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Christians Must Exit Government Schools

For years conservatives have asserted that homosexuals are pursuing children, and for years homo-activists have mocked that claim. Due to either their profound ignorance or their commitment to deception as a tactic for advancing their pernicious goal of normalizing homoeroticism, homo-activists misrepresented what conservatives were claiming.

Homo-activists falsely claimed that conservatives were worried that they would try to “turn children gay,” when, in reality, most conservatives were claiming that homo-activists were feverishly working through every cultural institution to eradicate conservative views on the nature and morality of homosexuality. In other words, homo-activists were pursuing the hearts and minds of other people’s children.

The same goes for “trans”-activists who, like homo-activists and their ideological allies, are hell-bent on using public schools to pursue the hearts and minds of other people’s children.

These activists teach other people’s children that homoeroticism and biological-sex rejection (i.e., “transgenderism”) are phenomena to be celebrated.

They teach them that there is no difference between a marriage between a man and a woman and an anti-marriage between two people of the same-sex.

They teach them that expressing the belief that homoerotic activity or cross-dressing and bodily mutilation are wrong is equivalent to bullying and the cause of teen suicide.

They teach them that men can be mommies, and women daddies.

They teach them that to be loving, compassionate, and inclusive, they must lie by calling gender-pretending peers by opposite-sex pronouns, and they must be willing to relinquish their privacy.

They expose them to plays, novels, and essays with obscene language that depict deviant sexuality positively.

They teach them that every person who believes homoeroticism and co-ed locker rooms are wrong is hateful—which includes many children’s parents.

Christian parents charged by God to train up their children in the way they should go have no biblical warrant for placing their children all day, all year in schools that refuse to recognize the immutability and profound meaning of sexual differentiation, particularly as it relates to modesty and privacy.

No Christian should teach in an institution that requires them to facilitate the body- and soul-destroying fiction that humans can be born in the “wrong” body.

No Christian teacher should refer to boys and girls by opposite-sex pronouns. If they do, they teach all students that the “trans” ideology is benign at best, if not good. They teach all children that it is justifiable to participate in the grievous fiction that subjective feelings about one’s sex have greater value and import than does one’s objective, immutable sex.

Hawaii just issued guidelines that direct schools on how “trans”-identifying students should be accommodated. The guidelines include the false claim that Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibit “discrimination based on gender identity and gender expression.” They do not. They prohibit discrimination based on sex and sex did not then, nor does it now include “gender identity” or “gender expression.”

Here are some of the other guidelines:

1.) Schools should accept a student’s “gender identity” based on nothing more than his or her claim. No medical or mental health diagnosis or treatment is necessary.

2.) For students who will be pretending to be the opposite sex at school, there should be a meeting with school officials. Parents need not be included or notified about the meeting or the student’s opposite-sex impersonation. This directive applies to elementary, middle, and high schools.

3.) “Trans”-identifying students should be allowed access to opposite-sex restrooms, locker rooms, and hotel rooms on overnight school-sponsored trips.

4.) Schools should not require “trans”-identifying students to use single-occupancy restrooms or locker rooms.

5.) Schools may not share the true sex of “trans”-identifying students with students of the opposite sex whose privacy they are invading. Nor may schools share this information with the parents of students whose privacy is being invaded. So, a girl who pretends to be a boy should be able to use the boys’ restrooms—where boys use urinals—and no parents may be notified.

6.) Schools should make special accommodations for normal students who don’t want to share restrooms and locker rooms with peers of the opposite sex. In other words, normal girls will be forced out of girls’ restrooms and locker rooms so that boys with a mental disorder may use them.

7.) “Trans”-identifying students should be allowed to play on opposite-sex athletic teams.

8.) Students should be permitted to cross-dress at school.

9.) School staff and faculty should use the “preferred” pronouns of “trans”-identifying and “gender nonconforming” students.

Minnesota has just issued similar guidelines but include this startling statement regarding restrooms, locker rooms, and hotel accommodations for overnight trips:

Privacy objections raised by a [normal] student in interacting with a transgender or gender nonconforming student may be addressed by segregating the student raising the objection provided that the action of the school officials does not result in stigmatizing the transgender and gender nonconforming student. [emphasis added]

So, what exactly will happen if “trans”-identifying students feel “stigmatized” when normal students of the opposite sex don’t want to share restrooms or locker rooms with them? Will normal students be forced to share private facilities with persons of the opposite sex?

