Here’s some news you might have missed.

On April 7, 2022, Florida preschool teacher, 28-year-old Lois Schwartz, boasted about teaching her students that she is neither a boy nor a girl and that she’s a polyamorous, pagan witch.

This polyamorous genderfluid witch is a preschool teacher in Florida. She’s so proud of herself that she discusses her gender and sexuality with 4 year olds pic.twitter.com/XOuuX6by4w

— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) April 7, 2022

“Eli” Dinh, formerly Molly, a kindergarten teacher at the private Hillbrook School in California, uses a pronoun game to inculcate five-year-olds with her arguable, self-serving gender theories. On Instagram she goes by @okayenby, with “enby,” standing for nonbinary. She expects others to refer to her by the third-person plural pronouns “they” and “them.” Dinh is a woman who gave birth and breastfed two children before she decided that her authentic identity was male. Then she started doping testosterone, hired a quack surgeon to lop off her breasts, and changed her name from Molly to Eli. Dinh’s favorite curricular components are, not surprisingly, social and emotional learning and anti-bias education—for kindergartners. Private schools may teach whatever destructive nonsense they want, but Dinh is the cold, sharp tip of a colossal iceberg that is plowing through government schools as well.

Brooke Charter School first-grade teacher “Ray Skyer,” a bearded woman who pretends to be a man, told K-2 students this hogwash during a zoom class:

Something that’s really cool and unique about me is that I’m transgender. We touched on that earlier this week in the book that Ms. Hammond read, but I’m going to give you my explanation about what it means to be transgender.

So, when babies are born, the doctor looks and makes a guess on whether the baby is a boy or girl based on what that baby looks like. Most of the time, that guess is 100 percent correct. … But sometimes the doctor is wrong. The doctor makes an incorrect guess. When the doctor makes a correct guess, that’s when a person is called cisgender. When a doctor’s guess is wrong, that’s when they are transgender.

So, I’m a man, but when I was baby, the doctors told my parents that I was a girl. … Until I was 18 years old, everyone thought I was a girl. This was super, super uncomfortable for me because I knew that wasn’t right. … So, when I was 18, I told my family and friends that I’m really a boy, and it was like this huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders, and I had the freedom to be who I truly am.

.@BrookeSchool 1st grade teacher records an “identity share” zoom call with K-2 grades where he spoke about being trans.

“When babies are born the dr looks & makes a guess on whether the baby is a boy or girl. Sometimes the dr is wrong. If they are right, the baby is cisgender” pic.twitter.com/qYGFm9B7rF

— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) April 10, 2022

This short video teaches parents everything they need to know about morally and intellectually unmoored activists who self-identify as teachers working in schools. First, they propagandize in many ways, including through literature, direct instruction, and demagoguery.

Second, they propagate highly controversial beliefs without telling young students that the “explanations” are controversial, disputed, faith-based, and devoid of scientific support. Doctors don’t “guess” whether babies are boys or girls. They identify the sex of babies. Skyer was correctly identified as the girl she is and ever more will be. Her mother’s obstetrician did not guess, and he or she was not wrong. At 18, Skyer decided to start masquerading as a man.

Skyer did not merely explain. She manipulated the emotions of young innocent children who would not want anyone—especially a teacher they know and like—to feel “super, super uncomfortable.” So, in addition to feeding them fantastical fiction in the guise of objective truth, Skyer is trying to make children feel predisposed to sex-masquerades.

Indefensible ideological grooming of children by leftists is not limited to the United States. Australian Member of Parliament Bernie Finn shared an assignment given to 10-year-old boys and girls in a school in the district he represents. Children were instructed to discuss their father’s erections and ejaculations with their fathers. It should go without saying that at no age should a child be asked to discuss with their fathers their erections and ejaculations. But we are forced to say such things now because purportedly “civilized” societies no longer experience righteous anger at evil being promoted as good to children in school. How long before “civilized” societies no longer find father-daughter personal orgasm discussions objectionable?

