Do we need to engage in “worldview training” with our children and grandchildren? What difference does it make? Isn’t all of that “worldview” stuff just for philosophers who use big words that my kids and I can’t understand anyway? Isn’t it enough to just follow Jesus and leave worldview to others?

It might be tempting to think that way, but let’s pause for a moment to consider what a “worldview” really is. Our worldview, simply put, is our view of the world. It’s the philosophy or viewpoint we use to interpret everything around us. It’s our road-map to how we live our lives.

That means every single one of us has a worldview. It might be an organized, coherent philosophy, or it may be a hodge-podge of ideas we’ve picked up here and there with no organizing principles. But each one of us, whether we realize or not, has some kind of worldview.

Of course, there are many worldviews in our culture today. There’s humanism, pantheism, socialism, postmodernism, etc. And, of course, there’s Biblical Christianity.

But again, what difference does it make what our worldview is as long as we follow Jesus? And why do we need to go to the work of teaching our kids about worldviews?

To begin, let’s dig a little deeper on what a worldview is.

Defining a Worldview

At the foundation of any worldview are certain “big ideas” that undergird everything else. Chuck Colson and Nancy Pearcey, in their book How Now Shall We Live?, contend that every worldview must answer three questions:

1. Creation: Where did we come from, and who are we?
2. Fall: What has gone wrong with the world?
3. Redemption: What can we do to fix it?

The Bible answers all of these questions, of course, and those answers form the starting point of a Biblical worldview. And if we choose to live consistently with those answers, every facet of our lives will be impacted.

But what happens if we change the answers to those three foundational questions? Simply put, we’ll end up with a very different worldview.

Marxism, for instance, gives answers that are radically different compared to Christianity. In her book Total Truth, Nancy Pearcey explains it this way:

1. What is Marxism’s counterpart to Creation, the ultimate origin of everything? Self-creating, self-generating matter.
2. What is Marxism’s version of the Fall, the origin of suffering and oppression? The rise of private property.
3. How does Marxism propose to set the world right again? Revolution! Overthrow the oppressors and recreate the original paradise of primitive communism.

And once again, from that high-level, big-question perspective, Marxists can figure out what it means to live a life consistent with Marxism.

If the Bible is true—and it is—then its answers to these big questions reveal and describe the world as it really is. It gives us an accurate picture of true reality. All other worldviews, to one extent or another, distort reality and lead their adherents to live contrary to the truth.

Where We Are

Our children are going to believe something. They’re going to have some view of the world around them. And if we don’t give them a Biblical worldview, the world will be glad to give them a substitute to take its place.

The truth is, most of the children in our country today are enrolled in secular government schools that don’t share our worldview. They’re also spending vast amounts of time plugged into media that doesn’t share our worldview.

What ideas are they learning? What worldview are they absorbing through all of this educational and entertainment content?

Young people have been walking away from the church in massive numbers, and the number of “nones”—essentially, those who hold to no religion—has been on the rise. According to Pew Research Center in 2015, 35 percent of Millennials were “nones.”

Moving from the religious to the political sphere, consider these headlines from the past couple of years:

• CNBC: “Most young Americans prefer socialism to capitalism, new report finds”

• Axios: “Gen Z prefers ‘socialism’ to ‘capitalism’

• Fox News: “Americans warming to socialism over capitalism, polls show”

• Gallup: “Four in 10 Americans Embrace Some Form of Socialism”

Are these young people hardcore socialists? As Gallup notes, “Whether the appeal of socialism to young adults is a standard function of idealism at that age that dissipates as one grows older, or will turn out to be a more permanent part of the political beliefs held by the cohort of millennials who have come of age over the past decade, remains to be seen.”

Of course, once we find out the answer to that question, it may be too late.

As we look around our culture, we see the decline of Christian thought and ideals. If ever there was a time to teach our children a Biblical worldview, the time is now. And I’ll say it again: if we don’t give our children a Biblical worldview, someone is going to take our place and teach our children a different one. But it probably won’t be the one you would have chosen.

Why it Matters

There are at least three negative outcomes our children may succumb to if we fail to teach our them a Biblical worldview:

• Without a solid understanding of a Biblical worldview, they may fall prey to one of the false worldviews prevalent in our culture—perhaps under the impression that it better explains the “big questions” of life—and walk away from the Christian faith entirely.

• They could remain faithful to Christ at one level, but be led astray by wrong ideas (such as socialism) because they don’t understand the Bible’s teaching on anything other than personal faith and values (in other words, they think Christianity is only about a personal relationship with Jesus, not truth about all of life).

• They may absorb elements of many false worldviews without having any Biblical framework to filter them through, leading to a life lived without any real core.

Worldview training, then, is about equipping our children to understand the world as it really is (because only the Bible has the real answers to the biggest questions), refute the wrong ideas our culture tries to hand them, and live confidently according to what they know to be true.

Of course, having a Biblical worldview isn’t a substitute for saving faith in Christ. It’s possible, after all, to know all the right answers yet remain spiritually lost. Yet if our children trust Christ but don’t understand how the Bible offers the best answers across life’s many questions, they won’t be equipped to stand strong in a culture that has lost its way and point others toward the Truth.

Let’s make sure we’re passing on a Biblical worldview to the next generation.

IFI Worldview Conference

To help equip Christians to think and live out our faith in the public square, the Illinois Family Institute is hosting their annual Worldview Conference on March 7th at the Village Church of Barrington. This year’s conference is titled “Thinking Biblically About Our Corrosive Culture” and features Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. Rob Gagnon.

What:  IFI Worldview Conference

When:  Saturday, March 7th, 10 AM to 3:30 PM

Where:  Village Church of Barrington, 1600 E. Main Street, Barrington, IL 60010 (map)

How much:  $20 per person/$50 per family

Click HERE for a flyer for this event.

You don’t want to miss this!

Many pro-family conservatives ask, “Isn’t there any good news to report?” Yes, there is. Some examples are the growing national economy, record low unemployment numbers for minorities, foreign policy changes from the G.W. Bush and Obama years, and, lately, even some positive decisions from the U.S. Supreme Court.

June is traditionally a big month for announcing decisions from the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), and this year is no exception. Below are a few of the cases decided and a few still pending.

It can take a lot of work to search out short case summaries put into non-legal language, but the New York Times and the SCOTUS Blog are useful resources. The SCOTUS Blog has a helpful page titled “Plain English / Cases Made Simple” — “This is our archive of posts in Plain English,” the page explains. In addition, each case page includes a list of links to analysis posted at their website.

For those interested in statistics, the SCOTUS Blog also has a page that includes sporting event-like stats for the current term on “dispositions by sitting, majority opinions authored by sitting, pace of grants, pace of decisions, the circuit scorecard and justice agreement.”

(The text beneath the bolded subject lines are from the New York Times, and the case names link to their SCOTUS Blog page.)

Several of the cases below were included in a Times article “The Supreme Court’s Biggest Decisions in 2018.” The article opened with this:

“The nation’s highest court, now at full strength with the appointment of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch last year, faces a far-reaching list of cases that renew its central role in American life.”

This first case, of course, has been well covered by the conservative press. It has also generated a debate on whether the ruling was too narrow or not. You can find arguments on both sides here, here and here.

Gay Rights and Religion

Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission

The court ruled 7-2 in favor of a Colorado baker who refused to create a wedding cake for a gay couple. The court said the baker had been mistreated by a state civil rights commission based on remarks of one of its members indicating hostility to religion.

The Alliance Defending Freedom provides a good write-up on the Masterpiece case background here.

In the next two cases, addressing partisan gerrymandering, the court didn’t rule on the question in either case. In one, no harm was shown, in the other, the court ruled that those bringing the case didn’t have standing. Next term, however, the court will hear a case from North Carolina where it may well decide on the constitutionality of partisan gerrymandering.

For more on the court’s action in these two cases, read “The Supremes put off deciding whether politics violates the Constitution” by the Heritage Foundation’s Hans A. von Spakovsky.

Partisan Gerrymandering (2 cases)

Gill v. Whitford

The court sent back the challenge to Wisconsin’s legislative map to the lower courts.

Benisek v. Lamone

The court ruled in an unsigned opinion against Republican voters who had challenged the congressional map drawn by Democratic lawmakers in Maryland.

In the next case, involving voting rights, the above-linked Times article examines an Ohio program that removed “voters from its list of registered voters if they don’t respond to a notification after four years… Critics said federal law prevents states from removing people from voter registration rolls for not voting.

Voting Rights

Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute

The court upheld Ohio’s aggressive program to purge its voting rolls.