The purportedly Catholic governor Chris Christie (R-NJ) just signed a bill into law requiring schools to allow co-ed restrooms and locker rooms, and requiring teachers to refer to “trans”-identifying students by opposite-sex pronouns. The government is requiring teachers to speak falsehoods to and in the presence of children. Will theologically orthodox Christians comply? Will they bear false witness by pretending that boys are girls or vice versa? Will they render unto Caesar that which is not Caesar’s?

These things are happening in public schools all around Illinois, and where they aren’t yet, they will be soon.

Unfortunately for the countless children and teens who attend public schools, the 2017/2018 school year is just around the corner, and like dirty old men in trench coats lying in wait to expose children to sordid things, so too await public school administrators and teachers to do likewise. Unlike perverts who lurk in darkness, however, these government employees have no shame. They do their dirty work of exposing children to wickedness openly and call it “love.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie HERE.


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The Collapse of Gender Sanity

Written by Rachel Lu

Men were built for fighting. Women were built for childbearing. It’s interesting to note how stubbornly true—even obvious—these statements remain, despite aggressive efforts to bury them.

Modern people have a penchant for denying obvious things. Dysfunctional politics and political correctness have brought us to the point of potentially approving women’s inclusion in a military draft. The Senate Armed Services Committee recently entertained arguments in favor of requiring women to register for the selective service, and three candidates endorsed the plan in New Hampshire’s Republican debate. The trickle is turning into a stampede. Suddenly political correctness requires that we all agree that girls can fight just as well as boys.

The problem is that it’s just not true. We need to return to some basic Aristotelian principles in order to explain why drafting women would be both imprudent and unjust.

Playing Politics

From a political standpoint, it’s easy to understand why Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and Chris Christie were all prepared to agree that women should register for the selective service. (U.S. Senator Mike Lee is pushing legislation to block the drafting of women, which has won support from Rubio and from Ted Cruz.) Somewhat farcically, all three candidates treated selective service registration as a wonderful new “opportunity” for women. That’s silly; the system exists to enable conscription in a time of extreme need. Women already have the opportunity to enlist in the military if they meet the relevant requirements.

Rubio specified that most likely a draft would apply only to women who met the physical requirements. But this would be a foolish policy in an emergency scenario. If you desperately need a large number of soldiers in a hurry, is it sensible to start screening populations of people that will mostly be unfit for the job? Should children and retirees also be included, in case a few turn out to be suitable for active service? This is nonsense. Every society in history has built its armies primarily of young men, for an excellent reason: They are overwhelmingly the most fit for the job.

If the Republican candidates were thinking clearly, they would be racing to specify that they support drafting women only to non-combat roles. This is a more sane position, modeled on the example of other nations (such as Israel) that use female conscripts primarily in supporting roles (as medics, logistical support, etc.). Considering that a draft would only be implemented in a time of extreme need, asking unattached young women to serve their country in these capacities could be reasonable. Demanding that they serve as infantry would not be.

The Collapse of Gender Sanity

It’s disconcerting to see even Republicans sanctioning this kind of foolishness, but there may be a silver lining here. There is value to discussing this issue at a moment when we desperately need a starting point for a more reasonable conversation about sex and gender. Sending thousands of young women to die in battle would be morally monstrous, but luckily, we are not currently threatened with a draft. Instead we are facing a near-total collapse of gender sanity.

With schools banning the concepts of “boyhood” and “girlhood,” single-sex restrooms being treated as an affront, and even the Olympics allowing anatomical males to compete in women’s events, American gender politics has reached freakish levels of absurdity. If there is any chance of returning to sanity, our understanding of gender will need to be rooted in reflections on something objective and measurable: the body.