Conservative Americans seem—to borrow a British term—gobsmacked by the trans-volution sweeping our formerly rational society. I am gobsmacked by their astonishment. The trans-volution has been slowly emerging like a parasitic guinea worm from the homo-volution which was birthed by the Boomer’s sexual revolution. I first warned about the emerging trans-volution in late 2008 when I wrote about “bisexual” Anglican priest Laurel Dykstra who has twins via a sperm donor. Dyskstra wrote an article in 2005 on how to make preschools “trans-friendly.” Here were her explanations and recommendations:

• She said that the “gender binary system. … is harmful to everyone.”

• She moralized that “It is not enough for classrooms, teachers, and schools to be ‘open’ or ‘non-judgmental’; they need to be actively trans-positive.”

• Dykstra recommended that when talking to preschoolers, teachers should say things like “‘Well, most men have penises, but some don’t,’” and “‘Some girls grow up to be men.’”

• She urged teachers to “Encourage kids to question their assumptions. ‘How do you know that that person is a woman? Could a man wear a dress?’”

• She instructed teachers to “Call children by the name and the pronouns they choose.”

• She recommended accessorizing classrooms with a “Tranny Teddy. Have a non-gendered toy/doll/puppet…. Do not use pronouns and give this creature a variety of gendered clothing, such as a skirt and tie. If asked, say ‘Oh, Binker isn’t a boy or a girl.’”

• She suggested having a “Butch/Femme Day. Why not teach kids language like butch/femme, as an alternative to boy/girl or male/female? You could have dress-up days to play deliberately with gender, like ‘Fabulous and Fearless Day’ or ‘Capable and Campy.’”

• She encouraged teachers to “Invite a drag performer or transsexual person who would be willing to share their story and a photo album.”

• When reading picture books to preschoolers, Dykstra recommended “switching pronouns, avoiding them altogether, or using alternative pronouns.”

• Dykstra rationalized using deceit in the face of parental opposition: “For ‘stealth practitioners’ (i.e., teachers in a transphobic setting), these classroom suggestions can be implemented without fanfare to create a more just and welcoming classroom.”

Dykstra offered these suggestions 17 years ago, and I issued warnings 14 years ago. Increasing numbers of warnings have been issued across the nation by men and women who have been paying attention. The ignorance and sloth of conservatives—including church leaders—in addressing the evil in the midst of our schools is inexcusable.

If Americans had been paying attention to warnings about the perverse shape of things to come, maybe the disaster we see unfolding in schools could have been stopped, thereby preventing the incalculable damage being done to children. But confronting socially acceptable evil requires not just awareness but courage, perseverance, and a willingness to suffer for the neighbors we love.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Ideologically-Grooming-Kids-in-Schools.mp3

Just think of the upside down world in which we live today. Women and girls are relaxing in a California spa when a man walks in, naked and fully exposed, in full view of these mothers and daughters. Yet when a complaint is issued, the spa, along with the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times editorial board, defend the man. Do we need any more proof that we have lost our corporate minds?

A man commits full frontal indecent exposure in the presence of women and girls, and the Los Angeles Times chides the women for being upset while defending the man, since, after all, he’s actually a woman. And, you know, women can have penises too. That’s right. And men can menstruate as well as conceive and give birth to babies. That’s also why we must talk about “chestfeeding” rather “breastfeeding,” since the latter term would offend nursing fathers.

Have we not lost our minds?

Listen to this woman’s personal account of what happened:

“I went to the Wi spa in Los Angeles, California, and while I decided to go around the different jacuzzis, I decided to take a nap. After my nap, I got up and I wanted to get water. As I was walking, I noticed something that really was disturbing, something that caused me to feel that I must have been transported into the men’s locker room, the men’s Jacuzzi area.

“Yeah. A man, a full-on man, fully naked, completely exposed, showing his testicles, his penis. Slightly erected.

