Well, now, that didn’t take long. Yesterday, I warned about the dystopian cultural landscape that the sexual subversives among us are pursuing with unholy fervor and at breakneck speed. They seek to end all public recognition and accommodation of sex differences. I clearly didn’t issue my warning early enough.

Sexual revolutionaries drunk with anti-cultural power, aided and abetted by bootlicking government and business leaders, are successfully eliminating public recognition of the value and meaning of sex differences. At Manhattan’s uber-regressive Cooper Union College, they’ve leaped ahead a step or two. Rather than allow just gender-confused students and faculty to use opposite-sex restrooms, the Cooper Union administration decided, what the heck, just let everyone use any facility his, her or zir heart’s desire. All sex-segregated restrooms are gone. Nary a one left. Interim president Bill Mea offered this bizarre defense:

When there’s a gendered space, there’s a sense of ownership to that space….When people see someone who [sic] they think doesn’t belong there, it can create stress for everyone. So we thought, let’s just take that away.

Oddly, in the olden days when restrooms corresponded to one’s objective sex rather than subjective feelings about one’s objective sex, I never felt I “owned” restrooms. I didn’t feel I owned women’s restrooms in stores, malls, health clubs, schools, or movie theaters. I used them.

And I’m pretty sure that giving all men free rein to use women’s restrooms is not going to decrease women’s stress.

Mea is correct, however, I did believe some people didn’t belong in the women’s restrooms I used: objectively male people. Still do, as a matter of fact. I “feel” that the objective sex of people matters. It has meaning and value and is the source of feelings of modesty and desires for privacy. I don’t want to be forced to use restrooms, dressing rooms, or showers with those whose sex I don’t share. I don’t think other women or men should be either.

Now restroom signage at Cooper Union offers these distinctions:

• “Urinals and stalls”
• “Stalls only”
• “Single occupancy”

Young’uns, you may not know this, but in the backward, hateful gendered days of yore when objective, immutable sex differences meant something, these restrooms corresponded to (TRIGGER WARNING!) male, female, and faculty respectively (I wonder how many male faculty members will be using the “stalls only” restrooms).

This is coming everywhere, my friends. Culture-destroying movements always start on the fringy edges of society where the feckless live and move and have their being. And then they begin their march to the center.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s time to get those dusty spines out of the attic. Stop all that stooping and groveling at the altar of sexual deviance and irrationality. Stand tall. Be courageous. Speak and act as if you believe your beliefs are in reality true. If you know that being created as male or female has profound meaning, then do something about it.

Concerned about Common Core Standards?

Join us this Friday (April 8th) in Orland Park for yet another IFI Forum, this time exploring The Case Against Common Core with Dr. Duke Pesta.  Click HERE for more information.

Click HERE for a flyer of the event.

State Representative Greg Harris (D-Chicago) and his leftist accomplices, endlessly involved in trying to subvert truth and reality, have introduced the Birth Certificate Sex Designation bill (HB 6073) to make it easier for men and women who wish they were the opposite sex to obtain falsified birth certificates. Harris’ first chief co-sponsor was Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago), both of whom are at the forefront of every legislative effort that serves the homosexual community of which they are part.

The absurdity and unscientific nature of the content of HB 6073 reveals the absurdity of the law it seeks to amend. This bill proposes to change a reference in the law from “sex change” to “change of sex designation.”

First, this change implicitly acknowledges the true fact that no one’s sex can change. Second, it demonstrates that birth certificates are being rendered meaningless. Birth certificates were intended as legal documents identifying objective birth facts. Gender-dysphoric men who were male at birth remain male. Gender-dysphoric women who were female at birth remain in perpetuity female. Gender-dysphoric men who were “designated” male at birth remain designated at birth male. Gender-dysphoric women who were “designated” female at birth remain designated at birth female. No amount or degree of legal or rhetorical chicanery can change what they were designated at birth. When liberals in Springfield figure out how to manipulate time, maybe this bill will make sense. Now it’s merely an exercise in nonsensical legislative legerdemain.

This bill changes the requirements for acquiring a new (and falsified) birth certificate. Currently, gender-dysphoric persons must present an “affidavit” from a “physician” confirming that the gender-dysphoric person has had “an operation” to try to conceal their actual sex. The proposed changes would nix the whole “affidavit” requirement, changing it to a bar far easier to climb over. If this bill passes, all that gender-dysphoric persons will need is a “declaration” from any “licensed medical or mental health professional who has treated or evaluated a person stating that the person has undergone treatment that is clinically appropriate for that individual for the purpose of gender transition, based on contemporary medical standards.”

And what kinds of treatments, inquiring minds might be asking, are included in the “clinically appropriate” toolbox for gender-dysphoric individuals? Will a gender-dysphoric person be required to have had surgery to tamper with their private parts? Nope. Will he (I am using the moribund universal “he”) be required to have received or currently be receiving cross-sex hormone treatments? Nope. Will he be required to be receiving psychological counseling for his gender-dysphoria? Nope. All that will be legally required in order to receive a de facto falsified birth certificate is a “declaration” from a licensed mental health professional who states that this person has received some treatment deemed appropriate by contemporary standards established by the dominant mental health organizations that are drenched in “progressive” socio-political dogma. That’s a bar so low and bendy that even a toddler could scramble over it.

Of course, not even surgical mutilation, hormone-blockers, cross-sex hormones, and cross-dressing can change a person’s sex at birth or in adulthood. And none of these anti-treatments (Treatments imply a disorder, and one’s sex is not a disorder) can change what these persons were designated at birth.

This is what our elected representatives waste their time and our taxes on: making it ever easier for gender-dysphoric persons to pretend they are the opposite sex.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to contact your state representative to ask him/her to uphold births as accurate legal documents.

Ask them to vote NO to HB 6073.

Concerned about Common Core Standards?

Join us on April 8th in Orland Park for yet another IFI Forum, this time exploring The Case Against Common Core with Dr. Duke Pesta.  Click HERE for more information.

Click HERE for a flyer of the event.

The Leftist effort to sever objective immutable sex differences from both meaning and cultural recognition and to promote the fiction that one’s sex can change marches on. Within hours of the filing of the Pupil Physical Privacy Act (HB 4474) in Springfield, which would prohibit students in public schools from using restrooms and locker rooms designated for the opposite sex, Equality Illinois, an organization dedicated to the normalization of sexual perversion and confusion, flew into a paroxysm of deceit:.

HB4474…would stigmatize transgender and gender non-conforming youth by requiring them to use separate restrooms and locker rooms.

This bill is an attack on the well-being and dignity of transgender and gender non-conforming students. It says to them that they are not respected and valued in the very spaces where they should be safe and affirmed.

The only fair option is to ensure transgender students have access to the facilities that correspond to their gender identity.

Despite the demagogic rhetoric of Equality Illinois, policies and practices that acknowledge and respect objective, immutable, and important sex differences do not “stigmatize” or “attack the well-being” or “dignity” of gender-dysphoric students. Respect and valuation of humans does not require affirmation of all their feelings, beliefs, desires, or actions. In fact, sometimes respect and valuation of humans includes not affirming some of their feelings, beliefs, desires, or actions. Many would argue that allowing a boy or girl to deny the meaning and import of their sex through cross-dressing, rendering themselves sterile through the use of cross-sex hormones, and mutilating their healthy bodies is profoundly disrespectful—an egregious denial of their dignity.

The Left believes—sort of—that all reality is determined by the subjective feelings and desires of each individual. So a person’s maleness or femaleness is determined by their feelings not by their, well, maleness or femaleness.

But, it’s a horse of a different color, when other people “feel” that maleness and femaleness is inextricably linked to objective, immutable sex, or when they believe that it’s wrong to pretend people are the sex they are not, or that treating others with dignity requires affirming their wholeness. In such cases Leftists, who with alacrity and regularity violate the law of non-contradiction, claim their subjective feelings (and assumptions) should be considered immutable, absolute, objective truth—you know, unlike each person’s sex.

Certainly boys whom parents and schools foolishly permit to cross-dress at school are at risk for bullying in (and out) of restrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their actual sex, which is why the Pupil Privacy Act specifically allows schools to accommodate the disordered desires and behavior of gender-dysphoric students. The bill allows schools to provide single-occupancy facilities to gender-dysphoric students.