Americans have been suspicious of stark gender claims for a long time, and in some cases this is actually reasonable. Do boys really excel in math and science? Are girls really more nurturing or “emotionally intelligent”? These stereotypes are not groundless, but it may not be appropriate or necessary to assert them too forcefully. Boys and girls are indeed different in certain respects, including in how their brains develop. Nevertheless some boys are well attuned to emotion, while some girls may be assertive, independent, or analytical. Gender skeptics may reasonably ask: Isn’t it time we stopped defining people by dated stereotypes and allowed them to prove for themselves what they can do?

Much of the public finds these arguments persuasive, which is why politicians are happy to echo them—even on the political right. Most of us don’t mind when increased gender-role flexibility means a girl can become a sportswriter or an electrical engineer. In our time, however, the lines of reasonableness clearly have been crossed. Given that so many of our compatriots have rejected tradition as offensive and anachronistic, what other grounds are there to restore some sort of natural order?

The case of women in the draft may fit this purpose, because the objections are so obvious and so rooted in physiology. One can understandably argue that stereotypes play a role in holding women back from, say, achievements in the STEM fields. But military service is an entirely different animal. By significant margins, women are physically weaker and slower and have poorer reflexes than men. On the battlefield, these shortcomings make a literally life-or-death difference.

The Marine Corps commissioned a study that found that their strongest female recruits (top 25%) were about on par with the weakest male recruits (bottom 25%). Women undergoing entry-level marine training were an appalling six times more likely to suffer injury, including especially high rates of musculoskeletal injuries due to movement with heavy loads. (Even women who seem spectacularly fit may still sustain pelvic fractures from long marches with a standard military pack.) Mixed-gender units were slower and less lethal, and sustained more casualties.

In short, women don’t make very good soldiers. The exceptions are few and don’t stand out much by elite military standards. Women can certainly be courageous, patriotic, and self-sacrificing, but the female body was not built for combat.

From Biological Determinism To Biological Escapism

Suppose you consider chivalry outdated or even sexist. Perhaps you scoff at the idea that all-male units will have a stronger sense of fraternity, and you’re unworried about the possibility of romantic entanglement. But have you considered the strong evidence that female conscripts would be less effective in achieving military objectives, but far more likely to die trying? Are you moved by the consideration that under-qualified soldiers are a danger to everyone in their unit? Drafting women to combat roles just doesn’t make sense.

You may reply, won’t girls feel bad if we tell them they are weak, slow, and generally unimposing in combat? Isn’t this tantamount to saying that women are physically inferior?

Not at all, if you put the claims in a larger context. Women have bodies of amazing power: Nothing can compare to holding a newborn and realizing with awe, “My body built that.” It’s a remarkable feat that men can never simulate.

Women are physiologically awe-inspiring, but not in a way suited for soldiering. Their energies go towards something else; indeed, the female reproductive system is far more “expensive” in terms of invested energy, whether or not a woman ever bears a child.

Might these physiological differences tell us anything about what a flourishing life should look like, for men or women? Modern feminists would say “no”; that kind of reasoning is angrily rejected as “biological determinism.” Gloria Steinem famously declared, “Everybody with a womb doesn’t have to have a child any more than everybody with vocal cords has to be an opera singer.”

Steinem’s comment is a good illustration of how far feminist thinking is removed from reality. Singing opera is a highly rarified use of a part of the anatomy that most of us use all the time, whereas wombs are useful for gestating babies and really nothing else. Still, feminists are right to object against any claim that a person who is physically suited to X must be restrictively mandated against doing anything besides X. But does anyone make this claim? It is possible to find moral significance in the body without engaging in hackneyed reductionism.

Women should not be commodified as baby-builders, any more than men should be commodified as body-builders. It turns out, though, that a flight from “biological determinism” sometimes ends in a kind of biological escapism. If we insist that our physiology has no moral significance, we may find ourselves desperately trying to hide from the obvious consequences of refusing to be what, in fact, we are.

Being Corporeal

We see manifold evidence of this escapism in modern life. Schools tie themselves into knots trying to prevent boys from doing what boys of virtually every culture like to do: wrestle, compete, and play warlike games. Boys are not suited to sitting in chairs all day long: The lack of movement in school is a huge problem for them that seems to be undercutting their scholastic achievement. Later in life, if they enlist in the military, the physical standards they are expected to meet will probably have been lowered to make it more possible for women to compete. Let’s have no overt expressions of masculinity in the military, please! It makes the ladies feel bad.