“I was appalled at what I saw. This was not normal. . . . Little girls are there, their mothers are there, other women are looking about, and they begin to put their robes back on them. I went to management. Management did nothing. I even told the guy he should leave, ‘This is not right,’ and he didn’t leave. We had no help whatsoever. I did not know what to do.

“Something has got to be done. This is not fair. It is not right. We as women have rights to be safe in public spaces, and they are being violated by men going into women’s spaces, claiming to be women to gain access, so that they can exercise their perversions.

“This is not right. We must do something about it.

“On June 23, I experienced what no woman or little girl should ever experience. I experienced what used to be called flashing or indecent exposure, which would result in a man registering to be a sexual offender for life.”

Yes, this used to be considered perverse and even illegal. But not today. Today, this is a “right” to be celebrated. And it is the women and girls who have a problem. They are the ones who are messed up in their thinking. The onus is on them to change.

As explained in the upside-down editorial in the Los Angeles Times, “As complicated as the opposing beliefs might be, it is clear where the rights in this matter land. Everyone — transgender customers, members of every faith and women who are upset by the sight of penises — all have the right to use the spa and other public accommodations.”

Indeed, the Times’ editors opined with some of the most convoluted thinking imaginable, “no one has an absolute right to feel comfortable all the time. People have a right to use the spa, but that doesn’t include with it a guarantee that they all will feel at ease with everything they see. They might prefer a spa where a certain amount of body covering is required.”

Seriously? No one has the right to expect that a biological male, naked and fully exposed, will not come marching into the women’s area? No one has the right to expect that their children will not suffer this kind of sexual and psychological abuse? Seriously?

This used to be called indecent exposure. You could go to jail for this.

But not today. Today it is just a needless “hullabaloo,” to quote the exact term used by the Times. We’ll get over it soon enough.

Yes, the Times editors tell us, “Young people are far more comfortable with the idea of shared spaces for people of all gender identities and sexes.”

Absolutely. I’m sure an 8-year-old or 12-year-old or 15-year-old girl, sitting naked in the steam room, is super comfortable with a 40-year-old naked man sitting down next to them. Of course!

To repeat: this is madness.

Yet the self-righteousness and moral perversion of the Times knows no bounds. To quote the closing words of the editorial, “In the meantime, customers of public-serving businesses should be prepared to share space with the public, in all our forms, varieties and customs. Antidiscrimination laws stand for the principle that all are welcome, whether we are comfortable or not.”

Tell that to the girls (and women) who feel violated and abused. Tell that to the people whose rights have been trampled.

But no, we can’t, because transgender activism trumps all. It trumps morality. And decency. And honor. And common sense. Just say, “I’m trans!” and anything goes.

And what about sexual predators who have already used these loopholes to enter ladies’ bathrooms and the like? That’s too bad, we are told, but the priority is protecting those who identify as transgender.

I ask again: what kind of madness is this? How and when did we entirely lose our minds?

And what an absolute and ridiculous farce to allow for these abuses to take place under “antidiscrimination laws.” Talk about legal mumbo jumbo. Talk about turning right into wrong and wrong into right.

As for the man who truly believes he is a woman, here’s a word of wisdom for you: you do not belong in the women’s spa, naked and exposed, even if to the core of your being you believe you are female.

Moreover, no one is making you go there, and your life will not be hurt if you stay out of a place where there are naked women and girls. (Let’s be realistic here. We’re not talking about withholding lifesaving treatment or essential medical care from someone who identifies as trans. God forbid. We’re talking about biological males not exposing themselves around women and girls. Please get a grip.)

Sir, male plumbing remains, and if you expose that plumbing in the sight of the opposite sex you should pay the penalty for indecent exposure.

The truth is that the spa should be ashamed for defending the man. Those members of the public who also supported his “rights” should be ashamed. And the Times should be ashamed.

Alas, in today’s upside world, where perversion is celebrated and common decency is denigrated, shame is hard to find.

