Is that headline dramatic enough for you?

Since writing the four part series focusing on trade and manufacturing jobs (one, two, three, four), Jim Dicks at American Thinker added some interesting political information to the mix.

Steve Bannon, Jim Dicks wrote, has begun an

epic confrontation between the multinational corporations on one side (and their congressional politicians, to whom they have lavishly contributed) and the newly emerging Republican Party of the Little People on the other — the forgotten working class, championed by Donald Trump in his successful presidential run.

It is a crucial struggle, where, as stated best by Sundance of The Conservative Treehouse, “trillions of dollars are at stake.” It is a battle that will determine who controls the future wealth of the United States, where the manufacturing sector and portions of the service industry sector of the U.S. economy have been eroded, stripped from the United States and moved to cheap-labor countries, leaving behind a massive loss of jobs and wealth.

The goal of the Trump agenda is simply to “generate an economic renaissance with a dramatic infusion of wealth for middle-class workers,” Dicks wrote. President Trump “rejects the notion that the demise of U.S. manufacturing is inevitable and irreversible.”

Bannon believes that if we are to revitalize our moribund Obama economy and safeguard our future against the implications of profound technological advancements coming over the horizon, this economic and political reformation is essential. Corruption through bribery of our political class by multinationals must be stopped. Macro-level decisions concerning our national wealth must include the workers who build it and whose very future is at stake.

Bannon asked what’s more powerful: “the money of the corporatists or the muscle of the people”? His bet is on the people.

In part four, in my article I hyperlinked the words “creative destruction” to a definition of it at the website of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I’ve bolded the text on a key passage:

[Creative destruction] has become the centerpiece for modern thinking on how economies evolve.

[Economists who adopt the summary] of the free market’s ceaseless churning echo capitalism’s critics in acknowledging that lost jobs, ruined companies, and vanishing industries are inherent parts of the growth system. The saving grace comes from recognizing the good that comes from the turmoil. Over time, societies that allow creative destruction to operate grow more productive and richer; their citizens see the benefits of new and better products, shorter work weeks, better jobs, and higher living standards.

Herein lies the paradox of progress. A society cannot reap the rewards of creative destruction without accepting that some individuals might be worse off, not just in the short term, but perhaps forever. At the same time, attempts to soften the harsher aspects of creative destruction by trying to preserve jobs or protect industries will lead to stagnation and decline, short-circuiting the march of progress. … The process of creating new industries does not go forward without sweeping away the preexisting order.

It seems to me that the question of how many people will be permanently worse off is key. The page goes on to give helpful examples of how progress did away with jobs as technology evolved.

In a nutshell, cars wrecked the horse and buggy industry, planes lowered the number of people travelling by train, and “all this creation did not come without destruction.”

“Each new mode of transportation took a toll on existing jobs and industries”:

What occurred in the transportation sector has been repeated in one industry after another—in many cases, several times in the same industry. Creative destruction recognizes change as the one constant in capitalism. Sawyers, masons, and miners were among the top thirty American occupations in 1900. A century later, they no longer rank among the top thirty; they have been replaced by medical technicians, engineers, computer scientists, and others.

Technology roils job markets, as Schumpeter conveyed in coining the phrase “technological unemployment” E-mail, word processors, answering machines, and other modern office technology have cut the number of secretaries but raised the ranks of programmers. The birth of the Internet spawned a need for hundreds of thousands of webmasters, an occupation that did not exist as recently as 1990. LASIK surgery often lets consumers throw away their glasses, reducing visits to optometrists and opticians but increasing the need for ophthalmologists. Digital cameras translate to fewer photo clerks.

Companies show the same pattern of destruction and rebirth. Only five of today’s hundred largest public companies were among the top hundred in 1917. Half of the top hundred of 1970 had been replaced in the rankings by 2000.

That’s all easy to understand. What’s not easy to understand is — what happens if not enough new industries arise to provide the kind of good-paying jobs that are lost with the elimination of the old jobs?

Change is happening faster and faster — technology no longer creeps forward, it leaps, leaving many behind. We all know and live that. But many of those manufacturing jobs lost over the past few decades weren’t lost due to technology or progress. Many were just shipped overseas.

It is a fundamental fact: manufacturing is an important aspect of a nation’s wealth. Equally important is the fact that our nation’s policies should be geared towards benefiting our nation’s people. Like it or not, there is a segment of the population who will never write computer code or start a small business. What do we do about them? I don’t pretend to have the answer. The search for that answer is why the Illinois Family Institute decided to bring attention to John Westberg’s proposal. It is also why IFI provides this list of articles for anyone who wants to learn more on the topic.

As noted, click here for the rest of the articles on Trade and Manufacturing that I easily collected for about two years. Depending upon the value of anything new that I see, I will add links to the list.

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The above title was used as a subheading in this article by Elizabeth Kantor at The Federalist: “Donald Trump Isn’t Fighting a Culture War but A Cultural Revolution.”

Underneath that subheading, Kantor writes:

[T]he genius and the miracle of America was that our identity as Americans was once inextricably tied to abstract principles about the rights of all human beings. To identify as an American was to believe in the Bill of Rights. To be an American patriot was to defend the God-given equality of all men as articulated in the Declaration of Independence.

The rights the American revolutionaries fought for were an inherent part of themselves, always referred to as “the rights of Englishmen.” It was identity politics, but fought for an identity bound up in natural rights, one that could eventually be adopted by every American of every national origin, ethnicity, and race.

That American identity is what the cultural revolutionaries are determined to replace with their very different identity politics.

Kantor asks two questions without answering them:

“Is there a way out of the newly gelling mutually hostile tribal identities that are replacing it? Can we ever climb back into an e pluribus unum identification with all Americans as members of one tribe?”

She closes with this: “[R]eforging that American identity seems to be what Trump is trying for: “We are all Americans first.”

Let’s look at two other articles where the writers partially answer Kantor’s question, expressing doubt that the Leftists’ use of identity politics can succeed. First, is Dr. Michael Brown, focusing on the identity of the hour, “transgenderism.”

In his article, “Why Transgender Activism Will Not Succeed in Changing America,” Brown writes:

Transgender activism will never succeed in reshaping our society for one simple reason: It is not natural. Biological differences are too deeply instilled in the human race. Male-female distinctives are too obvious and real. It is futile to declare war on gender.

It is one thing to be asked to empathize with those who struggle with gender identity confusion. It is another thing to declare that biological categories do not determine reality.

It is one thing to recognize that some people do not fall within the normal, male-female spectrum due to genetic abnormalities. It is another thing to claim that gender is whatever you perceive it to be.

After listing examples where people and organizations are sticking to common sense over this new identity of the day fad, Brown writes, “Will the whole world be turned upside down because of the confusion and sensitivities of less than 1 percent of the population?” “Watch and see,” he says, “The pushback against transgender activism will continue.”

Our last article is from Linda Harvey. In her post, “Is Gender Confusion Insanity Finally Beginning to Wane?,” she asks, “Do we dare hope that a new era of sanity is dawning?” Regarding the growing trend towards the reversal of sex “reassignment” surgery, Linda Harvey writes:

Such an option still offends many on the left, who dig in their heels and continue to push unisex bathroom laws and bans on therapy to overcome “transgender” delusions and same-sex attraction.

An increase in people seeking a return to their birth gender is reported in Europe. A renowned “sex change” surgeon in Serbia noted more requests for complicated and expensive reversal surgery.

A young boy in Australia recently received international publicity for wanting to be a boy. After several years of estrogen, he no longer wants to pretend to be a girl.

Why is this controversial? The default response of every human should be a longing to be that woman or man as nature intended.

Harvey asks another question: “Aren’t liberals supposed to be flexible?” “But a rigid adherence to identity politics,” Harvey notes, “ties the typical leftist in notes”:

Secretly, a social liberal is often a mess, exhausted from the convoluted mental and spiritual energy needed to reconcile the nonsense of pretense.

Ouch. Linda Harvey gives examples where Leftists are unwilling to give up on their goal of doing away with the reality of biological sex, but then writes:

And yet promising glimmers of truth keep emerging. In Miami-Dade County, a measure to prohibit counseling of minors to overcome same-sex attractions was just defeated after hard work by the Christian Family Coalition and other pro-family advocates.

. . .

This victory comes as good news after a long series of defeats for common sense on this issue. Numerous cities and states have passed laws limiting counseling for minors who want to embrace the natural design of their heterosexual bodies as male or female.

Since “Attorney General Sessions ended the Eric Holder/Obama imaginary application of Title VII sex discrimination law to those with gender confusion, Harvey writes, “Activist groups are expressing fury that their fascist fantasy is ending.” Ouch again.

Read more:  Series: Identity Politics & Paraphilias

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The Leftist mainstream press has been on its heels for months now for its biased and erroneous reporting. The more it’s criticized for biased reporting, the more biased it becomes while declaring itself unbiased. Next time Leftist journalists take (or fake) umbrage over President Donald Trump’s criticism of the mainstream press, pretending they think his criticism of bias is an attack on the foundation of our republic, or when a “progressive” talking head goes all middle-school snotty on a guest for his or her criticism of press bias, remember their responses–if you can–to these comments from Barack Obama and his water-carriers who routinely accused Fox News of being a de facto fake news network and shill for the Republican Party:

Obama:

“We’ve got a tradition in this country of a press that oftentimes is opinionated…. [Y]ou had folks like Hearst who used their newspapers very intentionally to promote their viewpoints. I think Fox is part of that tradition—it is part of the tradition that has a very clear, undeniable point of view. It’s a point of view that I disagree with. It’s a point of view that I think is ultimately destructive for the long-term growth of a country that has a vibrant middle class and is competitive in the world. But as an economic enterprise, it’s been wildly successful. And I suspect that if you ask Mr. Murdoch what his number-one concern is, it’s that Fox is very successful.”

“If a Republican member of Congress is not punished on Fox News or by Rush Limbaugh for working with a Democrat on a bill of common interest, then you’ll see more of them doing it.”

“I’ve got one television station entirely devoted to attacking my administration.”

Implying that negative views of him result from the misrepresentation of him on FOX News, Obama said, “They’re responding to a fictional character named Barack Obama who they see on Fox News or who they hear about through Rush Limbaugh.”

“I am convinced that if there were no Fox News, I might be two or three points higher in the polls.[T]he way I’m portrayed 24/7 is as a freak!” 