The next case was obviously not viewed as positive by many social conservatives:

Sports Betting

Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association

The court struck down a federal law that effectively banned commercial sports betting in most states, clearing the way for legal wagering.

SCOTUS Blog noted that the holding of the next case, involving immigration, per federal law does “not give detained aliens the right to periodic bond hearings during the course of their detention”:

Immigration

Jennings v. Rodriguez

The court ruled that immigrants held in detention facilities have no rights under a federal law to periodic hearings to decide whether they may be released on bail.

Among the cases still pending is Arlene’s Flowers Inc. v. Washington — here is the summary from the SCOTUS Blog page:

Issues: (1) Whether the creation and sale of custom floral arrangements to celebrate a wedding ceremony is artistic expression, and, if so, whether compelling their creation violates the free speech clause; and (2) whether the compelled creation and sale of custom floral arrangements to celebrate a wedding and attendance of that wedding against one’s religious beliefs violates the free exercise clause.

Here are a few other cases where the decisions have not yet been announced:

Travel Ban

Trump v. Hawaii

The court will decide whether President Trump had the legal authority to restrict travel from several mostly Muslim countries.

Digital Privacy

Carpenter v. United States

The court will decide whether the government needs a warrant to obtain information from cellphone companies showing their customers’ locations.

Labor Unions

Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees

The court will decide whether states may require government workers who choose not to join unions to pay fees for collective bargaining.

Pregnancy Centers and Abortion

National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra

The court will decide whether California may require “crisis pregnancy centers” to provide information about abortion.

Internet Sales Taxes

South Dakota v. Wayfair

The court will decide whether states can require internet retailers to collect sales taxes in states where they have no physical presence.

If what you’ve read so far doesn’t strike you as all that positive, you can be happy you don’t live in Canada. Dr. Michael Brown details what their high court did this week:

Canada’s Supreme Court Rules Against Trinity Western and the Bible

In a ruling that is sure to send shock waves through the nation, Canada’s Supreme Court ruled 7-2 against Trinity Western University’s (TWU) Law School. In effect, what the court declared is that universities must choose between biblical standards and accreditation. Put another way, the court ruled that Christianity and higher education are incompatible. I am not exaggerating in the least.

Here’s a brief summary of the case for those who are not familiar with it. Trinity Western is a Christian university that requires its students and faculty to live by basic Christian standards. This means that to be a student or faculty member in good standing, you can’t commit fornication or adultery, nor can you engage in homosexual relationships . . .

And if it could happen in Canada, it could happen in America.

Honestly, I don’t know where TWU goes from here. And I don’t know how the believers in Canada will respond.

But I can say this to my friends and colleagues and fellow-educators and communicators here in America: We either use our liberties or lose them. We either stand fast and stand tall and stand strong, or we cower in a corner. We either do what’s right today, or we apologize to our children tomorrow.

It’s time to push back.

Earlier this week I reported how YouTube had come under attack from various LGBT websites and YT channels and social media accounts. The internet giant had committed the cardinal sin of playing conservative Christian ads on LGBT channels. How dare they!

To add insult to injury, YouTube had previously demonetized many of these LGBT videos, just as YouTube demonetized hundreds of my videos. They were deemed not appropriate for all advertisers. Now, YouTube had the gall to advertise a video like “Can You Be Gay and Christian?” on these very same channels. This was too much to bear.

The Twitter world was set ablaze, and a number of YouTubers expressed their disappointment and anger. (See my previous article for details.)

In reality, though, this was not really a very big story.

This very week, I received word that an ad encouraging gay men to get HIV testing appeared before one of my videos. These things happen, and I doubt YouTube can be 100 percent sure that an offending ad will never pop-up.

But it’s not the end of the world. No one was raped or molested or tortured or robbed or killed.

And I seriously doubt that the conservative Christian ads were appearing day and night on these LGBT channels. In fact, for the most part, I keep seeing reference to the same one or two ads appearing on the same one or two LGBT channels. What’s the big deal?

But now, this is a story. A big story. A cause for moral outrage. A cause calling for justice. Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill.

Outrage Overkill

Already this week, the story has been covered by Forbes, Business Insider, the Advocate, and the Independent (UK), along with a host of other sites, including LGBTQ Nation, Pink News, and the Verge. (There are too many to link here.) It’s even made it to the Spanish language Posta site. (Perhaps other languages too?)

YouTubers with large followers have weighed in as well, including Phillip DeFranco, with 6.1 million subscribers (his video had more than 1.2 million views in less than two days; and, again, I could cite many more YouTube examples).

Almost every story included clips (or still shots) from our “Can You Be Gay and Christian?” video. And for the most part, interviewers have focused on FTM transgender Chase Ross, one of the most offended parties involved and one of the first to speak out on YouTube.

As a result, our video has been swarmed by angry members of the LGBT community, with one woman rallying others to take over our video feed. (She posted, “Where are all my gay motherf—kers at? We taking over this b—ch.”)

Prager U remains in a legal battle with Google and YouTube over the truly outrageous treatment it received. In contrast, what happened with our ads running on a few LGBT channels is hardly a story at all, let alone a cause around which people should rally.

The negative exposure has been such that we went from a 10-1 positive response (roughly 670 to 70, which would be a typical ratio for videos watched by our subscribers) to barely 2-1 positive (at present, 2,098 to 929).

Of the nearly 1,100 comments (it would be much higher if we didn’t have to delete lots of posts for incredibly vulgar and offensive language), many are quite ugly. They include choice comments like, “die you old bast—d”. And, “oh and some people can’t help being gay it’s just like what paedophiles like you can’t help you dumb a– doctor can’t do jack sh-t no one will miss you when i kill you.” And, “you look like pedophile colonel sanders.” And, “Breeders are f—ing disgusting.” And, “I seriously hope that every single one of you twisted, evil monsters that liked this video are hit by a bus. This isn’t exaggeration. I want the plague you’re spreading wiped off the face of the planet.” (Remember: There are others too vile to print, even while omitting some of the profanity.)

And every day, the outrage grows greater. How dare YouTube do such a monstrous thing!

And the more it is reported, the more the story grows, until it has become a cause for social justice. Just look at how unfairly LGBT’s are being treated!

It’s On

Again, as I stated earlier in the week (and as the Advocate fairly quoted me), we never intended for our video to be advertised on LGBT channels, and my preference is that it not be advertised there. I had no desire to go into someone’s own “territory” and present to them something they didn’t want to see. Nor did I ask for a veritable flood of profane comments and negative responses. (On the flip side, we produced the video to be viewed, so we’re thrilled with the day and night publicity, even if it’s negative. Let the message get out!)

Yet all the while, Prager U remains in a legal battle with Google and YouTube over the unfair treatment it received, treatment which really was outrageous. In contrast, what happened with our ads running on a few LGBT channels is hardly a story at all, let alone a cause around which people should rally. But rallying they are, and so the story now takes on a life of its own. We’re watching it unfold in front of our eyes.

But let me not end here by merely observing what is happening. Instead, may I ask for five seconds of your time? I’m simply asking you to click on the link to my video, and give it a thumbs up. (If you haven’t watched it yet, it’s only 6 minutes long, so watch and then respond. You can even leave a comment!)

One viewer said, “It’s a gospel version of a Prager U video.” Sweet!

Your five second investment of time will help us push back against the tide of angry LGBT activists and their allies. If the battle is on, then let it be on. And may truth triumph in the end.

This article originally posted at Stream.org.

Here is a recent headline from the Independent Journal Review: “Salon: Identity Politics Is ‘Dragging the Progressive Agenda Down.’” IJR’s Pardes Seleha explains that yes, indeed, a “far-left publication” [Salon] is “finally denouncing its long-embraced identity politics…”

Salon isn’t the only place on the political left to find critics of I.D. politics. Last November, Mark Lilla, a professor at Columbia wrote an op ed that ran in the New York Times titled, “The End of Identity Liberalism.” Here was his opening:

It is a truism that America has become a more diverse country. It is also a beautiful thing to watch. Visitors from other countries, particularly those having trouble incorporating different ethnic groups and faiths, are amazed that we manage to pull it off. Not perfectly, of course, but certainly better than any European or Asian nation today. It’s an extraordinary success story.

But how should this diversity shape our politics? The standard liberal answer for nearly a generation now has been that we should become aware of and “celebrate” our differences. Which is a splendid principle of moral pedagogy — but disastrous as a foundation for democratic politics in our ideological age. In recent years American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing.

So, Lilla writes, “the age of identity liberalism must be brought to an end.”

The “fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups,” he adds. Ouch. Trigger alert!

