Written by Denise Shick

Denise Shick is author of “My Daddy’s Secret,” “When Hope Seems Lost,” and “Understanding Gender Confusion.” She serves on the academic council of the International Children’s Rights Institute and directs Help 4 Families Ministry.

Is it true that the push for “transgender rights” is simply a compassionate effort to protect a tiny, vulnerable portion of society? Is it an innocent, well-meaning effort that will not adversely affect other Americans? The answer to these questions is decidedly No. While we should be compassionate to those who struggle with gender identity issues, we should beware of the push for “transgender rights.”

To be sure, we already have reason to be concerned about the normalizing of transgender identity in our society, from the almost satirical choice of Bruce Jenner to be Glamor magazine’s Woman of the Year to shocking stories like this one, reported by family activist Linda Harvey:

A 17-year-old Chicago girl recently had healthy breasts amputated because she read about the possibility of becoming ‘transgendered’ and decided this was the answer to her depression and suicidal tendencies — and her parents said, ‘Well, OK.’ So Emily is now called ‘Emmett’ and has just begun hormone therapy to (supposedly) become a male.

Yet there is far more at stake than public perceptions about gender identity and the health and well-being of teenagers who amputate healthy body parts.

We’re talking about downright dangerous legislation that even affects our children in their schools. Under the guise of LGBT non-discrimination bills, an aggressive agenda is being advanced across the country, one that protects LGBT “rights” at the expense of the rights of other citizens, foremost of which are our religious rights.

Thankfully, many American Christians have recognized the very real, gay-activist threat to these freedoms of speech, conscience and religion. But when it comes to transgender issues, most are not as aware of the real issues involved.

One obvious concern is the impact on our privacy, specifically, in public bathrooms and locker rooms. If LGBT activists have their way, public bathrooms and locker rooms would be rendered gender neutral, leading to obvious chaos, confusion and possible danger.

As a woman, would you want to use a gender neutral bathroom? As a father, would you want to send your daughter into one? How about you as a woman having to get undressed in the fitness center’s locker room next to a biological male who identifies as a female? (This is not hypothetical; see here.)

How about that biological male getting undressed in the locker room next to your wife, sir?

Transgender activists want to be able to use the bathroom and locker room of their perceived gender identity, no matter how uncomfortable it would make anyone else, thereby imposing the struggles of less than 1 percent of the population on the other 99 percent.

And, while I do not believe that a man who truly believes he is a woman is going into the bathroom in order to check out the ladies — or worse — I’m quite sure that heterosexual predators have taken advantage of these situations to pose as transgender women in order to have access to unsuspecting women. As reported October 8, the “University of Toronto Dumps Transgender Bathrooms after Peeping Incidents.”

Yes, “The University is temporarily changing its policy on gender-neutral bathrooms after two separate incidents of ‘voyeurism’ were reported on campus September 15 and 19. Male students within the University’s Whitney Hall student residence were caught holding their cellphones over female students’ shower stalls and filming them as they showered.”

What kind of madness is this?

It is the madness of the gender-neutral bathroom craze, a direct result of transgender activism. More seriously still, younger children are being negatively impacted, without parental knowledge or consent. As reported by MassResistance on February 19, 2013, “The ‘transgender agenda’ onslaught is now hitting Massachusetts schoolchildren with full force. What you are about to read is nothing short of madness. But it is happening.”

These charges are then outlined in disturbing detail, with direct citations from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Gender Identity document, including:

• There is a difference between a child’s “assigned sex at birth” and his or her “gender-related identity.”
• All schools must include “gender identity” in policies, handbooks and written materials.
• “A student who says she is a girl and wishes to be regarded that way throughout the school day and throughout every, or almost every, other area of her life, should be respected and treated like a girl. So too with a student who says he is a boy and wishes to be regarded that way throughout the school day and throughout every, or almost every, other area of his life. Such a student should be respected and treated like a boy.”
• Parents can be excluded from the process of a student changing his or her gender identity if the student so desires, meaning that if Jane decides to become Joe at school while hiding this from her parents, she can do so, provided she has a letter from a “parent, health care provider, school staff member familiar with the student (a teacher, guidance counselor or school psychologist, among others), or other family members or friends” verifying that she wants to be treated as a boy.
• The concept of “gender”/biological sex will be removed from all school life.
• There will be mandatory transgender diversity training for children and school staff.
• There will be no tolerance for other students’ discomfort with transgenderism.