Obama refers to fictional character Uncle Jim to imply that FOX News is inaccurate: “Uncle Jim, who’s been watching Fox News, thinks somehow I raised taxes.” 

“Look if I watched Fox News, I wouldn’t vote for me either. You’ve got this screen, this fun-house mirror through which people are receiving information.” 

Again accusing FOX News of disseminating false stories: “…Fed by Fox News, they hear Obama is a Muslim 24/7, and it begins to seep in.”

“There’s a reason fewer Republicans are running around against Obamacare—because while good, affordable health care might still be a fanged threat to the freedom of the American people on Fox News, it turns out it’s working pretty well in the real world.”

“And if all you’re doing is watching Fox News and listening to Rush Limbaugh and reading some of the blogs that are churning out a lot of misinformation on a regular basis, then it’s very hard for you to think that you’re going to vote for somebody who you’ve been told is taking the country in the wrong direction.” 

Obama’s team:

Obama communications director Anita Dunn: “We’re going to treat them the way we would an opponent. As they are undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House, we don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.”

Anita Dunn also said that FOX News operates “almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party.”

White House senior advisor David Axelrod on This Week with George Stephanopoulos in 2009: “It’s really not news—it’s pushing a point of view. And the bigger thing is that other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way, and we’re not going to treat them that way.”

In an interview with ABC News in 2009, White House spokesman Josh Earnest described FOX News as “an ideological outlet,” saying, “We figured Fox would rather show So You Think You Can Dance than broadcast an honest discussion about health insurance reform.”

In CNN’s State of the Union, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel shared Obama’s view of  FOX News: “I suppose the way to look at it and the way…the president looks at it…It’s not a news organization so much as it has a perspective.”

Recently, Sebastion Gorka, military analyst and deputy assistant to Trump, was interviewed by CNN’s smug, disdainful Jake Tapper who was reduced to a mine-is-better-than-yours playground taunt in this exchange:

Gorka: The last 16 years, to be honest—disastrous. The policies that were born in the beltway by people who have never worn a uniform, the people who were in the White House like Ben Rhodes… helped to create the firestorm that is the Middle East, that is ISIS today. So, we are open to new ideas because the last 16 years have failed American national interests and the American taxpayer.

Tapper: There were plenty of people who wore a uniform who advised President Obama and advised President Bush.

Gorka: Not people as influential as Ben Rhodes who had a master’s degree in fictional writing. That is disastrous.

Tapper: Well, I’m sure [Rhodes] would put his graduate degree against yours any day of the week.

Yes, a news anchor actually said that.

In an interview with Anderson Cooper, Gorka called CNN on the carpet for the absence of substantive “reportage.” When Gorka asserted that CNN’s coverage of the White House was corrupted by the desire to increase ratings, a contemptuous Cooper responded, “Okay, I’m just going to ignore the insults because I don’t think it really gets us anywhere.” Apparently, an obtuse Cooper didn’t notice that in his retort he actually did respond to the “insults.”

After the interview, Cooper ridiculed Gorka, referring to him as the “Hungarian Don Rickles.” This from the anchor who in May said to a Trump defender, “If [Trump] took a dump on his desk, you would defend him.”

Cooper better never criticize Trump for lack of decorum.

MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle embarrassed herself as well. In answer to her question about where Trump would be during the August congressional recess, Gorka said, “[I]n the last 25 weeks, you’ve seen [Trump’s] leadership, from the Southern border, to NATO, to Warsaw, to the economy, to the stock market. We’re crushing it, and he can do that from anywhere.” For no apparent reason other than childishness, Ruhle responded, “Alright, well, the White House doesn’t ‘crush’ a stock market, but I do appreciate your time.”

Maybe I’ve forgotten, but I can’t recall hearing Special Report’s Bret Baier ever responding to a  guest like the adolescent Tapper, Cooper, or Ruhle did.

Some will argue that many of Trump’s tweets are inappropriate, distracting, or worse. Some will argue that Gorka’s comments were unnecessarily provocative (that said, it doesn’t take much to provoke self-righteous, brittle, thin-skinned “progressives”). Neither of those issues is my concern here. My concern here is with the hypocrisy, arrogance, and bias that now corrupt the Fourth Estate. Many on both sides of the political aisle believe a free and fair press remains a critical cultural institution. Many, however, also believe the absence of objectivity, neutrality, or impartiality in most mainstream press outlets (as in many other cultural institutions, especially academia) pose a danger to the republic, and that should concern all Americans.

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The shooting of GOP House Whip Steve Scalise and several other Republicans during an early morning baseball practice this month is as unsurprising as it was dreadful. Some of our deepest expectations were realized in that moment, as the furious rhetoric being churned out by the Left finally expressed itself in the ultimate form of contempt: an attempt to assassinate political leaders.

It wasn’t hard to predict where our national discourse was taking us. For years in the halls of Congress and in the courts, we’ve been engaged in a civil war. There’s been a marked increase in the use of the term “civil war” by those who spend their days opining on culture. It’s all been there but the shooting, and now we can check that box.

Until that happened, we all hoped that what was left of the original American spirit—the rule of law, respect for human dignity, a sense of honor, and love of country—would hold back the baser instincts of human nature. But we could all feel the rope fraying.

Even a cursory look at the last few years reveals a surprising amount of unfiltered and increasingly hostile rhetoric coming from politicians, entertainers, professors, scientists, philosophers, and other public figures.

It started with words

• Words from Barack Obama: “they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them” and “I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face.”

• Words from Donald Trump: “Anybody who hits me, we’re gonna hit them ten times harder” and “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”

• Words from Hillary Clinton: “You could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it.… Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America” and “Laws have to be backed up with resources and political will. And deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs and structural biases have to be changed.”

• Words from DNC Chairman Tom Perez: “[Trump] doesn’t give a s— about health care;” U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY): “Has [Trump] kept his promises? No. F— no;” U.S. Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA): “[Trump is a] disgusting, poor excuse of a man;” and former Clinton running mate Tim Kaine (D-VA): “What we’ve got to do is fight in Congress, fight in the courts, fight in the streets, fight online, fight at the ballot box.”

• Words from Fresno State University lecturer Lars Maischak: “Justice = the execution of two Republicans for each deported immigrant;” “To save American democracy, Trump must hang. The sooner and the higher, the better”; and “#TheResistance Has anyone started soliciting money and design drafts for a monument honoring the Trump assassin, yet?”

• Words from Trinity College (CT) professor Johnny Eric Williams: “I’m fed the f— up with self-identified ‘white’s’ daily violence directed at immigrants, Muslims, and sexual and racially oppressed people. The time is now to confront these inhuman a–holes and end this now.”

• Words from Art Institute of Washington professor John Griffin: “[Republicans] should be lined up and shot. That’s not hyperbole; blood is on their hands.”

• Words from former Rutgers adjunct professor Kevin Allred: “Will the Second Amendment be as cool when I buy a gun and start shooting at random white people or no?”

• Words from former CNN personality Reza Aslan: “This piece of s— is not just an embarrassment to America and a stain on the presidency. He’s an embarrassment to humankind.”

• Words from pop diva Madonna: “Yes, I’m angry. Yes, I’m outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House;” actress Lea DeLaria: “[O]r pick up a baseball bat and take out every f—ing republican and independent I see. #f—trump, #f—theGOP, #f—straightwhiteamerica, “f—yourprivilege;” comedienne Sarah Silverstein: “Once the military is w us fascists get overthrown;” and actor Johnny Depp: “When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?”

While the words broke an unspoken decorum, they weren’t much without action. Mobs gathered and marched with signs that read, “Become ungovernable” and “This is war” and “The only good fascist is a dead one.” Violent protests shut down presentations deemed hate speech on college campuses: Dr. Charles Murray at Middlebury College, Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos at the University of California, Berkeley.

From there it was only a few steps to acting out murder fantasies in the form of “art”: comedienne Kathy Griffin decapitating Donald Trump; rapper Snoop Dogg shooting Donald Trump in a “music” video; and a Shakespeare play featuring the murder of “Julius” Trump.

And finally, someone put these sentiments into action, unleashing a hailstorm of bullets on unsuspecting Republican congressmen practicing for a charitable baseball game.

As much as I regret making the distinction, the animus is almost wholly on the Left of the political spectrum. It is the Left that has become hostile to historical, traditional American values. It is the Left that has mocked Christianity and rejected our Judeo-Christian heritage. It is the Left that has labeled the rest of America homophobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, and misogynistic. It is the Left that accuses white people of having privilege that needs to be checked. It is the Left that has championed the principles of “tolerance,” “diversity,” and “inclusion” as the new American values. It is the Left that has embraced democratic socialism. It is the Left that has twisted American history and alters textbooks, traditions, and monuments.

John Adams once warned in a letter to the Massachusetts Militia:

Should the People of America, once become capable of that deep simulation towards one another and towards foreign nations, which assumes the Language of Justice and moderation while it is practicing Iniquity and Extravagance; and displays in the most captivating manner the charming Pictures of Candour frankness & sincerity while it is rioting in rapine and Insolence: this Country will be the most miserable Habitation in the World. Because We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

In other words, our society was organized on the assumption that our “moral and religious people” would govern themselves under the auspices of godly conduct and that if they didn’t, our country would become a hellhole. Does anyone doubt the truth of his statement?

He wasn’t the first to recognize that laws can’t keep people from wickedness. “When people do not accept divine guidance, they run wild,” wrote the wise man, “but whoever obeys the law is joyful” (Proverbs 29:18).

James T. Hodgkinson didn’t pull the trigger in a vacuum. He did what many of our fellow citizens seem to be calling for. Now that the barrier has been broken, is it only a matter of time before others unbridled by morality and religion step through the breach?”

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Let’s flash back 10 years ago…

This was a time when a majority of states had constitutional marriage amendments defining marriage s the union of one man and one woman – a time when support for this definition was bipartisan: from John McCain to Barack Obama, most politicians would confess their support for marriage.

As you may recall, at that time supporters of redefining marriage had a favorite talking point: what does my marriage have to do with you? Why can’t we live and let live?

This was a persuasive argument to a lot of people (And at another time, we can get into why this question fundamentally misses the point of why the government is in the marriage business in the first place).

“Live and let live.”

But once the U.S. Supreme Court redefined marriage, we can see they never really meant it.

