The Hollywood actress Ellen Page has appeared in over two dozen movies. But if you congratulate her for being a successful actress you could get into trouble. You see, Ms. Page has decided that she is actually a man.[i] Now it is Mr. Page, and in some locales saying “Ms. Page” is considered “misgendering hate speech.” Misgendering people in Norway,[ii] Scotland,[iii] Canada[iv] – or even New York[v] – could put you behind bars.

Hate speech is just one argument against the freedom of speech and being able to act on your beliefs. This article examines just the hate speech issue. Other articles examine “cancel culture,” Black Lives Matter, and interacting with a culture that wants to de-person you (think Facebook and Twitter).

This article claims the following:

• Some speech or writings are called hate speech, even when completely truthful.

• Hate speech is meant to suppress opponents of cultural change. This means that the hate speech debate is about political power, and not about fairness.

• Activist politicians are taking sides, declaring winners in the hate speech debate even before the debate has hardly begun.

• Christians must not be cowed by hate speech accusations. Ours is an evangelistic faith. Everyone still needs to hear that Christ rules over all us, our culture, and our laws.

Telling the truth now called hate speech

What is hateful about these statements?

• God says that homosexuality is a sin.

• Just because you say you’re a woman doesn’t make you one.

What is hateful about them is actually…nothing.

• The Bible says that God detests homosexuality, in both the Old and New Testaments.

• Biology, not your ideology, makes you a man or a woman. It’s “science!” as some people like to yell at Christians.

But there are groups of people pierced by the message that “the Emperor has no clothes!” These groups cry “foul!” because telling the truth makes them feel sad, and makes them feel insecure about their carefully spun unrealities.

“The question is NOT whether it is TRUE that trans women are “men” with “male privilege”.  … The question IS whether saying that trans women are “men” or “male” is reasonably thought of as showing seriously hostile psychological intentions or motives: to harass, distress, alarm, threaten, and so on. This is really important, in a way that goes way beyond Miller’s case, because we are told all the time that “rejecting someone’s gender identity” or “misgendering” is evidence of hate — that is, talking of their sex in a way which conflicts with their gender identity.”[vi]

So telling the truth becomes hateful because it reminds them that they’re not really godlike, and reality isn’t whatever they say it is.

Using hate speech to silence Christian opposition to the cultural takeover

Why is it that telling the truth is considered to be offensive? It starts with God, who hates homosexual activity. We see in the Old Testament and New Testament condemnation of its acts, and doom for those who don’t repent of it.[vii] Ditto for transgender behavior.[viii] Just to be clear about what this hateful transgenderism is:

The subject of transgenderism, includes, specifically, “Trans-sexuality, cross-dressing,” and seeking “gender identity development,” i.e., physical identity through radical surgeries, and hormone treatment; and, more broadly, “gender atypicality” that includes “myriad subcultural expressions of self-selecting gender,” and “intersectionality” with other “interdependence” movements, i.e., feminism, homosexuality. The idea of transgenderism has its roots in the primordial rebellion of humankind to the creation order of God. [ix]

It is obvious that if society is to have unquestioned acceptance of homosexuality, and of things they covet like same-sex marriage and “choose your gender” education in grade schools, then Christian opposition must be removed. This naturally leads to the political and cultural conflict we’re experiencing.

Activists have tried to shame Christians into silencing themselves. One argument is this:

“Calling homosexuality a sin is an affront to your fellow citizens. It disparages the fundamental ideals of our country and ignores the teachings of Christ. It’s disgusting behavior without justification. Religious groups do not have a right to sow the seeds of hatred within our communities. They should be working towards harmony, unity, and love. In the United States nobody is above the law, and our laws say you cannot discriminate against anyone because of their sexual orientation.”[x]

We’re asked, even expected, to redefine Christianity into a cosmic Welcome Wagon:

“The whole point of religion is to strengthen the bonds of harmony within all humankind, not encourage discord or incite violence.”[xi]

The constant message of “disagreement is hate” would redefine Christianity, preferring it to become yet another devotion to the divinity of Man. To these proponents it is either us or them. And they can win over society if nobody – especially Christians – fight back.