Back in 2016, during a debate over transgender access to school bathrooms and locker rooms, the Charlotte Observer infamously opined that, “Girls must try ‘overcoming discomfort’ of seeing ‘male genitalia’ in bathrooms.”

I commented in response, “Transanity indeed.”

Is there any other way to describe it? Do we need any further proof that we have lost our corporate minds?

I rest my case.

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.

As the social media giants continue to crack down on those who violate their trans-activist talking points (see here and here), another perspective has been raised from an unexpected source. I’m talking about a powerful, deeply moving article posted in Newsweek and titled, “We Need Balance When It Comes To Gender Dysphoric Kids. I Would Know.”

The author of the op-ed is Scott Newgent, self-described as “a 48-year-old transgender man.” What Newgent has written is courageous, deeply revealing, poignant, and accurate.

Perhaps others will now heed these urgent warnings, since those of us on the conservative Christian side who have been presenting similar cases have been largely ignored to this day.

Six years ago, Newgent was told by the medical community that she could turn from a woman into a man. But, Newgent adds, “all the negatives were glossed over.”

As a result, “I have suffered tremendously, including seven surgeries, a pulmonary embolism, an induced stress heart attack, sepsis, a 17-month recurring infection, 16 rounds of antibiotics, three weeks of daily IV antibiotics, arm reconstructive surgery, lung, heart and bladder damage, insomnia, hallucinations, PTSD, $1 million in medical expenses, and loss of home, car, career and marriage. All this, and yet I cannot sue the surgeon responsible—in part because there is no structured, tested or widely accepted baseline for transgender health care.”

Most of us cannot imagine this kind of trauma, let alone imagine telling a story like this to the whole world.

Yet, because it comes from the mouth of a biological female who now identifies as a male, the author can hardly be called transphobic. Plus, this op-ed was published in Newsweek rather than in a Focus on the Family magazine.

Unfortunately, when Christian conservatives have stated these same facts, we have been branded hateful and bigoted and transphobic. Not only so, but when former transgenders like Walt Heyer or Laura Perry tell their own, agonizing (yet redemptive) stories, they too are branded hateful and bigoted. (To see their stories for yourself, watch this free documentary. You won’t regret taking the time. You can also visit the SexChangeRegret website for more.)

But it is love and truth that caused Newgent to write, not hate. As Newgent states, “It is not transphobic or discriminatory to discuss this—we as a society need to fully understand what we are encouraging our children to do to their bodies.”

That’s why Abigail Shrier wrote her important book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, named a book of the year by The Economist and one of the best books of 2021 by The Times and The Sunday Times.

The alarm must be sounded. The warning must be issued. Not only are adults destroying their bodies and their lives, but our children are doing so as well. Doesn’t love compel us to speak?

Consequently, when Amazon refused to allow Shrier’s publisher to advertise the book on their site (sell it, yes, but advertise it, no), wasn’t it Amazon, not the publisher, that displayed dangerous bias?

Newgent, who previously identified as a lesbian, experienced many doubts about the transitioning process. But rather than the professionals slowing down the transition process, they all encouraged her to keep going. This is just what you need!

To the contrary, the surgeries and drugs took a terrible toll on Newgent, who found no real help in the medical world that was so quick to recommend her transition.

“During my post-operation 17 months of sheer survival,” Newgent writes, “I discovered that transgender health care is experimental and that large swaths of the medical industry encourage minors to transition due, at least in part, to fat profit margins.”

Yet those of us who seek to raise a cautionary flag, those of us who say, “Slow down! Let’s see if you can be helped from the inside out,” are branded the haters and the transphobes. How can this be?

I urge everyone reading this article to take the time to read every word of Newgent’s op-ed. A summary cannot begin to do justice to her journey, from the physical pain to the emotional agony to the devastating losses to the list of negative consequences.