Just look at the case of Blaine Adamson – a T-Shirt printer in Kentucky. In 2012, the Lexington Gay Pride Parade asked Blaine to print shirts for their event. As a Christian, Blaine didn’t feel comfortable promoting their message, so he declined.

This wasn’t acceptable to the Lexington LGBT community, so they sued Blaine. Blaine lossed his case in front of the Lexington Human Rights Commission, but last Friday, The Kentucky Court of Appeals overturned this decision, protecting Blaine’s first amendment rights.

Make no mistake, this is a significant victory. This is the first time in the country religious freedom has prevailed in a case like this – the first time the court understood our the issues that are truly at hand.  Blaine didn’t decline to make shirts for these clients because they were gay, in fact, he served gay customers all the time. He declined to make the shirts because they were trying to get him to promote a message he disagreed with, or in other words, they were trying to compel speech from Blaine.

If the government can force you to say something or convey a message, then you fundamentally do not have free speech.

Nation wide, the courts are full of these cases today. Here’s hoping this is the first of many “wins” to come.

Over five years ago, in 2012, Barack Obama was running for a second term. The U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, had been attacked by Islamic terrorists. United States Ambassador Chris Stevens, IMO Sean Smith, and CIA Contractors and former Navy SEALS Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were all killed in the attack. Yet, the White House and State Department, under the lead of Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, lied repeatedly about the nature and cause of the attack.

Americans were discouraged and mourning the loss of life. Conservatives were discouraged, wondering if our sound, life-giving principles would ever again rule the day and undergird the policies of our nation’s capital.

In that backdrop I wrote an article, “The Great MSM End-Run” in an attempt to awaken conservatives, Christians, to the tools we had available for messaging and coalescing. It was quite evident years and years ago that the Progressive hordes had effectively taken over media, broadcasting, Hollywood, and academia. How could we possibly win elections, let alone hearts and minds if there were no means of dissemination at our disposal?

But the truth was and is, we do have the means and the tools if we are wise enough and disciplined enough to use them. As I wrote just prior to Election 2012:

Why then so much palpable discouragement when real polls that are scientific show it’s a neck and neck race? Why do so many solid conservatives judge the election to be already lost? Because those downcast Americans are not engaging. Consider the Right has the team, we have knowledgeable coaches, we have an ace quarterback and a receiver with great hands and unstoppable wheels. But we’re only playing prevent defense and there’s no one cheering in the stands. Sometimes momentum is everything.

We learned this the hard way in 2008 as Obama excited the young voters, utilized new media, and won the election. This time around, 4 years later, that same youth vote is not as energized, and many voting blocks are polling with lower percentages favoring Obama. The Right needs a new play, an end run…an Elisha moment. The story of this Old Testament battle comes to mind: the king of Israel was surrounded by the enemy and paralyzed by fear. Elisha spoke in 2 Kings chapter 6:

16 “Don’t be afraid,” the prophet answered. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.”

17 And Elisha prayed, “Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

That’s where new SOCIAL media, especially Twitter, which is instantaneous and real-time, comes into play. We may all have credible, powerful information, but without unity and action despondency overcomes good intentions. However, if on a daily basis, conservatives are connecting with thousands of other right-minded folks, hope is renewed and the MSM thwarted in their game plan of overwhelming discouragement.

At about the same time, urged by friends across the nation, I wrote two Twitter tutorials that went viral. I encouraged Conservatives:

Contrary to popular opinion, twitter is not a mere megaphone for narcissists: it can be a cyber bully pulpit for enduring ideas and urgent announcements.

. . .

Twitter at first blush is a mere amusing past-time, and may even seem like a “time drain”. Oh it can be fun–absolutely!

But Twitter can also be a powerful media application, which used to good effect, can span the world with life altering news. I say we use it as though our values and Republic depend on it…and so they do.

Keep in mind, in 2008 when I first began using Twitter and social media to connect with my conservative, Christian friends across the nation, almost no one understood what in the world Twitter was or how to use it. News and other TV shows did not have Twitter accounts and did not ask people to “tweet” during their shows.

Now that has changed and we understand the dire stakes: our nation is floundering in sea of lies and immorality and desperately needs our message of hope and life.

That’s where the Illinois Family Institute comes into play. As written at the IFI website:

The Illinois Family Institute (IFI) is an independent 501c(3) non-profit ministry dedicated to upholding and re-affirming marriage, family, life and liberty in Illinois.

. . .

IFI works within the state of Illinois to promote and defend biblical truths to foster an environment where families can thrive and reach their full God-given potential to serve and glorify Him–making the most of the opportunities afforded to each of us by His gift of life and liberty.

Illinois Family Institute works hard to disseminate those biblical truths via any and all possible communication mediums.

You can connect with IFI, read articles, share articles, plan to attend IFI events, and get involved in being salt and light.

If you’re reading this, you already know about the Illinois Family Institute website. But there’s more — much more!

Follow and tweet with IFI on Twitter , watch and share their videos on Youtube, interact via the Illinois Family App for Android or iPhone , listen to the weekly Illinois Family Institute podcast, and sign up for Text Alerts — an SOS for critical information and alerts.

Wise King Solomon wrote in Proverbs 29: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”

The Apostle Peter wrote 2,000 years ago:

But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.

Those inspired words are as true today as they were all those millennia ago. Illinois Family Institute is doing their level best to be salt and light, to share God’s vision, and to help all of you equip yourselves with the answers for the hope that is in you.

Join us in this great venture, using the latest iteration of the Gutenberg press — digital and social media — to shine the light, to touch hearts and minds.

The Illinois Family Institute is completely dependent on voluntary contributions of individuals just like you.  Without you, we would be unable to fulfill our mission.  Please consider a donation to support our efforts!

To make a credit card donation over the phone, call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.

Audacity: unrestrained impudence, impropriety, gall

Last week President Barack Obama delivered his farewell address. Aside from his lovely tribute to his family, there were more than a few portions of his address that raised eyebrows, hackles, and dander.

For 240 years, our nation’s call to citizenship has given work and purpose to each new generation. It’s what led…slaves to brave that makeshift railroad to freedom. It’s what pulled immigrants and refugees across oceans and the Rio Grande, pushed women to reach for the ballot….It’s why GIs gave their lives at Omaha Beach and Iwo Jima; Iraq and Afghanistan—why men and women from Selma to Stonewall were prepared to give theirs as well.

It’s both audacious and offensive for Obama to compare the struggle of blacks for freedom from slavery, segregation, and Jim Crow laws or the sacrifice of soldiers fighting to defeat evil totalitarian regimes to the protests of homosexuals clamoring for America to affirm and celebrate homoeroticism.

Obama then boasted about his galling impropriety, spuriously couching it in language that appeals to our better selves:

If I had told you eight years ago that America…would win marriage equality… you might have said our sights were set a little too high.  But that’s what we did.

Obama and five U.S. Supreme Court Justices did not win marriage “equality.” They imposed a radical revision of the legal definition of marriage on the entire country. Equality demands that like things be treated alike. Equality does not demand that we treat unlike things as if they were alike. An intrinsically sterile union of two people of the same sex is as different from a union composed of two people of different sexes as men are from women (which is a difference that even homosexuals acknowledge is real, substantive, and profound). Homosexuals have always been free to marry. They’ve been as free to marry as polyamorists have been. They weren’t fighting for a right they were denied. They were fighting for the unilateral right to revise the legal definition of marriage.

Obama inadvertently alluded to this when he referred to “reinvention”:

Our youth, our drive, our diversity and openness, our boundless capacity for risk and reinvention means that the future should be ours. But that potential will only be realized if our democracy works. Only if our politics better reflects the decency of our people.

Obama has used every extra-legal and unconstitutional means at his disposal to force people to share restrooms, locker rooms, and shelters with persons of the opposite sex. He has undermined true marriage and eagerly endorsed family structures that deny children their intrinsic right to be raised by a mother and father. He refers to people who publicly proclaim their embrace of homoeroticism as heroes. He has vigorously supported the putative “right” of women to have the humans growing in their wombs killed and believes taxpayers should subsidize this barbarity. And Obama has the audacity to talk about decency.

Obama-the-Audacious continued his reverie in la-la land:

 “Now, I’ve lived long enough to know that race relations are better than they were 10, or 20, or 30 years ago, no matter what some folks say.”

Surely Obama jests. More likely he lies. Well, perhaps race relations are better than they were in 1996 or 1986, but are those improvements the result of Obama’s words and actions? More to the point, are race relations better now than they were eight years ago, before Obama assumed office?

In an interview that aired shortly before Obama’s farewell address, liberal pundit Stephanopoulos asked him  about his record on race relations: “The heart of your promise when you first burst on the national scene, bringing everyone together. And you look now and most African-Americans think we’ve gone backwards on race relations over the last eight years. What do you say to that?”

Obama responded, “I am absolutely convinced that race relations on the whole are actually better now than they were 20 years—.” An incredulous Stephanopoulos interrupted him: “Better now?”

Sly rhetorician that he is, Obama changed the question Stephanopoulos had asked. Stephanopoulos asked about the trajectory of race relations during Obama’s eight-year tenure. He did not ask if race relations were better compared to race relations in 1996.

Obama, whose honey-tongue (or is it forked tongue?) masks his extremist and divisive cultural agenda, continued:

…[I]f our democracy is to work in this increasingly diverse nation, then each one of us need to try to heed the advice of a great character in American fiction—Atticus Finch–who said “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Has Obama walked around in the skin of orthodox Christians—especially those who are being persecuted for their faith? While “progressive” business owners have the freedom to live in accordance with their deeply held convictions by refusing to provide baked goods, music, or dresses, orthodox Christians are sued for doing likewise. One dress designer justified her refusal to design a dress for Melania Trump: [W]e consider our voice an expression of our artistic and philosophical ideas.” Apparently Obama spends more time walking around in designer clothes and little time walking around in the skin of Melissa and Aaron Klein who lost their bakery business and were fined $135,000 because of their artistic, philosophical, and religious ideas about marriage.

Obama warned about the deep distrust Americans have of government:

When trust in our institutions is low, we should…insist on the principles of transparency and ethics in public service. 

When Obama entered office he promised his would be “the most transparent administration in history,” but in a scathing report for the Committee to Protect Journalists, Washington Post vice president at large Leonard Downie Jr. wrote that the Obama “administration’s war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I’ve seen since the Nixon administration.”

