The title is a reference to a concept espoused decades ago by U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY). The idea was not original to Moynihan, but the phrase meant that as bad behavior becomes more pervasive a limit is crossed and society simply begins to accept it.

The same year that Senator Moynihan gained notice for his comments, columnist Charles Krauthammer expanded Moynihan’s point by suggesting the opposite. Not only were we “normalizing what was once considered deviant,” but we were also “finding deviant what was once considered normal.” As morals decline, the rejection of morality also occurs. We see this more and more today.

It seems that the pervasive nature of pornography, which is available like never before in history, is impacting mindsets. According to Gallup Polling, the percent of Americans who now say that pornography is “morally acceptable” is at an all-time high with 43 percent now expressing this view, up from 36 percent in the previous year’s survey.

The Institute for Family Studies discusses some of the implications of this.  One of the problems they note is that the people who view pornography at younger ages are less likely to marry or more likely to delay marriage.

The theory that porn use is linked to a decline in marriage is one that University of Austin professor Mark Regnerus, the author of Cheap Sex, has noted with the Institute before. “At best, porn will augment—or compete with—sex, and stall marriage,” Regnerus warned. “At worst, sexual technology threatens to undermine coupled sex altogether.”

Beyond marriage, other experts worry about the long-term impact of widespread pornography on the mental, emotional, and spiritual health of young people who are growing up in a porn-saturated world.  A study by BYU professor and family therapist Mark Butler found a link between young people’s increasing use of pornography and their experience of loneliness and isolation. Butler suggested that pornography’s “potential to mislead and misshape young people’s views of women and men, relationships, intimacy, and sexuality during their formative years is very real—making a pornography-loneliness partnership a threat to their overall sexual and relational well-being.”

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.

Target recently announced its new restroom policy, which embraces the absurd notion that in order to be inclusive, sex differences cannot be acknowledged or respected. In light of Target’s sex-integrated, co-ed restroom policy, I called my local Target and had this enlightening conversation with the store manager:

Me: Is it true that all Target restrooms are now co-ed?

Store manager: That’s not exactly how I would describe them.

Me: Well, are your women’s restrooms now open to people who are objectively male, and are your men’s’ restrooms now open to people who are objectively female?

Store manager: The restrooms are available to “transgenders” who identify as the opposite sex.

Me: But humans have both a “gender identity” and a sex, so your restrooms are now co-ed because co-ed means “having or including both men and women.”

Store manager: Our customers can use the restroom of the sex with which they identify.

Me: If a person who appears to be a man enters a women’s restroom, how do you determine whether he’s gender dysphoric or not.

Store manager: If a female customer reports that a man is in the women’s restroom, we would follow-up.

Me: What is your procedure for following up?

Store manager: I don’t know.

Me: So, if I and my three-year-old granddaughter are in the women’s restroom, a man enters, and I report it to store management, you don’t know what would happen next?

Store manager: Well, if this person were not bothering you, he could be in there.

Me: But sharing a restroom with someone of the opposite sex bothers me.

Store manager: Well, Target believes people should be able to use whichever restroom they feel comfortable in.

Me: What if non-gender-dysphoric men—you know, men who share the same sex as “transgenders”— feel more comfortable in women’s restrooms? May they use them? And how would you stop them anyway? You evidently have no procedures to determine if males in women’s restrooms have been diagnosed as gender-dysphoric.

Store manager: (silence)

Me: So, your restrooms are in reality co-ed because people have a sex that cannot change.

Store Manager: Yes, it can.

Me: Are you a science-denier? Even gender-dysphoric persons know they can’t change their sex.

Store Manager: I’m not going to argue with you. 

So, there you have it folks. If women don’t want to use restrooms with men, they will have to use the family restroom, but if gender-dysphoric men don’t want to use restrooms with men, they don’t have to use the family restroom. They get to use the women’s restroom. Gender-dysphoric men are permitted to use restrooms with only women, while women are not permitted to use restrooms with only women.

Many conservatives perplexed by the lies and dragooned by the tactics of body-rejecting activists and their “progressive” allies do nothing when there is much to be done. And they get little help from conservative punditry who seem not to grasp the significance of allowing objectively, immutably male persons in women’s restrooms and vice versa.

Last week the estimable Charles Krauthammer dismissed the so-called “bathroom wars” as “a solution in search of an issue,” suggesting that because those who suffer from gender-dysphoria are few in number, laws requiring that restrooms correspond to sex are silly. Astonishingly, Krauthammer blamed these laws on conservatives:

[D]o we really have an epidemic of transgenders being evil in bathrooms?

Krauthammer…said transgenders using public bathrooms has become a problem “precisely because Republicans in North Carolina decided it was a problem.”