At the level of electoral politics, Lilla says, “identity liberalism has failed most spectacularly, as we have just seen. National politics in healthy periods is not about ‘difference,’ it is about commonality.”

Why is this series about identity politics running at the Illinois Family Institute’s website? Because those who have been running up the white flag of surrender in the “culture war” should pull down that flag immediately.

Another name for that culture war is identity politics. Aggrieved groups demand their rights. Women are to be treated to taxpayer funded abortion. The LGBT(etc.) crowd are to be treated as if their sex-centric identity is legitimate. College campus snowflakes are to be treated as if they were grown-ups.

Professor Lilla’s article attracted a good bit of attention on both the left and the right.

Here was Rich Lowry writing at the National Review:

A recent essay in the New York Times elegantly diagnosed the problem and inadvertently illustrated it. Mark Lilla, a professor at Columbia and highly respected intellectual historian, wrote that “American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender, and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing.”

His piece itself occasioned a moral panic, focused overwhelmingly on how Lilla is, in fact, himself a white male. His op-ed was denounced from the left as “the whitest thing I’ve ever read,” and part of an “unconscionable” assault on “the very people who just put the most energy into defeating Trumpism, coming from those who will be made least vulnerable by Trump’s ascension.”

Lilla was so undeterred by the criticism from his fellow Leftists that he decided to turn the topic into a 160 page book, The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics.

Beverly Gage, writing at the New York Times, wasn’t completely happy with the effort.

Still gobsmacked by the 2016 election, many liberals may be yearning for a thoughtful, generous and well-informed book to put it all in perspective, a strategic account of where they’ve been, where they are now and where they ought to go. In “The Once and Future Liberal,” Mark Lilla, a professor of the humanities at Columbia and a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, says his aim is to unify today’s fractured liberals around an agenda “emphasizing what we all share and owe one another as citizens, not what differentiates us.” Unfortunately, he does this in a way guaranteed to alienate vast swaths of his audience, and to deepen left-of-center divisions. Rather than engage in good faith with movements like Black Lives Matter, Lilla chooses to mock them, reserving a particularly mean-spirited sneer for today’s campus left. “Elections are not prayer meetings, and no one is interested in your personal testimony,” he instructs “identity” activists, urging them to shut up, stop marching and “get real.”

You can see why I included that entire paragraph. It was too much fun not to.

So, it’s clear that not everyone on the political left wants to move past identity politics — and that is very good news for those of us on the political right. Again, here is Beverly Gage:

This is not, of course, a work of historical scholarship. It is a polemic about the dangers of “identity liberalism,” and a critique of the misguided professors and students who seem so enamored of it.

Beverly in not a fan, either:

Despite his lofty calls for solidarity, Lilla can’t seem to get out of his own way — or even to take his own advice. He urges fellow liberals to focus on “the hard and unglamorous task of persuading people very different from themselves to join a common effort,” then proceeds to insult his own audience…

“The Once and Future Liberal” is a missed opportunity of the highest order, trolling disguised as erudition.

One note of thanks to Ms. Gage: Since I’m not going to read Lilla’s book, I appreciate her including this quote in her review — again, too much fun:

“Elections are not prayer meetings, and no one is interested in your personal testimony,” [Lilla] instructs “identity” activists, urging them to shut up, stop marching and “get real.”

Let me close with Michael Brown, also writing last December partly in response to the Lilla op ed:

[Leftist] radical agendas can only go so far before the people begin to push back, and that it is partly what happened with the recent elections.

Enough with the divisive ways of identity politics. Enough with the attack on traditional American values. Enough with the assault on our religious freedoms. Enough.

So, in that sense, yes, we are witnessing a larger moral and cultural backlash, even if some of these issues were not front and center in the Trump campaign. And to the extent we can make the case for a biblically-based, moral conservatism, one that treats everyone fairly but that recognizes that certain boundaries are healthy and good, we can turn the hearts of the younger generation as well as recapture the hearts of the older generation.

As my close colleagues and I have said for the last 15-plus years, on with the revolution.

Also worth reading on this topic is Kay S. Hymowitz‘s article “Why Identity Politics Are Not All-American,” where she opens with a reference to Mark Lilla’s NYT article.

Read more:  Series: Identity Politics & Paraphilias

PLEASE consider a financial gift to IFI to sustain our work.
We have stood firm for 25 years, working to boldly bring a biblical perspective to public policy.

Leftists are increasingly making it easier for social conservatives to convey their message of common sense to the public at large. No better example of this exist than how male/female sports are being impacted. Here are short excerpts from two writers on the topic — first up is Joy Pullmann — here is the title of her post:

Boys Will Keep Winning Girls’ Sports Trophies Until We Are Willing To Re-Assert Sex Distinctions
The assumption in Obergefell that the sexes are interchangeable is affecting laws and regulations that concern sex differences in many other forms.

From the article:

The latest girls’ 100- and 200-meter dash winner from Cromwell High School in Connecticut has some broad shoulders, manly biceps, and a mustache — because he’s not a girl. The power of social stigma is strong enough, however, in this politically and culturally Left community to coerce an entire girls’ track team and their families to affirm an idea their eyes and experiences can easily disprove and which is directly harmful to their own aspirations and children.

. . .

Obergefell is a head domino, and we’re about to see it knock down a lot more sex-distinct policies. It’s a pretty sure bet Americans did not expect tolerance for two consenting adults doing whatever behind closed doors to become a spearhead for forcing naked boys to shower next to naked girls and make girls second-class players on their own fields. That’s what happens when you base social policy on feelings retroactively justified by pretend reasoning, and use courts as a major vehicle for turning those feelings into policy rather than through elected officials more responsive to legislating by consent.

Here is Dr. Michael Brown’s title:

Is this what leftists and progressives mean by ‘equality’?
When it comes to male and female athletic competition, we divide based on biological sex.

From the article:

In recent weeks, we’ve read about a female high-school wrestler who identifies as male and who has been taking testosterone to prepare to “transition” to male. Unsurprisingly, she defeated the other girls, all of whom are not taking testosterone.

We also read about a male weightlifter who now identifies as female. Unsurprisingly, he defeated the women he competed against, setting a new record along the way.

“Today,” Brown writes, “common sense is in danger of extinction, and concepts like fairness and equality are turned upside down.”

Even according to activist ideology, gender is a social construct but sex is biological. And when it comes to male and female athletic competition, we divide based on biological sex.

In the end, this is just one more example of why I believe LGBT activism will ultimately defeat itself.

You cannot wage a winning war against gender distinctions any more than you can redefine marriage while preserving its integrity.

. . .

And so, I appeal to progressivists, leftists, feminists, and LGBT allies and their allies, along with all those who cherish fairness, equality, and justice. Look carefully at the trajectory of your activism, and ask yourself: Is this really the kind of world that you want?

Onto our paraphilia of the day: Exhibitionism. Here is Wikipedia:

Exhibitionism is the act of exposing in a public or semi-public context those parts of one’s body that are not normally exposed – for example, the breasts, genitals or buttocks. The practice may arise from a desire or compulsion to expose themselves in such a manner to groups of friends or acquaintances, or to strangers for their amusement or sexual satisfaction or to shock the bystander. Exposing oneself only to an intimate partner is normally not regarded as exhibitionism. In law, the act of exhibitionism may be called indecent exposure, “exposing one’s person”, or other expressions.

Wikipedia provides more information by having sections on “types of exposure” and “classifications.” I’ll spare the reader the details and move onto our closing question.

Will “Exhibitionism” be added to enumerated anti-discrimination policies and laws? If America is to be truly free, shouldn’t all sexcentric-identified individuals be treated equally under the law?

The entire Identity Politics and Paraphilias series can be found here.

Up next:

Articles in this series, from oldest to newest:

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Introducing a Series

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Incest

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Body Integrity Identity Disorder

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Impact & Transgenders

Transgenderism a Choice or Disorder?

Why the Term “Sexual Orientation” is Nonsense

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Man’s Search for Meaning

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: LGBT Is Not a Color & Fetishism

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: ‘Public Discourse’ Weighs In & Bisexuality

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: More from ‘Public Discourse’ & Autassassinophilia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: An Ugly Fight & Bestiality/Zoophilia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Tribalism & Urolagnia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Ideas & Voyeurism

Charlottesville: A Return to the Topic of Identity Politics

Paraphilias of the Day: Pedophilia, Hebephilia, Ephebophilia, and Pederasty

PLEASE consider a financial gift to IFI to sustain our work.
We have stood firm for 25 years, working to boldly bring a biblical perspective to public policy.

It is time to return to our Identity Politics and Paraphilias series, and events surrounding Charlottesville serve as the path back.