What government schools must never be permitted to do is affirm or espouse to students that compassion or respect for gender-dysphoric students requires society to pretend that their desire to be the opposite sex is more important than their actual sex. Government schools must never be permitted to allow students who don’t like their bodies to use opposite-sex restrooms or locker rooms. And government schools must never mandate that faculty, staff, or students lie by using opposite-sex pronouns. When administrators, teachers, and school board members no longer recognize something as fundamental as the immutable reality and meaning of sex differences, schools have lost the ethical right to teach. And people of faith must stop excusing, tolerating, and accommodating such ignorance and immorality.

To my knowledge, Equality Illinois has not explained why restrooms and locker rooms should correspond to students’ feelings about their sex rather than their actual sex. Equality Illinois has not explained why students who are gender dysphoric should not be compelled to use restrooms and locker rooms with those whose “gender identity” they don’t share while non-gender-dysphoric students (i.e., normal students) should be compelled to use restrooms and locker rooms with those whose sex they don’t share.

Conservatives need to be intellectually equipped to respond to the lies used to promote the utterly irrational and destructive effort of Leftists to redefine reality. Conservatives need to commit unwaveringly to speaking and acting in ways that comport with truth, including in even seemingly small things, because it is through acquiescence in seemingly small things that incrementalism changes culture. And they need to prepare to endure the persecution that is upon us.

Teachers in public schools: Tell your administrations that pronouns denote and correspond to objective biological sex, that you cannot lie, and that, therefore, you cannot refer to students by opposite-sex pronouns. Tell them too that you will not use newly coined pronouns (e.g., “zie,” “zim,” “zir”), because they embody false beliefs about sex.

Parents: Tell the teachers of your elementary and middle school-age children that under no circumstances are your children to be exposed to resources or activities that address gender dysphoria. Tell the teachers of your high school students that your children are not to be exposed to any resources or activities that address gender-dysphoria unless equal time is spent with resources that espouse dissenting views on the nature of gender dysphoria and the proper way to address it.

Parents: Teach your middle and high school students about gender dysphoria. Teach them about the immutability and goodness of objective, immutable sex differences. Teach them never to use opposite-sex pronouns when referring to gender-dysphoric persons.

People of faith: Ask your church, synagogue, or mosque leaders to teach on this issue.

Those who out of cowardice are predisposed to accommodation, know this, the Left does not seek merely the “right” of a few gender-dysphoric teens to use private stalls in restrooms and locker rooms. No siree, Leftists seek the “right” of any gender-dysphoric person of any age to have unrestricted access to any opposite-sex restroom, locker room, shower, or dressing room in any context. Leftists will not be satisfied until they have forced all society to treat gender-dysphoric persons as if they are in reality the sex they wish they were.

Leftists will oppose this common-sense bill to protect the privacy, dignity, and safety of students with the vigor, tenacity, demagoguery, and deceit with which they promote efforts to normalize deviance. Conservatives should support it with the same vigor and tenacity but without the demagoguery and deceit. Fortunately, we’ve got reality on our side.

Citizens of Illinois:  Take ACTION:  If your state representative is not yet a co-sponsor of HB 4474, click HERE to urge him or her to sign on.

Worldview Conference with Dr. Wayne Grudem

We are very excited about our second annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Wayne Grudem on Saturday, February 20, 2016 in Barrington.

Click HERE to register today.  Seating is limited!

In the morning sessions, Dr. Grudem will speak on how biblical values provide the only effective solution to world poverty and about the moral advantages of a free-market economic system. In the afternoon, Dr. Grudem will address why Christians—and especially pastors—should influence government for good as well as tackle the moral and spiritual issues in the 2016 election.

We look forward to this worldview-training and pray it will be a blessing to you.

Click HERE for a flyer.

Perhaps I owe an apology to District 211.

While District 211 is guilty of egregiously poor judgment in allowing gender-dysphoric students to use opposite-sex restrooms and in agreeing to allow a gender-dysphoric boy into the girls’ locker room to use private changing areas, perhaps the district was neither incompetent nor dishonest with regard to the statements they made about the agreement with the Office for Civil Rights (OCR). Perhaps it is the ACLU and the OCR that are incompetent, dishonest, or both. Untangling who’s inept or lying may require Solomonic discernment. All that’s certain at this point is that there’s a tempest raging between District 211 and the devilish OCR.

Superintendent Daniel Cates has issued an angry statement in which he accuses the OCR of negotiating in bad faith and of inaccurately portraying the requirements of the agreement. Further, he demanded a full public retraction, which the OCR has thus far refused to issue. Therefore, Cates has called for an emergency board meeting on Monday night to decide whether the district will pull out of the proposed agreement.

The district is outraged that the OCR publicly claimed that the district is in error in claiming that the boy must use the privacy changing areas, and that the OCR has said this agreement applies to all gender-dysphoric students. The ACLU posted this statement:

We also remain disturbed by the inaccurate, misleading and fundamentally troubling language used by the District, even as they adopt this agreement. For example, the District said last night that transgender students who are provided access to locker rooms consistent with their gender identity “will utilize a private changing station when changing clothes or showering” and will not be allowed unrestricted access to the locker room. This is not what the agreement with OCR provides. The agreement specifically says that “based on Student A’s representation that she will change in private changing stations in the girls’ locker rooms, the District agrees to provide Student A access to locker room facilities designated for female students at school.” Nowhere does the agreement require Student A to use a private area to dress and such a requirement would be blatantly discriminatory. [emphasis added]

Superintendent Cates issued this blistering response on the district website:

On the heels of what was an appropriate and balanced approach to resolving an important issue of access to our locker rooms by one transgender student, we are outraged by the mischaracterizations in the press by Catherine Lhamon of the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), and her blatant disregard for the facts of the negotiated agreement.

The OCR appears to be stating to the media what they wish was in the agreement, rather than what was actually agreed upon by both OCR and the District 211 Board of Education – and this, after countless hours of listening, reviewing and careful consideration.

It is wrong, it is an act of bad faith, and our school district will not let it stand.

To be clear, what was agreed upon between District 211 and the OCR struck a critical balance for safeguarding the privacy of all students, recognizing the dignity of all students, and allowing all students to participate fully in our education programs.

The resolution agreement’s provisions on locker room access, approved by our School Board just 36 hours ago, apply ONLY to the student who lodged the complaint. It does not apply district-wide, nor set precedent for other school districts in the country. It gives this student access to the gender-identified locker room with this student’s stated assurance that privacy curtains will be used. And, if this student doesn’t comply, access will no longer be allowed. The agreement also removes the threat of the loss of federal funds and states that no violation of Title IX or discrimination by the District has occurred.

We communicated to the OCR that we expected a full retraction of their inaccurate portrayal of the agreement in the media. They refused. Failing that, we will convene an emergency board meeting to discuss taking action, including retraction of the agreement because the OCR acted in bad faith. Citizens have a right to expect more from a federal agency than smoke and mirrors.

The date, time, and location for the emergency Board of Education meeting will be posted on the District 211 website once it is established.

It is farcical to claim that allowing a boy in the girls’ locker room even to change in “private changing areas” is “appropriate” or “balanced,” but we have to give credit where credit is due: Steadfastly refusing to allow an objectively male student unfettered access to the girls’ locker room is a very good decision on the part of District 211.

All concerned community members should make it a priority to attend the Monday school board meeting and express their view that no students should be permitted access to opposite-sex restrooms or locker rooms. Restrooms and locker rooms should correspond to objective, scientifically-verifiable sex—not subjective feelings about sex.

Support IFI

Please consider supporting IFI’s ongoing work to educate, motivate and activate Illinois’ Christian community.  Your donation will help us stand strong in 2016!  To make a credit card donation over the phone, please call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.  You can also send a gift to:

Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 88848
Carol Stream, Illinois 60188

(Gifts to IFI are tax-deductible.)

ACLU attorney John Knight who represents the gender-dysphoric boy in the lawsuit against District 211 has issued this statement about the agreement reached between the district and the Office for Civil Rights (OCR)—a clarification that should deeply trouble District 211 community members:

We also remain disturbed by the inaccurate, misleading and fundamentally troubling language used by the District, even as they adopt this agreement. For example, the District said last night that transgender students who are provided access to locker rooms consistent with their gender identity “will utilize a private changing station when changing clothes or showering” and will not be allowed unrestricted access to the locker room. This is not what the agreement with OCR provides. The agreement specifically says that “based on Student A’s representation that she will change in private changing stations in the girls’ locker rooms, the District agrees to provide Student A access to locker room facilities designated for female students at school.” Nowhere does the agreement require Student A to use a private area to dress and such a requirement would be blatantly discriminatory. [emphasis added]

According to the ACLU of Illinois, the Office for Civil Rights “clearly stated that our client, like all students, does not have to use a privacy curtain. She may choose to do so, but she is not required to use the privacy curtain under the settlement.”