As Brian Camenker of MassResistance said to the school board when these changes were being announced, this is “complete lunacy.” But it could well be coming to a school near you if transgender activists succeed.

You have been forewarned.

This article was originally posted at the Stream.org.

Through their foolishness, selfishness, and arrogance, “progressives” are responsible for the harm being done to children, teens, the family, the church, the First Amendment, and what’s left of American culture.

Through our ignorance, selfishness, cowardice, and passivity (if not apathy), we Christians are complicit in this harm.

Tragic teen victim of perverse Leftist ideology

The tragic story of a teenage boy—a senior in high school—who just two months ago underwent a grotesque amputation of his genitalia, illustrates the egregious and obscene nature of the evil that too many Christians have facilitated.

Caden Boone, who has changed his name to “Katherine,” underwent what the New York Times stupidly calls an “operation that had changed her, in the most intimate part of her body, from a biological male into a female.”

Any scientist with the courage to speak truth in a public square dominated by anti-science ideologues would explain that no human can change from a biological male into a female.

It’s excruciating to say this, but charlatan doctors are changing teenage boys, not into girls, but into de facto eunuchs.

According to the Times, Caden Boone never demonstrated the usual childhood signs of gender dysphoria:

Kat Boone did not fit the stereotype of a girl trapped in a boy’s body.

As a child, she dressed in jeans and shirts, like all the other boys, and her best friend was a boy. She liked to play with cars and slash bad guys in the Legend of Zelda video games. She still shuns dresses, preferring skinny jeans and band T-shirts.

But as a freshman in high school in Cazenovia, N.Y., she became depressed and withdrawn. “I knew that the changes going on with puberty were not me,” Kat said. “I started to really hate my life, myself. I was uncomfortable with my body, my voice, and I just felt like I was really a girl.”

When she discovered the transgender world on the Internet, she had a flash of recognition. “I was reading through some symptoms, not really symptoms, but some of the attributes of it did click,”

Boone, whose father moved out when he was in fifth grade and who had never demonstrated discomfort with his sex, became depressed during his freshman year in high school and had his penis amputated before he graduated three years later.

The Times reporter acknowledges that “there are no proven biological markers for what is known as gender dysphoria.”

Tangled Leftist web

The Left is really getting tied up in intellectual knots as their doctrinaire assumptions about race, homosexuality, biological sex, “gender,” and “identity” come home to roost. In their lowered consciousness, “progressives” are doing what roosting chickens do: excrete excrement. Unfortunately, they’re also tracking their doo-doo all over the lives of young people.

We’ve been told for decades that race is an immutable biological reality, but now we’re told race is a social construct. We’ve also been told ad nauseum told that homosexuality is analogous to race, but if race is a social construct, then what about homosexuality?

We’ve been told that the binary categories of male and female are arbitrary and socially constructed, shaped by societal conventions and expectations. But then why do so many “transwomen” insist that their desire to dress like caricatures of 1950’s pin-up girls is evidence of their “female brains”?

And if there exist no substantive and real differences between men and women, why do homosexuals claim they’re attracted only to those of their same sex?

Who’s being compelled to lie?

Syndicated columnist Clarence Page, who both is and “identifies” as black, compares Bruce Jenner’s gynophilia to the “negrophilia” of Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who identifies as black:

Dolezal…says she wants to look the way she feels inside. That’s her right, as long as she’s honest about it. Jenner made news by “living his truth,” as many in the transgender community say. Dolezal lived a lie.

What about less famous “transpeople” who are hormone-doping, lopping off body parts, stitching on other body parts, changing birth certificates, driver’s licenses, and falsely claiming to be the opposite sex? Do they have an obligation to tell everyone what Jenner because of his fame will never have to tell (i.e., that he is in reality a man)? Does the obligation not to tell a Dolezal-like whopper require all “transpeople” to fess up to their real sex? Are men who are passing as women living a lie? “LGBT activists claim that “transpeople” are not living a lie, because they are living the truth of their “gender identity.” But there’s also the pesky phenomenon of biological sex. Many believe that subjective desire is subordinate in importance to objective reality.