This focus on identity politics is important because while it’s being written about a lot, in my view it’s still not receiving the serious level of discussion that it deserves.

Leftists want to fundamentally transform the United States. Unfortunately, they do not nearly have the level of support they need to accomplish it. What they would sell—socialism which leads to Venezuela-type poverty and tyranny—they can’t, so they seek to distract and destroy with divisive identity politics.

They need countless aggrieved sects fighting each other. This has always been a big part of the strategy of the cultural Marxists.

The purpose of the other part of this series — our highlighting of paraphilias — is to outline more fully the dangerous agenda of the identity politics champions. Many of these champions ride under the banner of LGBTQIA. What they don’t want you to know is that those letters represent only the beginning of the show.

The country has now been introduced to a growing number of genders — who knew that there could be so many? Silly common sense used to hold that there were only two. Here is one list that runs 13 pages.

The number of paraphilias is far greater than both the number of letters currently listed following LGBT and the count of gender varieties.

Thus, paraphilias deserve attention. According to Leftists, if America is to be truly free, all sexcentric-identified individuals should be treated equally under the law. Therefore, there is no logical answer from them as to why discrimination should be allowed for any other perversions.

So — identity politics and paraphilias fit nicely together. The Leftists know that we can’t remain a county whose motto is “out of many, one.” They want the opposite, “out of one, many.” Did I mention that not all the identities involve sex and gender? There are also “oppressed” minority groups. And a lot of them!

And now Charlottesville has brought into the spotlight a few more labels — such as crazies and anarchists: Neo-Nazis, KKK members, Antifa, and Black Lives Matter.

Commentator Tammy Bruce penned an article with this title and lead:

The deadly impact of identity politics
By conflating white supremacists and Trump supporters, the ‘Resistance’ pours hate on hate

Americans know full well the environment of hate and violence that identity politics has served us.

The concerted effort by the so-called “Resistance” to further divide this nation is disgusting and dangerous. By singularly focusing on such a craven goal of race hatred and suspicion, and conflating white supremacists with all Trump voters, they not only ignore the real issue of the danger of identity politics, they contribute to it.

In the wake of Charlottesville, commentator Michael Brown wrote:

Identity politics can be just as dangerous as outright racism. Both are divisive, both demean the value of others, and both make judgments based on skin color or ethnicity.

Writing at Mercatornet, Jarrett Stepman notes:

In a country of 320 million people of stunningly diverse ethnic backgrounds and philosophies, this is a fire bell in the night for complete cultural disintegration. The end result will be uglier than the already sickening events that took place this past weekend.

Bruce Thornton, one of my favorite writers, notes in an article at Front Page Mag:

Identity politics based on grievance and victimization requires that there always be grievances and victims. Progress cannot be admitted, no more than any of us can be born free from Original Sin. The permanence of racial sin, and the need for whites to act in ways that advantage the “victims,” forbid such reconciliation.

It used to be called the “culture war.” The phase we are moving into will make that war look like the good old days. Now it’s bigger, and on purpose. Fueled by Leftists on a mission, violent radical groups are, in the words of Jarrett Stepman, stepping up “their efforts to plunge the nation into constant social unrest and civil war.”

Up next: Paraphilias of the Day: Pedophilia, Hebephilia, Ephebophilia, and Pederasty

Articles in this series, from oldest to newest:

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Introducing a Series

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Incest

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Body Integrity Identity Disorder

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Impact & Transgenders

Transgenderism a Choice or Disorder?

Why the Term “Sexual Orientation” is Nonsense

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Man’s Search for Meaning

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: LGBT Is Not a Color & Fetishism

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: ‘Public Discourse’ Weighs In & Bisexuality

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: More from ‘Public Discourse’ & Autassassinophilia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: An Ugly Fight & Bestiality/Zoophilia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Tribalism & Urolagnia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Ideas & Voyeurism

If you appreciate the work and ministry of IFI,
please consider a tax-deductible donation to sustain our endeavors.  

It does make a difference.

The Illinois Family Institute (IFI) and its sister organization Illinois Family Action (IFA) have posted “about” pages that summarize each group’s mission on their respective websites (IFI, IFA).

Occasionally IFI and IFA receive notes from friends and allies questioning some aspect of the organizations’ activities. One recent email expressed concern over our coverage of the tax code debate and other policy issues that the sender viewed as irrelevant to what he believes is IFI’s or IFA’s mission to advocate for conservative positions on only the social issues.

There are some IFI/IFA supporters who are “social issues” conservatives and, therefore, do not think IFI or IFA should take positions on economic issues. They request that IFI/IFA “not mix the two,” saying that “Jesus never took a political side,” and “Neither should you if you claim to speak with a Christian voice.”

Author and radio talk show host Dr. Michael Brown wrote a column on this topic, articulating the questions with which Christians wrestle:

Is it dangerous for Christian leaders to mix politics and religion? Is that a confusion of their calling? Or is it important for Christian leaders to address all areas of life, including politics?

In response to letters from people who agree with him on the social issues, Dr. Brown wrote the following:

Would Paul or Peter or John have gotten involved in the presidential elections? Would they have endorsed a candidate or advised a candidate or commented on the various party platforms? Would they have even voted?

Some point to Jesus’ comment in John 18 when He said to Pilate shortly before His crucifixion, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). If it were of this world, He explained, then His servants would have been fighting for him not to be delivered up to His captors.

But in saying this, Jesus hardly meant that we should not be involved in the affairs of this world. After all, feeding the hungry and clothing the poor and educating our children and working our jobs are all “of this world.” Should we stop doing these things and simply go on a mountaintop to pray, waiting for the Lord’s return? (Of course, we’d soon have to figure out how to get food and where to sleep–all issues of this world.)

In reality, what Jesus was saying was this: “My kingship does not derive its authority from this world’s order of things. If it did, my men would have fought to keep me from being arrested by the Judeans. But my kingship does not come from here” (Jn. 18:36, CJB).

Just because we are “passing through this world” and “it is not our eternal home,” Brown writes, “doesn’t mean that we don’t fight against injustice or champion the cause of the needy, nor does it mean that we remain silent on important political and social issues.” Brown clarifies the responsibilities of Christians:

After all, slavery was the paramount hot-button, deeply-divisive, political and social issue of the 19th century, yet it would have been very wrong for Christian leaders to remain silent on this, just as it’s very wrong for Christian leaders to remain silent on issues like abortion and homosexual activism today.

Abortion. Marriage. Parental freedom regarding education. Religious liberty. Obscenity. Those are a few areas easily categorized as issues that have a clear moral impact.

What about energy policy? Foreign policy? Health care policy? Tax rates? And there are almost countless other areas where government spending doesn’t seem to be obviously moral in nature.

Recently, IFI executive director David E. Smith had this to say on the topic:

The Illinois pension problem and state budget issues that we’ve been writing about are moral issues that affect families, businesses and churches across the state. It is not among the main issues that we’ve addressed over our 25 years of ministry, but the irresponsible and reckless stewardship of tax resources that plagues our state should be a growing concern to Christian citizens of this state.

Jesus told His disciples, “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s” in Matthew 22:21. In the United States, “we the people” are Caesar. As such, “we the people” will be accountable for the poor stewardship of our resources and the high level of corruption we tolerate in government.

We are blessed by God with the gift of self-government.  It absolutely matters how we steward it.

Over the years I have collected and linked to articles on this page at my website: On the Connection Between the Economic and Social Issues. One of the articles was written by Jim DeMint, former member of Congress and president of the Heritage Foundation. In “The Connection Between Economic and Cultural Policies”, DeMint writes:

Inside the Beltway, federal policymakers tend to think in terms that separate “economic” policy from “social” policy. But life in homes and communities around the country doesn’t organize into such neat categories.

“Cultural decline,” DeMint wrote, “did not emerge entirely on its own”:

Perverse incentives created by public poli­cies have contributed to social breakdown. The law is a teacher, and decades of policies undermining families and communities have taught neighbors to depend on the government rather than each other, with dire consequences for the very people those policies were designed to help.

DeMint is correct. For over half a century, immoral government economic policies have caused havoc when it comes to the family structure and stability. For even longer, government policy on health care has left many families struggling to afford both health insurance and health care. One of the greatest threats to the family in this state continues to be the use and abuse of tax dollars.

As part of its work in defending faith, family and freedom, IFI and IFA must cover economic issues. Spending future generations into debt, after all, is a moral issue.

We urge you to pray for our state and nation, for our elected officials in Springfield and Washington D.C.  

PLEASE also consider a financial gift to IFI to sustain our work. We have stood firm for 25 years, working to boldly bring a biblical perspective to public policy.

