consequences and which they may later regret? Would the harm done to one such teen be sufficient justification for removing Gender Queer from the high school library?

Will Wheaton high schools purchase other books that include graphic depictions of and dialogue about sex toys and sex acts? Could those books include photos rather than cartoon drawings as long as someone could argue that one person may be helped by reading them? Would Paulsen et al. support the purchase of a memoir that depicts a woman’s journey to becoming a consensual non-monogamist, replete with graphic images of her sexual journey with multiple people? If not, why not?

(As a related aside, do any of the Wheaton high schools carry Abigail Shrier’s important and compelling book titled Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters?)

Board member Susan Booton followed Paulsen and began by asserting her “deep thinker” bona fides, by which she meant that she self-identifies as a deep thinker. The evidence, however, suggests the opposite.

She echoed Paulsen by saying that “the LGBTQ community struggles with suicide and harm to self at a much higher rate than our cisgender peers.” What she seems not to have thought deeply about is whether an obscene memoir carried in a public school library will reduce self-harm.

Booton claims the district must “honor all stories.” Does that include the stories of other underrepresented groups, like zoophiles? If not, why not? They too are marginalized and shamed.

Booton defers to the judgment of “professional librarians” who choose the books for the district’s book collections. She seems to believe that a degree in library science confers on them some special knowledge about and expertise in making moral judgments about obscenity.

What Booton doesn’t share is how the library book collection game is rigged.

Librarians create what are called “Collection Development Policies” that recommend, for example, purchasing books that are “positively reviewed” by at least two “professionally recognized review journals.” Surprise, surprise, the professionally recognized review journals are controlled by leftists who either don’t review or review negatively conservative books.

In addition, publishing companies gatekeep at an even earlier de facto censorship stage. Publishing companies won’t publish books written from a conservative perspective on sexuality, so there are none to be reviewed. Leftists can ban books with carefree abandon because their banning is concealed from the public. Can’t be accused of banning books when you don’t purchase them.

Deep thinker Booton doesn’t see how “removing this book helps” the mental health “crisis that we’re facing in this—in our world.” While helping mental health crises is a noble endeavor, is it the task of public school English teachers and librarians? Does Boone wonder why, during this unprecedented time of approval and even celebration of homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation, “LGBTQ” adolescents are suffering so tremendously? Why aren’t conservative kids whose beliefs and feelings are mocked and scorned in schools and the culture at large experiencing such high rates of suicide? Does the troubling degree of suffering experienced by “LGBTQ” youth not lead Booton to ask hard questions on whether “progressive” sexuality dogma is harming kids?

In addition to assuming without proving that Gender Queer may help one “LGBTQ” teen, board member David Long believes that strap-on dildo sex and vagina-tasting scenes are acceptable as long as they’re brief. Wiser adults would argue that no matter how brief, the presence of scenes so repugnant and controversial render a text unsuitable in schools funded by taxpayers.

The board chair, Ms. Chris Crabtree concluded by making the inane argument that the book should remain in district libraries in order to show that “this board cares about kids, it cares about the LGBTQ+ community.”

Choosing to remove one book because of egregiously obscene drawings and dialogue that violate school policy means the school doesn’t care about the LGBTQ+ community? Is the board so myopic and uncreative that they are unable to find other ways to show students they care?

Moreover, does caring require affirmation of all student feelings, beliefs, and volitional acts? Is it the business of public school leaders to affirm arguable ontological and moral assumptions on controversial topics?

Board member Rob Hanlon emoted about love, loneliness, shame, and isolation, implying that the removal of Gender Queer will increase loneliness, shame, and isolation, and keeping it will increase love for “LGBTQ” students. What a bunch of hooey.

There’s a lot of hooey spouted by school leaders struggling mightily to defend the indefensible. They cite prizes awarded to obscene books by leftist organizations as just justification for purchasing, recommending, and teaching garbage to kids. They also cite the lousy decisions of other schools to purchase, recommend, and teach garbage to kids as the reason to follow suit.  Let’s call that the lemming defense.

What was notably missing in all the claptrap was any discussion about the virtue of modesty and whether this book may further erode what little remains of respect for modesty in our coarse, unsafe culture.

Reminder to school boards, administrators, and teachers: Teachers are public servants hired to teach math, science, literature, world languages, social studies, and P.E. They are not hired to butt in to the emotional, moral, and psychological lives of other people’s children.

The Facebook Overlords have finally released me from yet another 30-day prison sentence for expressing views “progressives” don’t like. You know who I’m talking about. “Progressives” are those freedom-loving tyrants who proclaim from their high horses how deeply they honor all voices and value diversity; how tolerant, unbiased, and respectful they are; how open-minded they are; and how much they loathe oppression and “othering” as they oppress and “other” conservatives.

“Progressives” are the moral midgets who are destroying America while self-identifying as the world’s saviors. They are transaviors. They enslave and call it liberation. They hate and call it love. They kill and call it health. They propagandize and groom, and call it education. They exclude and call it inclusion. They divide and call it unity. They produce evil and call it good.

In the 21st Century virtual public square, transaviors decide which views ought not be tolerated based on their beliefs about love, reality, and truth, while censoring the expression of all dissenting views. They shriek against shaming and bullying while ridiculing dissenters.

They destroy the hearts, minds, bodies, and families of children, and then sashay away wearing their pussy hats and glittery rainbow blinders to their splintered, hedonistic, artificially lit non-homes to self-pleasure and ingest soma, content knowing that Big Brother will finish what they started.

Transaviors include presumptuous change agents like Kelly Baraki and Lori Caldeira, two propagandists who self-identify as teachers at Buena Vista Middle School in Salinas, California. They are the predatorial “teachers” whose goal is to use their publicly funded positions of power to recruit vulnerable students into the boundary-free world of disordered sexuality. Abigail Shrier broke the story a month ago, which generated a firestorm that spread across the nation.

The deepest desire of Baraki’s and Caldeira’s dark hearts is to ideologically groom other people’s children through membership in an “LGBTQA+” school club with the intentionally obscurantist name “You Be You.” Until Shrier’s exposé, Baraki and Caldeira’s tactics included secretly monitoring students’ Google searches to identify their prey and developing ever more cunning ways to conceal children’s club membership from parents.

But Baraki and Caldeira weren’t satisfied with merely ideologically grooming other people’s children with the debatable beliefs of homosexuals, cross-sex impersonators, and collaborators (euphemistically called “allies”). They also secretly facilitated the decision of a vulnerable 12-year-old girl to identify as “transfluid.”