In fact, everyone considering “transitioning” should memorize this list of 13 potential consequences. It begins with “decreased life expectancy” and includes “no improved mental health outcomes.” To call it sobering would be a gross understatement. Remarkably, after citing examples from other countries which are rethinking their approach to sex-change surgery and treatments, Newgent writes,

“We now have the obligation to work together to slow trans medicalization of minors until they are adults and have the capacity to truly understand the lifelong consequences of transitioning. As a former lesbian and current trans man, I maintain this is not transphobic. It is actually sensitive and caring to recognize that not just one treatment or pathway is right for all kids.”

But of course. It is love that has motivated many of us to call for this very slow down – in particular, love for the children. (You can see for yourself how my call for this on Tyra Banks was received over 10 years ago.)

Newgent closes with this:

“So, endocrinologists and pediatricians, moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans, radical feminists and evangelicals, lawyers and psychologists, parents and teachers: My hand is out. I will grab yours and turn down no one. Together, we can build a circle around our most precious resource: our children. Help me fulfill the promise I made on the night I almost gave up, to be here for my children—and now yours. Who’s with me?”

As a conservative evangelical, I say to Scott Newgent: for this cause, I am with you. Let’s do something to stop the madness. Let’s put the children first. And if I can be of help to you in any personal level as you work through your own journey, count me in.

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.

Written by Tony Perkins

Lynn Meagher seriously considered killing herself. Desperate, tormented, and out of options, she went to see a therapist. How should she cope, she cried, knowing that two of her children wanted nothing to do with her? Two children, who, through horrible, mutilating surgeries, destroyed the bodies she’d carried inside her? “I felt I was living in a dream, a nightmare,” she says quietly. That nightmare, the one she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy, is real. And from now on, every time you walk through the door of a Starbucks, you’re telling moms like Lynn you couldn’t care less.

“I can’t even describe what it’s like to see your own child’s face with the opposite gender superimposed on it. It’s just… I can’t even describe it…” Parents like Elaine Davidson still struggle to talk about the bloody bandages covering the place where their daughters’ breasts used to be. “I begged everyone I could [to stop the surgery]. I begged her. I couldn’t stop it.” Losing a child to this tortured life is like a death in the family. Only, there was no goodbye. No ceremony. “No one sent us flowers,” Lisa grieves. “No one dropped off a casserole.”

So imagine their horror when they scanned the headlines and saw an American company — one as large and powerful as Starbucks — trying to inflict that pain on as many people as possible. In an announcement shocking even for them, the coffee chain is launching a campaign to actively push kids into sex changes that damage them for life. Using #whatsyourname as its call sign, Starbucks started placing ads in the U.K. featuring a young girl (dressed like a boy) who wants the barista to write “James” on her cup. “Taking a customer’s name, writing it on a cup, and calling it out is a symbol of our warm welcome,” Starbucks says.

But it isn’t just the “welcome” customers are supporting. The mega-chain has a much more serious agenda — donating piles of money to trap kids into this lifestyle of pain and suffering. “In addition to the ad campaign, Starbucks states it is partnering with Mermaids,” an activist group for “supporting trans and gender-diverse children.” “Transgender children,” the website says, “deserve the freedom and confidence to explore their gender identity wherever their journey takes them, free from fear, isolation and discrimination.” The goal? For Starbucks to raise at least 100,000 euros for the cause.

These aren’t grown men and women the coffee giant is after. These are children — young girls and boys who are hurting, confused, and being destroyed by adults pushing them to chase these identities, despite the cost. And the cost, hundreds of parents and patients will tell you, is irreversible.

“I remember breaking down. It was like, this was a mistake. It should never have happened. But what do you do about it? How do you go through another harrowing transition? What do you do? I’ve got no hair. I’ve got a beard. I’ve had all [of] my body mutilated. How do I go back?” Debbie was 17. She would do anything to turn back time. “There are thousands of us,” another young woman told the BBC, desperately wanting a way out. A way out from the life companies like Starbucks are telling children is the way to finally get noticed and valued. They don’t mention the heartbreak. The regret. The years of physical agony.