In this report, New York Times chief Washington correspondent David Sanger described the Obama administration as “the most closed, control freak administration I’ve ever covered.” And New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan said, “it’s turning out to be the administration of unprecedented secrecy and unprecedented attacks on a free press.”

Obama continues to foment division even in his waning days. He commuted the sentence of traitor Bradley (aka “Chelsea”) Manning who was convicted of 17 charges resulting from leaking 700,000 pages of classified or sensitive government documents to Wikileaks that, according to experts, resulted in incalculable and ongoing damage to national security. Obama commuted his sentence from 35 years to 7, a commutation that even Democrats oppose.

Obama also offends with his audacious reference to Manning as “she” despite the fact that Manning has not yet been castrated and despite the scientific fact that castration and cross-sex hormone-doping cannot turn Manning into a “she.” This is particularly ironic in light Obama’s supposed commitment to science and reason:

But without some common baseline of facts, without a willingness to admit new information, and concede that your opponent might be making a fair point, and that science and reason matter, then we’re going to keep talking past each other, and we’ll make common ground and compromise impossible.

Surely a scientifically-grounded, reasonable man like Obama knows that it’s not actually possible for Manning ever to be a woman. Even a child can tell that he’s a man in the empress’ new gown.

In his farewell address, Obama proclaimed “Our Constitution is a remarkable, beautiful gift.” Equally remarkable, his nose didn’t grow when he said it.

If he actually did believe our Constitution is a beautiful gift, he wouldn’t have abused it. In a congressional hearing, Left-leaning and well-respected constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley warned about the danger to the Republic posed by Obama’s abuse of executive actions to legislate:

The danger is quite severe. The problem with what the president is doing is that he’s not simply posing a danger to the constitutional system. He’s becoming the very danger the Constitution was designed to avoid. 

At the beginning of this article, I provided the definition of audacity—well, I provided one definition of audacity. There’s another. Audacity also means “boldness” or “daring.” As Obama at long last leaves office, let’s not follow in his impudent, at times even galling footsteps. Let’s step into the public square with boldness, constrained by our remarkable Constitution and unsullied by impropriety.

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Written by William Choslovsky

Imagine this: Upon taking his oath of office, President Donald Trump instructs his new attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to ignore civil rights laws.

How would that go over?

Before you yell, “But we are a nation of laws!” you can thank President Barack Obama and his prior Attorney General Eric Holder for magnifying this issue.

Basically, the Obama administration made it standard operating procedure to ignore laws they thought unfashionable or unworthy.

The best example of this is marijuana.

To be clear at the outset, I am neither pro-pot nor anti-pot. And, in fact, marijuana is not even the issue — rather, the Constitution is. Marijuana is just the symptom that exposes the problem.

As pieces of paper go, our Constitution has proved remarkably durable, as it has structured our democracy for more than two centuries.

Old news now, marijuana laws are sweeping the country. More than half the states, including Illinois, have legalized some form of marijuana use.

But there is one little problem. Long ago Congress passed a law making marijuana, in all forms, illegal. No exceptions. Whether wise or not, it is the law of the land, no different from the thousands of other federal laws on the books.

Given this conflict, the question arises, can state law really trump federal law? Is marijuana really “legal” in those states?

The short answer is “no,” it remains illegal under federal law.

The constitutional lesson is simple: federal law is top dog, and it trumps all conflicting state law.

If Congress says your toilet bowl can hold only 2 gallons of water, and Illinois passes a law saying it can hold 3 gallons, Congress wins, and your toilet will have only 2 gallons to flush with.

It is called the Supremacy Clause, and it is all you really need to know to be a constitutional scholar.

But amazingly, Holder — Obama’s first attorney general — directed the Department of Justice to ignore federal law. He instructed his deputies and the FBI not to investigate, arrest or prosecute marijuana growers and users in states where it was “legal.” In short, he told them to look the other way, the rule of law be damned.

Though this issue surfaces through pot, it is dangerous, even subversive, stuff — however well-intended.

As the nation’s top law enforcement officer, the attorney general’s duty is to enforce the law — whatever it may be — not to make law. In failing to do so, he violates his oath to uphold the Constitution.

At bottom, this is no different than a rogue local sheriff choosing to enforce some laws while turning his eye on others.

To be clear, our federal law banning marijuana might be terrible. But that issue is above the attorney general’s pay grade, as his job is to enforce — not make — the law.

And the irony in all this is that there is a simple fix.

If our nation’s pot laws are terrible, then Congress can, and should, amend the existing law. Heck, it could just repeal the law altogether. It could do so in five minutes, which the Constitution allows.

But the Constitution does not allow the attorney general to simply ignore otherwise valid federal law because he, or others, think the law unwise. That is what happens in banana republics where men, not laws, rule.

Long ago, President Abraham Lincoln said: “The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.”

And the issue — enforcing valid laws, even bad ones, until repealed — is not limited to marijuana.

The same analysis applies to other important issues of the day, including immigration laws and mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses. Good or bad, these laws should be enforced until properly repealed or ruled unconstitutional.

Obama, a constitutional scholar, understands this.

In fact, in 2014 when some liberal groups criticized him on immigration policy and called him the “deporter in chief,” he responded, “I cannot ignore those laws any more than I can ignore any of the other laws that are on the books. That’s why it’s important to get comprehensive immigration reform done.”

Yet when Congress failed to act on immigration reform, Obama tried to get his way through executive order.

“Executive order” is just a fancy way of sometimes ignoring the law.

To put things in perspective, once you start down this path, what if a state chose to legalize heroin? Or child pornography? Or better yet, it passed a law making federal taxes optional?

It is a slippery slope best avoided.

Importantly, this is not a screed against Democrats or Republicans. The Constitution is larger than both.

After all, if a Democrat today ignores pot laws, might a Republican tomorrow choose to ignore civil rights laws?

When you remove the politics, the issue and solution become clear: amend or repeal “bad” laws, but do not ignore them, as such is the beginning of chaos. Though some may scoff at these extreme examples, the underlying concept remains the same in each case: Our Constitution is supreme and must be respected.

William Choslovsky is a Chicago lawyer who appreciates selective enforcement of laws that might someday apply to him.

This article was originally posted at ChicagoTribune.com

The United States of America was founded as an extraordinary experiment in freedom balanced by an almost universal worldview — the Christian or biblical worldview — which supplied inward moral constraints and rendered heavy handed government unnecessary and even repugnant.

But today, over 240 years later, America is a battlefield of opposing worldviews: secular humanists who have no transcendent truth to constrain them, versus people of faith who still embrace a biblical worldview. That biblical worldview includes exhortation to all manner of good and godly works and attitudes.

But what of The Left? Those with no moral compass who subscribe to the situational ethics school of thought? How can Progressive leaders and gatekeepers motivate their followers? Simple: fear.

People, in general, are either motivated by love or fear. Many times a healthy dose of fear is not a bad thing: ask the parent who loves their child unconditionally, yet understands the efficacy of fear of consequences.

Consider the notorieties of The Left and some of their chronicled pronouncements intended to evoke fear.

National Review columnist David French writes of fearmonger Al Gore:

In January, 2006 — when promoting his Oscar-winning (yes, Oscar-winning) documentary, An Inconvenient Truth — Gore declared that unless we took “drastic measures” to reduce greenhouse gasses, the world would reach a “point of no return” in a mere ten years. He called it a “true planetary emergency.” Well, the ten years passed today, we’re still here, and the climate activists have postponed the apocalypse. Again.

In case you missed seeing Al’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, here is the film’s synopsis:

Director Davis Guggenheim eloquently weaves the science of global warming with former Vice President Al Gore’s personal history and lifelong commitment to reversing the effects of global climate change in the most talked-about documentary of the year.

An audience and critical favorite, An Inconvenient Truth makes the compelling case that global warming is real, man-made, and its effects will be cataclysmic if we don’t act now. Gore presents a wide array of facts and information in a thoughtful and compelling way: often humorous, frequently emotional, and always fascinating. In the end, An Inconvenient Truth accomplishes what all great films should: it leaves the viewer shaken, involved and inspired.

Notice the hyperbolic language — cataclysmic — and the ultimate goal of the movie, “An Inconvenient Truth accomplishes what all great films should: it leaves the viewer shaken, involved and inspired.” Shaken. Indeed. Trembling with fear. Now that’s some motivation!

Now consider the collective works and declarations of Hollywood heavyweight (pun intended) Michael Moore. Take a look at the PR description of Moore’s 2009 film, Capitalism: A Love Story:

Filmmaker Michael Moore explores corporate greed, the global economic meltdown, and their disastrous effect on American lives. As he travels from the Heartland to the financial epicenter of New York and the halls of government in Washington, Moore delves into the price the country pays for its love of capitalism.

Moore’s earlier 2002 movie, Bowling for Columbine, delivers a foreboding message concerning guns in America:

Political documentary filmmaker Michael Moore explores the circumstances that lead to the 1999 Columbine High School massacre and, more broadly, the proliferation of guns and the high homicide rate in America. In his trademark provocative fashion, Moore accosts Kmart corporate employees and pleads with them to stop selling bullets, investigates why Canada doesn’t have the same excessive rate of gun violence and questions actor Charlton Heston on his support of the National Rifle Association.

Leftist Moore crafts his documentaries to support his radical worldview: capitalism is unadulterated greed which will destroy America and the globe; guns and the NRA and Charlton Heston are evil and the cause of violence in America. Each of Moore’s films seek to instill fear in the audience.

Another purveyor of fear, Nobel Peace Prize Winning Barack Obama has the bully pulpit and the Progressive mindset to disseminate chilling, but fictitious, dictums. With the looming danger of Islamic terrorism, Obama dons his blinders and preaches:

Today there is no greater threat to our planet than climate change.

. . .

No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.

Secretary of State John Kerry warns:

It is [climate change], indeed, one of the greatest threats facing our planet today.

Even Veep Joe Biden gets in on the “scare-your-pants off with man-caused climate change doom” act:

Climate change is the threat multiplier.

Watch the video below with these and more scary quotes:

Now we all know we should live in fear and trembling of climate change, gun owners and capitalism. But wait, there’s more.

Slow Joe Biden warned the black community in August 2012, replete with his phony “black brother accent:”

[Romney] said in the first hundred days, he’s going to let the big banks write their own rules — unchain Wall Street. They’re going to put y’all back in chains.

Thus Americans can add Romney and all Republicans to the list of phobias. But, don’t put down your pen — if you’re taking notes.