Baraki and Caldeira’s efforts are evil, and they have no right to be involved with children.

Sarah Rubin, editor of the Monterey Weekly, has a close-minded take on the community uproar over Baraki and Caldeira:

If this were a chess club or a gardening club, it would be a non-issue. The instructor would be reprimanded for violating school policies, but no public outcry or chain of conservative media coverage would’ve followed. They’re responding to an underlying fear that exposure to LGBTQ+ awareness is somehow changing kids. 

It might be making their kids more open-minded. But LGBTQ+ people have been here and will continue to be here. And a new generation of kids is growing up much more open-minded about gender and sexuality than my generation did. Instead of telling them to shut up, we might learn something by listening.

Here’s something on which everyone can agree: Chess and gardening clubs are non-issues. Surely, Rubin can understand why that is. Unlike homoeroticism and cross-dressing, chess and gardening do not touch on morality, epistemology, ontology, teleology, theology, or psychology.

Rubin is correct. Parents are concerned that “exposure to LGBTQ+” propaganda—not “awareness”—will change kids. Using yet more euphemistic language, Rubin admits such “awareness” is changing kids. She admits it “might be making” other people’s kids “more open-minded.” By “open-minded,” Rubin means their minds have been changed. Their minds have been “trans”-formed by transaviors.

The minds of children indoctrinated with leftist assumptions about sexuality are being closed tightly to the beliefs that homoerotic acts, cross-dressing, cross-sex hormone doping, and lopping off healthy breasts and penises are unhealthy and morally wrong acts. Relentless advocacy of leftist beliefs has closed the minds of children to the ideas that all forms of love are not the same, that marriage has an intrinsic nature that laws cannot change, and that children deserve a mother and a father—ideally their own biological mother and father.  

Just curious, is Rubin any more open-minded to conservative views of sexuality than conservatives are to leftist views?

Who is telling kids to “shut up”? What I hear is parents telling leftist change-agents—adults—in government schools to shut up. Parents and other taxpayers are telling them to stop promoting their moral claims and metaphysical theories about “gender” and “gender identity” to children. They’re telling leftist activists to stop basing policies and practices on bathroom usage and sports participation on arguable theories. They’re telling leftist activists who pretend to teach to stop usurping parental authority and undermining parents’ beliefs. They’re telling them to stop exposing minors to obscene material. And they’re telling them that sound educational content and practices should not be shaped by the disordered feelings of immature children and teens.

Rubin concludes with yet more sophistry:

My hope is that there are also voices from parents who want to advocate for inclusion. As Jacob Agamao, LGBTQ+ services coordinator for The Epicenter in Salinas puts it: “We hear it all the time: ‘Won’t somebody think of the children?’ But please, won’t somebody think of the children?”

What precisely does Rubin mean by “inclusion”? She means that leftist views of sexuality must be systemically embraced, affirmed, and implemented in curricula, policies, and practices, which necessarily excludes any child who rejects them.

It may surprise Rubin to know that many conservatives think about children unceasingly. They think about the children whose minds are being malformed, innocence stolen, hearts broken, and bodies poisoned.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/The-Open-Mindedness-of-Leftist-Propagandists.mp3

Someone I know from California told me recently that he has decided to pull his child out of public school and enroll him instead into a private, Christian school.

Why? Because during some of the Zoom instruction during the coronavirus pandemic, this concerned parent discovered some of the lessons they were trying to foist on his child. In this case, it was the anti-American historical revisionism that disgusted this parent.

Multiply this story many times over, and we are seeing a very important development right now—many parents are finding better ways to educate their children, including home-school and home-school co-ops, than the failing public schools.

But the left is pushing back. Perhaps the most galling thing about this debate is the arrogance of the educrats who think they are the ones who should be responsible for the education of the children—not the parents.

Former Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe let the cat out of the bag. The Democrat is currently running for governor again, and he said in a recent debate: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

Unfortunately, McAuliffe is not alone in these sentiments.

Writing in wnd.com (10/3/21), Art Moore points out that parents are supposedly “not the ‘primary stakeholder’ in their children’s education”—even though they are “important stakeholders.” Who says this? Some left wing nut job on a TicTok video? No, Joe Biden’s education secretary Michael Cordona said this.

What’s more, the National School Boards Association (NSBA) asked the Biden administration to treat concerned parents at school board meetings as essentially domestic terrorists. They write, “Now, we ask that the federal government investigate, intercept, and prevent the current threats and acts of violence against our public school officials through existing statutes, executive authority…to preserve public school infrastructure and campuses.”

They add: “Further, this increasing violence is a clear and present danger to civic participation.”

Apparently, President Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland agrees. He is now claiming that concerned parents protesting at school board meetings are guilty of “domestic terrorism.”

In his End of Day Report (10/5/21), Gary Bauer of American Values responds, “So, let’s get this straight: The radical forces indoctrinating your children are trying to shut you up by utilizing the same agency, the FBI, that the left used to smear Donald Trump with the fake Russia collusion hoax.” He observes that the Biden administration is “turning the FBI loose on soccer moms.” Critics note that Garland has a conflict of interest here. Bauer says:

“His son-in-law is the president of a consulting firm that makes millions of dollars contracting with school boards to push the left’s radical agenda.”

If you look at the videos of the unruly school board meetings, what you see are parents visibly upset that their children are being taught a bunch of lies. They are not resorting to “violence.”

The most prominent areas of curriculum conflict include:

• Critical race theory (CRT), where by definition whites are oppressors and blacks are the oppressed. Little children who have done nothing wrong are being vilified for the color of their skin.

• Historical revisionism, which turns American history on its head. The settlers and founders of America were far from perfect. But they created a nation with unparalleled freedom and prosperity. Now political correctness has turned America’s founders into villains. One can only wonder why those would-be American immigrants trekking through Central America are currently risking their lives to come to this supposedly evil country.

• The dogmatic LGBTQ agenda. Many children (mostly girls) are questioning if they were born in the correct gender. Because of this fad that is sweeping through many of the schools and is being promoted by teachers and the school administrators, many young people are undergoing “irreversible damage” as puberty blockers and even surgery are administered to try and resolve a conflict that usually resolves itself in puberty. The fallout is horrible. Journalist Abigail Shrier wrote a book documenting this dangerous trend—Irreversible Damage.

The schools and teachers unions are acting as if they own the children. They do not. Children are on loan by God to the parents. Indeed, who is responsible for children’s education? Parents or educrats?