But then, it’s not as if Starbucks’s agenda is a surprise. The liberal business has never truly cared about kids — not after spending thousands of dollars helping Planned Parenthood abort them — or working to deprive them of a married mom and dad. And yet, despite it all, plenty of Christians will still rationalize turning their cars into the first drive-thru sign they see. “We’re uncomfortable with boycotts,” they’ll say. But surely we’re all more uncomfortable funding a war against innocent children. Try clicking through these stories and finding peace at Starbucks — or any company where your dollars help create more victims. Is the coffee really so good that you’re willing to give a portion of every cup to promote this self-destruction? Ask yourself when you read this plea from a mom whose family will never be the same.

“Once we have cut that beautiful body, when the voice is permanently broken, the beard is there for good, the breasts are gone, what happens if the body was never wrong to start with? What will you tell the daughters that realize, too late, that they have destroyed their ability to bear children, or to nurse them? When they find that their wounds had other causes, other origins, and required other treatments? I plead with you to hear the parents, and the many stories of young people who have changed their minds after medical transition. This is not health care, this is a medical experiment. This is not life-saving care, these are criminal actions. And [it] must be stopped.”

You can help. Contact Starbucks and ask them to stop contributing to agendas that permanently scar our kids. Meet Lynn and hear why below.

This article was originally published at FRC.org.

“[F]or Precious Brady Davis,
getting her husband pregnant meant going off hormones.”

How’s that for a head-scratcher of a quote—a quote that actually appears on the no-longer reputable NBC 5 Chicago “news” website  in a story about two “trans”-cultists who are married and recently had a baby. The pretend-wife is “Precious” Brady Davis,” a biological man who pretends to be a woman. The pretend-husband is “Myles” Brady Davis, a biological woman who pretends to be a man. Myles-the-real-mother is the director of communications and press secretary for Illinois’ premier “LGBTQ” propaganda organization, Equality Illinois. This woman really knows how to spread propaganda.

The “trans power couple” are in the news again, and again they’re in the news for pernicious reasons. When Myles was 20 weeks pregnant, she learned that she would be listed as the baby’s mother on the birth certificate, because she is, well, the mother.

As “trans”-cultists and propagandists so often do, Myles contacted an attorney with Lambda Legal who contacted the Illinois Department of Public Health, which immediately cried uncle … or aunt … or something. Suffice to say, the state caved to the “trans”-cultists.

The birth certificate will now identify the mother—the biological woman who gestated and birthed the baby girl—as the “father” and will identify the father—the biological man whose sperm united with Myles’ egg and then implanted in Myles’ womb—as the “mother.”

According to the Chicago Tribune, Myles-the-real-mother “never even thought the birth certificate would have to misgender us.” Yeah, riiight. She never thought a legal document would include the objective fact that she is the mother.

The Tribune writer, Nara Schoenberg, evidently a propagandist for the “trans” cult who identifies as a news reporter, described the possible identification on the birth certificate of the biological father as the father as making “matters worse.”

Propagandist Schoenberg also wrote this nonsensical sentence:

To have biological children, they had to go off their gender-reinforcing hormones.

Schoenberg needs to take classes in both biology and leftist sexuality ideology. Does she know what hormones are? Does she know what “gender” is in the “trans” world she seeks to suck up to? Gender—according to “progressives”—is the aggregate of arbitrary, socially constructed conventions associated with maleness or femaleness. Hormones are chemical substances produced in the body that control and regulate the activity of certain cells or organs. Hormones can’t and don’t reinforce “gender.”

The website Mommyish—which claims to “take parenting seriously”—has an article about the self-glorifying, “trans”-cultist power couple titled “Trans Couple’s God-Like Pregnancy Photos Defy Stereotypes” which includes this photo from Myles-the-real-mother’s Instagram account:

A better title would be “Trans Couple’s Frankenstein-Like Photos Defy God.”