To my non-attorney eyes, it appears that Knight and the OCR are correct. This is what the agreement actually states:

For the duration of Student A’s enrollment in the District:

1. based on Student A’s representation that she will change in private changing stations in the girls’ locker rooms, the District agrees to provide Student A access to locker room facilities designated for female students at school and to take steps to protect the privacy of its students by installing and maintaining sufficient privacy curtains (private changing stations) within the girls’ locker rooms to accommodate Student A and any students who wish to be assured of privacy while changing;

There is no requirement that the boy use the private changing stations.

Moreover, again according to the ACLU of Illinois, the OCR claims the agreement between District 211 and the OCR “applies to all students, not just our client,” which directly contradicts what the district is claiming in its Frequently Asked Questions:

Will this Resolution Agreement require specific locker room access for all transgender students in District 211?

No. The Resolution Agreement pertains to one student in District 211 — the student who filed the original complaint with the Office for Civil Rights.

Will this Resolution Agreement require specific locker room access for transgender students in all school districts throughout the state and nation?

No. The Resolution Agreement pertains to one student in District 211 and does not extend to other students in District 211 or to other school districts.

District 211 taxpayers should be troubled by either the incompetent lack of understanding by district leaders or their deception.

In another frequently asked question, the district admits that the school which the gender-dysphoric boy attends will not be identified and that no parents will be notified if a gender-dysphoric student will be using a locker room with their sons or daughters.

Hard science-denier John Knight also made this ludicrous and ironic statement:

[T]he District continues to demonstrate a wanton ignorance of the science of gender by persisting in drawing a false distinction between transgender persons’ gender and anatomy. Let me be clear. My client is a girl – full stop.

The District’s refusal to accept transgender students as girls and boys is extremely harmful for all students, but especially those who are transgender. We had hoped the District would embrace this moment as an opportunity to educate itself and its community about what it means to be transgender. Unfortunately, that has not happened.

Precisely what “science” proves that there exists no distinction between gender-dysphoric persons’ “gender and anatomy”? If there were no distinction between their “gender” and anatomy, then gender-dysphoric persons would not be lopping off breasts and penises, shaving down Adam’s apples, adding fake breasts, and taking puberty-blockers and dangerous cross-sex hormones.

Clearly there is a distinction between the gender-dysphoric boy’s anatomy/biology and his “gender” (i.e., his desire about his anatomy/biology). His objective, scientifically verifiable anatomy (and barring the presence of an intersex condition, his DNA) is male. He desires to be female. That, Mr. Knight, is a distinction.

No one is obligated to accept the a-scientific proposition that the descriptor “girl” refers to a psychological condition rather than a biological condition. Mr. Knight’s client is a boy—full stop.

Support the work of IFI

Did you hear?  IFI has been given a challenge match of $55,000. So, between now and the end of the year, you can help us raise $110,000!  Please consider making an end-of-year donation to help us stand strong!

Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 88848
Carol Stream, Illinois 60188

(Gifts to IFI are tax-deductible.)

Against the wishes of the majority of community members who spoke at last night’s District 211 Board of Education meeting, the district capitulated to most of the Office for Civil Rights’ (OCR) demands with regard to the gender-rejecting boy who wants unfettered access to the girls’ locker room.

According to one attendee, approximately 80 percent of attendees who spoke opposed any capitulation to the leftist demands of the OCR, and yet within hours of the meeting’s conclusion, the agreement with the OCR had been posted on the school website, indicating that the “hearing” was merely for show. The Faustian bargain had already been struck and the school board held the charade of a hearing just to placate community members. Community members never really had a voice in the district’s momentous, ignorant, unjust, anti-science, anti-rationality, anti-sex decision.

The only small bit of good news is that the gender-rejecting boy at the center of the controversy still does not have unfettered access to the girls’ locker room. He may enter the locker room at will, but when changing clothes, must use private, curtained areas. Apparently any girls who wish not to be seen unclothed by him must use these areas also.

Now that a boy is allowed in the girls’ locker room, the district will provide what are essentially uber-tiny locker rooms within locker rooms.

Even locker rooms that exist solely to separate boys from girls can no longer separate boys from girls. Nothing, not even reality can stand in the way of feelings of sexuality anarchists.

In addition to forcing girls into privacy stalls if they don’t want to be in the presence of a boy while changing clothes in their own locker room, the district has caved to the almighty and highly politicized federal bureaucrats by agreeing to hire a consultant to make sure their capitulating efforts are sufficiently Leftist.

To ensure that the district’s efforts to pretend this boy is a girl are pleasing to Leftists, it must not only hire a consultant who is practiced at the art of deception but must also report back to the OCR begging for their approval and a forgiving kiss on the brown nose.

According to the agreement, the consultant must be an expert in “transgenderism” and “gendernonconformity,” which means the consultant must embrace Leftist assumptions about “gender identity.” Before the district may hire this consultant, it must be granted permission from the unelected, dictatorial, paternalists at the OCR.

You think my rhetoric is excessive? Well, chew on this excerpt from the agreement:

Reporting Requirement: Within 30 calendar days of the execution of this Agreement, the District will provide OCR with a written summary of the expert consultant it proposes to engage, including that individual’s application and resume and/or documentation concerning the individual’s previous position(s), employer(s) or professional affiliation(s).

The OCR has final approval of the Leftist consultant “nominee,” whose salary must be covered by the district.

Oh, but that’s not all, no that is not all.

Already, unbeknown to community members, the district has allowed gender-rejecting students to use opposite-sex restrooms, play on opposite-sex athletic teams, and change their names and sex on official school forms. This spanking new agreement forged in secret with no community input, however, also requires the following:

• When the district sponsors off-campus activities (e.g., prom), the district must work with the hosting facility to ensure that the gender-rejecting boy has access to opposite-sex facilities in the “least disruptive manner” for him. No mention about the degree of disruptiveness high school girls or the employees of the hosting facility must endure.

• The actual sex (or as Leftists and District 211 call it “assigned sex,” by which they must mean “assigned by DNA”) of the gender-rejecting boy on any school documents must be kept separate from his school records in order to better conceal reality and in order to better deceive others.

• If any other students request additional privacy, the school must make reasonable accommodations. So, if a girl—I mean an actual girl—is uncomfortable changing in one of the uber-tiny, makeshift, curtained “privacy” rooms with a boy changing in the uber-tiny “privacy” room beside her, the school must find another solution, and report all of this to the OCR. Of course, what high school girl is going to risk being called hateful by saying this whole mess makes her uncomfortable? The Left wins by humiliating people into submission.

• If the gender-rejecting boy desires a “support team,” well by golly, he gets an entire support team that must include “at a minimum” the boy, his parents, “an advocate or representative of the parents’ choice (if any), a medical professional of the parents’ choice (if any), and relevant District personnel familiar” with the boy. All details related to the composition of the team and content of the meetings must be reported to Big Brother.

• The district is required to create and submit for approval to Big Brother a new non-discrimination policy, and is required to submit “compliance reports” so that Big Brother can make sure the district is behaving in a sufficiently toady-like fashion.

• The district is required to provide a “detailed description of all gender-based discrimination or harassment complaints or incidents” that occur during the OCR’s “monitoring” period which extends to June 30, 2017.

The ACLU, who represents this tragically confused boy, the OCR, and every other Leftist organization promoting ignorant beliefs about sexuality are also guilty of exploiting children. Lying homosexualists put children on the frontlines of an ugly cultural war against truth and then blame those who speak truth when children are bloodied.

Every board member who voted for this agreement should be voted out come their next election, and the cowardly superintendent should be fired.

While those efforts are underway, parents should seriously consider alternative educational options for their children. Public schools are only going to get worse.

Support the work of IFI

If you believe in the mission and purpose of Illinois Family Institute, please send your most generous contribution to IFI today. IFI is supported by voluntary donations from individuals like you across the state of Illinois. Donations to IFI are tax-deductible.

Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 88848
Carol Stream, Illinois 60188

(All gifts to IFI are tax-deductible.)

Written by Kaeley Triller

Written by Carlos D. Flores

We should make public policy and encourage social norms that reflect the truth about the human person and sexuality, not obfuscate the truth about such matters and sow the seeds of sexual confusion in future generations for years to come.