Who knows better than the parents what is in the children’s best interest? To whom have the children been given? Hasn’t God given the parents the responsibility of teaching their children, even if they delegate that teaching to others? Traditionally, teachers have been described as “in loco parentis”—acting on behalf of the parents, not against them.

Our current education crisis could actually prove to be a good thing—if we handle it correctly. This could be the time when many Americans seek to rescue their children from leftist and false indoctrination promoted by too many of our public schools.

This article was originally published by JerryNewcombe.com.

**Reader Discretion Strongly Advised**

How many times have conservatives heard “progressives” claim that the controversial, obscene material they want taught to children is “age-appropriate”? Now, how many times have your heard conservatives respond by demanding to know specifically what criteria are used to determine “appropriateness”—age or any other kind? How many times have you heard conservatives demand to know specifically who socially constructed the criteria used to determine appropriateness and specifically which teacher suggested that a controversial, obscene book or play be taught?

Taxpayers are entitled to know the criteria, names of creators of criteria, and names of teachers who choose controversial, obscene material. Concealment facilitates unethical behavior among teachers and breeds distrust among taxpayers. Transparency fosters trust and accountability. Government school teachers who are paid by the public want absolute autonomy and absolute anonymity, and that is why we now have adults introducing obscene material to other people’s children.

As an example, here are several writing prompts for high school students in Hudson, Ohio. These prompts prompt children to use their imaginations to focus on sexual immorality and violence:

• Write a sex scene you wouldn’t show your mom. Rewrite the sex scene into one you would let your mom read.

• You have just been caught in bed by a jealous spouse. How will you talk your way out of this?

• Write a sermon for a beloved preacher who has been caught in a sex scandal.

• You are a serial killer. What tv shows are on your DVR list? Why?

• Describe a time when you wanted to orgasm but couldn’t.

• Write an X-rated Disney scenario.

No worries, rationalize supporters, these are just a few prompts from among the hundreds offered in a book of prompts that taxpayers subsidized. And anyway, such prompts appeal to teens and gets their creative juices flowing—or so rationalize the creepy adults who eye little children with bad intent.

(As an aside, weren’t those Hudson, Ohio teachers able to come up with writing prompts on their own? Isn’t that what they’re paid for?)

Many parents don’t realize that appealing to the sensibilities and appetites of adolescents assumed a dominant place in the selection process of English teachers decades ago. There’s another word for capitulating to the tastes of adolescents: it’s called pandering.

Schools should teach those texts that students will likely not read on their own. Schools should teach those texts that are intellectually challenging and offer insight, wisdom, beauty, and truth. Schools should avoid those that are highly polemical, blasphemous, and vulgar.

These writing prompts embody the perverse obsession with sex that many authors who write Young Adult (YA) novels share, that change-agents teach, and that government schools purchase with limited taxpayer funds.

Here are some quotes from The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which is found in most middle school libraries and recommended and taught in many classrooms:

• I guess I forgot to mention in my last letter that it was Patrick who told me about masturbation. I guess I forgot to tell you how often I do it now, which is a lot. … I started using blankets, but then the blankets hurt, so I started using pillows, but then the pillows hurt, so I went back to [the] normal [way].

• And the boy kept working up the girl’s shirt, and as much as she said no, he kept working it. After a few minutes, she stopped protesting, and he pulled her shirt off, and she had a white bra on with lace. … Pretty soon, he took off her bra and started to kiss her breasts. And then he put his hand down her pants, and she started moaning. … He reached to take off her pants, but she started crying really hard, so he reached for his own. He pulled his pants and underwear down to his knees. After a few minutes, the boy pushed the girl’s head down, and she started to kiss his p****. She was still crying. Finally, she stopped crying because he put his p**** in her mouth, and I don’t think you can cry in that position.

• When most people left, Brad and Patrick went into Patrick’s room. They had sex for the first time that night. I don’t want to go into detail about it, because it’s pretty private stuff, but I will say that Brad assumed the role of the girl in terms of where you put things.

• One night Patrick took me to this park where men go and find each other. Patrick told me that if I didn’t want to be bothered by anyone that I should just not make eye contact. He said that eye contact is how you agree to fool around anonymously. Nobody talks. They just find places to go. After a while, Patrick saw someone he liked.

In the face of criticism, those who rationalize teaching obscene, pro-“LGBTQ+” novels to adolescents roll their condescending eyes and call those who object to such material it prudes who take words out of context. But there is no context that renders graphic sex acceptable in texts purchased with public funds and taught to minor children.

Here are some more out-of-context quotes, these from the novel Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison—another YA book in school libraries–a coming-of-age novel in which the protagonist begins to feel fulfilled only after he embraces a homosexual identity and which includes obscenity like “f**k” and “s**t” on virtually every page:

• “G**damn-f**king-c**t-f**k-s**t-ass-f**ker!” I yelled.

• “What if I told you I touched another guy’s d**k? … “What if I told you I s****ed it?” … “I was ten years old, but it’s true. I put Doug Goble’s d**k in my mouth.” … “I was in fourth grade. It was no big deal.” … “He s***ed mine, too.” … “And you know what? … “It wasn’t terrible.”

I wonder if a coming-of-age novel in which a young adult who experiences unchosen homoerotic attraction finds fulfillment once he rejects homoerotic relationships could get published, positively reviewed, and purchased for school libraries.

Saturday Oct. 2, 2021 marked the end of another “Banned Books Week” sponsored by the sanctimonious, hypocritical, leftist American Library Association (ALA) that regularly violates its own principles of intellectual freedom and has no principles regarding morality.

The ALA makes this disturbing statement:

Library policies and procedures that effectively deny minors equal and equitable access to all library resources available to other users violate the Library Bill of Rights. The American Library Association opposes all attempts to restrict access to library services, materials, and facilities based on the age of library users.

Apparently, to members of the ALA, even five-year-olds should be free to access the porn available on library computers, in books, and in magazines.

The ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom claims to oppose the proscription of materials based on “partisan disapproval”:

Books and other library resources should be provided for the interest, information, and enlightenment of all people of the community the library serves. Materials should not be excluded because of the origin, background, or views of those contributing to their creation. Libraries should provide materials and information presenting all points of view on current and historical issues. Materials should not be proscribed or removed because of partisan or doctrinal disapproval.

If that’s the case, then why are there so few YA novels that depict homosexuality as unhealthy or depict cross-sex identification as disordered?