In a different way, girls are taught to suppress their most uniquely feminine characteristics. Progressive liberals have poured enormous energy into ensuring that girls can suppress their reproductive potentialities without cost, without judgment, and preferably as early as possible. Obsessed with lifting the “burden” of reproduction, these liberals lose any sense of healthy respect for motherhood or new life. They regularly reveal their disdain for pregnancy, children, and families, as we saw when NARAL activists threw themselves into a frenzy of indignation over a Super Bowl commercial that presented unborn children as humans.

Virtually no one would argue that either men or women should be enslaved to their physiology. But should we see it as an awkward physiological accident that men have (larger) biceps, and women the power to bring forth new life? Surely it’s more reasonable to incorporate these features into a complete and fully humane understanding of manhood and womanhood, in a way that gives meaning and social purpose to both.

What this means is that both boys and girls should be raised to embrace the unique potentialities of their bodies. Not every boy will grow up to be a soldier, but every boy can be taught to channel his natural competitiveness and aggression towards good. Young men should view themselves as protectors,ready to do what is needed to prevent the wicked from victimizing the innocent.

In a similar vein, not every girl will become a mother. Most will, but a woman who is unafraid of her physiology will find a healthy outlet for her life-giving impulses whether or not she literally bears a child. That doesn’t mean she can’t also (if she wants) learn to write software, but it does mean that she should expect her contribution to society to take the form of giving life, not taking it.

Again and again, the progressive left has proven that prudent living, once neglected, is soon spurned. Drafting women would be a particularly tragic illustration of this point: Even women who don’t want to serve could be forced to throw their lives away in a desperate effort to act like men. Might we use this moment to walk the conversation back in the other direction? Our military needs at the moment are happily not so dire, but in the war against nature and common sense, the enemy seems to be winning. Let’s step up our recruitment efforts.


Rachel Lu teaches philosophy at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota where she lives with her husband and three boys. Dr. Lu earned her Ph.D. in philosophy at Cornell University.


This article was originally posted on ThePublicDiscourse.com.




Is the GOP Suicidal?

Leave it to the Republican Party to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

While nearly every poll definitively affirms that Democrats are in deep doo-doo come November, and as leftist talking heads like Chris Matthews have already conceded a likelihood that Republicans will take the U.S. Senate in the 2014 mid-term elections, many of the GOP’s highest profile personalities obtusely refuse to take yes for an answer. They’re evidently hell-bent on disenfranchising the party’s pejoratively tagged “social issues” majority.

Stupid, stupid and stupid.

From mealy mouthed moderate establishment-types like Chris Christie, to dovish libertine libertarians like Rand Paul, it seems a majority of the GOP rock stars are scared gutless to set a single yellow-nailed pinky toe on the fevered culture war battlefield. They say it’s time to raise the white flag on traditional values.

Guys, I’m here to tell you, the “social issues” aren’t going away. But keep up this fatalistic nonsense and the GOP’s Christian-conservative base just might. Morality-minded Americans are sick of it, and we will choose fidelity to principle over surrender to ill-perceived “pragmatism” every time.

Take presidential wannabe Rand Paul. This guy, who, by all appearances, was shaping up to be a thoroughbred in the 2016 primary horserace, may have just snapped a leg before the gates have even chimed open.

In a recent interview with the uber-liberal online rag, Vocative.com, Paul could hardly wait to take a matchstick to the official Republican Party “social issues” platform (i.e., the sanctity of marriage, natural human sexuality and morality, ending the abortion holocaust, religious liberty, the Second Amendment and the like.)

Said Paul:

“I think that the Republican Party, in order to get bigger, will have to agree to disagree on social issues. The Republican Party is not going to give up on having quite a few people who do believe in traditional marriage. But the Republican Party also has to find a place for young people and others who don’t want to be festooned by those issues.”

In other words, the Republican Party must become a wussified version of the Democratic Party.

Democrat-lite.

Rand, Rand, Rand. This is the same failed, tired, reach-out-to-the-needy-independents strategy that brought us Presidents Dole, McCain and Romney. What is it about the GOP that has it constantly biting the hand that feeds it, while begging for a little scratch-behind-the-ear action from the fickle fingers of “independent” indifference?