By now we are all undoubtedly familiar with the tragic suicide of Joshua Alcorn, the transgender teenage boy who, in late December, walked onto a freeway with the intention of ending his life. In an apparent suicide note, Joshua cites a host of reasons for why he was led to end his life, most prominent of which were his parents’ attempts to discourage his identifying as a girl and his being sent to therapists in an attempt to relieve these feelings. All of the problems that ultimately culminated in his suicide, writes Joshua, stem from the fact that, from the time he was a small child, he felt like a “girl trapped in a boy’s body.”

No sooner had Joshua’s heart stopped beating than the story of his suicide was seized by LGBT activists and pruned to advance a familiar narrative of a sexual minority fighting cultural oppression. Joshua’s parents immediately began to be chided as “repressive” and “bigoted” and even began to receive various threats from LGBT internet crusader-activists.

Transgenderism and Gender Identity

I have not referred to Joshua by using female pronouns or by using his self-invented female name of “Leelah.” The reason I am not doing this is simple: Joshua was not a girl—he was a boy—and to address males with female pronouns or females with male pronouns is to contribute to our culture’s confusion about sexuality and the nature of the human person, which is literally leaving casualties in its wake. No amount of surgical mutilation of body parts, effeminate behaviors, or artificial female appearances can make a man a woman.

LGBT activists will respond in various ways to this. They might first respond by saying: “Okay, true enough: Joshua was biologically a male. But you have misunderstood our claim: we contend that his sex was male, yes, but his gender was female because he ‘identified’ as female.” The idea here is that people have a sex, which is either female or male and which one cannot choose. In addition to this, however, there is “gender,” or what sex one is more comfortable “identifying” as. The response to this is simple: Why think that what one “identifies as” is significant at all, especially to the extent that others should actively recognize or cater to such an identity, and especially when the identity one adopts is contrary to reality?

Consider the following analogies. Suppose that a Caucasian man from Finland—call him Gunther—suddenly decided that he identifies as being of Sub-Saharan African descent. Suppose further that, in light of this, Gunther undergoes unusual procedures to have his skin darkened and his skull’s bone structure re-shaped so as to resemble that of individuals of Sub-Saharan descent. Would we think that such a person has suddenly become of Sub-Saharan descent through such procedures? Of course not, and his identifying as such does nothing to change this. His appearance as someone of Sub-Saharan descent might be very convincing. But, again, this doesn’t change the fact that he is not of Sub-Saharan descent.

Similarly, suppose that a seventy-year-old man—call him Bob—comes to identify as a sixteen-year-old. Wouldn’t we think it absurd if people considered it “rude” or “bigoted” to tell the man: “You are not sixteen years old. Your identifying as such doesn’t change this fact, and we will not indulge you in your strange delusions by not calling attention to your old age and by pretending that you really are sixteen years old”?

The cases of Gunther and Bob and the situations of individuals who believe themselves to be transgender are perfectly analogous. In the case of the transgender individual, he identifies as something he is not—someone of the opposite sex—and seeks to undergo harmful surgeries and hormonal treatments in order to have his physical state match his identity of himself as someone of the opposite sex.

Our mental faculties, like our physical ones, are ordered toward various ends. Among these ends is the attainment of truth. To this extent, it is perfective of our mental faculties to recognize how we truly are (and thus apprehend a truth). It is for this reason that we can make sense of mental disorders such as anorexia nervosa as disorders: they involve persons’ having persistent, false beliefs about their identity or how they really are. In the case of the anorexic, someone who is dangerously underweight believes falsely (but tenaciously) that he is really overweight. It would be a proper procedure of medicine, then, for a therapist to help an anorexic individual to do away with his anorexia, restoring the individual’s mental faculties to their properly functioning state.

Gender Reassignment Surgery Is Not Medicine

Those in favor of transgenderism also (naturally) support gender-reassignment surgery as a perfectly legitimate medical procedure for individuals (including children) with gender dysphoria. Now, put to one side the fact that 70-80 percent of children who report having transgender feelings come to lose such feelings. Ignore, for the moment, the fact that individuals who undergo gender reassignment surgery are 20 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population. Instead consider the following question: Can we reasonably categorize gender reassignment surgery as a medical procedure in the first place?

Before we answer this question, we might venture to ask: what is medicine? Here is a plausible answer: medicine is the enterprise of restoring bodily faculties to their proper function. Our bodily faculties are ordered toward certain ends. This seems impossible to deny. Eyes, for example, are ordered toward (i.e., their function is) seeing, the stomach is ordered toward breaking down food, the heart is ordered toward pumping blood, etc. So if, say, someone’s eyes were not able to achieve their end of sight well, it would be rightly considered a medicalprocedure to seek to restore this individual’s eyes to their proper function. Similarly, it would be a medical endeavor to seek to restore an individual’s defective heart (one that has arrhythmia, say) to its proper function. All well and good.

But what are we to make of this “gender reassignment” surgery? Insofar as such a surgical procedure involves the intentional damaging and mutilating of otherwise perfectly functioning bodily faculties by twisting them to an end toward which they are not ordered, such a thing cannot, in principle, possibly be considered a medical procedure. And because love compels us to seek the good for another, it is thus a grave evil to condone such surgical procedures.

On Gender Identity Disorder Therapy

A similar point can be made about gender identity disorder therapy. Transgenderism activists are seizing Joshua’s tragic death to insist that such therapy ought to be criminalized. A petition is floating around the internet to ban so-called “transgender conversion therapy,” a procedure that involves, presumably, an attempt by a professional to help a person who is experiencing a gender identity disorder (also known as gender dysphoria). If the progress of the homosexual movement is a guide to what will come next, we can expect that laws will soon be passed criminalizing individuals’ receiving therapy to help them do away with transgender identities or desires—even for those who want to relieve themselves of such identities and desires.

Recall our earlier discussion of anorexia. Like the anorexic, the transgendered individual tenaciously holds to false beliefs about his identity or how or what he truly is: he believes that he is a sex that he is not. Dr. Paul McHugh’s words here are particularly incisive:

The transgendered suffer a disorder of “assumption” like those in other disorders familiar to psychiatrists. With the transgendered, the disordered assumption is that the individual differs from what seems given in nature—namely one’s maleness or femaleness. Other kinds of disordered assumptions are held by those who suffer from anorexia and bulimia nervosa, where the assumption that departs from physical reality is the belief by the dangerously thin that they are overweight.

It would thus be a perfectly proper procedure of medicine for the transgendered individual to visit a therapist to seek his professional help to relieve himself of his disordered transgender identity insofar as this would amount to a restoring of the transgendered individual’s mental faculties to their properly functioning state. The suggestion, then, that gender identity disorder therapy should be criminalized is as absurd as the suggestion that therapy to eliminate anorexia should be criminalized.

Some Common Objections

Now, an apologist for transgenderism might retort in the following way: “You’re missing a key point: the brains of, say, men who ‘identify’ as women have been shown to resemble those of women. This shows that there is a biological basis to their identifying as such.” In response, we might begin by asking for empirical evidence that this dubious claim really is true. But even if this were the case, this doesn’t show that men whose brains “resemble that of a woman’s” (whatever that means) are truly women after all. If we are to say that the person simply is the brain, as the one who espouses this objection seems to suggest, then, because presumably even males who identify as women have brains with male DNA, it follows that they are men after all.

But we don’t even need to grant that the presence of such-and-such brain states is relevant at all. For example, we may suppose that, through habitually behaving as a sixteen- year-old, the brain activity of the seventy-year-old mentioned above “resembles” that of a sixteen-year-old’s. Does it follow, then, that the seventy-year-old really is sixteen years old? Or that he is really a sixteen-year-old trapped inside a seventy-year-old’s body? Of course not. The most rational conclusion is that such an individual has some sort of cognitive or psychological defect associated with identity and self-perception. The same can be said for the transgender individual.

Indeed, it should not come as a surprise to find out that our daily activities shape our brain-states or alter the way our brains behave. After all, it is more or less common knowledge that, say, the process of learning to play an instrument has the effect of establishing new neural pathways, thus causing a change in brain-states. Thus Dr. Norman Doidge comments: “Now we know the brain is ‘neuroplastic,’ and not only can it change, but that it works by changing its structure in response to repeated mental experience.”

On the topic of sexuality more specifically, consider the fact that habitual porn use seems to result in (or correlate with) decreased gray matter in the brain, and that habitual porn use changes the sexual tastes of men. If habitually watching pornography can change a man’s brain so significantly, then it should hardly be surprising that through intentionally and habitually behaving like a woman a man’s brain would too change to some extent. But again, this does not thereby show that such a man is a woman after all; all it shows is that through habituated action of some sort, the man’s brain behavior has changed.

