IFI was blessed to be able to interview Grove City College professor of biblical and religious studies and author of The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution Dr. Carl Trueman last fall when he was the keynote speaker at the annual Touchstone Conference held at Trinity International University in Deerfield, Illinois. His landmark book has been lauded by cultural critics from Rod Dreher to Ben Shapiro to Al Mohler.

IFI was blessed too by Derek Buikema, lead pastor at Orland Park Christian Reformed Church in Orland Park, Illinois who conducted the interview for us.

In this first four-minute segment, Pastor Buikema asks Prof. Trueman how America got to this place of cultural confusion and disorder. Trueman begins by examining the statement, “I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body,” which Prof. Trueman argues reveals how “feelings have been granted authority. … even over the evidence of our own bodies.” Prof. Trueman argues that both philosophical trends from 18th Century as well as contemporary sitcoms reinforce and propagate the belief that feelings define who we are.

In addition to intellectual trends, Prof. Trueman discusses “material” trends that have contributed to the ascendancy of instability, confusion, and chaos, over stability and order. Those trends include mobility and the manipulation of the human body.

IFI strongly recommends watching the interview with Prof. Trueman and forming small groups to study either The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self or its more concise and companion book Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution.

It’s astonishing that America’s first freedom—the most fundamental of all constitutionally protected rights—is threatened by cross-dressers and others in bondage to disorders related to sexuality. That which has made America great—a beacon of light to oppressed peoples around the world—is being dismantled by those devoted to sexual libertinism. The manifold deleterious effects of the rejection of biblical truth from the public square is transforming America into a place unfit for children, families, or a free and flourishing people. While political “leaders,” including GOP “leaders” cower in their corners if men in dresses look at them cross-eyed, those men in dresses gobble up the rights of Christians. Yum yum, eat ‘em up.

The newest salvo from a man in a dress comes from “Reverend” “Kalie” Hargrove, a man who now pretends to be a woman and who filed a Title IX complaint with the Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Justice (DOJ) claiming that Lincoln Christian University in Lincoln, Illinois violated his Civil Rights under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

Mr. Hargrove was a student at Lincoln Christian University when he made the free choice to begin cross-dressing and pretending to be a woman. As a result, the Christian university told him he had to withdraw from classes or face discipline. Mr. Hargrove then filed his complaint.

Hargrove is being represented by the Religious Exemption Accountability Project (REAP), whose sole raison d’être is to sue Christian colleges and universities that receive federal funds in order to force them to abandon their biblical convictions in deference to those who worship sexual sin and who demand that all Christians do likewise.

Ain’t gonna happen. The wheat and chaff will be separated and the chaff burned up. The lukewarm church will be vomited out. And REAP will one day reap the whirlwind that it is sowing.

Here’s REAP’s tricksy bit of legal sophistry:

In August 2021, the University discriminated against Kalie Hargrove (Student A) on the basis of sex (gender identity) by directing her [sic] either to withdraw from classes or face discipline because she [sic] publicly identified as transgender.

REAP and Hargrove are citing Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 as the basis for their complaint. Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex. Title IX says nothing about “gender” or “gender identity”—which as sexual anarchists continually proclaim are entirely different from sex. In reality, the socially constructed, screwball idea of an “identity” based on subjective feelings about one’s sex wasn’t even on the cultural horizon when Title IX was written and passed.

As Ben Shapiro, Ryan T. Anderson, and others predicted, the boneheaded decision written by Supreme Court Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch in the Title VII case Bostock v. Clayton County made inevitable a conflict between Title IX and Title VII. Gorsuch decided that if employers don’t treat men who pretend to be women exactly as they treat women, then they’re guilty of discrimination based on sex. As legal scholars predicted and leftists knew, Bostock paved the way for legal attacks on both women’s sports and Christian schools that treat people differently in some contexts based on sex differences.