There’s an interesting aside to Paul’s Vocative.com interview. My friend and nationally syndicated talk radio host Steve Deace made an interesting point in a recent email.

Wrote Deace:

By the way, the website that Rand Paul did the interview with when he talked about needing to agree to disagree on social issues has stories titled ‘Shame Free Guide to Hookups’ and ‘Five Questions for the Creator of Direct Your Own Porn.

Can you imagine if Obama, or any national Democrat figure for that matter, gave an interview on public policy to a website that produces such content? Every conservative group in the country would be decrying how this is more evidence of America’s moral decline.

It’s also evidence, frankly, of the GOP’s moral decline and loss of its historical moorings, courage and resolve to stand firm on the transcendent, non-negotiable issues of life, liberty and the natural family, marriage and human sexuality.

If the big ol’ dumb elephant continues on this ill-fated trajectory, I can guarantee that the Christian-conservative base will abandon it, as it has abandoned us. Although we’d rather take the Ronald Reagan approach and reform the party from within, I can promise you that we will, if that becomes a lost cause, form a new, principled, conservative “values voters” third party.

If that happens, Democrats will rule the roost indefinitely.

Now that is scary.

In his email, Deace offered some wise counsel to Rand Paul and others who are squeamish on the “social issues.”

“Here’s what a libertarian like Rand Paul could say,” he advised. “Until somebody can prove their definition of ‘rights’ doesn’t cost somebody they’re already God-ordained rights, the burden of proof remains. And right now we’re seeing these new ‘rights’ costing people their free speech and religious freedom rights that were established at the founding of this republic. And that’s something Americans of all persuasions on the marriage issue should be opposed to.”

As I’ve noted before, Ronald Reagan often spoke of a “three-legged stool” that undergirds what I call “complete conservatism.” The legs symbolize a strong national defense, strong free-market principles and strong traditional social values. For the stool to remain upright, it must be supported by all three legs. If you snap off even one leg, the stool collapses under its own weight.

Why the GOP establishment seems determined to snap off the traditional social values leg, thus collapsing the entire Republican Party stool, defies all explanation.

Back in January I praised Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus for making several public pronouncements in defense of the “social issues”-conservative Republican Party platform in general and the unalienable rights to both life and religious liberty in particular.

Reince, you may want to have a sit-down with your party leadership and tell them to get their head in the game. If they don’t, we, the GOP base, may just decide to take our ball and go home.

Understand this: We “social issues” conservatives (read: complete conservatives) will never stop playing the game. But if the Republican Party doesn’t quit moving the goalposts, we may just have to go stake out a new playing field.


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Obama Encourages Drug Money Laundering

President Barack Obama’s administration has announced that it won’t enforce money-laundering laws against banks doing business with marijuana stores, in a move designed to “facilitate illegal conduct,” says U.S. Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA)

The Obama administration calls it “Guidance to Financial Institutions on Marijuana Businesses.”

The Washington Post story about this development carried the innocuous headline, “Obama administration clears banks to accept funds from legal marijuana dealers,” when in fact the marijuana “business” is not “legal” under federal or international law.

“Marijuana trafficking is illegal under federal law, and it’s illegal for banks to deal with marijuana sale proceeds under federal law,” noted Grassley. “Only Congress can change these laws. The administration can’t change the law with a memo.”

He added, “This is just one more area in which the Obama Administration is undermining our system of checks and balances and the rule of law.”

Robert Charles, former Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, told Accuracy in Media that, despite the “guidance” from the Obama administration, banks will stay away from laundering marijuana money because of the fear of being sued. “The range of suits is enormous,” he said. “The guidelines do absolutely nothing. They protect no bank against anything. The DOJ won’t give any bank an assurance that it won’t be prosecuted under federal bank secrecy or anti-drug laws.”

Calvina L. Fay, executive director of the Drug Free America Foundation, told us, “This is yet one more example of the lawlessness of the Obama administration.  We all know that banks are federally regulated and that pot is still illegal at the federal level. This action will clearly put banks in jeopardy of violating regulations and will enable criminal activity to thrive.”