Another response might be to ask rhetorically: “Well, what about intersex individuals?” The implication is that the existence of intersex individuals somehow shows that the nature of sex is up for grabs for everyone, intersex or not. But this doesn’t follow at all. In the genuine case of intersex individuals, it may very well be appropriate to express puzzlement or ignorance as to what to make of such an attribute, metaphysically speaking, and perhaps leave it as an open question whether such individuals are either male or female or whether they should be encouraged to undergo surgical procedures in the interest of their health. Cases in which an individual is intersex, however, are exceedingly rare. Indeed, even granting the point, it would not be unfair to say that in 99.99 percent of cases (and even this might be too low a percentage), a person is either male or female. And unsurprisingly, most of the individuals who believe themselves to be transgender have perfectly functioning male or female reproductive systems. This question is both irrelevant and fruitless.

Finally, the LGBT activist might retort by asking: “but how will a man identifying as a woman affect you?” If these were simply private issues, this might be a valid point (though a concern for the physical and mental well-being of individuals struggling with their gender might obligate us to reach out to them in such a case). But, alas, LGBT activists are actively working to make it the case that the state and private businesses cover “gender-reassignment” surgeries, that men who identify as women be able to use women’s restrooms, that girls who identify as boys be able to play on male sports teams, that we consider it immoral to refer to infants as male or female lest we insidiously impose upon them a “gender” they might not identify with, that we ban therapy to treat gender dysphoria, and that we generally co-opt language and social norms to reflect pernicious falsehoods about the human body.

How a man’s identifying as a woman will personally affect me, you, or John Doe is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether we will make public policy and encourage social norms that reflect the truth about the human person and sexuality, or whether we will obfuscate the truth about such matters and sow the seeds of sexual confusion in future generations for years to come.

Carlos D. Flores studies philosophy at UC Santa Barbara. He is the president of the UC Santa Barbara Anscombe Society and has written for Ethika Politika. Originally published at ThePublicDiscourse.com.

 The Truth Project

First Annual IFI Worldview Conference
featuring Dr. Del Tackett
April 10-11, 2015

CLICK HERE for Details

Correction: Macy’s has stated that it was the victim of a “prank” that involved a flyer falsely advertising an event involving Santa in “kinky boots” to be held at the State Street store in Chicago. IFI regrets including a discussion (since removed) of that flyer in this article about the troubling Kinky Boots performance in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

Like many Americans, you probably spent Thanksgiving Day at home with your family engaged in any number of family traditions, including watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.  So, did you enjoy the drag queens in “kinky boots” during the parade? For those who didn’t see the parade, take a few moments to watch this video clip of this controversial parade performance.

Macy’s invited the cast of the musical Kinky Boots to be part of their parade this year, apparently thinking the world needs to see kinky drag queens dancing in their boots in order to fully grasp what equality, tolerance, and Thanksgiving are all about.

The show centers around a drag queen who helps turn a shoe factory around with, you guessed it, kinky boots. In case you’re unfamiliar with this award-winning musical, you can click here to learn more. 

The musical has limited family appeal as most parents don’t want to take their children to see drag queens, so it was both curious and controversial when Macy’s invited the cast to take part in the Thanksgiving Day parade. Surely Macy’s management knew there would be many young children watching live and from home. Did Macy’s management care that exposure to drag queens would compel parents to talk to their children about a topic that many consider age-inappropriate? It’s one thing to put gender confusion on display for adults who at least have enough experience to understand what they’re seeing. It’s another thing to expose children to this confusion,  many of whom will have questions about why men are dressed as women.Is there no musical that Macy’s could find to illuminate the message of and spirit of Thanksgiving other than one that celebrates a behavior that God condemns (ie., cross-dressing)?

As with sympathetic portrayals of homosexuality, this effort is not about promoting tolerance of people. It’s about exploiting the concept of tolerance in order to expose children to the perverse sexual activities of adults in an effort to normalize such perversion.

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade also serves to inaugurate the Christmas season with an appearance by Santa Claus. Macy’s is willing to profit from the day set aside to celebrate the birth of Christ, while blaspheming God and insulting the beliefs of those whose hard-earned money they want. The hard-earned money of Christians is being used by Macy’s to normalize gender confusion and cross-dressing and to insult our God — who will not be mocked.

This is bad business and bad policy on the part of Macy’s. They are pushing mature adult conversations about psychological and moral issues on families at a time when families want to focus on celebrating Thanksgiving and the advent of the Christmas season.

Take ACTION:  Please click HERE to send an email or a fax to Macy’s President and CEO Terry J. Lundgren.  Let him know what you think of their decision to include a Kinky Boots performance in the Thanksgiving Day parade, then shop elsewhere.  You can also call their customer relations number at (513) 570-7000. 

It’s always offensive to push corrosive social and sexual agendas on children, but doing so during celebrations of religious holidays may be most offensive time of all.

Additional Contact Information:

Terry J. Lundgren, President 
Macy’s 
7 West Seventh Street
Cincinnati, OH  45202 
Phone: 513-579-7000
or: 513-579-7764
Fax: 513-579-7555

From now until the end of the year your tax-deductible gift to Illinois Family Institute will be doubled, up to $25,000 due to the generosity of some long-time supporters.   

Click here to double your tax-deductible donation to IFI today!

In addition to cowardice, one of the reasons that conservatives fail to oppose the myriad ways “progressives” exploit public schools to transform other people’s children into their social and political image is that we dismiss each new effort of theirs as insignificant. Such dismissiveness is proving costly.

In an effort to paint a more accurate (and therefore darker portrait) of public schools, this week I’ll  look at some recent events pertaining to public schools of which IFI subscribers may be unaware. Our hope is that these exposés will help parents (and others) understand why they must start taking a stand against the use of government schools/our taxes to affirm homosexuality and gender confusion. And one of the easiest ways to take a stand is to keep your children home from school on the Day of Silence, which is the homosexuality-affirming event sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) on Friday April 19, 2013.

Many IFI subscribers are well aware of the troubling anti-conservative hatred of the Southern Poverty Law Center which has led to its pernicious “hate groups” list that includes the Family Research Council, American Family Association, and IFI.

In keeping with the Left’s obsession with imposing their moral and political views on other people’s children, the SPLC created an “educational” arm called Teaching Tolerance. In a recent email to its subscribers, inluding countless public school teachers and administrators, they recommend that schools adopt a number of presumptuous Leftwing policies creepily called “nurturing practices.”

These are the “nurturing practices” they urge administrators, counselors, and teachers to adopt:

• “Enforce dress codes among all students equally.  A school cannot Constitutionally (sic) forbid male students to wear dresses, for instance, if other students are allowed to wear dresses….Check your dress code today. Are there rules that apply only to some students? If so, take immediate steps to remove them from your student handbook.”
•  “Help students whose gender is incorrectly listed on paperwork to correct the situation and ensure school staff and students address them using their preferred pronouns.”
• “Allow each transgender or intersex student to use the restroom in which that student is most comfortable, whether it’s the gender-neutral restroom or the restroom that corresponds with the student’s self-identified gender.”
• “Evaluate your administrative forms and communications. Do they use gender-neutral language or provide an opportunity for students to communicate their gender identity? If not, make the needed updates.”
•  “Educate event organizers about students’ First Amendment right to attend events with a same-sex date and to wear clothing of their choice.”
•  “Never reveal a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity without the student’s permission—even to the student’s family.”
• “Conversion Therapy, [a]lso known as reparative or sexual reorientation therapy, this pseudo-scientific “therapy” has been denounced by all major medical and psychological associations and may cause a student great psychological harm. Educate school staff about myths perpetrated by those who conduct conversion therapy. It is impossible to “turn” an individual from gay to straight.”
• “Prepare counselors and teachers to support students who are coping with the emotional side effects of conversion therapy.”
• “Our article, ‘Therapy of Lies,’ http://www.tolerance.org/toolkit/toolkit-therapy-lies is a great resource for educating school staff about conversion therapy.”
• “Religion can be a hot topic when discussing LGBT issues. All students are entitled to their religious viewpoints, but those viewpoints may not intrude on the rights of others.”
• “Include language specifically prohibiting harassment based on nonconformity to gender norms, gender identity and gender expression. Give examples of harassment based on actual or perceived sexual orientation.”
• Conduct student and teacher training once a year that discusses “The importance of diversity (including nonconformity with gender norms) in the student body.”