The ALA tries to divert attention from this obvious hypocrisy by appealing to its own “Collection Development Policies.” But they can’t do their dirty censorship deeds alone. It requires the collusion of publishing companies, book review organizations, and libraries.

“Collection Development Policies”—created by leftists—are used to select which books to purchase. These policies establish what will be considered in selecting which books to buy. Books are chosen based on the “Reputation and qualifications of the author, publisher or producer, with preference generally given to titles vetted in the editing and publishing industry.”

And guess what—leftists control the publishing companies and professional review journals on whom librarians depend for determining which books they will purchase. It’s a nice circular set-up that enables leftists to conceal their bias and book-banning.

That may explain why Wheaton North High School in Wheaton, Illinois carries the obscene comic book “graphic novel” Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe but doesn’t carry either When Harry Became Sally by Ryan T. Anderson or Irreparable Damage by Wall Street Journal reporter Abigail Shrier.

And it likely explains why school and community libraries all around the country carry the picture book I Am Jazz and numerous other picture books affirming cross-dressing in children. But how many carry the books I’m Glad God Made Me a Girl by Denise Shick, whose father began masquerading as a woman when Ms. Shick was a child, thereby causing her untold suffering.

What becomes obscured in all these discussions of book-banning or selection criteria is the egregious offense of using public money to subsidize curricula and activities that undermine many taxpayers’ deepest beliefs and morals.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Taxpayer-Funded-Libraries-Defend-Obscenity-Child-Corruption-and-Censorship.mp3

Written by Patience Griswold

This week is Banned Books Week, a week that the American Library Association claims “brings together the entire book community — librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types — in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.” However, in a year that saw major corporations engaging in viewpoint discrimination, two books that faced bans this year for daring to question the transgender agenda, When Harry Became Sally by Ryan T. Anderson and Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier, were notably absent from this year’s “Challenged book list.”

As Thomas Spence, President of Regnery Publishing noted, Banned Books Week is proving itself to be nothing more than a “gimmicky promotion [that] caters primarily to those who believe that schoolchildren should have access to anything bound between two covers without the interference of those busybodies we call parents.”

Earlier this year, Amazon removed Anderson’s book on transgenderism without any warning or explanation. When they finally broke their silence, they doubled down, insisting that When Harry Became Sally, which had been listed on their website for three years without any issues, violated their standards.

However, as Anderson pointed out, Amazon can’t argue that they simply don’t sell books that they disagree with — if that were the case, then they have some explaining to do when it comes to many of the books that they do choose to sell. “[T]he way that they’ve marketed themselves to customers is that they sell all books worth reading, not just books they agree with,” said Anderson. Nor is Amazon’s argument that they won’t sell it because they won’t sell books that refer to transgenderism as mental illness compelling considering that the only times in the book where transgenderism is referred to as a mental illness are direct quotes, one from a man who identifies as transgender, and the other from University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins.

Additionally, with 40 pages of notes reflecting the rigorous academic research behind the book, and endorsements from leaders in the field, no one can reasonably accuse Anderson of cheap arguments or shoddy research. What he can be accused of is challenging the transgender agenda, and for that, his book has been banned by the world’s largest online retailer.

Abigail Shrier’s Irreversible Damage received similar treatment from Amazon when its ads were removed last June, although Amazon has not removed the book itself. Target, on the other hand, pulled Irreversible Damage from shelves after a single complaint from an anonymous Twitter user. After briefly reinstating it, Target quietly removed the book again, along with The End of Gender by Dr. Deborah Soh, another book that critiques the transgender agenda.

The theme for this year’s Banned Books Week is “Books unite us. Censorship divides us.” As such, one would think that Banned Books Week would take the time to highlight the censorship coming from major corporations, but the organizations behind Banned Books Week have remained conveniently silent on this issue. Instead, proponents of Banned Books Week use the week as an excuse to celebrate increasingly explicit content filling library shelves under the name of free speech while conveniently turning a blind eye to the egregious viewpoint discrimination that takes place when authors challenge radical gender ideology.

If Banned Books Week is really about celebrating free speech and giving a voice to unpopular points of view, then using it to push an agenda that enjoys the support of top elected officials, woke corporations while ignoring the censorship of dissenters is hardly the way to do that. For my part, I’m celebrating Banned Books Week by revisiting When Harry Became Sally and Irreversible Damage.

Patience Griswold received her BA from Bethlehem College and Seminar and writes from the greater Twin Cities area.
This article was originally published by the Minnesota Family Council.

Stop reading for a moment. Go get some popcorn, and then sit back and enjoy two rousing videos of heroes pointing their sharpened spear tips right at the rhythmically contracting cardiac tissue of two government re-education camps (so much better to spear the pulsating cardiac organ of leftist schools than that of humans in their mothers’ wombs).

For those who prefer reading, here is some of what former Pennsbury School Board member Simon Campbell said:

This is my comment, not your comment. I’m quoting to you now from the United States Supreme Court, 1964 case, New York Times versus Sullivan. This is constitutional case law in this country. … The judges wrote that this nation is founded on the “profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues shall be uninhibited, robust and wide open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.” That’s constitutional case law in this nation. I don’t have to be nice to you. Nobody behind me has to be nice to you. If you don’t like living in the United States of America, then you can all move to Russia, Cuba, or China. This is the First Amendment. …

There are emails, public record emails, in which the director of equity is lobbying and advocating for public comment to be censored in this school district. … We’ve got the school board president saying she’ll do better at hitting the mute button in blatant violation of the constitution for her lobbying and her advocacy of unconstitutional censorship. I want you, the school board, to terminate the employment of (director of equity] Dr. Cherrissa Gibson with immediate effect. And after you’ve terminated her employment, I want all of you to tender your resignations for hating on this country. We have a God-given constitutional right to critique you, and we can speak in any lawful tone that we see fit.

I recently wrote about the growing resistance to the usurpation of public schools for leftist ideological purposes. The resistance movement is spreading and growing in both intensity and numbers. For decades there have been spear-wielding soldiers fighting the good fight, but, shamefully, the troops that should have been marshalling behind those on the frontlines did nothing. They didn’t back the courageous men and women on the frontlines. They sat home fearful and semi-embarrassed of their conservative brethren, rationalizing their cowardice as the ideological malignancies metastasized in schools.

Leftists know they can destroy lives and careers when the number of resistors are small. They also know they can’t destroy the lives and careers of armies of resistors, which is why leftists are now in a state of panic. It’s also why conservatives must come out in droves to stop the spread of Critical Race Theory and deviant views of sexuality in public schools.