She added, “This action tells parents and grandparents that the government can no longer be counted on to do what it is intended to do: protect U.S. citizens from criminals who engage in drug trafficking, human trafficking, weapons trafficking, and other serious illegal activities that are inter-connected to the drug underworld. Rather, our government is now embracing this activity and enabling it.”

While most of the major media have been in support of what the Obama administration is doing to facilitate the spread of mind-altering drugs, some publications are sounding the alarm.

Whistleblower, a publication of WND.com, has published a special issue on the epidemic of drug use, legal and illegal, in American society. A piece by Art Moore titled, “Dude: Science contradicts Obama’s pot claims” refers to Obama as the “Choom Gang” president, a reference to his membership in a high school gang of heavy marijuana users, and notes that Obama’s claims about the relative harmlessness of pot are not sustained by the scientific evidence. Another article by Moore identifies Obama supporter George Soros, the hedge-fund billionaire, as the main force behind marijuana legalization.

Investigative reporter Michael P. Tremoglie says in an article on a site called Main St. that George Soros is only one of several big name CEOs and rich elites who are financing the marijuana movement. He also names:

  • Google billionaire Paul Buchheit
  • Facebook billionaire founders Sean Parker and Dustin Moskovitz
  • PayPal founder Peter Thiel
  • Peter Thiel, founder of Men’s Wearhouse
  • John Sperling, chairman and CEO of the University of Phoenix
  • Whole Foods founder John Mackey

A website called “Marijuana Majority” names dozens of other personalities backing the legalization of dope.

It appears, however, that some Republicans are moving in the direction of Obama’s soft-on-drugs policy.

Five days after the Maryland mall shootings, The Washington Times ran a front page story, “In the weeds: Paul, Christie, Perry open to softer pot laws ahead of 2016,” about possible Republican presidential candidates embracing the drug. It turned out that the Maryland mall shooter, who killed two people and then himself, was himself a pothead, and was possibly having a psychotic episode.

The Times said that U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) “has arguably been the most vocal on the subject, saying the federal government should leave the issue entirely to the states.” The Times also reported that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) has vowed to scrap the “failed war on drugs.”

But David Evans, the Executive Director of the Drug Free Projects Coalition and a special adviser to the Drug Free America Foundation, notes that during the George W. Bush administration marijuana use went down among young people by 25 percent. “If we had had a reduction in any other health problem in the U.S. of 25 percent, we would consider it an outstanding success,” he said. But marijuana use has been going up under the Obama administration.

Michele M. Leonhart, administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), declared in a statement issued last December that “Those who aspire to see their own or others’ children accomplish great things in life or who want to live in a nation of increasing prosperity should be very concerned about the increase in marijuana use by teenagers, including the fact that a staggering 12 percent of 13- and 14-year-olds are abusing the drug. The mixed messages being sent to America’s teens about the harmfulness and legality of using record-high-potency marijuana are obscuring kids’ awareness of the effects their use will have on them. America owes it to its children to give them the best possible start in life, so they and society are not hindered in the future.”

Her statement takes on even more significance now that Obama has disregarded the scientific evidence, declared the drug to be relatively harmless, and is encouraging banks to launder money from the marijuana traffickers.

Pro-marijuana groups are demanding that Obama fire Leonhart. But she continues to enforce the federal laws against marijuana as best she can. The DEA announced on January 27, 2014 that the owners of a “medical marijuana” dispensary in Bakersfield, California, had been charged with trafficking in both methamphetamine and marijuana.


This article was originally published at the Accuracy in Media website.

 




Chris Christie Signs Discrimination Into Law

Despite his “concerns about [the] government limiting parental choice on the care and treatment of their own children,” Governor Chris Christie signed into law a ban on ex-gay therapy for minors, thereby committing an outrageous act against both the people of New Jersey and his own Catholic faith.

Buying into the standard gay activist talking points, Christie explained that “on issues of medical treatment for children we must look to experts in the field to determine the relative risks and rewards,” because of which he felt this government intrusion into doctor-patient relationships was justified.