According to Teaching Tolerance, here are the practices that student members of homosexuality-affirming clubs (i.e., “gay-straight alliances or GSA’s) should adopt:

• They should communicate their homosexuality-affirming views during daily announcements or school assemblies or by hanging posters on the wall.
• They should “Publicly praise staff members who actively promote an inclusive environment.”
• “At end-of-the-year award ceremonies,” they should “present special ‘Diversity Leader’ certificates to educators who actively promoted an inclusive school environment throughout the year.”

Some thoughts on these “nurturing practices”:

• I will have to add “nurturing” to my growing list of words the Left is cunningly redefining. What they’re “nurturing” is compulsory affirmation of Leftwing beliefs about the nature and morality of homosexuality and cross-dressing. That’s not nurturing. That’s indoctrinating.
• Someone should teach the dogmatists at Teaching Tolerance that “equality” does not mean sameness, and that treating different things differently does not constitute inequality.
• No bullying prevention curriculum or policy specifically mentions or treats affirmatively every condition for which students may be bullied, so why should bullying prevention curricula or policies specifically mention or treat affirmatively homosexuality and gender-confusion? It’s as possible to work to eradicate bullying of homosexual students without affirming homosexuality as it is to work to eradicate bullying of promiscuous students without affirming promiscuity.
• Teaching Tolerance expects us to believe that there are so many homosexual high school students who are homosexual and who have undergone reparative therapy and been harmed by it that public schools should spend valuable time and limited resources teaching teachers about Leftwing views of reparative therapy.
• Can you imagine an outside organization encouraging students, teachers, and administrators to affirm conservative beliefs about heterosexuality and homosexuality in public schools? And can you imagine any conservative teacher using public resources (i.e., their jobs and curricula) to promote their views that volitional homosexual acts are harmful to those who engage in them and that widespread cultural affirmation of homosexuality will harm children, families, religious liberty, speech rights, and parental rights?

Please take a principled stand against the continued exploitation of public schools to propagandize your children with your money. Email your children’s teachers—particularly English, social studies, world language, and theater teachers—and ask them if they present any resources on issues related to homosexuality or gender confusion or if they initiate discussions on those topics. If so, ask them if they spend equal time having students study the best resources from both sides of the debate—which rarely if ever happens. Most “progressive” teachers in their infinite ignorance of all things conservative, won’t even know who the best conservative scholars, blogs, or websites are. Depending on their responses, you may want to either change teachers or opt your child out of any pro-homosexuality classroom activities.  

And finally, if your school is allowing students to refuse to speak during instructional time (that is, during classes) on Friday, April 19, 2013, keep your child home.  Read more about the Day of Silence Walkout here .

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

Written by Thaddeus Baklinski, LifeSiteNews.com

A prominent Toronto psychiatrist has severely criticized the assumptions underlying what has been dubbed by critics as the Canadian federal government’s “bathroom bill,” that is, Bill C-279, a private member’s bill that would afford special protection to so-called “transgender” men and women.

Dr. Joseph Berger has issued a statement saying that from a medical and scientific perspective there is no such thing as a “transgendered” person, and that terms such as “gender expression” and “gender identity” used in the bill are at the very least ambiguous, and are more an emotional appeal than a statement of scientific fact.

Berger, who is a consulting psychiatrist in Toronto and whose list of credentials establishes him as an expert in the field of mental illness, stated that people who identify themselves as “transgendered” are psychotic or simply unhappy, and pointed out that hormone therapy and surgery are not appropriate treatments for psychosis or unhappiness.

“From a scientific perspective, let me clarify what ‘transgendered’ actually means,” Dr. Berger said, adding, “I am speaking now about the scientific perspective – and not any political lobbying position that may be proposed by any group, medical or non-medical.”

“‘Transgendered’ are people who claim that they really are or wish to be people of the sex opposite to which they were born, or to which their chromosomal configuration attests,” Dr. Berger stated.

“Some times, some of these people have claimed that they are ‘a woman trapped in a man’s body’ or alternatively ‘a man trapped in a woman’s body’.”

“The medical treatment of delusions, psychosis or emotional happiness is not surgery,” Dr. Berger stated.

“On the other hand,” Dr. Berger continued, “if these people are asked to clarify exactly what they believe, that is to say do they truly believe whichever of those above propositions applies to them and they say ‘no’, then they know that such a proposition is not true, but that they ‘feel’ it, then what we are talking about scientifically, is just unhappiness, and that unhappiness is being accompanied by a wish – that leads some people into taking hormones that predominate in the other sex, and even having cosmetic surgery designed to make them ‘appear’ as if they are a person of the opposite sex.”

He explained that cosmetic surgery will not change the chromosomes of a human being in that it will not make a man become a woman, capable of menstruating, ovulating, and having children, nor will it make a woman into a man, capable of generating sperm that can unite with an egg or ovum from a woman and fertilize that egg to produce a human child.

Moreover, Dr. Berger stated that the arguments put forward by those advocating for special rights for gender confused people have no scientific value and are subjective and emotional appeals with no objective scientific basis.

“I have read the brief put forward by those advocating special rights, and I find nothing of scientific value in it,” Dr. Berger said in his statement. “Words and phrases, such as ‘the inner space,’ are used that have no objective scientific basis.”

“These are the scientific facts,” Dr. Berger said. “There seems to me to be no medical or scientific reason to grant any special rights or considerations to people who are unhappy with the sex they were born into, or to people who wish to dress in the clothes of the opposite sex.”

“The so-called ‘confusion’ about their sexuality that a teenager or adult has is purely psychological. As a psychiatrist, I see no reason for people who identify themselves in these ways to have any rights or privileges different from everyone else in Canada,” he concluded.

REAL Women of Canada asked Dr. Berger for a statement on the issues surrounding Bill C-279 after the organization appeared before the review committee hearings on the bill.

Gwen Landolt of REAL Women told LifeSiteNews that after being initially refused permission to present their perspective on the bill to the review committee, the group was accepted, but found that all other groups and individuals who had been accepted to appear before the committee were supporters of Bill C-279.

“It can scarcely be an impartial review of any bill if only the witnesses supporting the bill are invited to speak to it,” Landolt said.

Landolt explained that after passing second reading on June 6, 2012, Bill C-279 went to the Justice and Human Rights Committee for review.

At the review committee hearings, REAL Women of Canada presented a 12 page brief setting out the harms created by the bill, and pointing out that the terms “gender expression” and “gender identity,” as written in Bill C-279, were so broad that they could be used to protect pedophilia along with other sexual perversions, if passed into law.

REAL Women provided the committee with evidence that post-operative trans-gendered individuals suffer substantially higher morbidity and mortality than the general population, placing the so-called “sex reassignment” surgery and hormone treatment under continued scrutiny.

They pointed out that a pioneer in such treatment, Dr. Paul McHugh, distinguished professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, stopped the procedures because he found that patients were no better adjusted or satisfied after receiving such treatment.

McHugh wrote in 2004 that “Hopkins was fundamentally cooperating with a mental illness” by catering to the desires of people who wanted surgery to change their biological sex.

“We psychiatrists, I thought, would do better to concentrate on trying to fix their minds and not their genitalia,” he stated, adding that “to provide a surgical alteration to the body of these unfortunate people was to collaborate with a mental disorder rather than to treat it.”

Landolt noted that the committee hearings ended in confusion over the terminology presented in the bill, and that even the bill’s sponsor, NDP MP Randall Garrison (Esquimalt – Juan de Fuca), was not clear as to who is included and who is excluded in these terms.

“The definition for ‘gender identity’ proposed by Mr. Garrison is a subjective one that he defined as a ‘deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex that the individual was assigned at birth’,” Landolt said, adding that “The committee engaged in extensive discussions on the meaning of “gender identity” and “gender expression” without much clarification.”

“As a result, instead of a smooth, orderly dispatch of this bill through the Committee orchestrated by Garrison, Conservative MP Shelly Glover (St. Boniface, Manitoba) and Conservative MP Kerry-Lynne Findlay (Delta-Richmond-East, BC), the committee hearings broke down in confusion at the final hearing on December 10th. The result is that the bill will be reported to the House of Commons as originally written without amendments,” Landolt stated.

Following this state of confusion over terms at the review committee, REAL Women sought out an expert in order to provide the scientific and medical evidence relating to “transgenderism” and the other terms used in the bill.

Gwen Landolt told LifeSiteNews that REAL Women of Canada will be including Dr. Berger’s statement in an information package to be sent to MPs before the bill comes to final vote.

“It is crucial that MPs know that this legislation is harmful, not only to those who think themselves transgendered but also to society, and should not be passed into law,” Landolt said. “We must therefore write to our MP’s to request that they speak against this troubling bill.”