As I wrote in 2020 following Gorsuch’s janky decision,

The crux of the argument goes something like this: If a company that allows a woman who gets breast implants and wears lipstick, stilettos, and dresses to work fires a man who gets breast implants and wears lipstick, stilettos, and dresses to work, the company has discriminated against him based on his sex and, therefore, violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Ironically, Lincoln Christian University was founded by Earl C. Hargrove. So, a Hargrove heretic seeks to impose his socially constructed heretical theology, which is misshapen by his sinful desires, on a university founded by a Hargrove Christian.

“LGB” and “T” activists are using receipt of federal funds as a ruse to force Christian schools to deny the Word of God on matters related to sexuality and marriage. Don’t be deceived. They will next come after Christian schools that don’t receive federal funds. If wolves in sheep’s clothing can’t infiltrate Christian schools (and churches) and transmogrify their theological orthodoxy into heresy, they will use the courts to silence them.

Slowly incrementally leftists have been engaged in a long battle to eradicate all public recognition of sex differences. The ideological weapons central to this battle include the heterosexual revolution fomented by the perverse Alfred Kinsey and Hugh Hefner, feminism, the homosexual revolution, and “trans”-cultism. Since this battle is at its core a spiritual battle, it also entails eradicating the church’s freedom to preach and teach. Leftists believe that identity defined by biblical orthodoxy must be subordinated to identity defined by disordered sexual appetites.

Every society has taboos and stigmas. Every society has shared public values and principles that shape culturally approved behaviors and conventions. Societies embed those values and principles in our laws, policies, civic practices, court decisions, classrooms, arts, and entertainment. These institutional incarnations of shared values and principles implicitly and explicitly teach what society believes is right or wrong, good or bad, healthy or unhealthy. Currently, those who hold conservative sexual ethics are stigmatized, shamed, excluded, and bullied.

Further, there are no societies in which individual freedom in all areas of life is absolute and without limit. A society is not a collection of atomized individuals united by nothing other than shared geography. Rather, societies are group projects in which diverse peoples are united by ideas, principles, and values. The question before us is which ideas, values, and principles will we uphold and teach. If leftists continue to dominate all cultural institutions, we will enslave future generations to leftist ideas and values that are shaped by disordered sexual appetites, instead of freeing future generations by providing sexual boundaries consonant with reality.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Trans_LCC.mp3

In the midst of our dangerous, steady descent into cultural madness, there are signs of encouragement as well. The morally-based, rationally-grounded resistance is rising. More and more people are saying enough is enough. Even the liberal media is giving voice to this dissent.

But this is what many of us have been expecting for years, knowing that the cultural radicals would overplay their hand. A push-back has been inevitable, as witnessed by these recent examples.

First, consider this op-ed published May 24 in USA Today by Chelsea Mitchell, titled, “I was the fastest girl in Connecticut. But transgender athletes made it an unfair fight.”

She explains that, despite being ranked the fastest 55-meter female runner in her state, time after time, she has been losing big races. Why? It’s because she is now racing against biological males.

As she wrote, “I’ve lost four women’s state championship titles, two all-New England awards, and numerous other spots on the podium to transgender runners. I was bumped to third place in the 55-meter dash in 2019, behind two transgender runners. With every loss, it gets harder and harder to try again.”

This is as outrageous as it is unfair, and soon enough, it will reach the breaking point as the world’s best female athletes lose to mediocre male athletes who identify as female.

Will the next Olympic games (if they’re held soon, despite the COVID outbreak in Japan) mark that breaking point? Either way, it is coming.

Second, there are now so many young adults regretting their decision to become transgender that the last episode of Sixty Minutes devoted time to the subject of “detransitioning.”

In response to this powerful segment, one which goes against the normal, trans-celebratory mood of the liberal media, Keira Bell tweeted, “I stand behind you all, I could see how difficult that was for you all to speak on. Honest, raw and powerful. I can only hope that viewers will pay attention and read between the lines. Stop the lies.” (For Bell’s own moving story of detransitioning, see here.)