President Obama decried flyover folks in 2008:

And when he spoke to a group of his wealthier Golden State backers at a San Francisco fund-raiser last Sunday, Barack Obama took a shot at explaining the yawning cultural gap that separates a Turkeyfoot from a Marin County.

“…And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

So there you go. According to Obama, working class Americans are bitter, God-clinging, gun-clinging, xenophobics who should be objects of suspicion and loathing.

Our universities have been indoctrinating students for several generations with this nonsense, instilling fear of patriots and what were once considered solid American values. Colleges advertise “safe zones” and decry “micro-aggression and trigger warnings.”

Oklahoma Wesleyan University President, Dr. Everett Piper, wrote an excellent rebuttal to all the PC/Lefty nonsense in his 2015 article, This is Not a Day Care. It’s a University!:

At OKWU, we teach you to be selfless rather than self-centered. We are more interested in you practicing personal forgiveness than political revenge. We want you to model interpersonal reconciliation rather than foment personal conflict. We believe the content of your character is more important than the color of your skin. We don’t believe that you have been victimized every time you feel guilty and we don’t issue “trigger warnings” before altar calls.

Oklahoma Wesleyan is not a “safe place”, but rather, a place to learn: to learn that life isn’t about you, but about others; that the bad feeling you have while listening to a sermon is called guilt; that the way to address it is to repent of everything that’s wrong with you rather than blame others for everything that’s wrong with them. This is a place where you will quickly learn that you need to grow up.

This is not a day care. This is a university.

Let’s face it, The Left is motivated by, and only by, feelings — not facts nor solid intellectual argument. With a worldview wherein man is both intrinsically good and, strangely, the enemy of the planet, the best mode of motivation is fear. Pure, unsubstantiated fear.

Contrast that with the Judeo-Christian, the biblical, worldview. Those who revere the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, those who read the Bible and try to live out its precepts. Those people of faith believe in right and wrong, in sin and mercy and grace. And they believe in absolute, transcendent truth.

If The Left motivates through fear, how does The Right, Conservatives of faith, motivate? Love.

There are over 360 passages in the Bible which tells us to “fear not.” And with great clarity the apostle John writes:

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love. 1 John 4:18

Dr. R.C. Sproul of Ligonier Ministries notes:

We are fragile mortals, given to fears of every sort. We have a built-in insecurity that no amount of whistling in the dark can mollify. We seek assurance concerning the things that frighten us the most.

The prohibition uttered more frequently than any other by our Lord is the command, “Fear not …” He said this so often to His disciples and others He encountered that it almost came to sound like a greeting. Where most people greet others by saying “Hi” or “Hello,” the first words of Jesus very often were “Fear not.”

Our culture may be a war zone as we wrestle against principalities and powers who wield fear as a weapon of control.

The antidote for that fear is truth and love. We must be apologists of truth, striking down the nonsense of the fear peddlers. As John Mark penned:

And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.

And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.

Sorry fearmongers, you don’t have a chance of winning: perfect love casts out fear.

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The Gates were just a couple of the two dozen award recipients who the president honored last week. By awarding the founders of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – which has reportedly been instrumental in population control though its vaccines that have worked to sterilize multitudes of African women – the Obama administration is sending the message that working toward the elimination of preborn children is a noble cause.

Awarding abortion?

Pro-abortion advocates and other critics contend that the Microsoft founder and his wife – with their devotion to promote and move the abortion movement forward – do not benefit society by eliminating innocent preborn children.

According to the official language used to describe the award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom is “presented to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.”

With Obama being a devout advocate of Planned Parenthood and its federal funding, many are not surprised by his adulation of the Gates.

The grant database of the Gates Foundation indicates that the nonprofit donated roughly $71 million to Planned Parenthood of America, the International Planned Parenthood Federation and Planned Parenthood of Western Washington from some time before 2009 through 2013. It is also noted that $46.1 million in contributions was given in 2012 alone to the pro-abortion organization, Marie Stopes International, by The Gates Foundation.

When introducing Bill and Melinda Gates, Obama gave them lofty accolades for their foundation’s humanitarian work in medicine – without mentioning its pro-abortion advocacy.

“For two decades, the Gates Foundation has worked to provide lifesaving medical care to millions – boosting clean water supplies, improving education for our children, rallying aggressive international action on climate change, cutting childhood mortality in half,” Obama announced. “The list could go on.”

Funding the abortion agenda worldwide

It is reported that the Gates Foundation plays an integral part in funding abortions on numerous continents around the world.

“Much of this giving is focused on Africa, Asia and Latin America, where abortion-providers like Planned Parenthood, Marie Stopes, and Ipas seek to overturn pro-life laws and sometimes even provide illicit abortion drugs,” Life News reports.

The Gates, the media and the Obama administration have done a phenomenal job touting the Gates Foundation’s work to preserve life and hide the fact that it has spent untold millions to destroy it.

“While Gates Foundation funds cannot be earmarked for abortion, the fungibility of money makes it easier for these organizations to provide abortion internationally,” Life News’ Steven Ertelt explained. “In other words, every dollar the Gates Foundation gives to Planned Parenthood for distributing birth control or building an abortion-friendly clinic frees up a dollar in Planned Parenthood’s budget to spend elsewhere.”

Furthermore, the billionaire’s wife has been witnessed on numerous occasions forwarding the culture of death.

“In 2012, Melinda Gates was criticized for promoting abortion and population control at an international meeting,” Ertelt pointed out. “The same year, she was criticized for hosting a Family Planning Summit in London with two of the biggest pro-abortion groups in the world – the U.N. Population Fund and International Planned Parenthood Federation.”

The foundation’s willingness to step in with funding when the abortion industry is lacking is also noted.

“More recently, the Gates Foundation is funneling more money into global programs promoting population control and abortion after a group warned that international family planning goals are not being met,” Ertelt added.

In the name of “women’s reproductive rights,” the foundation based in the Seattle area pledged to give millions more toward abortion.

“[The Foundation promised an additional $120 million to Family Planning 2020 programs that support] the rights of women and girls to decide when and how many children they want to have,” the news website All Africa reported last year.

The pro-abortion initiative’s press release announced that two of the largest abortion businesses in the world – Planned Parenthood and Marie Stopes International – are partners in the global Family Planning 2020 project.

Read more:  The Gates Foundation: Philanthropy Cloaked Abortion

This article was originally posted at OneNewsNow.com

Written by Dustin Siggins

Last week, the Obama administration enacted a rule that prohibits the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from contracting with groups that engage in “discrimination” against people who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. According to National Security Advisor Susan Rice in a speech on Wednesday:

This rule means that any organization that contracts with USAID must ensure that all people can benefit from its federally-funded programs, regardless of race, religion, disability — or sexual orientation and gender identity.  It’s a major step towards ensuring that American assistance is provided in a fair and equitable manner.

But “fair and equitable” have a specific meaning for the Obama administration. It doesn’t include the unborn. “Discrimination” is still permitted against the unborn — USAID has given tens of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups, and engaged in other anti-life policies.

It does include LGBT people. As Rice notes elsewhere in the talk, some countries punish homosexual acts with death, and a death penalty law was narrowly defeated in Uganda a few years ago. Her speech suggested that supporting the LGBT agenda is more important to the Obama administration than stopping the Syrian slaughter, preventing Russia’s advance internationally and protecting Christian refugees.

The Administration’s LBGT Pressure

Rice’s speech reflects how the administration has spent years blackmailing African nations over the LGBT agenda, demanding acquiescence in exchange for basic humanitarian aid. Many Christian leaders have refused to bow to the administration, but the pressure has continued. While some nations certainly have deplorable and inhuman policies, many times the administration has prioritized the LGBT agenda over fighting terrorism and stopping starvation.

She thanked the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and another group “who fight so admirably to promote equal rights and dignity for all.” Co-founded by Terrence Bean — who squirreled out of being found guilty in the alleged sexual abuse of a minor — HRC has targeted pro-marriage advocates to such a degree that a college professor told me he’s never sure if his family is safe.

HRC has also attempted to bully Johns Hopkins University into denouncing a much-cited study that debunks LGBT talking points about sexuality, and has led the dishonest-yet-successful effort to tar North Carolina’s HB2 “bathroom” law as bigoted and hateful. (The Obama administration has also contributed to this misleading state of affairs, with Attorney General Loretta Lynch comparing the very modest bathroom law to racist Jim Crow laws.)

Finally, after referencing the Pulse nightclub shooting this summer, Rice compared HB2 and state-based religious liberty laws to unfair and sometimes inhumane treatment of people who identify as LGBT in other nations. She briefly mentioned the cultural and legal LGBT fight in Indonesia, “governments in Central Asia and Eastern Europe” that are passing anti-homosexual laws and how that “in as many as ten countries, same-sex acts are punishable by death.” She then said:

And, in Syria and Iraq, ISIL has unleashed a unique brutality on LGBT people — dragging gay men behind trucks, stoning them, and burning them alive. ISIL works with chilling efficiency, often going through the cell phones and social media accounts of their victims to identify more LGBT individuals for slaughter. As we speak, the United States is supporting Iraqi and Kurdish forces as they push to liberate Mosul, where ISIL fighters were taped hurling gay men off of buildings.  As one Iraqi man testified before the UN: “In my society, being gay means death.”

Again, some of these laws are downright horrifying, and ISIS’ actions are the same. The Obama administration is right to condemn them, and put pressure on nations to change those practices and laws. But Rice’s speech shows that the Obama administration’s ideology on LGBT “rights” continues to go above and beyond what is right and just, instead giving state-sanctioned preference to the LGBT agenda over the rights of business owners, women and children.

This article was originally posted at the Stream.org

The pro-child-death regime seems to be kicking into high gear. It’s unclear whether they fear a rising tide of opposition to womb-killing or if they smell the blood swirling in the miasmic waters that envelop the world.

Children, always easy prey for uncivilized peoples, are perhaps at greater risk and more devalued than at any time in modern life. Homosexuals who choose sterile sex and yet believe they are entitled to children are acquiring them like chattel to be raised without mothers or fathers and in the midst of soul-killing sexual perversion masquerading as “love.” The Internet devours children in its black hole of child porn sewage. Muslim extremists starve, kidnap, sell, rape, and murder children. And baby-killing profiteers can taste the blood of children, and it tastes like money.

Let’s take a metaphorical boat-ride around these bloody waters.