And what about the freedom of others–you know, “cisgenders” who remain anchored to reality–who want to live the way they feel and believe?  What about people who believe and feel strongly that objective biological sex is real and meaningful and should be affirmed? What about people who believe and feel strongly that pretending that a gender dysphoric boy is a girl harms him deeply and possibly irreparably?

And what about teachers who believe and feel strongly that lying is wrong and yet are being required by the government to lie by being required to refer to gender dysphoric boys as “she” and “her”? What about teachers whose identity includes a commitment to truth-telling?

Connection between love and truth

“Progressives” talk endlessly about “identity,” squishing their definition into whatever shape suits their libidinous appetite for morally untethered sexuality. My generation (referred to by a waggish millennial pastor friend of mine as the “worst generation”) advocated free love. We’ve all been duped. The costs are incalculable, and in order to know which acts (including speech “acts”) are loving requires first a knowledge of truth.

So, for example, if homoeroticism is neither ontologically nor morally equivalent to heterosexual activity, then affirming it as such is not loving.

If homoerotic desire and activity are not ontologically equivalent to race, then affirming them as equivalent is either foolish ignorance or evil.

If homoerotic activity is, in reality, immoral, it is feckless and unloving to assert that it is moral.

If our biochemistry can contribute to powerful desires to engage in activities that are immoral, then telling children that because biochemistry may contribute to homoerotic attraction, homoerotic activity is inherently moral is a foolish and dangerous statement.

If biological sex (i.e., being male or female) is an immutable, profoundly meaningful, and objectively good ontological reality, proclaiming it mutable or subordinate to disordered desire is at best ignorant, at worst evil.

If love sometimes requires that humans tell their friends or family members that they ought not act on a powerful, persistent desire, then it is deeply dishonest to assert that society must affirm homoerotic activity and relationships simply because homoerotic desire is powerful and persistent.

Identity according to “progressives”

The Left created and exploits a deformed conceptualization of identity because it serves their lust for sexual autonomy.

Identity may signify the aggregate of all personal phenomena. These phenomena can be roughly and simplistically divided into categories:

1.  Morally neutral, unchosen phenomena (e.g., nation of origin; skin, eye, and hair color; height; I.Q.; number of siblings; food tastes)
2. Unchosen feelings, some of which impel us toward wrong behavior and some of which impel us toward right behavior (e.g., anger, covetousness, compassion, polyamory/”consensual non-monogamy,” gender dysphoria; heterosexual attraction; homoerotic attraction; “genetic sexual attraction,” “minor attraction”)
3. Unchosen experiences (e.g., music or sports that our parents required, sickness, accidents, childhood molestation)
4. Freely chosen phenomena (e.g., values, beliefs, actions).

Alternatively, identity can refer to aggregate of unchosen feelings and freely chosen values and beliefs that individuals affirm as good and upon which they think it’s morally legitimate to act.

“Progressives” seek to confuse people by demanding that society treat all categories as ontologically identical, which in turn serves their social and political ends. In their twisted world, if it’s wicked to judge a particular eye color as wrong or inferior, then it’s wicked to judge someone’s freely chosen actions (well, primarily actions related to sexuality) as wrong.

Conversely, in this topsy-pervy world, if one ought to treat eye color as morally neutral, then one has an obligation to treat homoerotic activity and cross-dressing as morally neutral.

Of course, “progressives” don’t apply that principle consistently. They don’t argue that if society has an obligation to treat eye or skin color as morally neutral, then society has an obligation to treat theologically orthodox Christian beliefs/identity as morally neutral.

Christian identity

Anyone who claims to find their identity in Christ has an obligation to expose the unfruitful deeds of darkness and to try to protect children. Most Christians—including our religious leaders—have failed and continue to fail.

We have failed because of our own selfish desire to live outside God’s stipulations for sexuality, marriage, and divorce.

We have failed because of our own intellectual, moral, and spiritual sloth.

We have failed because of our cowardly refusal to suffer for Christ and His Kingdom.

In the current cacophonous din borne in damning darkness, our children are hearing that turning Caden Boone into a eunuch is a sign of love.  And still we say nothing.