Though it is true that Republicans proposed and passed the North Carolina law that Krauthammer was discussing, they were merely responding to the efforts of gender-dysphoric activists to access opposite-sex restrooms. In other words, Republicans didn’t “decide” that men in women’s’ restrooms was a problem. It is in reality a problem created by gender-dysphoric activists.

As a percentage of the population, there are few gender-dysphoric persons, and until recently, they were using restrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their actual sex, so of course we have no “epidemic of transgenders being evil in bathrooms.”

Further, the concern is not centrally about gender-dysphoric persons “doing evil,” but of male predators pretending to be gender-dysphoric in order to easily view, record, or assault women and girls.

The other and at least as serious concern is with what these policies teach about physical embodiment as male or female. Arguing that because few “transgenders” have been “doing evil in bathrooms,” there is no problem, Krauthammer ignores the fact that men in women’s restrooms is the problem, and it is evil.

An uncharacteristically superficial Krauthammer ignores the radical ideas that are embedded in and taught by liberal “bathroom” policies:

• Such policies teach that if people are uncomfortable with their sex, the problem is with their sex—not their feelings.

• Such policies teach the arguable belief that subjective feelings about one’s sex are more important, indeed more real, than objective physical embodiment as male or female.

• Such policies teach that while gender-dysphoric men should be permitted to use restrooms with only women, objectively female persons should not be permitted to use restrooms with only women.

• Such policies teach that in order to be compassionate, one must treat gender-dysphoric persons as if they are in reality the sex they wish they were.

• Such policies teach that feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy derive not from physical embodiment as male or female but from desires about one’s sex.

• Such policies teach that stalls and curtains provide sufficient privacy to separate women from gender-dysphoric men but not sufficient privacy to separate gender-dysphoric men from normal men.

If we define “evil” as reductively as Krauthammer seems to when he says there is no “epidemic of transgenders doing evil in restrooms,” he’s right. If evil is understood as direct physical harm to another, there is no epidemic. But for many, evil is defined as “morally wrong,” and “harmful” and includes doing violence (i.e., “injury, as from distortion of meaning or fact”) to the idea that objective, immutable biological sex carries profound meaning and is the source of feelings of modesty and the desire of privacy that men and women naturally experience. This epidemic of philosophical violence is infecting not just corporate policies but school policies and thereby the minds and hearts of children far too young to comprehend the evil being done.

Take ACTION:  So, here are three things that conservatives must do:

1.) Those with children in public schools must tell their administrators that under no circumstance are their children permitted to share restrooms or locker rooms with children of the opposite sex. If gender dysphoric children have the right to refuse to use locker rooms and restrooms with those whose “gender identity” they don’t share, then other children have the right to refuse to use locker rooms and restrooms with those whose sex they don’t share.

2.)  DO NOT use Leftist language. Language matters:

Do not call them “gender neutral” restrooms. Call them sex-integrated or co-ed restrooms to keep attention on the objective reality the Left seeks to deny.

Do not use the term “transgender.” Use gender dysphoria or gender-dysphoric persons.

Do not use opposite-sex pronouns when referring to gender-dysphoric persons. Using opposite-sex pronouns does not constitute an act of love. It constitutes participation in and facilitation of a destructive fiction.

3.) As much as possible, avoid using Target. It is not possible to boycott every business that violates true principles, but policies as egregiously offensive as Target’s sex-integrated restroom policy demand a response. And while you’re boycotting Target, call the store manager of your local Target to ask about their co-ed restrooms. Ask management the hard questions, and don’t use liberal language. Use precise, clear, reality-based language. And consider signing on to the AFA Boycott Target pledge.

In this brave new world remade in the image of the Godless, confused, solipsistic, and sexually anarchical, objective, immutable biological sex is meaningless. Please stand for truth and reality publicly, courageously, perseveringly, and unapologetically—and not just when it’s cost-free.

Written by Bill Mulenberg

A defining feature of contemporary Western culture is the establishment and defense of certain ideological shibboleths that dare not be gainsayed. These PC orthodoxies are enforced with all the fanaticism of any religious cult, and those who dare to resist are treated as enemies, heretics and apostates.

Plenty of such ideological agendas can be mentioned here. Homosexualism is of course a perfect example, with most Western elites and almost all of the mainstream media marching in step with what the homosexual militants demand. And woe to anyone who dares to differ.

Instead of an objective media which allows for differing points of view, on issues like homosexuality there is only one position. Contrary points of view are censored out, mocked and ridiculed. This was not always the case, but so successful have the militants been in pushing their agenda, and harnessing the coercive arm of the state, that a code of silence has now descended on any heterodox viewpoints.