Fulfilling a campaign promise to get rid of the “Johnson Amendment,” President Donald Trump, according to Liberty Counsel, “signed an executive order today that promotes religious liberty throughout the federal agencies in general and in certain specific areas”:

The executive order declares that it is the policy of the Administration to protect and vigorously promote religious liberty, directs the IRS to exercise maximum enforcement of discretion to alleviate the burden of the Johnson Amendment, and provides regulatory relief for religious objectors to Obamacare’s burdensome preventive services mandate.

The Johnson Amendment, named for then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas and enacted into law in 1954, restricts tax-exempt organizations, including churches and religious organizations, from endorsing or opposing candidates for elected office. The executive order will provide some relief by directing the IRS to relax its enforcement of the provision.

For decades, the Johnson Amendment has deterred many church pastors and leaders from speaking about the moral issues of the day due to the fear of having their tax-exempt status revoked. Unfortunately, it was also used as an excuse to avoid controversial matters of morality that, over the years, became dominated by politics.

In an article earlier this year, Dr. Michael Brown wrote that he believes “it is the fear of man that has muzzled us and it is our desire to be affirmed by the world that has silenced us”:

The Johnson Amendment, as wrong as it is, is quite limited in its scope, primarily prohibiting “certain tax-exempt organizations from endorsing and opposing political candidates.”

It does not prohibit pastors from speaking out against political corruption. It does not prohibit pastors from speaking out against LGBT activism. It does not prohibit pastors from speaking out against abortion.

Nevertheless, many pastors and leaders have feared losing church members or offending those who disagreed. Now, with the loss of the excuse of the Johnson Amendment, Christian pastors and leaders can now, in the words of Dr. Brown, get back to the business of helping believers “sort out” cultural matters  “based on Scripture.”

“This is an appropriate way to commemorate the National Day of Prayer,” said Liberty Counsel Chairman Mat Staver, “as our President commits to protect and promote religious freedom.”

To learn more about the Johnson Amendment and what churches can and cannot do, click here.

Please join the Illinois Family Institute in thanking President Trump.

Take ACTION: CLICK HERE to thank President Trump for keeping his promise to protect free speech and religious liberty.

Editor’s Note:  Today’s action is a great first step in restoring First Amendment religious liberty rights, however it doesn’t change some of our nation’s most troubling laws, like the 1954 Johnson Amendment, or state laws that tyrannize Christian business owners.  We must keep in mind that this Executive Order could easily be overturned by the next president…  so we still have much work to do.

Lawmakers in Washington D.C. and Springfield must still follow through in making real changes to defend religious liberty against despotism.

Image credit: Liberty Counsel.

Would you help IFI continue this work?
Would you contribute $25, $50, or $100 today to help us fight for religious liberty?

If you have school age children, contact your administration as soon as possible to ask this specific question: Will you be permitting students to refuse to speak in class on the Day of Silence? If the administration either answers “Yes” or dodges the question, please call your child or children out of school on the Day of Silence. Every absence costs districts money, and money talks.

Also, if your school will be permitting students to refuse to speak in class, politely insist that an email be sent to every family informing them of the following: 1. The Day of Silence will be taking place in classes on April 17, 2. Students will be permitted to refuse to speak during instructional time, 3.  The Day of Silence is organized and promoted by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.

Parents have a right to know.

The Day of Silence is the queen of all the numerous homosexuality-affirming activities that take place in public schools. It started in one university and then like a cancer metastasized to thousands of high schools, and then into middle schools. Before long it will take place in elementary schools. Leftists know that it’s easier to indoctrinate 16-year-olds than 36-year-olds and easier still to indoctrinate 6-year-olds.

GLSEN promotes the Day of Silence as an “anti-bullying” effort. If it were solely about eradicating bullying, everyone—liberals and conservatives alike—would support it. But it’s not.

The Day of Silence exploits government schools, captive audiences, and anti-bullying sentiment to advance the Left’s social, moral, and political beliefs and goals. GLSEN seeks to advance the belief that all public expressions of moral disapproval of homosexual activity are bullying.

GLSEN urges students to refuse to speak all day, including during academic classes, which is disruptive to instructional time. Administrators permit students to refuse to speak in class, and teachers feel compelled to create lesson plans to accommodate student-refusal to speak. Teachers feel that if they don’t accommodate student-refusal to speak, they will be seen as supporting the bullying of self-identified homosexual students.

The little unspoken secret is that many teachers on both sides of the political aisle hate the Day of Silence because of the distraction and disruption it creates. Unfortunately, they’re afraid to say that to their administrations because GLSEN and its ideological acolytes proclaim that opposition to the Day of Silence necessarily means endorsement of bullying. The truth is one can both oppose bullying and oppose the Day of Silence.

The homosexuality-affirming legal organizations Lambda Legal and the ACLU have both stated that students have no legal right to refuse to speak in class, so school administrations have every right to require students to participate verbally in class. And teachers have every right to require students to answer questions, give oral presentations or speeches, or participate in debates or discussions.

A coalition of pro-family organizations is once again urging parents to keep their children home from school on the Day of Silence if their school administrations will be allowing students to politicize instructional time by refusing to speak. This is the only organized national effort to oppose any pro-homosexual activity or event in public schools.

Each year through the Day of Silence Walkout, parents of freshmen learn about the Day of Silence. And remarkably, there are parents of sophomores, juniors, and seniors who learn for the first time that the Day of Silence takes place in their children’s schools. This lack of awareness happens because school administrations do not notify parents about the Day of Silence.

The absence of conservative influence within the culture on issues related to homosexuality is to some extent the fault of conservatives. Ignorance, fear, and an astounding lack of perseverance on the parts of conservatives have turned our cultural institutions—including public education—into the playground of “progressives.” Our passivity has enabled homosexual activists and their ideological allies to become social, political, and pedagogical bullies. Evidence of that is everywhere, including in schools on the GLSEN’s annual April school event, the Day of Silence.

We must demonstrate the boldness and perseverance of the Left if we hope to stop the relentless appropriation of public education for the promotion of homosexuality.

Matt Barber, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, BarbWire

Dr. Michael Brown, Director, Coalition of Conscience

Brian Camenker, President, MassResistance

Linda Harvey, Founder and President, Mission America

Laurie Higgins, Cultural Analyst, Illinois Family Institute

Peter LaBarbera, President, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality

Diane Gramley, President, American Family Association of Pennsylvania

Matt Staver, President, Liberty Counsel

Debra Smith, Founder, Informing Christians

Tom Rasmussen, Executive Director, Montana Family Foundation

Pastor Scott Lively, President, Abiding Truth Ministries

Penny Nance, President, CWA

Debbie Leininger, State Director, CWA of Illinois

Beverly Uhlmer Roberts, State Director, CWA of Texas South

Linda Wall, VA Mass Resistance

Nolan Clayton, Faith and Freedom Family Ministries

Pastor Christopher Clegg, Operation Save America

In October 2014, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) put Dr. Benjamin Carson on its “Extremist Watch List.” Why? Because Dr. Carson holds the traditional, historical, and true belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman and has the courage to express that belief.

Who else is on this “Extremist Watch List”? In addition to a host of unsavory Neo-Nazis, KKK members, and skinheads, the SPLC lists the following as “extremists”:

• Dr. Michael Brown, Bible scholar, author, and radio host
• Cliff Kincaid, director of Accuracy in Media
• Charles Murray, fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and author of The Bell Curve and Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010
• Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council

The depth of the ignorance and malignity of the SPLC’s leaders is exposed through their defamation of a man of such unquestioned integrity as Dr. Carson.

After being exposed by Bill O’Reilly on his Fox News Channel program this week (video here), and receiving “intense criticism” from the public, the far Left SPLC decided to reverse their decision and issue an apology to Dr. Carson—well, an apology of sorts. You know, the sort that’s not really an apology. Here’s an excerpt from their deeply contrite apology:

In October 2014, we posted an “Extremist File” of Dr. Ben Carson. This week, as we’ve come under intense criticism for doing so, we’ve reviewed our profile and have concluded that it did not meet our standards, so we have taken it down and apologize to Dr. Carson for having posted it. 

We’ve also come to the conclusion that the question of whether a better-researched profile of Dr. Carson should or should not be included in our “Extremist Files” is taking attention from the fact that Dr. Carson has, in fact, made a number of statements that express views that we believe most people would conclude are extreme….We laud Dr. Carson for his many contributions to medicine and his philanthropic work, and we, like so many others, are inspired by his personal story. Nevertheless…because Dr. Carson is such a prominent person, we believe that his views should be closely examined.