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Once more for the hard of hearing or weak of understanding: The athlete formerly known as Bruce is not now nor ever can be a woman. Further, it is the apex of cruelty and ignorance to pretend along with him that he is.

If the cultural dictators continue to demand that everyone in society participate in this delusional, dishonest, destructive fiction, then intellectual consistency requires that they demand everyone in society to treat Africana Studies professor and race activist Rachel Dolezal—who is in reality of Central and Eastern European descent—as if she is African American.

Dolezal has been reverse-“passing” for years, falsely claiming to be African American. She has modified her physical appearance to align with her self-conception. She is “trans-raced.”

In addition, society needs to revisit the treatment protocols available to those who experience Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID), which causes sufferers to identify as amputees (Click here to read more on BIID). In order to alleviate the disturbing sense of discordance between their feelings and their bodies, they desire to have a limb amputated. Some even go so far as to mutilate themselves in order to force the medical community to amputate a limb. Society rightly views the disordered desire of the “trans-abled” to amputate healthy body parts as barbaric. Society largely believes, for now, that the compassionate, humane treatment protocol involves medication and counseling to encourage those who suffer from BIID to accept their bodies.

Then there are scores of Americans who identify as young’uns. Many are found in Hollywood. They reject their unchosen, unwanted age and seek to modify their appearance to align with their age-identity. The “trans-aged” should be permitted to attend high school and date those with whom they identify. They should be permitted to change their birth certificates to identify the year they wish they had been born as opposed to the year they were assigned at birth. And if the “trans-aged” identify as toddlers, they should be permitted to wear diapers to work where restrooms should be retrofitted with enormous changing tables.

And finally, let’s not forget the “trans-specied” who identify as sloths. Surely an evolving society must adapt by changing its work-productivity expectations. Sloths can’t possibly produce at the frenetic pace of alpha humans or even alpha wolves.

The Chicago Tribune once again revealed how foolish smart people can be. In yesterday’s editorial on Jenner, the Trib editorial board employed the imbecilic and insulting comparison of opposition to interracial or interfaith marriage to disagreement with the ontological and moral assumptions of Leftist sexuality dogma:

There was a time when intermarriage between faiths and races was taboo….Then the culture shifted and what seemed wrong or abnormal became accepted, and normal….Now we’re in a moment of cultural discovery about another frontier in sexual politics. This moment will pass and transgenderism will seem different, but not so strange.

The board conveniently omitted any discussion of whether or how faith or race per se correspond to gender dysphoria, cross-dressing, elective amputations of healthy body parts, and cross-sex hormone-doping. Such a discussion may have revealed the speciousness of such comparisons.

The board went on to state that “gender identity is a recognized concept,” without acknowledging that the assumptions that inhere a “progressive” conceptualization of “gender identity” are substantively different from those that inhere a conservative conceptualization of “gender identity.” The board suggested reductively that those who “are not comfortable” with the legal recognition of homoerotic unions as “marriages,” will also be “utterly bewildered by transgender politics.”

It isn’t discomfort or bewilderment that impels opposition to “transgender politics.” It is intellectual reasoning and science. In contrast, the uncritical embrace of all things sexually deviant demonstrated by the Left is impelled by feelings and doctrinaire ideology, largely divorced from philosophical reasoning, common sense, and science.

The Left has embraced the moral solipsism of the “LGBTQQAP” movement, which denies that anything outside the self exists that can serve as an arbiter of moral truth. That’s why the movement is rife with intellectual and existential inconsistencies and incoherence. Of course, they then judge moral disapproval of homoerotic activity and “transgender politics” as inherently immoral.

The issue of whether to call gender dysphorics by opposite sex names is a peripheral distraction. In some contexts, their original name may be unknown, so their adopted opposite-sex name is all people will know. What is not peripheral, however, is the issue of pronoun-use. Referring to a man as “she” or a woman as “he” constitutes a denial of reality, otherwise known as lying. Gender dysphorics cannot become the other sex. That is a matter of science. Neither “LGBTQQAP” activists, nor their ideological “allies,” nor arms of the government (e.g., public schools) have the ethical right to compel others to lie. And facilitating a destructive fiction is the antithesis of love and compassion.