I have learned the sorry lesson over the past 20 years that adults are as fearful of ostracism and needy for peer approval as the neediest teen, and as a result, many conservative Americans do not treat their conservative beliefs as if they believe they’re true. Many conservatives fear the stink-eye of the cool crowd more than the all-seeing eye of the creator of the universe who has the power to destroy body and soul.

While ideological groomers in government schools affirm homosexuality, cross-sex impersonation, and anal sex to grade schoolers with public money, milquetoasty Christians fret about how to address these evils “winsomely.” There are times and places, however, when evil demands righteous wrath, for which God has given us rhetoric. Properly trained minds and hearts are able to discern which words and tone are appropriate for confronting evil.

Here’s the deal, people are not only cowed by the madding crowd. They can also be inspired by boldness and fearlessness. The willingness to endure the slings and arrows of the cool crowd sets an example for others to emulate. Leaders inspire and galvanize others to walk the hard path.

Career military officer, Purple Heart recipient, attorney, and former Virginia State Senator Dick Black recognizes the evil being done to children, and at a recent Loudon County School Board meeting, Black properly—that is, passionately—expressed what all decent people should be expressing at school board meetings all across the country:

You retaliated against (P.E. teacher) Tanner Cross for addressing a public hearing of this board. The judge ordered you to reinstate Mr. Cross, because if his comments were not protected speech, then free speech does not exist at all. It’s absurd and immoral for teachers to call boys girls and girls boys. You’re making teachers lie to students, and even kids know that it’s wrong. This board has a dark history of suppressing free speech. They caught you red-handed with an enemies list to punish opponents of Critical Race Theory. You’re teaching children to hate others because of their skin color. And you’re forcing them to lie about other kids’ gender. I am disgusted by your bigotry and your depravity.

Immediately after Mr. Black’s comments, the school board shut down public comments and walked out, leaving scores of people unable to make their comments.

Who needs Netflix, when you’ve got warriors with spears poking leftist school board members and backed up by troops who have finally reported for active duty?

Wall Street Journal reporter Abigail Shrier, who wrote the critically important book Irreparable Damage on the staggering explosion in the number of adolescent girls joining the “trans’-cult, recently wrote an article expressing her frustration with the passivity of people who know how damaging “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices are to children and yet say nothing:

[I]f you read my inbox, you’d think I was popular, awash as I am in secret fan mail and “silent supporter” notes. …

Child and adult psychologists and psychiatrists write to say they have witnessed a surge in transgender identification among teen girls who seem to be acting under peer and social media influence. Teachers write to say they believe that the phenomenon is plainly an example of social contagion within their classrooms. Surgeons and pediatricians and endocrinologists write to wonder aloud at what has happened to their profession.

There are lawyers who posit that lawsuits are on the way—brought by others, presumably. Professors who have come to hate their jobs—you can’t discuss your own research without trampling on a young generation’s vast neural network of sensitivities. Journalists at our most storied newspapers, TV networks, and literary magazines, even at NPR, write to tell me they liked my book, they agree with it, and to tut-tut the abuse directed at me. They assure me that the horrible accusations—from child predation to white supremacy and transphobia—accusations that will forever live on the internet, blackening my name, are things no one really believes. …

And so, for over a year, I responded to those silent supporters with thanks and reassurance. You don’t have to speak out, just send me your documents — I will expose it for you. No need to stand up for me publicly, just tell me what you know. For a while, this seemed a decent bargain. …

[I]t is easy to justify our silence. We tell ourselves that we are protecting our families by remaining quiet and in the short-term, and we may be. But we are also handing our children over to a culture in which freedom of conscience and expression are drowned out. We are teaching our children that truth shouldn’t be our primary concern—or at least, that truth is negotiable or subordinate to being agreeable. They are learning that it is more important to remain acceptable to the powerful than to be truly free. …

[T]he inescapable reality is that defeating this ideology will take courage. And courage is not something that can happen in private. Courage requires each one of us to speak up, publicly, for what we believe in. Even when—especially when—it carries costs.

Christians are expected by God to take up our crosses daily, even when doing so carries costs.

The only regret I have when watching these school board meetings during which arrogant and morally vacuous board members are feeling the righteous wrath of community members is that the guiltier parties are getting off scot-free. Faculty activists have been scurrying around like unseen roaches, seeding their false, destructive, and evil ideas in the minds and hearts of other people’s children using taxpayer money to do their dirty work.

And it is dirty.

• It is false, destructive, and evil to teach that girls can be boys.

• It is false, destructive, and evil to teach children that cross-sex hormone-doping and bodily mutilation are healthy and good “treatments” for gender dysphoria.

• It is false, destructive, and evil to teach that in order to be compassionate and inclusive, children must relinquish their privacy and welcome cross-dressing opposite-sex peers into their bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports teams.

• It is false, destructive, and evil to teach children that commitments to love and respect require that they view homosexuality as favorably as heterosexuality.

• It is destructive and evil to require teachers to refer to students or colleagues who identify as the sex they are not and never can be by opposite-sex pronouns.

• It is destructive and evil to recommend or require students to read plays and novels with obscene language and graphic (usually disordered) sexuality.

• It is destructive and evil to teach children anything about masturbation, anal sex, “gender expansiveness,” homosexuality, or “trans”-cultism, let alone advocate leftist views of these topics as if their views are objective, inarguable facts.

• It is destructive and evil to teach racist, sexist, heterophobic, “cis”-phobic, anti-American, Marxist Critical Race Theory as objectively true and to do so without presenting dissenting views.

Several months ago, conservative Catholic philosopher and Princeton University law professor Robert P. George tweeted this:

I sometimes ask students what their position on slavery would have been had they been white and living in the South before abolition. Guess what? They all would have been abolitionists! They all would have bravely spoken out against slavery and worked tirelessly against it. Of course, this is nonsense. Only the tiniest fraction of them, or of any of us, would have spoken up against slavery or lifted a finger to free the slaves. Most of them—and us—would have gone along. Many would have supported the slave system and happily benefited from it.

So, I respond by saying that I will credit their claims if they can show evidence of the following: that in leading their lives today they have stood up for the rights of unpopular victims of injustice whose very humanity is denied, and where they have done so knowing: 1) that it would make them unpopular with their peers, (2) that they would be loathed and ridiculed by powerful, influential individuals and institutions in our society; (3) that they would be abandoned by many of their friends, (4) that they would be called nasty names, and that they would risk being denied valuable professional opportunities as a result of their moral witness. In short, my challenge is to show where they have at risk to themselves and their futures stood up for a cause that is unpopular in elite sectors of our culture today.