Dr. Berger is certified as a specialist in Psychiatry by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, and is an elected Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He is also a past Chairman of the Toronto district of the Ontario Medical Association and past President of the Ontario branch of the American Psychiatric Association.

Berger has been an Examiner in Psychiatry for the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology for twenty five years, has taught as Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, and is the author of many published papers on different aspects of Diagnosis and Independent Psychiatric Assessments, as well as author of the book “The Independent Medical Examination in Psychiatry” published by Butterworth/Lexis-Nexis.

Yesterday, I discussed the dishonesty of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) when reporting on the ill-conceived “transgender” policy at East Aurora High School in Aurora, Illinois and the school board’s dissolution of the ad hoc committee that included five deviant sexuality activists from outside the community. Anyone who naively believes the dissolution of this unelected committee due to community opposition is the definitive end to this story should read the email below that was sent by one of the activists to the other ad hoc committee members. It reveals the  presumptuousness, self-righteousness, and tenacity of “LGBT”-affirming activists: 

Dear Members of the Ad Hoc Committee: 

For myself and the hundreds of supporters of transgender students and their families in the East Aurora Schools, I was extremely disappointed to learn that the District 131 school board dissolved the Ad Hoc Committee.  I learned this, not as a courtesy from anyone at the district, but from the news media.  Learning secondhand about the decision sends a clear message that the district does not value the many exhausting hours members have volunteered and that the work we have done has been for nothing.  Notwithstanding recent events, we know that we have been a part of a critical conversation that must continue for the health and safety of East Aurora youth and families. 

Dissolving the Ad Hoc Committee fails the community and the district.  The dialogue beginning to develop presented an important opportunity for education and agreement on the best approach for the district to support a population of its students.  The difficult nature of the dialogue reveals just how critical it is that we have it.  The fact is that there are transgender students in East Aurora Schools (and all schools) and it is the district’s obligation to support and protect them.  Quitting the work now leaves unaddressed the damage done and a community divided.  Not to mention the liability incurred in recognizing the need for the work and then walking away. 

The work we’ve started is simply too important to abandon and the young people to whom we and the district are beholden deserve our thoughtful attention.  Thus, I propose that we continue the discussion with or without the official stamp of the school board. 

Please let me know whether you are available to meet on Wednesday, January 9 at 6p or Wednesday, January 16 at 6p to discuss how to move forward.  Location will be determined. 

You may reach me at sarah@illinoissafeschools.org or at 312-368-9070 ex. 323.

A few points in response:

• Since it is the mission of the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance to foist their beliefs about the nature and morality of homosexuality and gender confusion on public schools, why does Sarah Schriber claim that her “exhausting hours” were volunteer hours? And if she so deeply resents the rejection by the school board and community of her “volunteer” contributions, why is she initiating the continuation of her “volunteer” work?
• Schriber’s implicit claim about wanting to “dialogue” is laughable. Neither her organization nor any other “LGBT” advocacy organization seeks to “dialogue” with conservatives on how to think about issues related to same-sex attraction or gender-confusion. They will tolerate no other conceptualizations of homosexuality and gender-confusion than their own. Anyone who disagrees with their non-factual, subjective, unproven assumptions about the nature and morality of homosexual acts, cross-dressing, elective amputations of healthy body parts, “same-sex marriage,” or “same-sex adoption” are deemed ignorant hateful bigots. For evidence of that, just read the email sent by another member of the former ad hoc committee, the gender-confused Mr. Joanie Wimmer.
• Schriber’s declaration that she intends to continue to meet even “without the official stamp of the school board” reveals not merely how presumptuous she is, but how tenacious. Aurora community members need to be even more tenacious.

And Illinoisans in other communities need to be prepared to be equally tenacious because advocates like Schriber are coming to your schools–including your elementary schools. Unfortunately, many are employed in your schools even now, working behind the scenes to create policy and exploit curricula in their efforts to transform the beliefs and values of your children.

The East Aurora High School Board of Education recently passed a policy that would have permitted gender-confused students to use the restrooms and locker rooms designated for those of the opposite sex (i.e., of the sex that these students wish they were). The policy also mandated that district employees refer to these students using opposite sex pronouns (i.e., of the sex which these students wish they were), and it would have permitted gender-confused students to cross-dress at school without their parents’ knowledge or permission. 

The policy was rescinded four days later and the district administrator, Christie Aird, who proposed it and apparently misrepresented it to the board was temporarily placed on administrative leave. According to news reports, she implied or stated that the Illinois bullying law passed in 2010 required such a policy change. 

Here’s what every school district needs to know about the Illinois school bullying law: All it mandates is that schools must have a bullying policy and that they must register their policy with the state every two years. That’s it. The Illinois bullying prevention law does not require that schools have any policy whatsoever regarding restroom, locker room, or pronoun use for those who experience gender-confusion. 

Although the 2010 Illinois bullying law did, indeed, add the politically biased Leftist terms “sexual orientation,” “gender identity,” and “gender-related expression” to the enumerated list of protected groups, the bullying law does not require that school bullying policy include reference to any enumerated groups (*see below for a sample bullying policy). And the “transgender” policy passed and rescinded at East Aurora High School had nothing whatsoever to do with bullying policy. 

East Aurora HS ad hoc committee to study “transgender” policy 

It was too much to hope for that the vote to rescind the misguided East Aurora High School policy for gender-confused students would remain unchallenged. Common sense and decency are in short supply in public schools, so almost immediately after the policy was rescinded, the school board formed an ad hoc committee to revisit the rescinded policy. The committee had its first meeting last week. Multiple sources have reported that the chairperson of the committee made it clear that she wants East Aurora High School to be the trailblazer on “transgender” policy for Illinois schools. 

As is common at school meetings about controversial issues related to homosexuality or gender confusion, promoters of sexual deviance outnumbered conservatives, both on the committee and in the audience. 

Serving on the committee are two adult cross-dressing males who wish they were women. “Joanie Rae” Wimmer  is a Downer’s Grove attorney, and “Crystal Ann” Gray, who lives in Woodstock, IL, works as a “transgender” advocate. Click here to watch a video of Gray and “Shari” Miller, another gender-confused man who as of 2008 was Gray’s romantic partner. Aurora parents, church leaders, and other residents should be outraged that this is who is coming into their school to create school policy that would affect their children. 

Also in attendance was Sara Schriber, former ACLU attorney and current policy director for the Chicago-based homosexual activist organization, the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance. This is the organization instrumental in getting homosexuality-affirming resources into Beye Elementary School in Oak Park. 

Lesbian Shannon Sullivan, another Illinois Safe Schools Alliance staff member, complained to WBEZ that opposition to this policy came from “outside groups,” namely IFI. Ironically, she said that just after admitting that the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, an outside group, had been working behind the scenes for months with Assistant Superintendent of Elementary Programs Christie Aird.

The Aurora community should demand that only Aurora community members may serve on the committee, and at the next election, they should get rid of any school board member who supports any “transgender” policy. 

Take Action: The East Aurora community needs help to prevent the school board from passing yet another “transgender” policy. If you live in Aurora, please attend the next meeting which is November 29 at 6:30 p.m. at 417 Fifth Street in Aurora (main office). If you know someone who lives in Aurora, please contact them immediately and ask them to attend this meeting. They do not have to have students attending East Aurora High School. Anyone who is willing to make a statement should call Clayton Muhammad (630 299-5550)by Nov. 22 to ask to be placed on the agenda. 

If you have further questions, please contact either IFI or Aurora Pastor Patrick McManus at (630) 966-0724. 

Two questions for the ad hoc committee 

Those who support this type of policy must answer these two critical questions: 

• If gender-confused teens should not have to share restrooms and locker rooms with those whose “gender identity” they don’t share, then why should other teens have to share restrooms and locker rooms with those whose objective biological sex they don’t share? 

• If there are two distinct phenomenon, biological sex (constituted by objective DNA/anatomy) and “gender identity” (constituted by subjective feelings), why should locker rooms and restrooms be separated according to “gender identity” rather than objective biological sex? What justification is there for subordinating objective biological sex to “gender identity”? 

Thoughts about claims made by supporters of “transgender” school policy 

• Those who promote this type of policy believe that the subjective feelings of teens who wish they had been born the opposite sex trump objective biological and anatomical reality. They believe that what gender-confused teens feel is their true sex is, indeed, their true sex. They also believe that everyone in society must accept their unproven belief that “gender identity” is more objectively real and more important than is objective biological and anatomical reality. But society has no obligation and should feel no compulsion to accept these propositions as true. They are not facts. 