Another clear example of this is of course climate alarmism. This has now become the reigning orthodoxy, and contrary points of view are not allowed. Those who dare to differ are pilloried and demonized as recalcitrants and worse. Yet some brave voices are willing to go against the flow, and demand that truth be heard in the public arena.

The warmist alarmist establishment hates this, especially when one of their own turns against them. There have been a number of such defectors, and they are of course treated as persona non grata by the true believers. But their voices must be heard nonetheless.

One of these is someone well qualified to speak on such matters. I refer to a former founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore. Several years ago he wrote a very important book describing in detail why he changed his mind on all these matters. I reviewed that incisive volume HERE.

He has recently come out with more heterodoxy when it comes to climate alarmism. One news report covers the story this way: “A co-founder of Greenpeace told lawmakers there is no evidence man is contributing to climate change, and said he left the group when it became more interested in politics than the environment.

“Patrick Moore, a Canadian ecologist and business consultant who was a member of Greenpeace from 1971-86, told members of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee environmental groups like the one he helped establish use faulty computer models and scare tactics in promoting claims man-made gases are heating up the planet.

“’There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years,’ he said. Even if the planet is warming up, Moore claimed it would not be calamitous for men, which he described as a ‘subtropical species’.”

Of course the true believers will dismiss all this, and throw out their mantra, “the science is settled”. Yeah right. As if. Only ideologues with predetermined outcomes in mind throw around this sort of foolishness. Real science is always open to follow the evidence wherever it may lead. And new or changing evidence makes for new or changing assessments.

Charles Krauthammer has recently penned a piece on the myth of ‘settled science’. He begins: “I repeat: I’m not a global warming believer. I’m not a global warming denier. I’ve long believed that it cannot be good for humanity to be spewing tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. I also believe that those scientists who pretend to know exactly what this will cause in 20, 30 or 50 years are white-coated propagandists.

“’The debate is settled,’ asserted propagandist in chief Barack Obama in his latest State of the Union address. ‘Climate change is a fact.’ Really? There is nothing more anti-scientific than the very idea that science is settled, static, impervious to challenge. Take a non-climate example. It was long assumed that mammograms help reduce breast cancer deaths. This fact was so settled that Obamacare requires every insurance plan to offer mammograms (for free, no less) or be subject to termination.

“Now we learn from a massive randomized study — 90,000 women followed for 25 years — that mammograms may have no effect on breast cancer deaths. Indeed, one out of five of those diagnosed by mammogram receives unnecessary radiation, chemo or surgery.

“So much for settledness. And climate is less well understood than breast cancer. If climate science is settled, why do its predictions keep changing? And how is it that the great physicist Freeman Dyson, who did some climate research in the late 1970s, thinks today’s climate-change Cassandras are hopelessly mistaken?

“They deal with the fluid dynamics of the atmosphere and oceans, argues Dyson, ignoring the effect of biology, i.e., vegetation and topsoil. Further, their predictions rest on models they fall in love with: ‘You sit in front of a computer screen for 10 years and you start to think of your model as being real.’ Not surprisingly, these models have been ‘consistently and spectacularly wrong’ in their predictions, write atmospheric scientists Richard McNider and John Christy — and always, amazingly, in the same direction.

“Settled? Even Britain’s national weather service concedes there’s been no change — delicately called a ‘pause’ — in global temperature in 15 years. If even the raw data is recalcitrant, let alone the assumptions and underlying models, how settled is the science?”

He concludes, “Climate-change proponents have made their cause a matter of fealty and faith. For folks who pretend to be brave carriers of the scientific ethic, there’s more than a tinge of religion in their jeremiads. If you whore after other gods, the Bible tells us, ‘the Lord’s wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit’ (Deuteronomy 11).

“Sounds like California. Except that today there’s a new god, the Earth Mother. And a new set of sins — burning coal and driving a fully equipped F-150. But whoring is whoring, and the gods must be appeased. So if California burns, you send your high priest (in carbon -belching Air Force One, but never mind) to the bone-dry land to offer up, on behalf of the repentant congregation, a $1 billion burnt offering called a ‘climate resilience fund.’ Ah, settled science in action.”

Someone well qualified to speak on these issues is S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and director of the Science & Environmental Policy Project. His specialty is atmospheric and space physics. He refers to recent remarks by US Secretary of State, John Kerry, that “The science is unequivocal”.

He writes: “A survey of more than 1,800 members of the American Meteorological Society showed that less than half believe humans are the primary cause of any recent warming. Reviews of published climate papers by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) report on thousands of peer-reviewed studies that contradict the alarmist global-warming narrative; the Chinese Academy of Sciences has published a condensed version of NIPCC reports. But many scientific organizations and academies are still sharply split on the issue of dangerous AGW (anthropogenic global warming)….