The United Nations

On August 17, 2016, 435 baby-killing enthusiasts sent an open letter to United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and heads of all UN agencies announcing that they “support the proposal of the International Campaign for Women’s Right to Safe Abortion that you declare 28 September, International Safe Abortion Day, an official international UN Day.” Yes, nothing says “safety” quite like being slaughtered in utero.

One of the reasons feticide enthusiasts cite for an official International Safe Abortion Day is the increase in the number of annual abortions worldwide from 50.4 million every year between the years of 1990-94 to 56.3 million every year between the years 2010-14. Feticide enthusiasts want to ensure that the ghastly number of baby-killings each year won’t adversely affect the health of the babies’ mothers.

Planned Parenthood

Here in the Land of Lincoln, the baby-killing machine, euphemistically named Planned Parenthood, colludes with the perverse “Shout Your Abortion” (#SYA773) crowd to celebrate the so-called “right” of mothers to kill their unborn babies—oh, and to profit from the bodies of the dead.

Evidently, the $300 million Planned Parenthood gets from the government isn’t sufficient to sustain their “charitable” work, so there are several frolicsome fundraising events planned at the Empty Bottle in Chicago to make money for Planned Parenthood. The “Shout Your Abortion” peeps describe the collusion thusly:

The Chicago chapter of #ShoutYourAbortion (SYA773) and the Empty Bottle team up to raise money for Planned Parenthood, a vital American nonprofit.” [emphasis mine]

Just think, on November 4, 2016 at the Empty Bottle, you can enjoy an evening listening to the band Natural Child who are “Hellbent on finding the next beer, bong or girl to suck on” and make money for Planned Parenthood!

Or if you’re busy on November 4, on November 9, you can go hear MELKBELLY who “always turn that sh*t up to 11 whenever they hit the stage and we can’t wait to see how they kick this sh*tstorm into high gear tonight.” And in the midst of the “sh*tstorm,” you can help support the Planned Parenthood death squad. Sounds like a win-win to me.

“Catholics for Choice”

In case you missed it, on September 12, 2016, apostate Catholics spent a boatload of money for full-page ads in major cities across the country to promote the peculiar view that slaughtering babies in utero comports with Catholicism and with justice.

The ad read, “Public funding for abortion is a Catholic social justice value.” Such a claim reveals the organization’s profound ignorance. Social means, “pertaining to, devoted to, or characterized by friendly relations” or more generally, “living together in communities.” There’s nothing less likely to foster good relations in a community than forcing community members to be complicit in killing developing humans in the womb.

Justice means “the principle of moral rightness; conformity to moral rightness in action or attitude; righteousness.” I can think of few things less “righteous” than requiring citizens to fund feticide—well, except for feticide itself.

And since the Catholic Church opposes abortion, the claim of Catholics for Choice that public funding for abortion is a Catholic value is a bald-faced lie. But hey, if men can call themselves women, why can’t Catholic apostates call themselves Catholics?

“Luke, I am your…grandchild”: The myth of choice

An unsavory family drama is unfolding in Luke Skywalker’s family. The New York Post first reported that now-former girlfriend of Nathan Hamill, Mark Hamill’s son, has been pressured by Nathan and his parents to abort her and Nathan’s baby who is due in October.

After a failed attempt at a chemical abortion, the mother, Maegen Chen decided not to go through with another attempt, and the coercive efforts of the Hamills to have their first grandchild killed intensified, with Nathan’s mother Marilou telling Maegen that her relationship with Nathan would end if she didn’t kill Marilou’s grandchild: “With baby, you won’t see him; without baby, you will.”

As virtually everyone knows the word “choice” is a politically strategic euphemism exploited to conceal and sanitize what is being chosen: the unjust slaughter of a tiny human in the womb. Why not just say it.

The Hamill story exposes the myth that women are freely choosing to kill their offspring. The truth is that often parents, boyfriends, and husbands pressure women to kill their children.

Quite obviously the product of conception between two humans is a human, and no human has a moral right to end the life of another. Lack of full physical maturation on the part of one human doesn’t give other more developed humans the right to kill him or her. Neither does a human’s imperfections, geographic location, dependency status, nor “unwantedness” grant more developed humans a right to kill him or her.

Jeh Johnson’s family legacy

In researching the barbarous activities of the pseudo-civilized personalities stumping for baby-killing, I learned the sordid story of Dr. Kenneth Edelin, who died in 2014 and was the uncle of Jeh Johnson, President Barack Obama’s secretary of Homeland Security. Johnson, it turns out, comes from a line of  feticide-supporters and practitioners.

Johnson’s mother, Norma (Edelin) Johnson, was an associate director of a Planned Parenthood facility in Poughkeepsie, New York, and his uncle was the infamous Dr. Kenneth Edelin who was at the center of a famous court case over his gruesome 1973 (legal) slaughter of a baby boy during his 24^th week of development.

During  Edelin’s trial, it was revealed that the 17-year-old mother’s womb had been injected with a saline solution which ordinarily burns and poisons the baby and initiates uterine contractions that lead to the expulsion of the baby. The injections were unsuccessful, so Edelin performed a “hysterotomy” in which he made an incision in the womb (as in a caesarean section), reached in, and by hand separated the baby from the placental wall.

According to Edelin’s obituary in the Washington Post, “A doctor who witnessed the operation testified that Dr. Edelin had watched a clock for at least three minutes while holding the fetus inside the womb in order to ensure that the fetus had died before it was removed.”

Edelin disputed that claim and said that if the baby had been born alive, he “would have taken steps to get it to the nursery.”

Wow. Such compassion to be willing to take a baby whom he hadn’t successfully slaughtered to a nursery.

Edelin’s compassionate side was demonstrated again in 1975 when he told  the New York Times that “Nobody likes to do abortions…but the least we can do is make it safe and humane.”

Safe and humane for whom? For the baby boy pulled from the womb and suffocated?

Edelin, who became a hero to feticide fanatics, was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to a year’s probation. Unfortunately, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court later overturned his conviction, arguing that “only when a fetus had been born alive outside its mother could it become a ‘person’ within the meaning of the statute.”

Edelin went on to become chairman of the board at Planned Parenthood Federation of America.

So, parents, teach your children well.

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“Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe topful
Of direst cruelty!”
—Lady Macbeth

By the fall of 2017, kindergartners in Washington State will be taught to “understand the range of gender roles, identity, and expression across cultures.”1 For those unclear about what precisely will be taught, the kindergarten curriculum developers provide a helpful glossary that includes a definition of “gender”:

Gender: A social construct based on emotional, behavioral, and cultural characteristics attached to a person’s assigned biological sex. A person’s social and/or legal status as male or female.

• Gender expression. The way someone outwardly expresses their gender, whether consciously or unconsciously.

• Gender identity. Someone’s inner sense of their gender (see Transgender).

• Gender roles. Social expectations about how people should act, think, or feel based on their assigned biological sex.

Kindergarten now marks the starting point for government indoctrination of children into the brave, new, sexless, science-denying orthodoxy of the “transgender” movement, the end result of which is not a more compassionate society, but a society in which there is no public recognition of, or respect for, sexual differentiation.

In early May 2016, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) joined the ranks of the foolish by issuing guidelines pertaining to gender-dysphoric students in K–12 schools. Students who wish they were the opposite sex may now use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms, and on school-sponsored overnight trips, they may room with opposite-sex students.

These guidelines also apply to “gender non-binary” students who don’t “identify” as either male or female and to “questioning” students who aren’t yet sure which sex they would like to be. In other words, these students may make their restroom, locker room, and hotel room selections in accordance with their unstable sexual confusion.

In an effort to facilitate student confusion, the CPS “guidelines” mandate the use of Newspeak by faculty and staff, requiring them to lie by using opposite-sex pronouns when referring to gender-dysphoric students.

Exploitation of Title IX

One week later, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Education (ED) issued an almost identical edict, except theirs came with a threat of the loss of federal funds for non-compliance with what they euphemistically describe as “significant guidance.”

Elementary, middle, and high schools all around the country have been accommodating requests (or demands) from parents to have their gender-dysphoric children granted access to restrooms, locker rooms, and athletic teams that correspond to the sex these children wish they were rather than the sex they actually are. In a case in Illinois, a male student sued his district for the right to unrestricted access even to the girls’ locker room, which includes showers. Often school administrations are accommodating these requests without informing the parents of students whose privacy is being invaded.

The DOJ and the ED, through the intrusive Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which is an unelected collective of bureaucrats, have proclaimed that henceforth, in the section of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 that prohibits discrimination based on “sex,” the word “sex” includes “gender identity” and “gender expression.” Further, sex-segregated restrooms constitute discrimination based on “sex,” meaning that schools have no legal right to maintain separate restrooms for boys and girls.

There are multiple problems with this creative argument, the first of which is that the word “sex” in Title IX means sex.

Second, progressives themselves relentlessly assert that sex and “gender identity” are wholly distinct.

Third, Title IX specifically states the following: “A recipient [of federal funds] may provide separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex, but such facilities provided for students of one sex shall be comparable to such facilities provided for students of the other sex.“2

Fourth, neither the DOJ nor the ED has lawmaking authority, so neither can change the definition of the word “sex” in Title IX.

Exploitation of Title VII

But the Barack Obama administration had still more government power to wield illicitly in its quest to eradicate sex-segregation. Like the ED, the DOJ under Attorney General Loretta Lynch has declared that the word “sex” in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 includes “gender identity” and “gender expression.” The abuse of Title VII is far more dangerous than that of Title IX because it has broader applicability.

Whereas Title IX applies only to schools, Title VII applies to every business in the private sector with over 14 employees, to every government entity, and to every religious organization, including religious schools of every grade level from elementary through college.It even applies to churches, which are exempt only from the prohibition of religious discrimination. Churches and other religious institutions are not exempt from the ban on “sex” discrimination.

So if the Obama administration’s redefinition of the word “sex” to include “gender identity” prevails, even churches couldn’t prohibit gender-dysphoric persons from using opposite-sex restrooms. The decree—it can’t veraciously be called a law—would mandate that gender-dysphoric guests at church weddings or attendees of concerts and athletic events at Christian colleges be allowed in opposite-sex restrooms.

Since men are permitted to go shirtless on beaches, at pools, in public parks, in high-school swim classes, and on swim teams, there would be no legal warrant for prohibiting women who “identify” as men but forgo bilateral mastectomies from going shirtless as well.