Word to Mommyish, while Myles’ cross-dressing and cross-sex hormone-doping is clearly an effort to conceal her sex (or as Mommyish calls it, “defy stereotype”), the photo of a mother heavy with child is the anti-thesis of a “stereotype.”

“Trans”-cultists use the fact that language changes over time to try to compel others to use their redefinitions of words and the neologisms they invent to advance their strange, science-denying, metaphysical ideology. Now they want to redefine the words “mother” and “father.” They no longer want those terms to be linked to biological sex. Instead, they want “mother” to denote humans who wish they were women and “father” to denote humans who wish they were men.

Well then, why not redefine the word “teenager”? Henceforth, it will no longer denote a human whose objective age is between 13-19 but, instead, denote humans who feel like, wish they were, or identify as teens?

What about “Latinx,” the neologism that refers to “people of Latin American cultural or ethnic identity in the United States”? Why not redefine “Latinx” to denote anyone who wishes they were or self-identifies as a person of Latin American cultural or ethnic identity—including those whose Puritan ancestors came over on the Mayflower?

While we’re thinking about language, let’s remember what George Orwell said about the abuses of language for oppressive political ends (i.e., Newspeak), which points to the importance of resistance to such abuses:

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all… a heretical thought… should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. 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, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever….

[T]he special function of certain Newspeak words… was not so much to express meanings as to destroy them….

[W]ords which had once borne a heretical meaning were sometimes retained for the sake of convenience, but only with the undesirable meanings purged out of them. (emphasis added)

So, “trans”-cultists have struck another blow against science and reality. Illinois birth certificates will no longer “misgender” “trans”-cultists. They will now mis-sex them. (As an aside, the long-ridiculed flat-earthers must be so jealous.)

Some of us remember the good old days when teachers asked elementary school children to scour the newspaper for current events. If we want children to learn about reality, teachers better not ask them to do that anymore.

It’s remarkable that seemingly rational, sane people in academia, the professional medical and mental health communities, the arts, faith communities, and the press pretend to believe the emperor in a gown is an empress. We should no longer be baffled by the ignorant and destructive ideas people believed or, because of their cowardice, pretended to believe in days gone by.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Chicago-Trans-Power-Couple-Birth-New-Birth-Certificates.mp3

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Yesterday I commented under an article on The Hill on Merriam-Webster Dictionary adding “they” as a pronoun for “gender nonbinary” persons, an article that also referred to British singer Sam Smith‘s announcement that he’s “nonbinary.” Like Merriam-Webster, the Chicago Tribune has bought hook, line, and sinker the “trans” language rules. Writing about the singular man Sam Smith, the Trib wrote this embarrassing sentence:

Smith said they were excited and privileged for the support, adding that they’ve been “very nervous” about the announcement because they ”care too much about what people think.”

Someone responded to my Hill comment, and here’s the short confab I had with “NukeNado” about this nonsense:

Laurie: The “trans” community doesn’t have the right to unilaterally restructure English grammar in the service of their science-denying ideology. While “trans”-identifying persons may believe that each person creates his or her own “reality,” others believe real material phenomena exist, can be known, and matter. My reality includes the real phenomena in the world, like the fact that Sam Smith is a singular person and a man. And my reality excludes lying.

A sure sign that leftist lawmakers in Springfield are obsessively driven by the desire to use government money and power to advance an absurd, science-denying ideology is House Bill 922  sponsored by State Representative Linda Chapa LaVia (D-Aurora) that, if passed, will require every public middle and high school in the state to make tampons and sanitary napkins available for free in every boys’ bathroom.

You read that right. Every middle and high school in the state will have to add feminine hygiene dispensers to every boys’ restroom for all the menstruating boys. #AnotherUnfundedMandate.

“What ho?!” you may be exclaiming if you’ve been sequestered in a cloistered world in which science still appertains. Surely—you think—teachers know that boys don’t menstruate!

Oh, you naïve, antiquated, science-loving peeps. We’ve left modernity and post-modernity behind. We’ve even left “truthiness” behind.