Oh what a tangled web…

 Stand With Us

The Duggar controversy illuminates the truth that the cultural battle in which Christians are engaged is first and foremost a battle with principalities and powers:  “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12).

There is no other sensible explanation for the unseemly glee and unwarranted rage directed at this family by “progressives” who believe sodomy should be embraced as an identity. What, other than the influence of principalities and powers, can account for liberals taking aim at the Duggars—who  consistently demonstrate an otherworldly grace and gentleness—while rejoicing in Bruce Jenner’s tragic mental disorder and bodily mutilation and celebrating annual parades of perversion?

“Progressives” have provided the entire world with a graphic display (Warning: some obscene language) of ignorance and sickening schadenfreude.

Let’s take a little look-see at the mind-boggling claims that “progressives” make about the Duggars, claims which fuel their venomous assaults and expose their intellectual shallowness, moral vacuity, and unadulterated hypocrisy.

Claim 1. The Duggars are freaks because they reject the contraceptive culture that severs sex from marriage, sex from procreation, and procreation from marriage, and because they’re irresponsible, environmentally-unfriendly “breeders.”

Why is it weirder to oppose the contraceptive culture than it is to endorse intrinsically sterile erotic activity involving the excremental orifice?

Why is it weirder to deeply value the procreative function of sex—which is what accounts for the critical importance of marital permanence and exclusivity—than it is to value porn, erotic “literature,” sadomasochism, or homoerotic profligacy?

I understand why so many homosexuals enjoy the au courant sport of Duggar-hating. Homosexual activists have a vested personal interest in arguing that though the  biological implications of sexually complementary intercourse may be meaningful to individual couples, such implications have no inherent meaning or value relative to embodiment or human flourishing.

As to the environmental concerns of “progressives”—including Hollywood liberals, many of whom own huge swaths of property around the world and consume enormous amounts of natural resources to power their homes, planes, pools, and other accouterments of the lifestyles of the rich and famous: The world is not over-populated. There exists a problem with distribution of resources.

There is, however, a dearth of sexual sanity, grace, and wisdom, all of which the Duggars seem to amply possess. Who contributes more to a life-sustaining environment: The Jenner-Kardashian clan or the Duggars?

Claim 2. The Duggars are weird and cultish because they homeschool their kids, and the girls wear “prairie outfits.”

So, in our sordid carnival world, “prairie outfits” signify freakish repression, but a 65-year-old man in a lady’s satin corset represents female beauty and liberation? The Duggar girls in long skirts are weirder than Rihanna wearing completely—and I mean completely–transparent gowns to very public events?

If that’s the case, I’m all in for freakish prairie outfits. I would rather see my daughters in prairie outfits than have the whole world see them in the Empress’s new clothes. And I’d rather see my father lumber about in a suit of armor than sashay about in a chiffon peignoir. Yes, I’m just that transgressive—utterly liberated from the dictates of our socially disintegrated culture.

With regard to the homeschooling charge: it’s relevant to note that there are hundreds of liberal parents who homeschool their kids. The motivation for some is their view that public education fosters conformity over individualism. Some believe that public schools value uniformity over creativity. And some believe curricula are too test-driven. Those parents rarely if ever are criticized for weird cultishness.

No, it’s not the fact of homeschooling that generates all the foaming at the mouth we’ve seen in the past few weeks. It’s the Duggars’ reasons for homeschooling that drive homosexuals and their uber-cool allies to wax berserk and self-righteous.

The non-judgmental, tolerant disciples of diversity have judged that the desire to train up children to love God and theological orthodoxy is not merely counter-cultural and not merely weird, but twisted and evil.

Homosexual activists have all Christian institutions—including private schools, colleges, and universities—in their sights. And then they’ll come gunning for homeschools and airwaves. Before long, we will be Canada, or Germany where it is illegal to homeschool.

Deuteronomy 11:19 tells parents, “You shall teach [the words of the Lord] to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” Increasing numbers of Christian parents believe they cannot fulfill this instruction if their children are in public schools that are often hostile to Christian beliefs  7 hours a day, 5 days a week, 186 days a year, for 13-22 formative years.