The Constitution protects you against claims of hate speech… for now

What about Christians who refuse to shut up? Isn’t what they say illegally hateful? When judging a speech, or an article, for being hateful, what standard should be used? The Cambridge dictionary defines “hate speech” as “public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence toward a person or group based on something such as race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation.” [xii]

This definition involves a lot of hand waving. A more pointed statement comes from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who recently said that free speech has its limits:

Those limits begin where hatred is spread. They begin where the dignity of other people is violated. This house will and must oppose extreme speech. Otherwise, our society will no longer be the free society that it was. [xiii]

In Europe the only allowed speech is government-approved speech. A commentator has said,

Such speech controls in Europe have led to a chilling effect on political and religious speech. In their homes, people will often share religious and political views that depart from majoritarian values or beliefs. This law would regulate those conversations and criminalize the expression of prohibited viewpoints.[xiv]

But the American view aligns with what George Washington told us:

For if Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of Mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter. [xv]

The U.S. Constitution agrees with Washington’s views. There is no Constitutional definition of, or limitation for, hate speech. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that way many times over the years.[xvi] It ruled that even the “American Nazis” and the Ku Klux Klan had free speech rights. In a U.S. Supreme Court case involving the Communist Party, Justice Hugo Black wrote in his dissenting opinion:

I do not believe that it can be too often repeated that the freedoms of speech, press, petition and assembly guaranteed by the First Amendment must be accorded to the ideas we hate or sooner or later they will be denied to the ideas we cherish.[xvii]

Evading the Constitution

The U.S. Constitution protects free speech, but that doesn’t stop politicians and activists. They hope that if they enact a facially unconstitutional law that maybe the courts will actually uphold it. After all, supposedly, “the Supreme Court follows the election returns.”[xviii] And if the Court doesn’t yield the desired results, there is always “court packing.”

It was quoted again when the U.S. Supreme Court began ruling that Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal programs were unconstitutional. Since the Democrats had a huge majority in Congress, Roosevelt began talking about “packing the court” by naming additional justices. He didn’t do it, but suddenly the U.S. Supreme Court began to see its way clear to allow the New Deal to continue.[xix]

This session of U.S. Congress saw the Equality Act (HR 5), which would enact into federal law a lot of the homosexual and transgender agenda, hijacking the debate before this culture war has come to a conclusion. The bill may as well be called the “Criminalizing Christianity Act.”[xx] It enshrines transgenders in women’s facilities, codifying transgenders into non-discrimination of the Civil Rights laws, and many other things. But the screw top lid on this jar of bad gifts is how it tries to ban dissent to its provisions.

Incredibly, perhaps attempting to counteract any future court rulings on the issue, the “Equality Act” specifically states that religious freedom may not be used as a defense under the bill. And the legislation applies to churches, religious schools, religious hospitals, religious employers, gathering places, sports, all government entities, and more.[xxi]

This “Equality Act” will be introduced again in the next session of Congress. It stands a good chance of being enacted. If it becomes law, then perhaps the courts will strike it down. Perhaps they won’t. But even while the legal battles go on, everyone – not just Christians – will have to abide by its provisions or suffer great loss.

The Christian obligation to influence culture and instruct our rulers

God wants His people, His church, to influence American culture and society. In summary:

• The Great Commission tells us to “make disciples of all the nations… teaching them to observe all that I commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20). We’re to be bold and conquering, not timid.

• We are “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14-16). Our words and deeds illuminate how different God’s ways are from those of the fallen world.[xxii]

• We are change agents, like yeast (Matthew 13:33), working to gradually transform people one-by-one. In the end we have a society that honors God through the transformed nature and desires of its individuals.

Christians are also compelled to speak in a prophetic role to our representatives, appointees, and judges. These officials are “servants of God” (Romans 13:6), whether they like it or not.

For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same; for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil. (Romans 13:4-5)

By accepting their offices, these people are charged by God to approve good and hinder evil. But how will they know what good and evil are unless Christians instruct them? Topic by topic, the corporate church, as well as Christian individuals, must instruct them and encourage them to do right by God. Who better than God’s people to tell them about God’s requirements?

A Christian response to this hate speech assault

The homosexual and transgender communities have become bold, rebelling against God and reality. When Christians mute themselves for fear of “hate speech,” society hears the sounds of cultural consensus. How do we set things right again, especially before it becomes effectively illegal to oppose evil things like the Equality Act? We ought to resume the duties God gives to His church.

• God has us living in the world, but we’re not to be of the world.[xxiii] By hewing a path that obeys God, while in the midst of people who “do what is right in their own eyes” (Deuteronomy 12:8), we act as bright lamps, witnesses of God, and testimony for a darkened world.