Can you, kind reader, show evidence that you stand up for culturally unpopular causes at great personal cost?

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/School-Boards-Feeling-Some-Righteous-Wrath.mp3

As the social media giants continue to crack down on those who violate their trans-activist talking points (see here and here), another perspective has been raised from an unexpected source. I’m talking about a powerful, deeply moving article posted in Newsweek and titled, “We Need Balance When It Comes To Gender Dysphoric Kids. I Would Know.”

The author of the op-ed is Scott Newgent, self-described as “a 48-year-old transgender man.” What Newgent has written is courageous, deeply revealing, poignant, and accurate.

Perhaps others will now heed these urgent warnings, since those of us on the conservative Christian side who have been presenting similar cases have been largely ignored to this day.

Six years ago, Newgent was told by the medical community that she could turn from a woman into a man. But, Newgent adds, “all the negatives were glossed over.”

As a result, “I have suffered tremendously, including seven surgeries, a pulmonary embolism, an induced stress heart attack, sepsis, a 17-month recurring infection, 16 rounds of antibiotics, three weeks of daily IV antibiotics, arm reconstructive surgery, lung, heart and bladder damage, insomnia, hallucinations, PTSD, $1 million in medical expenses, and loss of home, car, career and marriage. All this, and yet I cannot sue the surgeon responsible—in part because there is no structured, tested or widely accepted baseline for transgender health care.”

Most of us cannot imagine this kind of trauma, let alone imagine telling a story like this to the whole world.

Yet, because it comes from the mouth of a biological female who now identifies as a male, the author can hardly be called transphobic. Plus, this op-ed was published in Newsweek rather than in a Focus on the Family magazine.

Unfortunately, when Christian conservatives have stated these same facts, we have been branded hateful and bigoted and transphobic. Not only so, but when former transgenders like Walt Heyer or Laura Perry tell their own, agonizing (yet redemptive) stories, they too are branded hateful and bigoted. (To see their stories for yourself, watch this free documentary. You won’t regret taking the time. You can also visit the SexChangeRegret website for more.)

But it is love and truth that caused Newgent to write, not hate. As Newgent states, “It is not transphobic or discriminatory to discuss this—we as a society need to fully understand what we are encouraging our children to do to their bodies.”

That’s why Abigail Shrier wrote her important book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, named a book of the year by The Economist and one of the best books of 2021 by The Times and The Sunday Times.

The alarm must be sounded. The warning must be issued. Not only are adults destroying their bodies and their lives, but our children are doing so as well. Doesn’t love compel us to speak?

Consequently, when Amazon refused to allow Shrier’s publisher to advertise the book on their site (sell it, yes, but advertise it, no), wasn’t it Amazon, not the publisher, that displayed dangerous bias?

Newgent, who previously identified as a lesbian, experienced many doubts about the transitioning process. But rather than the professionals slowing down the transition process, they all encouraged her to keep going. This is just what you need!

To the contrary, the surgeries and drugs took a terrible toll on Newgent, who found no real help in the medical world that was so quick to recommend her transition.

“During my post-operation 17 months of sheer survival,” Newgent writes, “I discovered that transgender health care is experimental and that large swaths of the medical industry encourage minors to transition due, at least in part, to fat profit margins.”

Yet those of us who seek to raise a cautionary flag, those of us who say, “Slow down! Let’s see if you can be helped from the inside out,” are branded the haters and the transphobes. How can this be?

I urge everyone reading this article to take the time to read every word of Newgent’s op-ed. A summary cannot begin to do justice to her journey, from the physical pain to the emotional agony to the devastating losses to the list of negative consequences.

In fact, everyone considering “transitioning” should memorize this list of 13 potential consequences. It begins with “decreased life expectancy” and includes “no improved mental health outcomes.” To call it sobering would be a gross understatement. Remarkably, after citing examples from other countries which are rethinking their approach to sex-change surgery and treatments, Newgent writes,

“We now have the obligation to work together to slow trans medicalization of minors until they are adults and have the capacity to truly understand the lifelong consequences of transitioning. As a former lesbian and current trans man, I maintain this is not transphobic. It is actually sensitive and caring to recognize that not just one treatment or pathway is right for all kids.”

But of course. It is love that has motivated many of us to call for this very slow down – in particular, love for the children. (You can see for yourself how my call for this on Tyra Banks was received over 10 years ago.)

Newgent closes with this:

“So, endocrinologists and pediatricians, moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans, radical feminists and evangelicals, lawyers and psychologists, parents and teachers: My hand is out. I will grab yours and turn down no one. Together, we can build a circle around our most precious resource: our children. Help me fulfill the promise I made on the night I almost gave up, to be here for my children—and now yours. Who’s with me?”

As a conservative evangelical, I say to Scott Newgent: for this cause, I am with you. Let’s do something to stop the madness. Let’s put the children first. And if I can be of help to you in any personal level as you work through your own journey, count me in.

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.

One of the more grotesque demonstrations of leftist non-sense and hypocrisy was demonstrated a week ago following an episode of the wildly popular Disney show The Mandalorian when “Baby Yoda” eats the unfertilized eggs of a Frog Woman who is transporting her eggs to her husband so he can fertilize them thereby preventing their species’ imminent extinction. Fans of Baby Yoda freaked out, incensed at the lighthearted treatment of what they deemed genocide by the beloved Baby Yoda.

The moral incoherence and hypocrisy should be obvious. In the Upside Down where leftists live, when a human mother hires someone to dismember her own fertilized human egg—aka human fetus/embryo/baby—they demand that society affirm, celebrate, and shout the execution of those tiny humans. In fact, the voluntary dismemberment of fertilized human eggs at any gestational age is so morally innocuous and such an unmitigated public good that leftists think all Americans should pay for the executions of humans in utero.

In the Upside Down, the genocidal killing of all fertilized human eggs with Down Syndrome is at best morally neutral if not morally good, but the fictional devouring of unfertilized Frog Critters’ eggs is morally repugnant. Just wondering, if fertilized human eggs are parasites so devoid of personhood as to render them morally legitimate objects to kill, if it’s okay to dismember them because they’re imperfect non-persons, would there be anything wrong with eating their remains?