I wouldn’t want to go so far as to claim that the SPLC is a racist organization, but we can’t help but wonder if Dr. Carson’s skin color may have factored into the SPLC’s decision to remove him from their fear-mongering, money-making “Extremist Watch List” while leaving Dr. Brown, Cliff Kincaid, Charles Murray, and Tony Perkins on the list.

One brief word about “extremism”: “Extremist” is a free-floating term with no fixed meaning relative to truth or goodness. Being an “extremist” can be either good or bad depending on the activity or belief from which one has become distanced. In the midst of a culture so corrupt and decadent that citizens cheer when men legally wed men and women flock to a movie that extols the pleasures of sadomasochistic sex, we should thank God that for our “extremist” status.

If having a public forum and expressing the belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman warrant inclusion on a list of hateful extremists, then the SPLC must be either short-staffed, which seems unlikely given the millions of dollars they suck from a gullible public, or they’re slackers.

There are countless Jews and Christians from Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant faith traditions who believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. And many of these men and women have access to public forums in which they express their beliefs. They express their beliefs in college, university, and seminary classrooms; podcasts; sermons; scholarly journals, magazines; newspapers; websites; speaking engagements; and news programs. So, why are they not on the ethically impoverished Southern Poverty Law Center’s “extremist” list?

Perhaps the reasons for the SPLC’s oddly truncated list are twofold:

1.) A common tactic of homosexual activists is to exploit the natural sheep-like human tendency to desire membership in the cool group and the natural human tendency to avoid pain and conflict. The Left maligns leaders who tell the truth about homoeroticism so that others who also hold these same true beliefs will not want to be associated with them. The Left thereby effectively marginalizes truth-tellers.

2.) The SPLC leaders surely know that if they included every public person who affirms the truth that marriage has a nature central to which is sexual complementarity, the SPLC would discredit itself—further.

We should learn three lessons from this newest unforced error from the SPLC.

Christians need to speak the truth in love about homosexuality and gender confusion with the perseverance and boldness that the Left speaks lies.

Second, Christians need to publicly come alongside those who are speaking the truth about homosexuality, gender confusion, marriage, and children’s rights.

Finally, Christians need to be willing to be persecuted for expressing biblical truth—which is to say, truth—about homosexuality and gender confusion.

Temporal and eternal lives are at stake.

**Caution: Not for younger readers**

Confession: I’m not into superheroes—well, I’m not into comic book superheroes. Real superheroes, I love.

As a result of my lack of interest in comic book superheroes, I have never seen an X-Men movie, nor even read a review of one—until today. What prompted me to read about the X-Men movies is a hair-raising lawsuit filed by 31-year-old Michael Egan who is accusing X-Men  director and producer Bryan Singer of drugging and raping him when Egan was between the ages of 15-17 and openly homosexual Singer was 32.

According to the Associated Press, Egan has also filed lawsuits against “Fox television executive Garth Ancier, theater producer Gary Wayne Goddard, and David A. Neuman, a former television executive with Current TV and Disney.”

Here’s more from the AP report:

This isn’t the first time Singer has been in trouble involving minors. In 1997, a 14-year-old extra from the thriller he directed entitled “Apt Pupil” accused Singer and others working on the film of forcing him and two other underage boys to get naked during a shower scene.

…

Deadline reports that due to the [Egan] lawsuit, Singer will be skipping planned appearance at this weekend’s WonderCon event in Anaheim. The website also reports Singer’s name is being removed from commercials for the new TV series ‘Black Box,’ which he produced.

According to the highly-explicit suit, the illicit activities started at a mansion in the Los Angeles area known as the M&C Estate, where principals of streaming video company Digital Entertainment Network, Marc Collins-Rector and Chad Shackley, lived. Shackley’s younger brother Scott was a classmate of Egan’s.

The court documents also claim that Collins-Rector molested Egan and threatened him with a firearm if he did not comply.

…Collins-Rector is already a registered sex offender. In 2004, he pled guilty to enticing five minors across states lines for sexual relations.

The suit goes on to allege that further abuse by Singer happened at the Paul Mitchell estate in Hawaii, where Egan was forced to take cocaine and was repeatedly raped in a swimming pool with his head held underwater.

TMZ provides yet more disturbing details:

TMZ has obtained an affidavit written by FBI Special Agent Joseph Brine. We know Egan—who was 15 at the time of the alleged assault—is referred to as Minor #4.

In the affidavit—dated May, 2003—Egan says Shackley’s younger brother invited him to a graduation party at the Encino estate. According to the docs, there were 5 to 6 people present, including Rector and Shackley….

Egan claims during the party, Rector told him “90 percent of show business was gay and that you needed to sleep with people if you wanted to go anywhere.” Rector allegedly warned, “We stay together, but you do not want to see my dark side,” and then displayed a gun.

Rector allegedly said he was one of the 25 most powerful people in Hollywood and it would be a mistake to make the group angry.

What followed, according to Egan, was a barrage of sexual assaults at the estate and elsewhere. Most shockingly, Egan says he was taken to a Siegfried and Roy show in Vegas, drugged and when he awoke he felt a pain in his rectal area and realized he had been sodomized by Shackley.

Collins-Rector was charged with 21 counts of sexual assault. He copped a plea to 1 count. We’re told Collins-Rector and Shackley fled the country.

The other minors who are mentioned in the complaint tell wild stories… being flown from various states to California, offered $100K a year for college tuition, cars and other perks in return for sex.

One minor was allegedly told by Rector if he refused to have sex he’d be sent back to his “hick town” and never have a life.

This helps explain the overt homosexuality-affirming messages of the X-Men movies in which mutants are the symbol for homosexuals. In an analysis of the deviance-endorsing didacticism of these films, Dr. Michael Brown writes: 

[T]he [X-Men] movies, along with the comic books, draw many clear parallels between the mutants and the gay and lesbian community. It is an open secret that the most recent movie in the series, X-Men First Class, which serves as the prequel for the other films, is especially overt in presenting these parallels.

… 

Who exactly is Bryan Singer? He is the openly gay producer, director, and/or writer of X-Men, X2, and X-Men First Class, and a reviewer on the Fridae website (“Empowering Gay Asia”) noted that Singer stated in an interview on BBC that ‘mutant’ was a stand-in for ‘gay.’” 

These lawsuits also shed some much-needed light on the homosexuality-affirming blitzkrieg spewing daily from Hollywood—America’s sorry storyteller. Don’t underestimate the power of stories to transform hearts and minds, particularly young hearts and minds. 

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Hollywood purveyors of perversion would be perverse, or that the Hollywood “teachers” of tolerance would tolerate virtually anything (accept, of course, dissent from their sexuality dogma), or that the most powerful among us would exploit their power to indulge in whatever deviant desires a corrupt mind can entertain. 

I know, I know, these are just allegations, but there are an awful lot of allegations like this out there. And where there’s this much smoke, there’s usually a conflagration. We ignore these allegations at the peril of children.

Let’s see if Hollywood, rightfully indignant about the abuses committed by Catholic priests and concealed by Catholic hierarchy, will now in righteous indignation, openly castigate powerful Hollywood moguls for their homoerotic abuse of minors.

Click HERE to support the work and ministry
of Illinois Family Institute.

By Lillian Kwon –The Christian Post

Dr. Michael Brown believes Christians have already lost the battle when it comes to public opinion on homosexuality and gender identity issues.

Pro-gay books are being read in elementary school classrooms, teachers are being mandated to use gender neutral language, gay activists have been welcomed in the White House, and young evangelicals see no problem with same-sex marriage.

Yet the prevailing thought in churches is that “this stuff is happening elsewhere” or that Jesus is coming back soon and “we’re out of here any minute,” Brown, a Jewish believer in Jesus, lamented.

“[We can] put our heads in sand or we can recognize that massive transformation is happening in our society right in front of our eyes, on our watch,” he told Christians over the weekend at the National Conference on Christian Apologetics in Charlotte, N.C.

Author of 20 books, Brown has spoken to revival in America, the need for moral and cultural revolution and Jewish outreach throughout his ministry career. But homosexual issues were never on his radar.

“This is not something that made sense for me to focus on,” he said. It was just six years ago when he felt a divine mandate to start dealing with the issue. Since then he has realized that many Christians have largely avoided the issue as well.

“The definitions of male and female are being eroded but don’t sweat it because praise the Lord you had a lovely service last Sunday,” he said sarcastically. “Don’t let me disturb you with these trivialities.”

Brown wants to awaken the conscious of Christians and bring them to a “divine reality” about what’s happening in America.

There is a need to reach out to homosexual men and women with compassion, he said, but at the same time there is “a gay activist agenda that we must resist.”