Interestingly, anti-Christian bigots and sexual pagans seek the same thing Christian parents like the Duggars seek. They seek to shape the minds and hearts of children. The difference is anti-Christian bigots and sexual pagans want to train up other people’s children in the way they believe they should go, which is why they are so desperate to mock, condemn, and ultimately eradicate the homeschool movement.

Claim 3. (This one is a real howler and reveals just how bereft of moral reasoning many “progressives” are.) The Duggars are hypocrites because they espouse family values while both experiencing sin in their own family and concealing a serious sin committed by a minor child from the prying eyes and vengeful, darkened, judgmental hearts of strangers.

Seriously, that’s what they say—well, I may have tinkered with that last part a bit.

Does the Left understand what hypocrisy means? Hypocrisy is “The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; insincerity.”

Let’s look at some real life incidents to try to achieve some clarity on hypocrisy:

• When someone says to me, “Who are you to judge,” while hurling obscenities at me for saying that homoerotic activity is immoral, they may be hypocrites.
• When Leftist public “educators” claim to value diversity and oppose censorship while selecting multiple homosexuality-affirming resources to teach to students and then “not selecting” (otherwise known as censoring) dissenting resources,  they may be hypocrites.
• When Dan Savage condemns name-calling and then calls conservative high school students “pansies” and calls theologically orthodox Christians “b*tsh*t,” “a**h*le,” “d**cheb*gs,” he may be a hypocrite.

Of course, we don’t know if these individuals are hypocrites or if they simply failed to live up to their true beliefs.

The fact that a Duggar child, while a minor, committed a serious sexual sin and the Duggars express the belief that homoerotic activity is immoral does not even come close to hypocrisy.

The Left isn’t angry because the Duggars expressed a moral proposition that they—the Duggars—don’t truly believe. The Left is angry because the Duggars truly believe the moral proposition they expressed.

I wonder, does every homosexual whose minor child commits a moral offense or breaks the law lose the ethical right to express moral propositions? If a homosexual’s minor child steals something, is the homosexual parent engaging in hypocrisy if he expresses his sincerely-held belief that theft is immoral?

If the young teenage son of homosexuals were to view child pornography several times, are his parents forever precluded from publicly expressing their sincerely-held belief that “swinging” is wrong? Are his parents forever prohibited from condemning plural marriage and consensual adult incest?

Would these parents forever be prohibited from saying that disapproval of homosexuality is immoral, bigoted, and hateful, because those claims sound downright judgmental to me. And surely intellectual consistency would suggest that anyone who expresses those moral judgments must think themselves morally superior to others.

But the Duggars have never claimed the mantle of human behavioral perfection. It is homosexuals who claim that whenever theologically orthodox Christians express disapproval of homosexuality, said Christians are claiming to be morally superior.

Homosexuals also  ignorantly claim that any iteration of what the Bible teaches about homosexuality and the afterlife constitutes a desire on the part of Christians that homosexuals go to hell. If Christians actually desired that homosexuals go to hell, they would say nothing about what the Bible teaches. Of course, if anyone who claims to be a Christian desired that homosexuals go to hell, they wouldn’t, in reality, be Christians.

Following her respectful and compelling interview with the Duggars, it was troubling to hear Megyn Kelly state that the Duggars “pass judgment” on others. Since when did the expression of moral beliefs become passing judgment on others? And if expressing moral beliefs does, indeed, constitute passing judgment on others, then every human is guilty of passing judgment.

Oddly, when homosexuals express their innumerable moral propositions, they seem unfazed by any fear that they are claiming moral superiority or passing judgment on others. Nor do they keep their traps shut about what constitutes right or wrong behavior when a child of theirs commits a sin—which I can only assume happens on occasion.

Perhaps in between catapulting boulders at the Duggars, self-righteous, judgmental “progressives” could share whether they are absolutely certain they would take a minor child of theirs to the authorities—like the Duggars did—if they learned their child had inappropriately touched siblings in a non-penetrative way that the victims hadn’t noticed.

The ultimate reason these incidents came to light was not that some insider or journalist exposed them. Rather, it was that by age 14, Josh Duggar’s conscience was sufficiently formed to recognize that the feelings he harbored while engaging in inappropriate touching of which even his victims were unaware were very wrong.