“Much has changed since 1997; but one constant is that the proponents of AGW have yet to publish any firm evidence that man-made CO2 is doing anything dangerous. They hadn’t done it in 1988 when James Hansen told a Congressional committee that we are headed to disaster; they hadn’t done it in 1997 when the Kyoto Protocol was signed by almost 200 countries (but never ratified by the US Senate); and they haven’t done it now.

“So the science about global warming cannot be called ‘settled.’ It no longer supports AGW — if indeed it ever did; in fact, there has been no significant warming trend for at least 16 years, while atmospheric carbon dioxide increased by more than 8%.”

But the true believers will not be deterred by facts and evidence. They have a new orthodoxy to push, and they will push it for as long as they can get away with it.

I often find the statements or actions of Illinois politicians embarrassing or worse. Watching U.S. Senator Dick Durbin’s interview with Bret Baier was one of those occasions. I cannot for the life of me understand why Illinoisans continue year after year to vote for men like Dick Durbin–particularly with Illinois in a state of perpetual decline.

The unflappable, congenial, and always civil Bret Baier (no Rachel Maddow or Bill O’Reilly here) tried indefatigably to get  Durbin to answer a simple question regarding the noticeable deletion of the word “God” from the 2012 Democratic platform. The phrase “God-given potential” appeared in the 2008 platform but was deleted from this year’s platform. Baier attempted multiple times to ask the obvious and reasonable question: “Why?” Durbin’s response was defensive, combative, rude, and evasive. The gentleman “doth protest too much, methinks.”

Below is a transcription of their exchange, which you can also watch here:

Baier: God was taken out of the platform, why do that?

Durbin: Well, I can just basically tell you if the narrative that is being presented on your station, and through your channel and your network is the Democrats are godless people, they ought to know better. God is not a franchise of the Republican Party

Baier: No, no, but…

Durbin: Those of us who believe in God and those of us who have dedicated our lives to helping others in the name of God don’t want to take a second seat to anyone who is suggesting that one word out of the platform means the Democrats across America are godless. Come on, Bret.

Baier: No, no, no – I don’t think that’s what’s being said. We’re reporting what’s in the platform. In 2008, God was mentioned once; in 2004, it was mentioned seven times; in 2000 it was mentioned four times. So, it’s just a question…

Durbin: So, what’s your point?

Baier: The question is, why take it out this time?

Durbin: What I’m basically saying to you is if you’re trying to draw some conclusion that the Democrats are godless, present your evidence, present your evidence.

Baier: I’m not trying to draw any conclusion. I’m just asking the question: why was the word taken out?

Durbin: I’m just telling you, you are carping on a trifle. We know that both parties are devoted to this country; both parties are God-fearing parties. Let’s get on with the agenda about creating jobs in America, about justice in this country.

Baier: And we’re going to talk about that in a second. We’re talking about the platform here, and there are two changes that we just noted, one is that God was taken out from 2008 to 2012 and two, that Jerusalem was not mentioned. I’m not drawing conclusions; I’m just asking why these changes were made.

Durbin: Bret, let me just say, I chaired the platform committee for two Democratic conventions. We produced the most unread document in the history of American politics, to suggest that this document and the insertion of two words here and one word there, now defines politics in America suggests to me that you’re not focusing on the real issues that Americans care about.

Baier: But Senator, you know…

Durbin: They want the American people to get back to work.

Baier: I understand that…

Durbin: We want to continue to create jobs.

Baier: Let’s talk about that in one second. You know that Democrats in Tampa talked about the Republican platform and what was and was not in there. So, when I’m asking you about these two changes and two words, I’m just asking why. I’m not drawing conclusions.

Durbin: I’m telling you, your conclusions are wrong, if you’re drawing them.

So, Durbin conceded that Baier may not have been drawing conclusions, but Durbin knows that if Baier had been drawing conclusions, he, Durbin, knew what they were and that they were wrong. Where is Professor Irwin Corey when we need him?

Durbin appears to have the inside scoop on the numbers of God-fearing people versus atheists in the two parties. Maybe he’s right. Maybe the number of God-fearing people in the two parties is exactly the same. If so, that makes the deletion of the one reference to God from the Democratic platform all the more perplexing.

Later Baier asked Charles Krauthammer about the deletion of the reference to God (a mere “trifle” to Durbin), which has even some moderate Democrats concerned. Krauthammer responded:

Platforms don’t really tell you what’s going to happen. But when you compare today with what people used to believe, used to say, and used to proclaim, and you see these glaring changes, you know that something has changed in the party. This is one place that Obama has led from in front and not from behind, moving the party—not just himself. And that, I think, is extremely significant.

Ditto.