Naturally, trans-activists and their allies are upset with Sixty Minutes for airing these stories. But you can be sure of this: if there were not a lot of young people regretting the tragic, life-altering decisions they made, Sixty Minutes would not have offered such a sympathetic treatment.

In February of this year, Newsweek printed the gut-wrenching story of Scott Newgent, herself a female to male  (FTM) transgender. The op-ed was titled, “We Need Balance When It Comes To Gender Dysphoric Kids. I Would Know.”

Newgent ended the article with this powerful plea: “I am currently building a bipartisan army to protect our children, hold the medical industry accountable and educate our president and the rest of society about the dangers of transgender extremism. We must throw our differences aside for a moment; I promise you, once children are safe, we can resume fighting. But until children are safe, nothing else matters.”

Newgent and I have since interacted several times, since she is totally serious about working together across ideological lines for the good of these children. The diverse coalition is growing.

What is tragic, though, is that it took two years for Newgent to find a major, secular publication willing to carry her well-documented article. What is positive is that Newsweek did decide to publish it. These stories must be told and will be told. As a result, the push-back will only intensify.

Fourth, a retired professor has been removed from an American Psychological Association email discussion group after challenging the idea that there are more than two biological sexes.

As reported by College Fix, “John Staddon, an emeritus professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, was taken off the Society for Behavioral Neuroscience and Comparative Psychology Division 6 listserv overseen by the APA. (This group is devoted to “studying the biology of behavior. Their focus is on behavior and its relation to perception, learning, memory, cognition, motivation, and emotion.”)

As Staddon explained, “This incident just illustrates the current inability of some scientific communities to tolerate dissent about issues related to sex and race. Psychology and sociology seem to be especially flawed in this respect.”

According to Staddon, what likely got him taken off was this post: “Hmm… Binary view of sex false? What is the evidence? Is there a Z chromosome?”

What? Only two biological sexes? Heresy! Ban him!

You can read Staddon’s actual exchange with the APA oversight for yourself and draw your own conclusions. The evidence is fairly straightforward, and the extreme bias against rational thinking is on full display.

But, as Ben Shapiro has often reminded us, facts don’t care about your feelings. And as Ryan Anderson and others have pointed out, biology is not bigotry. Reality cannot be denied for long.

Soon enough, more and more fair-minded Americans will say, “I did not sign up for this,” realizing that the slippery slope we warned about is much steeper than they realized.

They wanted to see equality and tolerance. Instead, they ended up with the destruction of the very foundations of our society, not to mention a new, oppressive Big Brother ruling the day.

So, the hour is urgent, and the sooner this cultural shift happens, the better. This is not a game we can afford to play for long.

At the same time, as our nation begins to regain its sanity, with God’s help, let it be with greater compassion for those who do struggle. Standing for what is right and true and best does not mean hating those who perceive things differently.

Let us, then, commit to doing the right thing, and at the same time, let us commit to showing mercy on those who are hurting. On with the truth-based, love-empowered cultural revolution.

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.

Conservative writer, podcaster, and attorney Ben Shapiro interviews Ryan T. Anderson, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation and founder and editor of Public Discourse on the dire implications of the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia that has roiled the political waters, including within the Republican Party. They discuss the likely affect of this decision on Title IX, speech mandates, businesses owned by people of faith, and more. To better understand the profoundly troubling nature of this decision, take 12 minutes to watch and listen to this important discussion.

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The New York Times has published an opinion piece by another young man who seeks to pass as a woman. In his essay, Manhattan, Illinois native Parker Marie Molloy tries futilely to mask the incoherence of his argument, which is that banning words passers don’t like from social media platforms is necessary to protect freedom of speech. His argument is composed of two dubious contentions:

1.) If language issues make passers feel really bad, they will choose not to speak, thereby undermining the free exchange of ideas, so conservatives need to get with “trans”-constructed Newspeak. In the mixed up, muddled up, shook up “trans” world, speech must be controlled in order to protect speech.

2.) There’s no point in debating the foundational questions regarding the meaning of biological sex, the relationship between sex and “gender identity,” and the meaning of language, so Americans should just move on to policy discussions.