• God commissioned us to be evangelistic. Thus, we must unapologetically evangelize. Don’t hold back for fear of offending someone. When we’re acting as useful lamps (see above), we offer to our hearers a clear difference, a choice between life and death (Deuteronomy 30:15).

• God tells us to instruct our rulers (Romans 13). Some of us may even have an involuntary chance to do so (Matthew 10:16-20). But the rulers need to know their duties, to honor God (Acts 12:20-23), and render Biblical justice.

In other words, we should resume the tasks we should have always been doing. It isn’t that these tasks are a losing idea. Rather, they were found hard, or presumed unnecessary, and were abandoned.

Finally, we must pray that God confounds our enemies. Each day that they don’t succeed, that we don’t see evils enacted like the Equality Act, is another day closer to transforming American society into a God-honoring one.

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[i] Cotrinski, Jennie, Ellen Page Comes Out As Transgender, Chicks on the Right, December 1, 2020, https://www.chicksonright.com/blog/2020/12/01/ellen-page-comes-out-as-transgender/

[ii] Turley, Jonathan, Norway Criminalizes Hate Speech Against Transgender People . . . In Private Homes or Conversation, Jonathan Turley blog, November 29, 2020, https://jonathanturley.org/2020/11/29/norway-criminalizes-hate-people-against-transgender-people-in-private-homes-or-conversations/

[iii] Lyman, Brianna, Scottish Hate Crime Bill To Prosecute People Who Use Hate Speech Even While Home, Daily Caller, October 28, 2020, https://dailycaller.com/2020/10/28/scotland-hate-crime-bill-free-speech/

[iv] Contrada, Amy, Free Speech Is Dead in Canada: The Persecution of Christian Activist Bill Whatcott, American Thinker, January 14, 2019, https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/01/free_speech_is_dead_in_canada_the_persecution_of_christian_activist_bill_whatcott.html

[v] Evon, Dan, New NYC Laws Prohibit Discrimination Against Transgender Community, Snopes, December 28, 2015, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/transgender-pronouns-fine-nyc/

[vi] Block, Kathleen, Hate speech and the statements “trans women are men” or “male”, Kathleen Stock blog, February 8, 2020, https://medium.com/@kathleenstock/hate-speech-and-the-statements-trans-women-are-men-or-male-f39b20b49729

[vii] What does the New Testament say about homosexuality?, Got Questions, https://www.gotquestions.org/New-Testament-homosexuality.html

[viii] Milton, Dr. Michael A., What the Bible Says about the Idea of Transgenderism, Bible Study Tools, February 6, 2020,  https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/topical-studies/what-the-bible-really-says-about-transgenderism.html

[ix] Ibid.

[x] Rhein, Walter, Calling Homosexuality a Sin is Hate Speech, Extra Newsfeed, July 28, 2020, https://extranewsfeed.com/calling-homosexuality-a-sin-is-hate-speech-e8390bf23e38

[xi] Ibid.

[xii] Hate Speech, Cambridge Dictionary, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/hate-speech

[xiii] Fjordman, Why Laws Against Hate Speech Are Dangerous, Gatestone Institute, January 18, 2020, https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15256/hate-speech-laws

[xiv] Turley, Jonathan, Norway Criminalizes Hate Speech Against Transgender People . . . In Private Homes or Conversation

[xv] Washington, George, Newburg Address, George Washington’s Mount Vernon, https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/quotes/article/for-if-men-are-to-be-precluded-from-offering-their-sentiments-on-a-matter-which-may-involve-the-most-serious-and-alarming-consequences-that-can-invite-the-consideration-of-mankind-reason-is-of-no-use-to-us-the-freedom-of-speech-may-be-taken-away-and-dumb-/

In this address, General Washington responded to a petition that apparently encouraged officers to mutiny over back pay. Washington reminded them that freedom of speech was one of the things they were fighting for.

[xvi] Head, Tom, 6 Major U.S. Supreme Court Hate Speech Cases, ThoughtCo, July 18, 2019, https://www.thoughtco.com/hate-speech-cases-721215

[xvii] United States Supreme Court, Healy v. James (1972), No. 71-452, FindLaw for Legal Professionals,, https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/408/169.htmlThe excerpt from Healy v. James actually quotes from Justice Black’s dissenting opinion on Communist Party v. SACB, 367 U.S. 1, 137 (1961). However, that 1961 case is very hard to find online.