Leftists views on the slaughter of fertilized human eggs is just the most grotesque of their many morally incoherent views. Here are a few more:

• According to leftists, concerns of conservatives about possible 2020 election “irregularities”—including via computer malfeasance and malfunction—are evidence of paranoid conspiracy theories, but when leftists express such concerns, they’re sound, reasonable, and legitimate. In 2019, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden proposed an amendment titled “Protecting American Votes and Elections Act” to the “Help America Vote Act of 2002.” His proposed amendment was signed by 14 co-sponsors—all Democrats—including a who’s who of presidential wannabes: Richard Blumenthal, Edward Markey, Jeff Merkley, Tammy Duckworth, Brian Schatz, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Tammy Baldwin, Bernie Sanders, Maria Cantwell, Kamala Harris, Sherrod Brown, Michael Bennet, and Patty Murray. Wyden provided a summary of his amendment that includes the following:

Votes cast with paperless voting machines cannot be subjected to a manual recount, and so there is no way to determine the real election results if they are hacked. H.R. 1 …  mandates paper ballots.

In order to detect hacks, this bill requires election bodies to conduct audits of all federal elections, regardless of how close the election, by employing statistically rigorous “risk-limiting audits.”

There are currently no mandatory standards for election cybersecurity, which has resulted in some states operating election infrastructure that is needlessly vulnerable to hacking. The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) sets voluntary standards for voting machines, but states can and do ignore these standards. There are no standards at all for voter registration websites or other parts of our election infrastructure.

• Leftists heartily endorse bodily damage and disfigurement as sound “treatment” protocols for those who experience a mismatch between their internal feelings and their sexual embodiment as male or female, but bodily damage and disfigurement of those who experience a mismatch between their internal feelings and their whole or healthy bodies (i.e., those with Body Integrity Identity Disorder who identify as amputees or paraplegics) are considered barbaric and ethically prohibited.

• Leftists condemn conservatives as “science-deniers” for disagreeing with them on the degree to which climate change is caused by human action or on how to respond to climate change. At the same time, the purported science-worshippers claim that men can menstruate, become pregnant, and “chestfeed,” and they claim that the product of conception between two persons is not a person. Anyone who refuses to concede to such nonsense is mocked, reviled, de-platformed, and fired. Just ask Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling or Wall Street Journal writer and author of Irreversible Damage, Abigail Shrier.

• Leftists claim that marriage has no connection to either sexual differentiation or reproductive potential. They vociferously claim that marriage is solely constituted by love, and that “love is love.” And yet most leftists don’t think two brothers in a consensual loving relationship should be able to legally marry.

• Leftists claim there’s no story behind or within Hunter Biden’s emails and texts that prove Joe Biden straight up lied to the American public, and yet they claimed there was a story of such magnitude and enormity within Christopher Steele’s imaginative “dossier,” that it necessitated 24-hour coverage for years.

• Leftists claim that eliminating the Electoral College and filibuster and packing the U.S. Supreme Court constitute necessary changes to enhance “democracy,” but implementing legal processes to ensure an election was fair undermines democracy.

• Every gathering of leftists, including mostly violent protests, a takeover of six city blocks, trips to hair salons (Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi), a post-election street celebration (Lori Lightfoot), a holiday boating excursion (attempted by husband of Michigan Governor Christine Whitmer), restaurant dining (California Governor Gavin Newsom, CNN narcissist Chris Cuomo), a funeral/Democrat campaign event (i.e., John Lewis’ faux-funeral) are COVID-immune and justifiable. But an Orthodox Jewish funeral, an entirely peaceful protest of draconian COVID restrictions, and a march in support of a transparent and fair election are denounced as super-spreader events.

• Serial killer of senior citizens, Andrew “Quietus” Cuomo, commands citizens to “admit” their “mistakes” and “shortcomings” with regard to how they responded to the Chinese Communist virus even as he refuses to apologize for his policies that killed scores of elderly.

• To leftists, social science is the god that determines all moral truth, and yet despite social science demonstrating repeatedly that children—especially boys—need fathers, the left refuses to discuss how fatherless families may be contributing to the anti-social behavior that is destroying our cities.

• Leftists claim to value free speech, religious liberty, inclusivity, diversity, tolerance, and unity while condemning not just the beliefs of those with whom they disagree, but also the persons themselves. Many leftists share an uncharitable, presumptuous, ugly, tyrannical, oppressive, and scary desire that those who believe homosexual acts are immoral, who believe marriage has an ontology, who believe biological sex is immutable and meaningful, and who believe bodily damage and disfigurement are improper treatment protocols for gender dysphoria should be unable to work anywhere in America.

To create the illusion that they’re not hypocrites and to defend their intolerance, exclusion, divisiveness, hatred of persons, book banning, speech suppression, demand for ideological uniformity, and efforts to circumscribe the  exercise of religion—which for Christians extends far outside the church walls—leftists resort to fallacious reasoning. The fallacies they employ are too numerous to list, but two of their faves are the ad hominem fallacy and the fallacy of circular reasoning.

Ad hominem is an informal fallacy in which an irrelevant personal attack replaces a logical argument. It proves nothing about the soundness, truth, or falsity of a claim. Instead it appeals to emotion and silences debate through intimidation.

The fallacy of circular reasoning occurs when the conclusion presumes the premise (i.e., the initial claim) is true without proving it true. So, for example, leftists–ignoring their purported commitment to the First Amendment–argue that homosexual acts are moral acts and, therefore, there is no need to tolerate the expression of dissenting views. But the intolerance they are trying to defend is based on the truth of their premise that homosexual acts are moral—a premise they simply assume without proving is true.

Here’s another: Leftists assert that marriage is constituted solely by subjective romantic and erotic feelings, and, therefore, the government has no reason not to recognize unions between two people of the same sex as marriages, because such couples can experience love and erotic desire. But the premise—i.e., that marriage is constituted solely by subjective romantic and erotic feelings—hasn’t been proved.

And here’s yet another claim about marriage based on circular reasoning: Leftists argue that the reason government is involved in marriage is to grant public legitimacy or provide “dignity” to erotic/romantic unions and, therefore, the government has an obligation to recognize homoerotic unions as marriages. The problem is that those who make this argument fail to prove their claim that the reason government is involved in marriage is to recognize, provide, or impart “dignity” to unions. Those who make this argument just assume their premise is true.