What got Molloy all atwitter was public criticism of Twitter’s illiberal censorship, that is, its decision to ban “deadnaming” and “misgendering” on its allegedly open platform:

We prohibit targeting individuals with… content that intends to dehumanize, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful stereotypes about a protected category. This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals. 

“Deadnaming” refers to using the names passers were given by their parents at birth or by their adoptive parents. “Misgendering” is a pejorative term invented to stigmatize the use of correct pronouns when referring to passers. In case anyone has forgotten, pronouns correspond to biological sex—not to subjective internal, non-material feelings about biological sex, maleness, or femaleness.

To be clear, Molloy is arguing for banning certain words in news media and on social media, and worse, he’s arguing for forcing everyone to speak certain words—words that embody, espouse, and imply acquiescence to a set of arguable assumptions.

Specifically, he wants to ban “deadnaming.” For example, he would want banned from social and news media the name “Bruce” when referring to the man who won the Olympic decathlon in 1976. Already Wikipedia is scrubbing facts from its biographies. While Wikipedia still “deadnames” John Wayne and Elton John, it omits the “deadnames” of Janet Mock, Jazz Jennings, and Kate Bornstein.

And Molloy wants to force everyone on social media and in the news media to use incorrect pronouns when referring to passers. Banning “misgendering” means mandating that people use incorrect pronouns when referring to people who seek to pass as the opposite sex. But banning “misgendering” would mean mandating mis-sexing. Oh what tangled webs….

Despite its evident belief to the contrary, the “trans” cult has no intrinsic right to revolutionize English grammar for the entire English-speaking world to make themselves feel better about their false beliefs or disordered desires about their biological sex. And normal people who reject the faith-based beliefs of passers have no moral or ethical obligation to use their Newspeak.

Twitter means serious censorship business with this new policy. Canadian feminist Meghan Murphy has already been Twitter-disappeared, which pleases Molloy because Murphy “regularly calls trans women ‘he’ and ‘him,’” and says, “men aren’t women.” Molloy believes no one should be allowed to publicly say that objectively male persons are not women.

Molloy describes his subjective, internal feelings about hearing others describe human reality truthfully, objectively, and accurately:

I find it degrading to be constantly reminded that I am trans and that large segments of the population will forever see me as a delusional freak. Things like deadnaming, or purposely referring to a trans person by their former name, and misgendering—calling someone by a pronoun they don’t use—are used to express disagreement with the legitimacy of trans lives and identities.

There is no right to be free from encountering ideas that we will find discomfiting—particularly in an open society committed to free speech. Molloy has a right to pretend he is a woman, and others have a right to acknowledge he is a man. He has a right to ask that others refer to him as a woman, and others have a right to refuse to speak lies. Molloy has no right to mandate that others pretend along with him that men can be women.

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh points out the problems with pronoun diktats, which he opposes:

[W]hat if some people insist that their title is… “Your Holiness”?… [P]resumably the same logic that applies to gender-related self-chosen titles would apply to religion-related self-chosen titles. Both sex and religious discrimination are, after all, prohibited by the same laws…. The analogy [to “gender”-related pronoun mandates] would be if the government demanded that people have to be addressed using their own preferred race- or religion-linked titles—hypothetically, enforcing people’s demands that “you need to use the title ‘Sun Person’ when you refer to me, because I’m black,” or “you need to use the title ‘rav’ with me because I’m Jewish,” or “you need to use the title ‘friend’ with me because I’m a Quaker,” or “you need to address me as ‘thee’ rather than ‘you’ because I’m a Quaker.” 

While Molloy might find it degrading that others reject his faith-based assumptions about the nature, value, and meaning of biological sex, others find it degrading to be forced to pretend that his assumptions are true and good by being forced to use deceitful language.

Molloy muddies up the murky rhetorical waters even more when he claims that grammatically correct pronouns are “used to express disagreement with the legitimacy of trans lives and identities.” I can’t discern his meaning in the murk, so I’ll try to explain with clarity the real reasons grammatically correct pronouns are used.