[xviii] Cagle, Frank, Supreme Court follows election returns, KnoxTNTofay, October 20, 2020, https://www.knoxtntoday.com/supreme-court-follows-election-returns/

[xix] Ibid.

[xx] Newman, Alex, “Equality Act” Would Unleash Federal Persecution of Christians, The New American, May 8, 2019, https://thenewamerican.com/print/equality-act-would-unleash-federal-persecution-of-christians/

[xxi] Ibid.

[xxii] Barker, Matt, Light of the World, Sermon Central, August 10, 2008, https://www.sermoncentral.com/sermons/light-of-the-world-matt-barker-sermon-on-christian-witness-125576

[xxiii] Bradley, Michael, In the World – But Not of the World, Bible Knowledge, December 18, 2020, https://www.bible-knowledge.com/in-world-not-of-it/

‘Twas the week before New Year’s, when all through the house
No reporters were stirring, not even a louse.

They turned off their ‘puters and phones with great care
In hopes that celebrities soon would de-pair.

When from their i-Phones there arose such a clatter,
They sprang from their beds to see what was the matter.

Into the now-lit abyss of their phones
Dorsey and Zuck sucked in all the drones.

When what to their wondering eyes did appear—
Not Ellen—now Elliot—whose gender’s so clear.

But Spaniard Hilaria, a native Mallorcan,
Who oddly grew up in a suburb of Boston.

Shock, indignation, and fury arose
From the heads of reporters down to their tiptoes.

How dare could a person pretend to be thus—
Changing her name to deceive all of us!

Appropriate gender like Jenner and Page,
Passing as someone like that’s all the rage.

But don’t even think about faking birthplace
That devious act will cause family disgrace.

Denying the sex assigned at one’s birth,
Is muy importante for joy here on Earth.

Denying the sex of one’s birth is a must,
Denying the place of one’s birth is unjust.

Remember these rules about reality:
It matters unless she should want to be he.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For those who missed last week’s celebrity news, a surprising years-long deception by Hilaria Baldwin, the diversely flexible young wife of angry, sanctimonious actor Alec Baldwin, was exposed.

For years, she claimed she was from Mallorca, Spain and that her name is “Hilaria.” She also affected a Spanish accent, once pretending to forget the English word “cucumber” in a television appearance. As of this writing, she continues to claim she moved to the United States when she was 19.

The truth—that is, that which corresponds to reality—is that she was born Hillary Hayward-Thomas in Boston to American physician/professor Dr. Kathryn Hayward and American attorney David Thomas. She attended high school at the expensive Cambridge School of Weston, graduating in 2002, the year before she claims she arrived on the shores of NYC from Espagne. Her parents retired to Spain in 2011 when Hillary was 27 years old. English is her native language.

Many leftists are outraged about Hillary’s commission of the mortal sin of culturally appropriating a Spanish identity. Social media is afire with brutal and often hilarious mockery of her deception, which, as mentioned, included adopting a new name and intentionally modifying her behavior to create the illusion that she is a native Mallorcan.

Meanwhile, men and women all around the country are adopting new names and intentionally modifying behavior to create the illusion that they are the sex they aren’t. They cross-dress and hire voice and movement coaches to teach them how to pass as the sex they aren’t. Not only are Americans forbidden to mock them, but they are also forbidden to say the emperors in ladies’ clothes are not empresses.

While leftists merrily “deadname” Hilaria Baldwin (“deadnaming” is the practice of referring to opposite-sex impersonators by their birth name—something forbidden by the Ministers of Truthiness), the moment diminutive actress Ellen Page assigned herself the sex of male, our gullible, so-called journalists scurried to their computers to scrub “Ellen” from history. With sparks flying from their lying fingertips, journalists replaced every occurrence of the name “Ellen Page” from the Internet.

Leftists forbid Hillary Baldwin to identify as a Spaniard even if she subjectively feels that her authentic self is Spanish. Even if she experiences a mismatch between the reality that she is a Bostonian and her internal felt sense that she is a Spaniard, tough luck. She was not born in Spain, so she is not and never can be a Spaniard.

If, however, Ellen Page and Chastity Bono choose to identify as men, we must all pretend they are men.