The speaker and author listed a host of examples, particularly in the public school system, to demonstrate how much GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender) activism has advanced.

Currently, the Los Angeles Unified School District has a policy on “ensuring equity and nondiscrimination” for “transgender and gender nonconforming students.” The policy defines gender identity as “one’s understanding, interests, outlook, and feelings about whether one is female or male, or both, or neither, regardless of one’s biological sex.”

In San Francisco, the school policy for restroom accessibility states, “Students shall have access to the restroom that corresponds to their gender identity exclusively and consistently asserted at school.”

And the policy for locker room accessibility states, “Transgender students shall not be forced to use the locker room corresponding to their gender assigned at birth. In other words, if Joey’s convinced he’s Jane, then he can use the girls’ locker room and restroom,” Brown summarized.

Pro-gay books have also become prevalent in the classrooms. Just ten years ago, it was difficult to get a copy of Heather Has Two Mommies. Now, Brown has been able to collect stacks of similar children’s books.

They include One Dad, Two Dads, Brown Dad, Blue Dads; Two Daddies and Me; Oh The Things Mommies Do!: What Can Be Better Than Having Two?; and the coloring book Girls Will Be Boys Will Be Girls.

Recently, middle school students in Washington, D.C., were given surveys that asked them about their gender (male, female or transgender) and sexual orientation (straight, bisexual, gay or lesbian, nor sure).

Even the largely religious state of North Carolina is not exempt. A preschool teacher in Charlotte was told not to address the class as “boys and girls” but rather as “friends.” In Burke, one Christian girl quit her high school softball team because she was the only non-lesbian, Brown said.

Many schools are also using the Riddle Homophobia Scale, where repulsion, pity, tolerance, and acceptance are measured as homophobic. Meanwhile, “positive levels of attitudes” that are encouraged toward GLBT persons include support, admiration, appreciation, and nurturance.

“Like it or not, this is coming to a community near you,” Brown warned.

“All the while, Christians have not concerned themselves with the issue and pastors are afraid to speak out for fear of being perceived as homophobic,” he lamented.

“The fact is, when our answer is ‘let’s retreat more quickly,’ we’re already defeated,” Brown said. “When our main concern is ‘I don’t want to be perceived as bigoted, intolerant and hateful, therefore I’ll say nothing instead of speaking truth in love,’ we’re already defeated.”

There is an abysmal lack of teaching and preaching on the issue, he pointed out.

“We’ve been silent because this is unpopular, because people will be offended, because ‘one of my biggest givers in the church has a daughter who’s gay.'”

And while some may be extra sensitive in these times because of the recent bullying of GLBT students and teen suicides spotlighted in the media, Brown pointed out that there are some 4,000 to 5,000 suicides a year among teens and little is said about the other kids.

“I want to find out what these real problems are so we can address them,” he commented.

Brown made clear that he isn’t trying to stir up anything hateful. Rather he is speaking out of love and a broken heart. He also stressed that he is not an alarmist or extremist and that he has done careful research.

“If I’ve given you information, it’s based on facts. It’s not cherry picking things to give a misleading impression,” he said.

He has packed all the collected information into a 475-page book that is slated for release in February.

Though he has published with major publishers before, no secular or Christian publisher was willing to go near his new book, titled A Queer Thing Happened to America: What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been.

His book was rejected by about 20 publishers, all of whom said the title needs to be changed and that the contents are too controversial.

“You have Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, kindergarten kids being taught terms like gender queer, queer theology and study programs in our schools, and [yet] to have a book [titled A Queer Thing Happened to America] is too controversial to touch,” Brown said.

The book, he stressed, does not have a single hateful syllable in it. He calls for compassion and understanding of gay and lesbian persons while taking issue with gay activism.

“We fail to understand the struggles,” he said. “Can you imagine what someone goes through, raised in the Lord and believing they must be condemned, crying themselves to sleep every night, hoping that they’ll change the next day and their desires don’t change. And then they meet someone and they love this person and they feel like it’s God but it can’t be God and they have to be celibate for the rest of their life and as the best answer you tell them to just suck it up.”

Brown is calling on Christians to repent of their sins against the GLBT community, particularly for making homosexuality out to be the worst of sins. He himself has made public apologies.

He is also challenging the church community to repent of sins within its own household (i.e. high divorce rate).

At the same time, he believes the GLBT issue is the greatest challenge to religious freedoms and family foundations in this generation and is something Christians cannot ignore.

“We must pray for awakening in the church. America’s messed up because the church is messed up,” he said. “This has happened on our watch.”

“We must take a stand for righteousness in our society. We’re called to … expose darkness and to be a moral conscience and moral preservative. If we’re not shining the light, if we’re not making a difference … how’s the world going to have a moral conscience and know the difference between right and wrong.”

Brown has created his own publishing firm called Equal Time Books to get his book out on shelves. With the release of his book next year, he’ll also be launching a speaking tour called Campaign for Religious Tolerance and Intellectual Diversity.

“Coalition of Conscience” crowd of more than 500 prepares to offer Gospel witness at homosexual “pride” event in Charlotte, N.C. Their message: “God has a better way.” See www.godhasabetterway.com.

Dear Readers,

I commend to you my friend Dr. Michael Brown’s and the Coalition of Conscience’s response to the “gay pride” movement in Charlotte, N.C. In a speech last week to Reclaiming Oklahoma for Christ, I said that the appropriate Christian response to homosexual/”trans” activism and homosexual strugglers is a tightrope walk – balancing a witness for truth on the one side and the gracious love of Christ for sinners on the other. I too often fall off that tightrope, but Michael hangs on it as well as any pro-family leader I have observed in the last 20 years. (My only cautionary note is Brown’s use of the term “homophobia” [see this excellent NARTH analysis] – an artificial construct that is now so elastically defined that almost any rejection of homosexualist goals (including same-sex “marriage”) can be and is deemed “homophobic” by “gay” activists and the liberal media. That said, his point it correct: it is wrong to fear and hate men and women trapped in homosexuality – people who need God’s love and grace.)

How I wish that decades ago Christian leaders in Chicago had taken Dr. Brown’s “God has a better way” approach of a mobilized witness against “proud” homosexuality and the dangerous agenda that goes with it. Perhaps if they had, we wouldn’t be seeing the annual, raucous, debauched homosexuality “pride” celebrations on Chicago streets with attendees (“gay” and straight) numbering in the hundreds of thousands. The Church of Jesus Christ in America has largely abdicated its role as a bold witness for truth and Biblical morality in the culture. (And who says proclaiming the Gospel and confronting sexual sin agendas must be mutually exclusive?) I challenged Oklahoma Christians to be as aggressive in defending God’s truth about homosexuality as self-described “queer” activists are in advancing their lies (enumerated below). Such is the spirit that Michael Brown and the Coalition of Conscience have displayed in Charlotte; believers across the nation would do well to learn from and imitate them. – Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH,www.americansfortruth.org

P.S. As if to prove my theory that no matter how loving biblically faithful Christians are, they will always be cast as hateful, “homophobic” bigots by radical “queer” activists, click HERE to read homosexual militant Wayne Besen’s response to Michael Brown’s “God has a better way” campaign. It is vicious, even by Besen’s low standard.
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STATEMENT TO THE MEDIA, JULY 25, 2009
GOD HAS A BETTER WAY RALLY, CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA

DR. MICHAEL BROWN, DIRECTOR, THE COALITION OF CONSCIENCE [links added by AFTAH]
www.coalitionofconscience.org; www.godhasabetterway.com

We are here today to reach out and resist — to reach out to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community with compassion, as neighbors and friends and fellow-workers, and to declare God’s great love for GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender] people. And we are here to resist the gay activist agenda and to send a message to the nation.

As followers of Jesus, we first confess our own sins — our lack of ardent love for homosexual men and women, our lack of compassion for their struggles, our adding to their sense of rejection through insensitive words and deeds.

We acknowledge the fact that homophobia is alive and well in some churches, and we renounce and repudiate that hateful and destructive attitude.

Our love also compels us to speak the truth, and we do not believe that all sexual orientations should be celebrated.

We do not celebrate the fact that some people believe they are women trapped in men’s bodies;

We do not celebrate the fact that two men or two women cannot reproduce their own unique offspring and that same-sex families guarantee that a child will never have either a mother or a father;

We do not celebrate the fact that some people choose to surgically mutilate their God-given organs and must take hormones for the rest of their lives just to be at peace with themselves;

We do not celebrate the sexual confusion that exists in many young people today, to the point that they can only identify themselves “as genderqueer”;

We do not celebrate the pain and brokenness that exists in the lives of many of those attending Pride Charlotte today — completely apart from societal rejection — and we proclaim to our GLBT friends that God has a better way, that there is a place of wholeness and transformation to be found in Jesus. And we are here for the long-term to help them on that journey.