Pronouns correspond to and denote objective biological sex, which has profound meaning. Sexual differentiation is the source of feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy when undressing and engaged in private bodily functions. Sexual differentiation is also foundational to marriage, childbearing, and childrearing. It is foundational to Judaism and Christianity. It is foundational to single-sex schools and competitive athletics. It is foundational to law enforcement and criminal justice, including prison assignments and public decency laws. It is foundational to health care. Sexual differentiation is real, and it matters. Using incorrect pronouns to refer to “trans”-identifying persons constitutes lying about an objective and deeply meaningful ontological reality. Using grammatically correct pronouns does not deny the existence of people who wish they had been born the opposite sex. It denies that they can be the sex they are not.

Molloy argues that those opposed to mis-sexing “see themselves as truth-tellers fighting against political correctness run amok.” He then ironically asserts that “voicing one’s personal ‘truth’ does just one thing: It shuts down conversation.” Did he hear himself?

Those who oppose incorrect-pronoun usage are not claiming “personal ‘truth.’” They’re acknowledging objective, scientific truth. It is Molloy who is voicing his “personal truth,” and quite literally trying to silence speech.

The ironies keep piling up. Next Molloy describes the absence of pronoun mandates as constituting a “content free-for-all” that “chills speech by allowing the dominant to control the parameters of debate, never letting discussion proceed past the pedantic obsession with names and pronouns.”

First, can there be better evidence that it is “trans”-cultists who have a pedantic obsession with pronouns than Molloy’s essay? Molloy demands ad nauseum which pronouns others must speak.

Second, Molloy’s argument here is a classic illustration of a question-begging fallacy. Pronoun-usage is the debate. To assert that everyone should just move on to the real debate assumes the proposed grammar revolution has been debated and settled. Just move on, you dominant conservatives, there’s nothing to debate here.

Molloy explains why he is reluctant to appear on television:

I wonder whether I’ll be able to discuss the day’s topic or whether I’m going to get roped into a debate over my own existence…. If this isn’t harassment, I don’t know what is.

How would this roping happen? Is Molloy suggesting that if a host or moderator were to use grammatically correct pronouns, Molloy couldn’t continue discussing the day’s topic? Why not? Would Molloy’s pedantic obsession with correctly sexed pronouns result in his refusal to discuss the day’s topic? If that’s what he meant, then he wouldn’t be “roped.” He would be tying himself up.

Molloy asserts that the use of grammatically correct (i.e., correctly sexed) pronouns constitutes harassment. But since mis-sexed pronouns embody moral, ontological, and political views, Molloy is implying that comity and respect require affirming all the beliefs and desires of others. Resist Molloy’s desires and stand guilty of harassment. Let’s add “harassment” to the growing list of terms the “LGBTQ” lexical pillagers have redefined.

Others view language mandates as harassment, and when fines or imprisonment is imposed for non-compliance, as has been done in New York City and California, the free flow of ideas is really impeded.

Molloy argues absurdly that,

Aside from the harm it does to trans people, it also impedes the free flow of ideas and debate, in the same way that conservatives often accuse student protesters of shutting down speech on college campuses. Sometimes, as the logic behind the campus speaker argument would dictate, we have to set parameters on speech if we want to actually have a debate on the issues.

By “it” in “it also impedes the free flow of ideas,” Molloy is referring (obsessively) to pronouns, suggesting that the refusal of television hosts to capitulate to his language rules—capitulation that would entail lying—is analogous to protesters shouting down speakers. Molloy says the use of pronouns he doesn’t like impedes the free flow of ideas and debates “in the say way” that drowning out speakers does. Really? In Molloy’s hypothetical television scenario, he chooses not to speak because he feels bad, whereas conservatives are trying to speak but being drowned out or disinvited.