To be clear, in the Upside Down—the dark twisted un-reality where leftists are demanding we all live and move—it’s wicked to appropriate a Spanish ethnicity (i.e., Spanish-ness) but an unmitigated good for Bruce Jenner to appropriate woman-ness.

Just curious, what did Alec Baldwin know and when did he know it?

Listen to this article read by Laurie: 

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/audio_NO-ETHNIC-SELF-IDENTIFICATION.mp3

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One of the many remarkable aspects of this time in America is that all the forces of oppression about which George Orwell warned in his novel 1984 are present and growing, and many of the oppressors can’t see it. Ironically, many of the oppressors view themselves as paragons of virtue when, in reality, they’re paragons of virtue-signaling, which constitutes a performative cloak of invisibility that conceals their totalitarianism.

In Orwell’s portentous novel, he describes four government ministries, one of which—the Ministry of Truth—“concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts.” Orwell wrote,

‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ … All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. ‘Reality control’, they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink’.

While our news, entertainment, education, and fine arts are not institutionally linked to the government, they are ideologically bound together in an unholy alliance that seeks to indoctrinate society just as Big Brother does in 1984.

Today “progressives” are tearing down statues and renaming government schools to erase recognition of our Founding Fathers. Government schools are teaching the revisionist history of the 1619 Project and Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States.

Through falsified birth certificates and drivers’ licenses, the state colludes with mainstream news outlets, entertainment, and educational institutions to scrub history by identifying men and women as the sex they aren’t. Try looking for information on the actress Ellen Page. Within hours of Page’s recent announcement that she was no longer a woman, the disparate minions in the Ministry of Truth began scrubbing history, changing “Ellen” to “Elliot” and replacing all pronouns that refer to her with deceitful male pronouns.

Acts of hatred and deceit against the human person are now called “love” and “authenticity” by those practiced at the art of Newspeak.

Orwell wrote, “If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death.”

It’s happening now, and it is terrifying, indeed. Now we have intrusive Big Government—including government schools—in cahoots with Big Tech to control the past, the present, and the future. Social media has created algorithms and inconsistently applied “community standards” to suppress the dissemination of not only ideas but also news.

Orwell explains that in the government-mandated language of Newspeak, “Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” When I worked at Deerfield High School, two English teachers, Michael Wolf and Jeff Berger-White, sent a letter to the local press which was signed by half the department in which they argued,

It is difficult for … people … to simultaneously hold conflicting opinions. But this difficulty should not prevent us from attempting to do so. The best work we do in our classrooms is to highlight how multiple understandings are true, and that the validity of one idea does not necessarily negate the validity of another.

I’m pretty sure they read 1984 but seemed to have missed the point.

In their letter, they acknowledged that “certain doctrine” that “may not allow diverse and conflicting views to coexist” still have a “cherished place” in their classrooms—unless those doctrine are “malicious.” Guess which views on sexuality the gods of government schools have declared malicious.

The vehicle for our rocketing trip deep down into our subterranean Orwellian dystopia is “trans”-cultism. The world we’ve entered is the anti-science Transtopia where, in Orwell’s words, “Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.” The propellant that reality-denying “trans”-cultists and their fearful and/or foolish collaborators use is Newspeak.

Newspeak, like the speech rules leftists impose today, is intended to control thought:

It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all… a heretical thought… should be literally unthinkable. … This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings. … [T]he special function of certain Newspeak words. … was not so much to express meanings as to destroy them.

In two now-famous quotes, Orwell illuminates the troubling views of tyrants about language:

“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

On December 8, 2020, the University of Michigan’s Information and Technology Services’ “Words Matter Task Force”—Ministry of Truth for short—issued its spanking new Newspeak lexicon. Acknowledging that “language is powerful,” the Ministers of Truthiness have published a document with banned words and “recommended” replacements along with a bewildering array of action steps to ensure widespread compliance. The banned list—which is “not exhaustive and will continue to grow”—are those words deemed by the Ministers of Truthiness (aka Thought Police) to “harm morale, and deliberately or inadvertently exclude people from feeling accepted” or “cause people to feel alienated.”