Homosexuals and their allies in the war to enhance the moral status of sodomy fancy themselves free thinkers, liberated from the tyranny of “social construction” and the oppression of “THE MAN.” They rarely seem troubled by the fact that they are “THE MAN,” shaped by culturally regnant sexuality dogma. They now wield their entrenched power like a cudgel to impose their assumptions with a fearsome dictatorial power that makes the 1950’s look like the revolutionary summer of love and would color former Alabama governor George Wallace an enviable shade of green.

To all those celebrating the transition of Bruce Jenner to Caitlyn Jenner, I have a word of warning: Be careful watch you wish for.

You see, if gender is whatever you perceive it to be, then there is no way to limit or control what is coming.

I’m not just talking about things like Facebook’s 50 ways to describe your gender, including 10 different ways simultaneously, which turned out not to be enough, leading to the “fill in the blank” gender option.

I’m not even talking about things like gender neutral bathrooms and locker rooms, as misguided and harmful as those would be.

I’m talking about people who consider themselves gender fluid, to the point of their gender changing by the hour (or by the event they’re attending). Why not?

I’m talking about people who say things like, “I’m a gender smoothie. Just take everything about gender, throw it in the blender, press the button, and that’s me.”

I’m talking about teens who want to push back against the dominant culture and refuse to identify as male or female, preferring to be called “Tractor” and the like. (Some researchers consider kids like this to be “cutting edge.”)

One online personality (and porn maker) describes herself as “just about your average multiracial, pansexual, transracially inseminated queerspawn, genderqueer, transdyke, colonized mestiza, pornographer, activist, writer.”

Is this the kind of brave new world you really want to embrace? Is it the kind of world you want your kids to grow up in? And are you sure this is really preferable to “male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27)?

If perception is now reality, what do we say to those who are convinced they are part animal or part alien? (As incredible as all this seems, I document it carefully in my forthcoming book Outlasting the Gay Revolution: Where Homosexual Activism Is Really Going and How to Turn the Tide.)

And what do we say to those with Body Identity Integrity Disorder, also known as being transabled? They too are asking to be recognized, as noted in a recent articleby Sarah Boesveld titled, “Becoming disabled by choice, not chance: ‘Transabled’ people feel like impostors in their fully working bodies.”

These are people who are tormented by their healthy bodies, with their brains telling them that they should be missing a limb or be blind or disabled in one way or another, and some of them have now found peace by mutilating their bodies.

I addressed the comparison between transgender and transabled people in 2011, and now, LGBT activist Dan Savage has weighed in on their behalf, saying, “Other people’s bodies—and other people’s body parts—are theirs, not yours. And if someone needs to change or even remove some part(s) of their body to be who they are and to be happy and to be healthy, they should have that right.”

At least he’s being consistent in his position, which would mean that doctors should be allowed to amputate the healthy limbs of transabled people if that will give them peace of mind, just as they’re already allowed to perform sex-change surgery.

Returning specifically to Bruce-Caitlyn Jenner, am I the only one who gets the feeling that I woke up in some crazy new world when I watch the latest news about Jenner, a world in which it seems that just about everyone, from President Obama to ESPN, just drank some kind of strangely-laced Kool-Aid?

According to everything we know, we’re not talking about someone with biological or chromosomal abnormalities. We’re talking about a physically robust male who fathered 6 children and whose ex-wife Kris recently asked, “Why would you want to be married and have kids if this is what you wanted since you were a little boy? Why would you not explain this all to me?”

If he is to be applauded for his courage, then we should also applaud people like “One Hand Jason,” who “cut off his right arm with a ‘very sharp power tool’ . . . .”

Before the successful self-amputation, “he had for months tried different means of cutting and crushing the limb that never quite felt like his own, training himself on first aid so he wouldn’t bleed to death, even practicing on animal parts sourced from a butcher.”

Cutting off your own hand would take far more courage than submitting to all kinds of sex-change surgery, would it not?

I truly have sympathy for people who struggle with these disorders (or handicaps) and I don’t claim for a moment to be able to relate to their pain. That’s why, as a follower of Jesus: 1) I pray for a heart of an even deeper heart of compassion for them as people created in God’s image, yet fallen and flawed, like the rest of us; 2) I pray for breakthroughs that will help professionals uncover the spiritual, biological, genetic, psychological, or environmental causes of their suffering; 3) I will celebrate gender distinctions as God intended them.