Despite not establishing any points of correspondence between undesired pronoun-usage and screaming protestors or between his choice not to speak and conservative speakers’ inability to speak, Molloy goes on to say that what we’ve learned from these two (wholly different) scenarios is that we must set debate parameters. And the parameters Molloy thinks are not only just but necessary entail—you guessed it—acceding to Molloy’s begged question.

Molloy tries and fails again to construct a sound analogy. He points to an editorial in which Ben Shapiro argued that discussions about whether Trump’s actions or statements are racist are faulty if they start from the premise that he’s racist and, therefore, everything he says and does is racist. Shapiro says, “Perhaps Trump is a racist. Perhaps not.… But we can’t have a productive conversation that starts from the premise that Trump is a racist overall…. That conversation is about insults, not truth.”

Molloy responds,

Just as we can’t actually address the merits of any particular policy proposed by Mr. Trump if our focus is solely on the man himself, we can’t address the merits of policies that affect trans people if debate starts from the premise that trans people are and will always be whatever happens to be stamped on our original birth certificates. And as Mr. Shapiro notes, while there may or may not be truth to the statement that Mr. Trump is a racist, any discussion had through that lens will be “about insults, not truth.”

Molloy seems not to understand Shapiro’s point. Shapiro isn’t saying “Ignore the man. Just pay attention to his statements and policies.” He’s saying that presuming a character flaw—something we can’t know and is subjective—is unproductive. Evaluate instead, his statements and words.

The difference with the “trans” issue is that the premise Molloy wants us to elide is not an assumption about a character flaw. Being a biological male is a reality and saying so is not an insult.

The premise is a claim about the reality and meaning of an objective, constitutive feature of human beings and its meaning. The policies that Molloy prefers to discuss depend on answering the questions he wants to beg.

Molloy concludes by one last time implicitly begging readers to beg the question “Can men be women?” He introduces the Trump Administration’s possible clarification that the word “sex” in federal anti-discrimination policy refers to biological sex, a clarification that the “trans” cult ludicrously contends defines them out of existence. Molloy complained about the ensuing debate between “trans” cultists who oppose the change and conservatives who like it:

[T]he focus was almost universally on whether or not trans women are actually women and trans men are actually men. Rather than having a robust discussion about what practical effects a change to the Department of Health and Human Services definition of sex and gender might have… we found ourselves mired in the same stalemate.

Molloy desperately wants Americans to forgo a robust discussion of whether men can be women. He wants instead and only robust discussions of the practical effects of accepting his assumptions about biological sex. He acknowledges our responsibility as a “democratic public” to “hash out thorny policy issues,” but Molloy asserts we must set “guardrails for that conversation,” and those guardrails are based on his view that “trans”-identifying people are “not concepts, ideologies or philosophical questions to be pondered.” \

What a crock of sophistry. While people are not concepts, ideologies, or philosophical questions to be pondered, the choice to cross-dress, cross-sex-hormone-dope, mutilate healthy bodies, sexually integrate private spaces, and mandate grammatically incorrect pronoun-usage are justified by concepts and philosophical views that must be pondered and discussed openly and freely. Molloy might not want to discuss it, but one of the “practical effects” that is coming is the eradication of public recognition of sexual differentiation everywhere for everyone.

Don’t gobble up the baloney Molloy and his ideological compeers are serving to compel surrender to their cultural demands. And definitely don’t mis-sex people.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Baloney-Served-Up-by-Pretend-Woman.mp3

Save the Date!!!

On Saturday, March 16, 2019, the Illinois Family Institute will be hosting our annual Worldview Conference. This coming year, we will focus on the “transgender” revolution. We already have commitments from Dr. Michelle Cretella, President of the American College of Pediatricians; Walt Heyer, former “transgender” and contributor to Public Discourse; and Denise Schick, Founder and Director of Help 4 Families, and daughter of a man who “identified” as a woman.

The Transgender Ideology:
What Is It? Where Will It Lead? What is the Church’s Role?
Stay tuned for more information!

Recently Ben Shapiro, writing for National Review, exposed a serious failure of lawmakers that partisan debates conceal. Partisan debates conceal that fundamental, first-principle policy arguments about governance are avoided like the proverbial plague by politicians of all political stripes.