Here are a few of the alienating terms (left column) and their “recommended” Newspeakian replacements (right column):

-men-, -man-	-people, -person, or a wholly different word. (e.g., “man-hours” can become “person-hours”)
blacklist/whitelist	allowed/prohibited, include/exclude, allow list/deny list
black-and-white thinking	binary thinking, all-or-nothing thinking
brown bag	lunch and learn
crack the whip	manage the effort closely
crazy, insane	outrageous, unthinkable, nonsensical, incomprehensible, ridiculous, egregious, irrational
crippled	weakened, deteriorated
disabled	when referring to a system: deactivated, broken
dummy	placeholder, sample
gender-neutral he or she	gender-neutral they, referring by name

grandfathered (in)	legacy status, legacies in, exempted, excused
handicapped	restricted
girl/gal, boy/guy	person, or use the person’s name
guys/gals (e.g., Hi guys!)	everyone, folks (e.g., Hi everyone!)
honey, sweetheart, sweetie	use the person’s name
long time, no see	“It’s been a while,” “I haven’t seen you in ages!”
low man on the totem pole	last in the pecking order, the bottom of the heap
master/slave	leader/follower, primary/replica, primary/standby
native	built-in, innate
picnic	gathering

 

preferred pronouns	pronouns
privileged account	elevated account
sanity check	quick check, confidence check, coherence check
sold down the river	betrayed, thrown under the bus
straw-man	conceptual design
uppity	Arrogant, conceited

I don’t know how fans of Masters of the Universe are going to feel about Primaries of the Universe.

This list reveals that the left is teaching people to be offended in order to maintain their cultural power through intersectional-identity grievance politics. My anecdotal experience with even leftists suggests virtually no one has been offended by most of these expressions as they are commonly used until the last five minutes of history. And the faux-offense now being asserted didn’t arise naturally. It had to be beaten into them by the hammer of tolerance wielded by far-left social justice warriors.

It also raises a question for leftists: If a word’s history is largely unknown and its current meaning is inoffensive, why eliminate it? Why not be thankful that the old ugly association has been supplanted by a new innocuous one?

If, on the other hand, we must commit to linguistic stasis, then shouldn’t we retain the historical meaning of, for example, pronouns?

And what if I’m offended by being commanded to use pronouns based on “gender identity” rather than on biological sex?  What if, because I’m deeply committed to science, reality, truth, and the First Amendment, I’m offended by attempts to socially coerce language compliance in the service of a political agenda?

Orwell wrote that “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” Yep, that pretty much describes what 16+ years of secular education does to children.

Under an article about the University of Michigan’s Ministry of Truth on the College Fix website, one waggish fellow left this perfect response to the banned words list:

Every member of the Words Matter Task Force has sold his or her ideals down the river. This black-and-white thinking only ever leads to blacklists, and shunning people off the reservation while the crazies enjoy a crippled picnic. To be thrown under the bus for being the low man on the social-justice totem pole is to be grandfathered into the ever-growing community of gypped guys and gals, excluded when the masters change the rules of polite society into one of a dummy society where every utterance is weighed for a privileged account. Even asking for a sanity check of these lunatic brown-baggers puts you at risk of being professionally, if not personally, disabled. They may start by cracking the whip rhetorically, but their rhetoric inevitably leads to insane physical realities sooner or later.

In short, kiss my grits, sweetie.

Remember this list next time you see the leftist American Library Association’s annual umbrage-fest called Banned Books Week. Leftists ban not only books, but also words.

Orwell said something else “progressives” will hate:

Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting.

Listen to this article read by Laurie: 

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Lesbian actress Ellen Page just posted an Instagram photo of her and her “wife” topless and kissing in honor of LGBTQ “pride” month, providing symbolic evidence that the cultural movement to normalize homoeroticism is chiefly about sex—not love—at least not love in its true and complete sense.

Page is the young actress who in early February delivered an anti-Christian screed on The Late Show with arrogant Catholic heretic Stephen Colbert in which she attacked Vice President Mike Pence over his theologically orthodox views on marriage. In her diatribe, Page demonstrated—again—that cultural regressives can’t distinguish between moral disapproval of acts and hatred of persons.

With a sycophantic Colbert hanging on her every word, the over-emoting Page declared that Mike Pence’s views on homosexuality and marriage were the cause of the allegedly homophobic attack on homosexual actor Jussie Smollett:

The vice president of America wishes I didn’t have the love with my wife…. Connect the dots! If you were in a position of power, and you hate people, and you want to cause suffering to them… you spend your career trying to cause suffering, what do you think is going to happen? Kids are going to be abused and they’re going to kill themselves. And people are going to be beaten on the street…. This needs to f**king stop. 