After employing fallacious circular reasoning and hurling ad hominem epithets at their opponents, leftists sanctimoniously wipe the dust off their dirty hands and assert that their hypocrisy isn’t really hypocrisy after all.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Ideological-Non-Sense-and-Hypocrisy-of-Leftists.mp3

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What is it that makes the very existence of ex-gays so dangerous? And why is there a concerted, worldwide effort to block professional counseling for those with unwanted same-sex attractions?

Before you think I’m exaggerating, consider these following examples.

In England, Barclays Bank announced it was closing the account of a Christian charity after protest from LGBTQ activists. The charity, Core Issues Trust (CIT), was accused of practicing “conversion therapy.” CIT said that “Barclays informed them that their bank account will be terminated by September. CIT claimed that the move came after pressure from an LGBT social media campaign that targetted the group for allegedly practising ‘conversion therapy’.”

On the social media front, it is now reported that, “Facebook and its photo platform Instagram are banning any content advertising or promoting treatment to overcome unwanted same-sex attraction.”

According to Facebook spokeswoman Stephanie Otway, “This is a global policy. The policy is still under development, but for now it will be applied to content that promotes conversion therapy when we become aware of it.”

Ex-gay colleagues have already informed me that their content is being removed from Facebook and their pages are being shut down, simply for stating that change is possible.

Last year, Amazon stopped selling books by respected therapists like Dr. Joseph Nicolosi as part of their ban on “conversion therapy” books. This year, Amazon refused to allow Regnery Books, one of the largest conservative publishers, to buy ads for their new book by journalist Abigail Shrier, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.

But there’s more.

As posted on the official website of the Office of the High Commissioner of the United Nations Human Rights organization, “Practices known as ‘conversion therapy’ inflict severe pain and suffering on lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and gender-diverse (LGBT) persons, often resulting in long-lasting psychological and physical damage, a UN expert told the Human Rights Council while calling for a global ban.”

Yes, you read that correctly. This UN expert is calling for a global ban of so-called “conversion therapy.”

And what, exactly, is this dangerous therapy?

According to Victor Madrigal-Borloz,

“the Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity . . . conversion is attempted through beatings, rape, electrocution, forced medication, isolation and confinement, forced nudity, verbal offense and humiliation and other acts of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse.”

He said,

“These interventions exclusively target LGBT persons with the specific aim of interfering in their personal integrity and autonomy because their sexual orientation or gender identity do not fall under what is perceived by certain persons as a desirable norm. They are inherently degrading and discriminatory and rooted in the belief that LGBT persons are somehow inferior, and that they must at any cost modify their orientation or identity to remedy that supposed inferiority.”

This sounds pretty horrible, right? No wonder the Christian charity in England is having its bank account shut down. No wonder Facebook and Instagram are blocking posts advocating these torturous practices. No wonder the UN is calling for a ban.

There’s only one problem.

This is a myth. It is a creation of the left. It is a bogey man, manufactured out of thin air, meant to discredit fine organizations and ministries which simply say, “If you are unhappy with your same-sex attractions or gender-identity confusion, we’re here to talk with you and help.”

That’s it.

Nothing is forced or coerced. No one is being beaten. Or raped. Or electrocuted. Or isolated. Or confined. Or forced to take medication. Or stripped naked. Or subjected to “verbal offense and humiliation and other acts of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse.” God forbid!

There is not a person I know on the planet who would affirm such abusive practices, and if they do exist, they have no connection at all to organizations like CIT and others.

Instead, professional counselors and ministry leaders, many of them ex-gay or ex-trans themselves, are offering prayer, support, and talk therapy to those that request it.

That’s it.

You say, “But I’ve heard horror stories of kids taken against their own will and isolated and tortured in an attempt to drive the gay out of them. It is child abuse of the worst kind.”

If such stories were true, I would agree with you wholeheartedly. That would be downright wicked, and all people of conscience should denounce such horrific practices. And to the extent such a thing has taken place or still takes place, I will work side by side with you to help eradicate it.

The reality, however, is that many of these stories are not true at all. And certainly, there is not a single, recognized ex-gay ministry or organization in the world that would sanction any of the horrific practices listed here.

Why, then, should they be banned by the UN, by social media, and by other countries when all they do is offer counseling and prayer to those who request? What is their crime? Why the extreme reaction, to the point of removing their content on social media and shutting down their bank accounts? Why accuse them of practicing “conversion therapy” (allegedly replete with horrible practices) when that is not who they are or what they do?

You say, “I have gay and trans friends who told me how damaging it was to receive this kind of counseling and prayer when they were adults. They were told this would help them change their sexual orientation or gender identity, but in the end, it did far more harm than good. Worse still, it made them feel like there was something wrong with being gay or trans when, in fact, this is how God made them.”

Maybe they weren’t helped at all. Maybe they were actually hurt. The same can be said for countless people who tried everything from new diets to spiritual fads to life coaches to psychiatrists. They report negative outcomes rather than positive outcomes.

But I can also point you to countless thousands who have been helped. Who have improved the quality of their lives. Who are happier and more content. Who have resolved deep inner conflicts. Who have found gender wholeness (without surgery or lifelong hormones). Who have even seen changes in their sexual orientation.

Why don’t their stories count? And what about those people who believe that God did not make them gay or trans? Do not their beliefs or convictions count?

Really now, in today’s world, if someone wants to go a new age healer who allegedly makes contact with UFO’s, they can do so. Or, if someone wants to go to a holistic cancer treatment center rather than get chemotherapy, that’s their choice.

Yet if someone says, “I would rather not take hormones for life and remove perfectly healthy organs in order to feel at home in my body. Instead, I would prefer finding wholeness from the inside out, and I’d like to meet with a professionally trained counselor,” they will be told that such counseling is forbidden.

This is both criminal and cruel, and people of conscience around the world need to raise their voices in support of freedom of choice. (Shall I mention here the secular therapists who believe that sexual orientation is often quite fluid?)

The Restored Hope Network has posted this Call to Action, offering many practical steps you can take. And you can do what I’ve done on social media, specifically, challenging the ban and asking for people to post their testimonies of change. (See here for a Facebook post that, thankfully, has not been taken down. Some of the testimonies are very powerful.)

As for the questions I asked at the outset of this article, the answers are simple. People who are ex-gay and ex-trans are a threat to the whole “born that way” argument, the argument that says that gay (or trans) is the new black. By undermining that, we undermine the movement.

And that’s why is it such a threat.

(To watch an important August 1 online event, offering a sneak preview of a powerful new documentary called In His Image, addressing these very issues with biblical clarity and life-changing stories, go here.)

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.