Shapiro uses comments about health care from three prominent political figures, President Donald Trump, Senator Bernie Sanders, and Governor John Kasich, to illustrate that there is little principled difference between their positions:

President Trump wants to re-enshrine Obamacare’s two central premises: that it is the government’s job to make sure everyone has health insurance, and that health-insurance companies should therefore be forced to cover pre-existing conditions. Sanders wants to spend more money on the same two principles — or do away with the second principle altogether in favor of a direct government program. Kasich expanded Obamacare in his own state, saying that St. Peter would want government health-care spending expanded, and he mirrors both Trump and Obama in his central contention that there is a government-guaranteed “right” to health insurance.

What are these three fighting over? Whether to spend an insane amount of money on Medicaid or simply a crazy amount of money on Medicaid; whether to pay for everyone’s insurance through taxes later or today; whether to force insurance companies to cover services that are unnecessary or allow them to pare such services back to a moderate extent; whether to mandate that healthy people buy health insurance or whether to coax them into gradual single-payer acceptance via back-door fines. All of this matters, of course. But to suggest that this is a cataclysmic conflict over principles is idiotic. Democrats and Republicans apparently agree on health care’s central principles, they just argue over how best to implement them.

In other words, these are tales full of sound and fury signifying almost nothing.

Lawmakers avoid discussions of fundamental policies and principles

Shapiro elucidates what kinds of discussions politicians avoid and why:

[O]ur politicians generally elide the most important policy questions of the day — the ones that would implicate central principles. That’s because so long as they stick to the center of the road and then act as though they’re facing threats for doing so, they don’t have to alienate anyone — and they can rake in money.

Then Shapiro reveals the central conflict facing our republic now and the one from which our lawmakers flee with all due haste:

[O]n the hot-button issue of whether religious Americans ought to be protected from government intervention when they operate their businesses according to religious dictates — the single most important cultural issue in America today — politicians have been largely silent. What’s Trump’s perspective on the issue? We have no idea. Bernie Sanders doesn’t spend a good deal of time talking about it either. And John Kasich couldn’t be more vague. When politicians do have to sound off on such issues, they often run from the fray.

The next revolution

I would add another hot-button issue which implicates first principles and on which politicians remain largely silent: That is the Left’s reality-denying attack on the public’s recognition of and respect for sexual differentiation.

Never in the history of the world has there been a sustained attack on a proper understanding and recognition of sexual differentiation. What we are witnessing now is a cultural revolution the likes of which no society in history has encountered.

Because of the obsession lawmakers have with raking in money in the service of securing their re-elections, because of their cowardice, because of their intellectual incuriosity, and because of their ignorance, they are failing to address this radical and destructive revolution. And for all these reasons, our political leaders have no sense of the end game.

What is the end game of “trans” cultists? It is nothing less than the eradication of public recognition of sex differences everywhere for everyone.

While Leftists pursue their end game via strategic incrementalism, naïve, ignorant, and cowardly Americans incrementally capitulate. Some conservatives argue that if men who pretend to be women have been castrated, it’s okay if they invade women’s restrooms and locker rooms. It’s as if these conservatives believe that an elaborate disguise effaces the meaning of sex. Or that being unaware that an objectively male person is present where girls and women are undressing legitimizes their presence.

If that’s the case, then these same women should be comfortable with peeping Toms peeping as long as women are unaware of the peeping. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not suggesting those who experience the disordered desire to be the opposite sex are voyeurs. Rather, I’m suggesting that if being deceived about the presence of men in private spaces legitimizes their presence, then surely being deceived about the presence of peepers should legitimize peeping.

No efforts to masquerade—not surgical, chemical, or sartorial—can change the sex of humans. So, no matter how convincing a gender-pretender’s disguise, he or she should not be permitted in opposite-sex private spaces.