Sex Segregation versus Racial Segregation

Progressives, who never tire of exploiting race as an analogue for sexual deviance, compare racially segregated restrooms to sex-segregated restrooms, again misconstruing the issues. Racially segregated restrooms were unjustifiable because they were based on the false belief that people of different races are ontologically different. Sex-segregated restrooms are justifiable because they are based on the true belief that men and women are different—a true belief that even homosexuals implicitly acknowledge when they say they are attracted only to persons of their own sex.

When announcing the DOJ’s lawsuit against North Carolina following that state’s passage of a law prohibiting de-sexed, co-ed restrooms, Attorney General Lynch said, “It was not so very long ago that states, including North Carolina, had signs above restrooms, water fountains and on public accommodations keeping people out based upon a distinction without a difference.”

If there is no more difference between men and women than there is between blacks and whites—as Lynch clearly implies—then how is it justifiable to maintain single-sex restrooms or showers anywhere? Why not allow men and women and boys and girls to share the same restrooms, locker rooms, showers, shelters, and hospital rooms just as blacks and whites do?

Lynch also suggested that the unwillingness of women to share restrooms with gender-dysphoric men is evidence of fear, disrespect, misunderstanding, closed-mindedness, unfairness, lack of compassion, unjust regressive discrimination, and the denial of equality. If that’s the case, then how would she characterize the unwillingness of gender-dysphoric men to share restrooms with non-gender-dysphoric men? If separate restrooms for men and women are analogous to separate restrooms for blacks and whites, then aren’t separate restrooms for gender-dysphoric men and normal men also analogous to separate restrooms for blacks and whites?

Justifying Deception

The left uses the little-known history of some cross-dressing men successfully deceiving women in restrooms as a perverse ethical justification for allowing men in women’s restrooms. The argument goes something like this: Since gender-dysphoric men in especially convincing disguises have successfully deceived and violated the privacy of women who don’t want to share restrooms with men, let’s just openly allow gender-dysphoric men to continue to invade women’s privacy.

That’s analogous to arguing that since some peeping Toms successfully spy on women through windows without being found out, there’s no harm done, so no foul. Or, since some husbands commit adultery without their wives ever finding out—again, no harm, no foul.

Others believe, however, that the deception per se is harmful. The use of ever-more-elaborate disguises—including chemically and surgically facilitated ones—by gender-dysphoric men to conceal their sex from women who don’t want to use restrooms with objectively male persons is comparable to peepers using ever-more-sophisticated technology to peep.

Questions for Progressives

There are still more critical questions that should be posed to anyone who supports de facto co-ed everything, questions that will expose the incoherence of the subversive un-sexing of America:

1. Why should gender-dysphoric men and women be allowed to dictate that restrooms, showers, locker rooms, shelters, and hospital rooms no longer correspond to objective, immutable sex?

2. Why should gender-dysphoric men be able to dictate that they get to use restrooms with only women, but actual women are prohibited from saying they should get to use restrooms with only women?

3. If stalls provide sufficient privacy to separate gender-dysphoric men from women in restrooms, and curtains provide sufficient privacy to separate gender-dysphoric men from women in changing areas, why don’t stalls and curtains provide sufficient privacy to separate gender-dysphoric men from other men in men’s restrooms and changing areas?

4. If there is a mismatch between a person’s sex and his feelings about his sex, how can progressives be certain that the error resides in the body rather than the mind? If a person has XY chromosomes that have commanded his brain to produce and release male hormones to which his body is able to respond, thereby developing normal, unambiguous, healthy, fully functioning male anatomy, he is clearly male. If he nevertheless desires to be—or insists that he is—female, might this not be an error of his mind?

5. If a man “identifies” as “bi-gender” and has appended faux-breasts to his torso while retaining his penis, should he be permitted to decide at will which locker room he uses in the altogether?

6. Those who suffer from gender dysphoria claim that their DNA and the genitalia it shapes are wholly unrelated and irrelevant to “gender” and “gender identity,” and that genitalia shouldn’t matter when it comes to restrooms, changing areas, and showers. They further claim they want to use restrooms with only those whose “gender identity” they share. So, why do gender-dysphoric men demand to use women’s restrooms? How do they know that the males using the men’s restrooms do not “identify” as women, and how can they be sure that the females using the women’s restrooms do “identify” as women? Is it possible that gender-dysphoric men are basing their restroom choices on genitalia? If so, why are they permitted to do so, but actual women are not?

7. Leftists claim that people who don’t want to share restrooms, changing areas, showers, shelters, and hospital rooms with persons of the opposite sex are hateful. If it’s hateful for women to say they want to share these facilities only with other women, why isn’t it hateful for gender-dysphoric men to say they want to share them only with women?

8. Progressives routinely mock opponents of co-ed restrooms, asking whether historical restroom practices that require restroom-usage to correspond to sex will also require “genitalia police” to determine whether restroom-users are in reality the sex that corresponds to the restrooms they seek to use. Well, in the mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up progressive world, will there be “gender-identity” police demanding proof that all restroom-users are either the sex that corresponds to the restrooms they seek to use or have proof that they have been diagnosed as gender-dysphoric? If not, how will women know if their fellow restroom-users are actual women, or gender-dysphoric men masquerading as women, or male predators masquerading as gender-dysphoric men?

9. If the views of Obama and Lynch prevail and gender-dysphoric men are permitted in women’s restrooms, on what basis could all other men be prohibited from using women’s restrooms? Normal men couldn’t be prohibited from using women’s restrooms based on their male sex because men would already have been allowed in. And normal men couldn’t be prohibited from using women’s restrooms based on their “identification” as males because that would constitute discrimination based on “gender identity,” which Obama and Lynch argue violates Title IX and Title VII.

The Final Chapter

The editorial board of the Charlotte Observer opined that “the thought of male genitalia in girls’ locker rooms—and vice versa—might be distressing to some. But the battle for equality has always been in part about overcoming discomfort.”3 This comment reveals what many Americans don’t realize: identifying as the opposite sex does not require or necessarily include any surgery, cross-sex hormone-doping, or even cross-dressing; the mere assertion of one’s “gender identity” is sufficient.

Of course, none of those actions can efface the truth of sex; all they can do is mask it. But Americans should disabuse themselves of the rationalization that sharing a shower with Caitlyn Jenner might not be so bad as long as his testicles have been given the heave-ho and his pesky penis has been tucked inside.

And this brings us to the final chapter in the dystopian cultural narrative the left is writing: the end of sex-segregation everywhere. The elimination of the binary. No more public recognition of or respect for objective maleness and femaleness. “LGBTQQAP” activists and their ideological allies seek to create a solipsistic, make-believe world in which nothing outside the self is recognized as real or meaningful. Objective, immutable, biological sex, which is the source of feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy, will become a hoary relic of the past. Even language will be co-opted to serve an ontological and epistemic lie.

A compassionate society helps those who suffer from disordered thoughts and emotions. It does not affirm confusion or facilitate fiction. This most profound distortion of reality and morality must be resisted. •

1. Washington State Health and Physical Education Standards (March 2016), 32
2. 34 C.F.R. Part 106, Subpart D, §106.33: www2.ed.gov/policy/rights/reg/ocr/edlite-34cfr106.html.
3. “Taking the fear out of bathrooms,” The Charlotte Observer (May 13, 2016): charlotteobserver.com/opinion/editorials/article77475147.html.

Tony Sanders, the chief executive officer of School District U-46 which serves 40,000 students in Cook, DuPage, and Kane Counties in Illinois, has declared that a middle school locker room is henceforth co-ed. He has declared from on high that a student who wishes to be the opposite sex may use whichever locker room his or her heart desires. Even more troubling, Sanders has further declared that no parents in the district may be apprised of the fact that their children may be sharing a locker room with an opposite-sex student. If it weren’t for one courageous school board member, Jeanette Ward, who alerted the community to this presumptuous decision on the part of the administration, parents would still be unaware of the practice that took effect on September, 6, 2016.

Opposition to co-ed restrooms and locker rooms does not constitute hatred of those students who suffer from gender dysphoria. And opposition to co-ed restrooms and locker rooms is not solely or centrally about the physical safety of students posed by close encounters of the undressed kind, although by high school such risks are not nil.

Rather, opposition to co-ed restrooms and locker rooms is driven by a recognition of the arguable assumptions embedded in and promoted by such practices. In other words, allowing co-ed restrooms and locker rooms depends on first accepting a number of controversial ideas about biological sex. Further, allowing co-ed restrooms and locker rooms necessarily means teaching those underlying ideas to all students. Practices and policies teach.

For example, such practices teach all students that feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy when engaged in intimate bodily activities have no necessary connection to biological sex. Co-ed restrooms and locker rooms teach all students that subjective feelings about one’s sex take precedence over biological sex in even the most private spaces. Such practices teach all students that in order to be compassionate and inclusive, they must share restrooms and locker rooms with persons of the opposite sex. Attorney General Loretta Lynch has, in effect, told girls the truly wicked lie that their desire not to share restrooms and locker rooms with boys is tantamount to the refusal of white racists to share restrooms with blacks. While many parents teach their sons and daughters that they should leave a restroom or locker room if an opposite-sex student enters, schools now teach them that leaving would be hateful and bigoted.

In a Facebook statement district CEO Tony Sanders explained his feckless decision:

While the vast majority of transgender students in our schools prefer to change in private, the needs of each student is addressed on a case by case basis.

State and federal statutes prohibit districts from releasing information about any student without parent permission. If we provide information regarding a student that would lead to the identification of the student without parental permission, we would be in violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and the Illinois Student Records Act. As such, administration will not share with a school community if a transgender student is utilizing the locker room of his or her choice.

Any student who does not feel safe in a locker room or a restroom should immediately contact the school principal. Schools can then work to address any concerns and, if appropriate, find an alternative location to address privacy or safety concerns.

Sanders must be kidding. He’s exploiting the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Illinois Student Records Act to rationalize not telling parents that their children’s privacy will be invaded by an opposite-sex student? If these laws, which were passed in part to give “parents the right to have some control over the disclosure of personally identifiable information from their education records,” are now used or abused to allow school administrators to prevent telling parents that their children will be sharing restrooms or locker rooms with opposite-sex students, then the laws need to change. School administrators can make parents aware of the decision to allow co-ed restrooms and locker rooms without giving student names. Withholding a general notification about the end of sex-segregated restrooms and locker rooms violates the rights of other students and their parents.