• This policy would inappropriately mandate that teachers use pronouns that correspond to a student’s “gender identity” as opposed to his or her objective biological sex. The reason teachers should not be compelled to use pronouns that don’t correspond to a student’s biological sex is that requiring them to do so means requiring them to participate in a fiction. Students who suffer from gender dysphoria or Gender Identity Disorder (as opposed to intersex conditions) have an objective biological sex. No student, teacher, or administrator should be compelled to treat objective reality as if it doesn’t exist. The government has no ethical right to compel people to participate in a lie. 

• The fact that boys or girls don’t choose to experience gender confusion does not mean that such feelings are normal or good. And it certainly does not mean that society must affirm their feelings or accommodate every behavior that such feelings impel. There is another psychological disorder analogous to gender dysphoria called Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) in which sufferers identify with amputees and seek to have their bodies correspond to their self-conception through elective amputation of healthy body parts. To be intellectually consistent, would supporters of this gender-confusion policy argue that schools should accommodate the desire of anatomically whole students to use a wheel chair and the elevators intended for disabled students? 

• Boys should leave a bathroom if a girl enters, and girls should leave a bathroom if a boy enters. How will that make a gender-confused student feel? 

• Supporters of this policy argue that the majority should not be allowed to deny the rights of the minority, but that statement presumes that gender-confused students have a right to use the restrooms and locker rooms designated for those of the opposite sex. And it ignores the rights of those who don’t want to be compelled to use facilities intended for private acts in the presence of those of the opposite sex. Boys have no right to use girls’ restrooms, and girls have no right to use boys’ restrooms. And no one has a moral right to compel others to lie. 

• Supporters of this policy argue that it’s needed in order to be “inclusive” of gender-confused students. To be intellectually consistent then, wouldn’t supporters of the policy have to agree that those who are not comfortable sharing a bathroom with someone of the opposite sex because of their beliefs about sexual differentiation, modesty, and privacy would be “excluded” if the school refuses to honor their beliefs, feelings, values, and identity—which, by the way, has a basis in objective reality? 

Symbolic and teaching effect of school policy

In this entire mess, no one has talked about the symbolic and teaching effect of school policy. Many community members who do not like this policy will dismiss it as relatively unimportant because so few students suffer from gender confusion. But if it’s unimportant, why does the Left care so much about it? They care about it in part because of its symbolic effect. The Left knows that passing this policy necessarily means that the school has formally embraced the Left’s unproven, non-factual beliefs about sex and gender. 

In addition, the Left knows that such a policy teaches. 

• If this policy were to be restored, the proper, healthy, and normal feelings and beliefs of students who do not feel comfortable sharing locker room and restroom facilities with those of the opposite sex would be ignored. Boys, who should leave a bathroom if a girl enters, and girls, who should leave a bathroom if a boy enters, would be taught either implicitly or explicitly that those natural and good feelings are wrong. They would be taught that their natural and good feelings of modesty are exclusionary, lacking in compassion, ignorant, and biased. 

• Such a policy would teach students that in order to be kind, compassionate, and inclusive of those who experience gender confusion, they have to affirm those troubled peers’ impulses and ideas. In reality, neither love nor inclusivity requires affirmation and accommodation of every feeling, impulse, belief, or behavioral choice of every student in a school. Real love as well as commitments to morality, objective reality, and public order put limits on what schools can and should affirm and accommodate. And real love depends first on knowing what is true. 

• Such a policy would teach students that gender is not determined by DNA and manifest in biology and anatomy, but that it is determined by subjective feelings. This, however, is not a fact, and neither schools nor the community has any obligation to accept the theory that “gender” has no connection to DNA and anatomy. 

• Such a policy teaches students that cross-dressing (as well as hormone-doping and elective amputations of healthy body parts) is morally acceptable and good. 

Make no mistake, this is a critical battle. If this policy passes, it will make national news, and the homosexual and “transgender” advocacy groups will use it to force other schools to pass similar policy. As I have said many times, cultural change rarely happens through dramatic single events. It happens through the slow accretion of small events that we ignore or dismiss as trivial or irrelevant. This has the potential to be a hugely consequential battle. 

*Sample School Bullying Policy 

A school bullying policy could say the following, which is taken verbatim from the bullying law: 

No student shall be subjected to bullying. 

Bullying means any severe or pervasive physical or verbal act or conduct, including communications made in writing or electronically, directed toward a student that has or can be predicted to have the effect of one or more of the following: 

1. placing a student or students in reasonable fear of harm to the student’s or students’ person or property;
2. causing a substantially detrimental effect on the student’s or students’ physical or mental health;
3. substantially interfering with the student’s or students’ academic performance; or
4. substantially interfering with the student’s or students’ ability to participate in or benefit from the services, activities, or privileges provided by a school. 

Bullying may take various forms, including without limitation one or more of the following: harassment, threats, intimidation, stalking, physical violence, sexual harassment, sexual violence, theft, public humiliation, destruction of property, or retaliation for asserting or alleging an act of bullying. 

Such a policy would pass legal muster, be much more clearly inclusive, and steer clear of partisan politicization.

Stand With Us

Your support of our work and ministry is always much needed and greatly appreciated. Your promotion of our emails on Facebook, Twitter, your own email network, and prayer for financial support is a huge part of our success in being a strong voice for the pro-life, pro-marriage and pro-family message here in the Land of Lincoln.  Please consider standing with us.

Click here to support Illinois Family Action (IFA). Contributions to IFA are not tax-deductible but give us the most flexibility in engaging critical legislative and political issues.

Click here to support Illinois Family Institute (IFI). Contributions to IFI are tax-deductible and support our educational efforts only.

You can also send a gift to P.O. Box 88848, Carol Stream, IL  60188.

On Wednesday, Erika Wurst, reporter for the Sun Times Beacon-News wrote an article about East Aurora High School’s recently adopted policy on gender confusion. In it Wurst quoted a “suburban high school math teacher” who blogged favorably about the policy, but curiously, she didn’t provide his name. His name is Hemant Mehta, also known as “the Friendly Atheist.” Although I am loathe to send anyone to his blog, I think readers deserved to know who exactly the math teacher is whom Wurst quoted. Knowing who he is puts his comments in the proper perspective. 

If you spend any time on Mehta’s blog, you will find that he promotes both atheism and the extraordinarily obscene and hateful religious bigot Dan Savage. In addition, Mehta, who is a Neuqua Valley High School math teacher, regularly uses profane and obscene language. Mehta’s endorsement of the East Aurora High School policy provides further evidence that it’s bad policy. 

It’s understandable why Wurst would not want to provide attribution for a source like Mehta, but such an omission is not good journalism.

Thursday evening, ABC News reported  that the East Aurora High School Board of Education had already decided to rescind the misguided policy on gender confusion that it had adopted on Monday evening. The board is scheduled to meet on Friday afternoon to have the formal vote. Let’s hope and pray that the board is able to stand firm even in the face of opposition by liberal activists who are planning to attend the board meeting.

IFI wants to thank every Illinoisan who contacted members of the East Aurora High School Board of Education to express his or her opposition to this policy. And we want to compliment the school board on their willingness to listen to their community and their humility in acknowledging their error. Responsiveness and humility are rare commodities on school boards.

We have no way of knowing all the factors that influenced this decision, but we do know that silence accomplishes nothing.

My original article was not about teens who suffer from gender confusion, which is a rare but serious disorder for which we should all feel compassion and sympathy. Rather, my article was about the feckless decision of the school board, which according to ABC News was responding to a proposal “introduced by the district assistant superintendent of education, Christine Erd, who thought it was important to implement guidelines to address when addressing transgender students and their needs.” The school board president told ABC News that the board was inundated with emails and phone calls from parents and that “Every one of those parents was upset that we put this policy forward.”

This debacle illustrates exactly how radical school policies and curricular resources are worming their way into schools unbeknown to the taxpayers who fund them. Often all it takes is one “agent of change” to propose a bad policy, film, or book for it to make its insidious way into the system. It’s easy for them to accomplish these feats of subterfuge because too few taxpayers know what’s going on—which is exactly what liberal “agents of change” want—and too few board members, administrators, teachers, and taxpayers who do know and who are willing to speak up.

But the good news is we can effect positive change.

Neither love nor inclusivity requires affirmation and accommodation of every feeling, impulse, belief, or behavioral choice of every student in a school. Real love as well as commitments to morality, objective reality, and public order put limits on what schools can and should affirm and accommodate.