As for Christie’s personal views, he stated that, “I’ve always believed that people are born with the predisposition to be homosexual. And so I think if someone is born that way it’s very difficult to say then that’s a sin. But I understand that my church says that, but for me personally I don’t look at someone who is homosexual as a sinner.”

New Jersey is now the second state to sign a ban on “sexual orientation change efforts” (SOCE) for those under 18, even with parental consent, following California (surprise!), although the California bill has already been challenged in the courts.

On a practical level, this means that a 17-year-old girl who was raped at the age of 14 and now feels a repulsion towards men and an attraction towards women cannot seek professional help to get to the root of her feelings, even if her parents back her decision.

That same young woman, however, would be allowed to seek professional help to develop her lesbian identity, even without the backing of her parents.

This is equality under the law? This is tolerance? This is a victory in the war against bigotry and discrimination?

And if this same young woman lived in California and was convinced that she was actually a boy trapped in a girl’s body, she could now choose to use the boys’ bathroom and even play on the boys’ basketball team, without any scientific diagnosis required.

In fact, it would be perfectly legal for her to undergo hormone therapy to help make her more masculine, soon to be followed by sex-change surgery. Yet if she said, “For many reasons, I’m uncomfortable with my same-sex attractions,” it would be illegal for her to receive counseling. What kind of madness is this?

Gender is now entirely subjective, based on nothing more than one’s personal perceptions, while sexual and romantic attractions are allegedly innate and immutable. Put another way, you are not necessarily born male or female, despite the biological and chromosomal evidence, and you can change from male to female. But you are born gay, and you cannot possibly change to straight.

What about all those who claim to have changed sexual orientation?

They are to be vilified, mocked, discounted, and silenced. In fact, they can be freely discriminated against, as Grammy Award winner and gospel superstar Donnie McClurkin just learned when Washington DC Mayor Vincent Gray disinvited him “from performing at a concert commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1963 civil rights March on Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream.’”

Why? Because he broke one of today’s biggest PC commandments, namely, “Thou shalt not be ex-gay,” which McClurkin is, which means that being gay is not innate and immutable. (This would have to be admitted, at least for some people.)

Yet the McClurkins of this world are now ignored (and worse) while testimony from someone like Brielle Goldani (born a male), which was apparently fabricatedbased on a movie script, helped push the New Jersey ban through.

What about the overwhelming scientific evidence demonstrating clearly that SOCE is harmful and destructive? It doesn’t exist.

Christie relied on a study conducted by a task force appointed by the American Psychological Association (APA) in 2007 which concluded that “efforts to change sexual orientation are unlikely to be successful and involve some risk of harm, contrary to the claims of SOCE practitioners and advocates.”

Yet this task force consisted entirely of gay activist psychologists and their allies, which would be the equivalent of asking Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to head a study of whether racial discrimination against blacks existed in America or asking Al Gore and Greenpeace to investigate whether man-made global warming existed.

In fact, gay activist bias in the APA has become so extreme that no less a figure than Dr. Nicholas Cummings, a past president of the APA, has become an outspoken critic of the attack on SOCE, arguing in a recent USA Today editorial that, “A political agenda shouldn’t prevent gays and lesbians who desire to change from making their own decisions.”

Dr. Cummings states that he personally helped “hundreds” of homosexuals change their orientation to heterosexual while helping many others “attain a happier and more stable homosexual lifestyle.” (Cummings, it should be noted, is a self-described life-long liberal who supports same-sex “marriage.”)

He writes that “contending that all same-sex attraction is immutable is a distortion of reality. Attempting to characterize all sexual reorientation therapy as ‘unethical’ violates patient choice and gives an outside party a veto over patients’ goals for their own treatment.”

He adds that, “Whatever the situation at an individual clinic, accusing professionals from across the country who provide treatment for fully informed persons seeking to change their sexual orientation of perpetrating a fraud serves only to stigmatize the professional and shame the patient.”

Gov. Christie has now become party to government intrusion on doctor-patient relationships, thereby serving as a useful pawn of the gay activist agenda, perhaps to his temporary political gain.

But when common sense and compassion prevail again, Gov. Christie’s decision will only serve to stigmatize and shame him.


This article by Dr. Michael Brown first appeared at the Townhall.com blog. You can see the original article and comments HERE.