Here are a list of questions that should be posed to your favorite teachers, school board members, and administrators:

• Do you believe children who wish they were the opposite sex have the right to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms?

• Do you believe students have a right to use restrooms and locker rooms with only persons of their same-sex?

• Do you believe that parents have a right to know if their children may be sharing a restroom or locker room with opposite-sex students?

• Why should girls who are uncomfortable sharing girls’ restrooms or locker rooms with a biological boy (formerly known as a boy) be forced to use other facilities (as Tony Sanders suggested above)?

• Should “gender fluid” or “gender non-binary” students be permitted to choose on a daily basis which restrooms or locker rooms they want to use?

• If policies that prohibit “discrimination” based on both sex and “gender identity” are applied to bathrooms and locker rooms, on what basis could schools prohibit a non-gender-dysphoric boy (i.e., a normal boy) from using girls’ restrooms or locker rooms? If schools argue that he can’t use girls’ facilities, he could point out the inconsistency of allowing another boy—the gender-dysphoric boy—to use the girls’ facilities while prohibiting him. He could also claim that since allowing a boy who “identifies” as a “transgirl” to use the girls’ facilities, while prohibiting him—a “cisboy,” they’re discriminating against him based on his “gender identity.”

• Does physical embodiment as male or female per se have any meaning relative to modesty and privacy?

• Why is it acceptable to allow a boy who wishes he were a girl in the girls’ locker room but not the girls’ shower?

• Should objectively female students who “identify” as male be permitted to use urinals in boys’ bathrooms using “stand-to-pee” devices? If not, why not?

• Should an objectively female coach of a boys’ swim team who “identifies” as a man be allowed in the boys’ locker room while the boys are showering and changing? If not, why not?

• Should an objectively female swimmer who “identifies” as male but has chosen not to have “top surgery” be permitted to wear a boy’s Speedo for swim practices and meets? If not, why not?

• Should an objectively female swimmer who “identifies” as male and has had a double mastectomy be permitted to change and shower with the boys? If not, why not? If all the boys and their parents are okay with her changing and showering with the boys, would she be permitted to do so?

• Staff and faculty routinely use student restrooms. Should male teachers who pretend to be women be allowed to use girls’ restrooms? Should biologically male teachers who “identify” as women but choose not to take cross-sex hormones, cross-dress, or have any surgery be allowed to use girls’ restrooms?

If you can get your school leaders to respond, their answers will likely reveal several things. (And don’t let them get away with responding to any of the hypothetical scenarios posed above with the all too common responses of “That will never happen,” or “That’s different.”)

First, their answers will likely reveal that our public school leaders have not thought about the ramifications of the ideas embedded in the practices and policies they are already implementing.

Second, their answers will likely reveal the inherently contradictory nature of the leftist ideas they are implementing.

Third, these leaders will likely reveal that they do, in fact, believe that objective, immutable biological sex per se has meaning: Biological sex is the source of feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy.

Opposition to co-ed restrooms, locker rooms, and showers in public schools has little to do with the risk of sexual assault by boys who “identify” as girls (or claim to), though that risk increases in middle school and high school. Opposition to such subversive practices stems from the abandonment of any recognition of and respect for the deep meaning of objective biological sex. Leftists are persuading or coercing public schools to treat subjective, disordered feelings about biological sex as if they are of greater importance than objective, immutable sex.

One of the many troubling lessons I learned from working in a well-respected public high school (Deerfield High School) for a decade and sending four children through public school is that few public school teachers, administrators, and school board members are deep thinkers. That is not to say they’re not intelligent. Rather, they rarely think critically about their own assumptions or about the logical outworking of ideas. In fact, many become become downright angry if pressed to think deeply about ideas—particularly ideas that challenge their usually unchallenged dogma.

Another critical issue that I hope becomes evident by thinking through these questions is where the chuckleheaded ideas, practices, and policies—which are embraced by foolish administrators, teachers, school board members, and parents or tolerated by cowardly administrators, teachers, school board members, and parents—will lead. They will lead to unrestricted co-ed restrooms, locker rooms, and showers everywhere. Eventually, there will be no more privacy curtains in locker rooms, no more separate showers, no more accommodations of just a few gender-dysphoric students.

Those who prefer not to rock boats—including even the pirate ships that are carrying away their children—will assuage their prickly consciences by repeating the empty mantras “Oh well, it’s just a few confused children,” or “Oh well, they’re  taking cross-sex hormones and are going to have surgery, so they’ll look like the sex they’re pretending to be.” What these cowardly boat-steadiers don’t realize is that “transactivists” and their political enablers like Barack Obama don’t think “transgender” persons need to cross-dress, take cross-sex hormones, or have surgery (By the way, having “top” or “bottom” surgery does not transform women into men or vice versa). In the doctrinaire leftist cosmos, a “trans” person doesn’t have to feel distress about their biological sex. All that’s needed for a person to be “trans” is his or her claim that he or she feels like the opposite sex (or both sexes or neither sex)—today.

The logic of leftist arguments necessarily leads to the end of sex-segregation everywhere. Don’t dismiss these changes in practices or policies as trivial or as affecting only a few students. These changes affect all students, and they are profound. In fact, these changes are the portents of the most radical cultural revolution in modern history.

“Laurie’s Chinwags”

Have you had a chance to checkout the latest special feature we are calling “Laurie’s Chinwags?” For the past few weeks, we’ve been adding audio recordings (aka podcasts) to articles written by Laurie. We hope this new feature will serve the needs and desires of IFI subscribers. We would appreciate any constructive feedback.

Chloe Jennings-White, a 61-year-old research scientist in Utah who was a Fulbright scholar and has a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Cambridge University, has known since she was 4-years-old that she is different. She feels uncomfortable with her normal, healthy, fully functioning body. She experiences a mismatch between her physical body and her mental image of her body. In an effort to achieve consonance between her body and her “identity,” she has engaged in risky activities and self-harm, hoping that injuries would result in the type of body with which she identifies. For years in private, she used props to pretend she had the body she wanted, but now she engages in these behaviors publicly.

Chloe Jennings-White identifies as a paraplegic and is part of the “transabled” community. She suffers from Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID), and careens about in a wheelchair wearing leg braces. Jennings-White reported that in 2010, she found a doctor overseas who was “willing to help her become disabled by cutting her sciatic and femoral nerves, but she could not afford” the $25,000 cost.

Oh, I almost forgot. In addition to identifying as a paraplegic, Jennings-White identifies as a woman. Chloe Jennings-White is, in reality, a man, formerly known as Clive. (Interestingly, according to a 2011 study, 25% of those who suffer from BIID identify as homosexual, while homosexuals constitute only 1-3 % of the population.)

While most people who suffer from BIID identify as amputees and desire a limb amputated, some, like Jennings-White, identify as paraplegics. Still others identify as blind persons, as is the case of 32-year-old Jewel Shuping who ten years ago was able to persuade a psychologist “to pour drain cleaner into her eyes…an excruciating process that took six months to fully take her sight.”

Dr. Michael First, a Columbia University professor of psychiatry, sees gender dysphoria as an apt though imperfect analogue for BIID:

 “When the first sex reassignment was done in the 1950’s, it generated the same kind of horror that voluntary amputation does now….It’s one thing to say someone wants to go from male to female; they’re both normal states….To want to go from a four-limbed person to an amputee feels more problematic.” 

The medical community—though not all of its members—has decided that amputating healthy breasts and testes and providing sterility-inducing cross-sex hormones constitutes medicine, while amputating an arm is quackery. Isn’t that judgmental and “transabled-phobic”?

Yes, male and female are, indeed, both normal states, but being female is not a normal state for men, being male is not a normal state for women, and the desire to amputate healthy body parts in a futile quest to become the opposite sex is definitely not normal.

There are, however, differences between voluntary amputations of arms or legs and voluntary amputations of breasts or testes.

First, elective surgery for BIID—which doctors will not do—would actually succeed in transforming able-bodied persons into amputees, paraplegics, or blind persons, whereas elective surgery for gender dysphoria—which doctors will perform even on minors—creates only an elaborate disguise.

Second, with regard to gender dysphoria (and unlike BIID), the medical community has been politicized by the infiltration, badgering, and bullying of “trans”-activists who have compelled the medical establishment to at least publicly assert that the desire to be the opposite-sex is not a psychological disorder.

Don’t take my word about the political pressure effecting such a change. “Julia” Serano, a male “trans”-activist who pretends to be a woman, recently admitted as much. He said that our healthcare system is “gradually becoming our contemporary trans healthcare system” an “evolution” that was brought about in part by “trans activists ‘f***ing sh*t up’….[T]his change was facilitated by a more general trend within research and medicine — away from the paternalistic ‘Doctor Knows Best’ attitudes of the mid-twentieth century, towards today’s recognition that practitioners and researchers need to actually be concerned about, and seek feedback from, the communities that they serve.”

Translation: Science isn’t shaping “trans”-treatment. “Trans”-activists are.

The medical malpractice masquerading as “treatment” for those who suffer from gender dysphoria is actually fashioned out of the remnants left over from the Emperor’s new clothes, and the flimsy garment is unraveling before our eyes as research fails to support the claims of “trans”-activists and as more and more people experience “sex-change regret” and “de-transition.” Tragically, what is exposed is mutilated bodies (more on that in a coming article).

Even though BIID-sufferers report “depression, frustration, and ‘constant consuming agony,’” the medical community still opposes what I guess should be called “transabled-identity confirmation surgery.” Well. it’s opposed for now. Just wait till “transabled” activists learn some lessons from the “transgender” community and kick their badgering into high gear.

Maybe President Barack Obama could tell us whether public school students who “identify” as amputee-fluid should be allowed to park in handicap spots, use wheelchair-accessible facilities, and be provided with extra time during passing periods on the days they’re feeling limbless.

Presenting “Laurie’s Chinwags”

IFI is pleased to announce a new feature we are calling “Laurie’s Chinwags.” In light of changes in the way many Americans prefer to access information, we’re adding podcasts to our articles. Podcasts will accompany both our new articles as well as previous articles that are of particular importance and relevance. As we add podcasts to previous articles, we will republish them for our subscribers’ convenience.

We hope this new feature will serve the needs and desires of IFI subscribers, and we would appreciate any constructive feedback.