Our politicians need to know what the “trans” cult end game is and once they understand that, they need to have the courage to address it. If they are stubbornly committed either to ignorance or cowardice, then they have no business serving the people in elected office.

“Trans” cult beliefs

So, here’s what our politicians and the people they serve need to know about the “trans” ideology:

• “Trans” cultists do not believe surgery, cross-sex hormone-doping, cross-dressing, a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, or even the experience of gender dysphoria is necessary to “identify” as “trans” or to access opposite-sex locker rooms, restrooms, dressing rooms, showers, shelters, semi-private hospital rooms, nursing home rooms, or any other historically sex-segregated spaces.

• They believe all that’s required to “identify” as “trans” and to access opposite-sex private facilities is their word.

• They believe that one’s “gender identity” can change day to day.

• They believe that genitalia have no connection to maleness or femaleness.

• They believe that those who care about the genitalia of their romantic/sexual partners are “transphobic.” That is to say, any man who wants his sexual partner to be an objectively female person with female anatomy is “transphobic.” And any homosexual man who wants his sexual partner to be objectively male with male anatomy is “transphobic.” (This is getting “trans” cultists in hot water with the homosexual community.)

• They believe that sex-segregated private spaces are intrinsically and unjustly discriminatory. They believe that they should have unrestricted access to opposite-sex private facilities. In their view, requiring them to use privacy stalls is unjust and discriminatory.

• They believe spaces in which undressing and bodily functions are engaged in should not be permitted to “discriminate” based on either sex or “gender identity.”

If lawmakers don’t believe me, maybe they could scrounge up 30 minutes to watch this video of a young man who “identifies” as a “transwoman.” He spells it all out:

“Trans” cult end game

So, now that we’re clearer about what the “trans” cult believes, let’s see what their peculiar and doctrinaire beliefs will look like in practice. In other words, here’s a glimpse into their desired gender-free, co-ed-everything, dystopian world:

• The sexual integration of private spaces will not be restricted to “trans”-identified persons: 1.) Schools and all other places of public accommodation—including places like Disney World and health clubs—that permit one objectively male “trans” person access to women’s facilities will have no rational grounds to prohibit other objectively male persons (i.e., normal men) from accessing women’s facilities because that would constitute discrimination based on “gender identity.” 2.) If genitalia are as irrelevant to physical privacy as say, hair color, then sex-segregated restrooms and locker rooms no longer make sense. 3.) There’s no rational reason for women to be more comfortable undressing in front of men who wish they were women than undressing in front of men who are content being men.

• Men who claim to be “transwomen” but choose not to be castrated will have unrestricted access to all previously women-only private spaces. And if women are permitted to walk naked in a locker room, so too will men with penises who claim to be women. So too will men with penises who have had breast implants.

• Women who claim to be men and who have birth certificates that identify them as male but have forgone “top surgery” will be exempt from laws and ordinances that prohibit women from going topless in public. These pretend-men with congenital breasts will be able to play topless frisbee in the park along with breastless, topless actual men.

• Objectively male persons with falsified birth certificates identifying them as women will be assigned semi-private hospital rooms with actual women.

• When entering a nursing home, elderly men who pretend to be women will be assigned rooms with actual women. Bill SB 219 is pending in California right now that if passed will require that long-term care facilities must assign “transgender” residents rooms in accordance with their “gender identity” rather than their sex. Further, it would make it illegal to reassign “transgender” residents to a new room if their roommates complain about their “gender identity.”

• Women’s athletics are doomed.

Despite the dire portents that no one should be able to miss, lawmakers who claim to want to lead and serve say virtually nothing and probably know less.

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-and, please-

Recently Ben Shapiro, writing for National Review, exposed a fundamental failure of lawmakers that partisan debates conceal. Partisan debates conceal that fundamental, first-principle policy arguments about governance are avoided like the proverbial plague by politicians of all political stripes.

Shapiro uses comments from three prominent political figures, President Trump, Senator Bernie Sanders, and Governor John Kasich, to illustrate that there is little principled difference between their positions.

Read more HERE…