And because of our sense of justice and rightness, we take strong exception to the gay activist agenda. We watch its trajectory, we see where it has gone and where it is going, and we say, “It stops here in Charlotte.”

Since gay pride events have been rallying points for GLBT activism, we take our stand here today and declare:

We don’t believe that elementary school children should be taught to find their “inner-trannie” (meaning their inner transgender identity) as advocated in GLSEN’s training materials.

We don’t believe that it is in the best interest of our society to seek to eradicate gender or to multiply it exponentially.

We completely reject the Los Angeles Unified School District Reference Guide when it states that Gender identity “refers to one’s understanding, interests, outlook, and feelings about whether one is female or male, or both, or neither, regardless of one’s biological sex.”

We don’t believe it is good or right for four-year-old children to have their preschool teachers read them books like One Dad, Two Dads, Brown Dad, Blue Dads or to be lined up by sneaker color rather than gender so they don’t feel “boxed in.”

We don’t believe in “Queering Elementary Education,” to use the title of a well-known book.

We believe it is outrageous when an African American woman is fired from her university position of vice-president of human resources because she writes an editorial objecting to the concept that sexual orientation is equivalent to skin color.

We believe it is outrageous for the media to cover up the gay identity of a sexual predator who repeatedly raped his adopted, five-year-old African American son and offered him for sex through the internet – for fear of making homosexual couples look bad.

We believe it is outrageous for the mayor of San Francisco to welcome warmly a public fair featuring nude, sado-masochistic displays, and to do so in the name of “diversity.”

And what does it say of our country today when our president, in the White House, could say “We are very proud of you” to a man who leads an organization devoted to making harder core pornography more readily available and who says that bestiality is fine as long as the animal doesn’t mind?

We don’t believe in fining a Christian photographer in New Mexico for politely declining to shoot a lesbian commitment ceremony, or punishing an Anglican bishop in England for choosing not to hire an openly gay youth worker, or for putting a lifetime ban on Christian leaders in Canada, forbidding them from expressing the biblical teaching on homosexual practice and threatening them with imprisonment.

We don’t believe in laws that could jail the owner of a Christian bookstore for choosing not to hire a cross-dresser as a receptionist.

We don’t believe in a Hate Crimes bill that is so flawed that even the ACLU is concerned that it could restrict freedom of speech.

We don’t believe it is right for major Charlotte-based companies like Bank of America and Wachovia and Duke Energy to pour tens of thousands of dollars into a radical organization like the Human Rights Campaign, an organization that has stated that supporters of male-female marriage are “right wing extremists” and that mandates that businesses must have special bathroom accommodations for employees undergoing sex-change surgery.

We are saddened by the fact that some of those who came out of the closet forty years now are now trying to put conservative Christians in the closet.

We don’t believe in tampering with the foundations of human society — male-female marriage and family — and creating a new institution previously unknown in human history.

We utterly reject the new theologies that advocate “Queering Christ” and writing “Queer Commentaries” on the Bible, and we say to Charlotte and the nation, “By God’s grace, it stops here.”

So, we say “Enough is enough” to the destructive goals of gay activism, and we say to the GLBT community, “Jesus loves you and God has a better way!”

Imagine if this Scenario Were Reversed: One might suppose that homosexual militant Wayne Besen would be the last fellow to question the idea that “gay” activism threatens religious freedom in America. At right, Besen is photographed harassing a Boston church hosting an ex-“gay” conference – by yelling through a bullhorn into the window of the church during the conference. (Click HERE for MassResistance’s full story on the homosexual protest, and HERE for a report on a much larger and more violent pro-homosexual protest against another Boston church in 2005.) What if a bunch of Christian activists terrorized a meeting at a homosexual church in a similar manner? We suspect that Besen and fellow “gay” advocates might accuse them of using fascist tactics, and rightly so. Besen also wrote a hate-filled screed against Christian activist Michael Brown and his “God Has a Better Way” Gospel outreach at the Charlotte, NC “gay pride” festival.

Homosexual activist Wayne Besen of the oddly named Truth Wins Out described Dr. Michael Brown’s group of evangelists (the “God Has a Better Way” campaign responding to the Charlotte, N.C. “gay pride” parade) as “uninvited locusts” descending on Charlotte. With that description in mind, I wonder how conservatives should describe the thousands of participants in “pride” parades and “fairs” who pollute our streets with illegal nudity and public sex acts to which law enforcement agents, who are paid by the public to enforce laws, turn a blind eye.

When Besen said that “the notion that gay people in conservative North Carolina needed Brown to educate them about religious fundamentalism was farcical,” he revealed his ignorance about Biblical and Historical Theology. Although the belief that homosexual acts violate God’s will is a belief held by “fundamentalists,” it also integral to all orthodox theological traditions and has been since the beginnings of the church. His ignorance is not surprising, however, since Besen is a member of the homosexual activist movement that regularly makes numerous ludicrous exegetical claims, including the claims that Ruth and Naomi and David and Jonathan had homosexual relationships.

Then Besen makes a patently false assertion when he states that homosexual activists are “falsely accused of working to undermine freedom of religion.” He may want to read the words of Georgetown University lesbian law professor, Chai Feldblum who writes that when same-sex “marriage” is legalized, conservative people of faith will lose religious rights.

Besen’s clouded vision is manifest in this description of a group of Christians engaged in evangelism: “Most alarming are these charlatans’ deliberate perpetuation of paranoia by trumpeting alleged religious persecution that exists only in their warped minds.” Perhaps Besen should talk to the Christian infertility doctors in California whom a lesbian sued when their religious convictions prevented them from inseminating a lesbian. Or perhaps he should talk to the Christian owners of a New Mexico photography studio who were sued and fined for “discrimination” when their religious beliefs prevented them from photographing the commitment ceremony of two homosexuals.

Perhaps Besen (left) should talk to the Christian mother in Alameda, Cal., whose public school is introducing pro-homosexual resources to first-graders next year. The school is refusing to notify parents prior to the presentation of these resources and is refusing to allow parents to opt out. Or perhaps he should talk to me about the efforts of change.org to get a hotel to break a legal contract with Illinois Family Institute because of our religious conviction that homosexual acts are immoral. Sounds remarkably like religious persecution to me.

What is confusing in Besen’s diatribe are these two seemingly contradictory claims: first, he said, “Brown tries to cover his tracks by sprinkling his apocalyptic rhetoric with calls for non-violence. Good orators, however, understand the principle of ‘layering’ messages. If in one sentence you speak of violence and in the next of non-violence, the listener will almost always embrace the words that support his or her belief system.” This clearly implies that Dr. Brown “spoke of violence in one sentence.”

But shortly thereafter, Besen said, “Brown, of course, doesn’t actually have to make an overt pitch for mayhem,” which seems to imply that Dr. Brown did not, in fact, “speak of violence.”

Besen takes issue with the proposition that the movement to normalize homosexuality tampers “with the foundations of human society.” Surely, he knows that this belief is not unique to Dr. Brown. It is widely held by theologians from most denominational traditions and by many legal scholars, philosophers, political commentators, sociologists, psychologists, and ordinary people of all educational backgrounds and walks of life. Many, many people view heterosexual marriage between one man and one woman who together produce and nurture future generations of children to be the foundational institution of any healthy society. Once society divorces marriage from children and marriage from gender, the institution becomes meaningless and the culture dies.

Besen goes on to say in his apoplectic way that “It is time for Brown and his comrades to abort their increasingly hostile and combative tactics before it leads to more wanton death.” This tactic of misrepresenting any public opposition to the ideologies and political actions of homosexual activists and their supporters as hate mongers, fomenters of violence, and bigots is the stock-in-trade of the “LGBT” movement. The logical implication of the argument that the expression of opposition to one group’s moral claims represents hatred, bigotry, and incitement to violence, however, would be that Besen’s words represent hatred, bigotry, and incitement to violence against Christians, and Orthodox Jews, and Muslims, and secular conservatives.

Besen’s screed is laden with overheated, inflammatory, intolerant rhetoric. Kudos to Dr. Brown for doing what faith leaders should have done decades ago. Let’s hope more brave men step forward.

One last point on another topic: I noticed that Besen (shown with the bullhorn at right) refers to Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth as “Porno Pete” which I also find ironic in light of the homosexual community’s purported opposition to name-calling. It’s not just ironic; it’s hypocritical. It’s just one more revelatory sign of the intellectual and ethical vacuity of the homosexual movement.