So many questions about her unhinged lecture.

Pence spent his “career trying to cause suffering”? Really? His entire career?

Do efforts to retain sexual complementarity in the legal definition of marriage constitute “trying to cause suffering”? If so, do efforts to retain the criterion regarding number of partners in the legal definition of marriage constitute “trying to cause” polygamists and polyamorists to suffer? Does the desire to prohibit close relatives from marrying constitute “trying to cause” those who experience Genetic Sexual Attraction to suffer?

What exactly “needs to stop”? Does Page think Christians should stop believing Scripture? Stop reading it? Stop preaching it? Stop expressing biblical truths in the public square, where Page remains free to express her anti-biblical beliefs? If so, which biblical truths should Christians stop expressing in the public square? All biblical truths or just the ones Page doesn’t like?

What is Page’s conclusive, research-based evidence that it is the faith of theologically orthodox Christians who express their views in a biblically defensible manner that causes child abuse, childhood suicide, or “hate” crimes?

Word to Page: No one objects to her “loving” another woman. Christians are commanded to love their neighbors and even their enemies. No, theologically orthodox Christians never begrudge people love. What Christ-followers disapprove of are homoerotic acts.

And they believe that marriage has a nature—an ontology—central to which is sexual differentiation, and without which a union is intrinsically non-marital.

If Page is befuddled by the origin of such beliefs, she should ask Catholic heretic Colbert who surely knows their origins even as he rejects them. Colbert surely knows what the Old Testament teaches about homosexual acts, what St. Paul teaches about homosexual acts, and what Jesus teaches about marriage.

Colbert and Page would be well-served by spending some time with Carl Trueman, biblical studies professor at Grove City College, who recently wrote an essay for First Things titled “Love Is Not a Feeling” in which he said,

in contemporary Christian approaches to political issues, “love” –a code word for whatever the political piety du jour may be—is set in opposition to “dogma” or “doctrine”—code words for whatever piece of traditional Christian teaching is deemed to be inconsistent with said political piety….

Trueman exposes the thinness, instability, and error in contemporary conceptions of “love” by summarizing the ways three different scholars characterize post-modern man’s conception of love, which in turn shapes post-modern man’s understanding of man:

To approach the matter from Philip Rieff’s perspective, we might characterize modern men and women as psychological selves for whom the good and the true is identical with whatever happens to make them psychologically happy at any particular moment. Or we could use Charles Taylor’s notion of expressive individualism, that the modern self is the person who expresses outwardly that which they feel inwardly…. Or we could adopt Alasdair MacIntyre’s notion of emotivism, and see modern ethics as manifestations of emotional preferences. Bringing all three to bear upon the sexual revolution, it becomes clear that the LGBTQ moment is not merely a revolution in what sex means; it is a revolution in what it means to be human. (emphasis added)

Trueman further argues that,

For many, gay marriage is a dead issue…. And therein lies the danger: We need to remember that for a Christian to recognize gay marriage as Christian… is not simply to recognize a shift or expansion in the definition of marriage. It is far more significant for the Faith…. it is to abandon Christian teaching about the self—as made in the image of God, and as resting upon an order which transcends individuals and their contexts—in favor of one constituted by whatever the moral structure of society happens to be at any given moment in time.

Gay marriage emerged from the sexual revolution; and the sexual revolution is the latest iteration of a revolution in the self, which has been taking place for hundreds of years and which stands opposed to the essentialism regarding human beings at the heart of orthodox Christianity. The moral structure of contemporary society stresses the foundational importance of individual psychological conviction with a marked preference for prioritizing polymorphous sexual desire as definitive of a sense of self. In legitimating gay marriage, a symptom of this underlying structure, Christians therefore effectively affirm the legitimacy of this deeper revolution of the self.

It’s important to note that the conception of marriage as the union of one man and one woman as articulated by Jesus is intellectually accessible even to those who reject Christ.

It’s important to note also that to reject Page’s and Colbert’s re-conception of marriage is not a manifestation of hatred but, rather, of true love—the kind that children deserve and society desperately needs. Homosexual faux-marriage will no more be a dead issue for committed Christ-followers than will be the slaughter of the unborn.

“The grass withers, the flower fades,
but the word of our God will stand forever.”
(Isaiah 40:8)

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Ellen-Page.mp3

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A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!