There’s a reason the world has operated based on male-female boundaries and distinctions since the beginning of human history, and we invite societal chaos beyond description if we simply cast those boundaries and distinctions aside.

To quote G. K. Chesterton, “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.”

To say it again: Be careful what you wish for.

This article was originally posted at the TownHall.com website.

The Left believes minors should be able to access medical help in rejecting their unchosen, unwanted physical embodiment but then wants to prohibit minors from accessing medical help in rejecting their unchosen, unwanted same-sex attraction. So, how do “LGBTQIAAP” activists reconcile yet another of their incoherent propositions and ironies? They just make up some novel terms that embody queer (pun intended) ideas.

Every time the incoherence or fallaciousness of their arguments is exposed, they frantically invent a new theory and a new term to advance their irrational agenda. Just keep dangling dazzling neologisms in front of the public’s blurry eyes and they won’t notice the idiocy and perversion that is destroying the lives of children while serving the desires of adults.

For example, the Left invented the politically useful term “gender identity,” which is the sex with which one identifies and with which one is supposedly born. In this queer ontological universe “gender identity” has no intrinsic relation to physical embodiment. So, sometimes one’s “gender identity” accidentally aligns with physical embodiment, and sometimes it doesn’t. When people’s “gender identity” and physical embodiment align, they are deemed “cisgender”—yes, another novel rhetorical construction that embodies very queer ideas.

In a more rational, less cowardly culture, we would just say that “gender identity” denotes the disordered desire to be the opposite sex. We would call it gender confusion or Gender Identity Disorder or Gender Dysphoria. Oh, wait, we tried that, but it didn’t serve the desires and social and political goals of the gender confused among us.

So moving on, if your “gender identity” does not align with your objective biological sex, you are not cisgender or a ciswoman or a cisman, you are transgender, a trans-man (that is, an actual woman) or a trans-woman (that is, an actual man).  In this new queer vernacular I, for example, am a ciswoman. Bruce Jenner is trans-woman.

Now stay with me.

When Leftists argue that minors should be able to access medical help in rejecting their physical embodiment, they won’t state it exactly like that, because that would expose their hypocrisy and incoherence. Instead, they employ their novel terms to explain their queer ideology. They will say trans-minors are not seeking to change anything. They’re seeking to “align” their bodies with their inherent, immutable “gender identity,” which is either a trans-man (that is, an actual woman) or trans-woman (that is, an actual man). And when trans-people have healthy body parts amputated, they’re no longer having either “sex change surgery” or  “sex reassignment surgery.” They’re now having “gender confirmation surgery.” This new term diverts the public’s attention from the truth that no one can change his or her sex. And it serves to reinforce the belief that subjective feelings are the ultimate arbiter of reality. In the Gnostic world of trans-activism, healthy, objective, material bodies must submit.

Well, two can play this foolish game.

Oh, and just to forewarn you, there are two other novel terms embodying queer ideas peeking over the rainbow-hued horizon: GSM and GSRM. GSM means Gender and Sexual Minorities, and GSRM means Gender, Sexual and Romantic Minorities. The Left needed to invent these because they were being mocked for the silliness of LGBTQIAAP.  You gotta give it to the Left. They are a rhetorically nimble and imaginative bunch.

Right now, liberals in Springfield do not have the votes to pass HB 217–the anti-autonomy, anti-choice Reparative Therapy Prohibition Act–even though they control both houses of the legislature. The lack of support for this bill is something liberals and their water-carriers in the mainstream press don’t share with the public.

But “LGBTQIAAP” activists are working like trans-madmen to garner support for this bill. Illinoisans need to match and exceed their fervor and tenacity in order to retain the right of minors to access medical help in aligning their unchosen, unwanted sexual desires with their inherent, immutable “sexual orientation identities” or in constructing identities that do not affirm unchosen, unwanted same-sex attraction.

TAKE ACTION: CLICK HERE to contact your state representative and state senator urge them to protect the rights of minors to seek help for their unwanted attractions. Urge a “No” vote on HB 217 and SB 111.

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