We’ve now entered the post-science, post-rationality, post-truth era where pseudoscience—aided and abetted by Big Brother and his ugly twin Big “Trans”—in the service of absolute autonomy, amorality, and pagan sexuality reign—and destroy.

To be clear, the “menstruating boys” are confused girls who masquerade as boys. Leftist lawmakers believe we the people and our taxes should be forced to subsidize their confusion and masquerades.

A less costly—in both dollars and sense—compromise with anti-science cultists would be to allow girls who pretend to be boys to get their feminine hygiene products from school nurses, but “trans”-cultists and their ideological allies demand that all society pretend along with “trans”-identifying persons. “Trans”-cultists seek to force everyone to pretend the empress is an emperor.

Leftist lawmakers believe that commitments to compassion and inclusivity require Illinois taxpayers to facilitate a body- and soul-destroying fiction that harms these children—a fiction that is supported by no actual hard science. There is no conclusive, research-based hard science proving that girls with healthy, normally functioning anatomy and physiology can be born in boys’ bodies or vice versa. There is no conclusive, research-based hard science proving that if a girl experiences a mismatch between her subjective feelings about her sex and her objective biological sex that the error resides in her body as opposed to her mind. There is no conclusive, research-based hard science proving that all cross-sex-identifying children as well as all other children are best-served by adults facilitating a fiction.

Parents of public school children must understand that pronoun mandates and restroom diktats like this bill are teaching all children that biological sex has no intrinsic meaning relative to anything, including to feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy when undressing or engaged in personal bodily activities.

These intrusive, coercive mandates are teaching all children that the desires of opposite-sex impersonators take precedence over the desires of non-delusional people in every context.

These mandates are teaching all children that in order to be loving, compassionate, and inclusive, they must share private spaces with opposite-sex peers.

And parents must understand that these “trans” policies and the ideology taught to their children to rationalize these policies are desensitizing their children to co-ed private spaces. In other words, increasing numbers of children and teens are becoming unnaturally comfortable sharing restrooms and locker rooms with peers of the opposite sex.

It is our cowardice and complacency that allow these incremental changes to move forward, thereby ensuring what should be a shocking sexual revolution. We’re moving to a cultural place where it will be illegal to publicly recognize sexual differentiation in word or deed.

When you next contact your lawmakers and school leaders, make sure to ask them this question: “What is a woman?” Get back to me with their answers.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state representative to ask him/her to vote down HB 922.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/HB922.mp3

The leaders of the transgender revolution revile the celebrated declaration, “It’s a boy” or “It’s a girl,” when a baby is born. Transgender activists recognize that their revolution cannot succeed until doctors who deliver babies, or ultrasound technicians at women’s cliques, stop labeling babies as a specific gender. The announcement of a baby’s gender, however, still fills delivery rooms and doctor’s offices with excitement. I predict that this practice will continue.

Recently, an article ran in “The Ethicist” column of the New York Times Magazine. The ethicist in this case is Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah. The headline in the article asked, “Should I Go to a Gender-Reveal Party?” The questioner who wrote in for advice posed to “The Ethicist” the following scenario:

“A close relation is pregnant with her first child and is having a gender-reveal party. She is overjoyed with the addition to our family, as am I. However, I am adamantly opposed to attending the gender-reveal party because it violates my moral code. I have worked in activism for my entire professional life and, though I am cisgender, I have strong feelings about gender politics and equality. Gender-reveal parties, where parents and guests learn a baby’s gender together, violate my values because they reaffirm society’s gender binarism and inadvertently perpetuate the stigma against non-binary genders. I know I will never experience firsthand the challenges of being gender-nonconforming, but when I think about how I might feel, I would be very hurt knowing my parents had a gender-reveal party for me before I was born with my incorrect gender. I know the non-binary community faces much deeper, more urgent problems than this hypothetical situation, but even so, I have a moral aversion to helping affirm society’s gender binarism. Should I attend the party?”

This question represents just one more step towards cultural insanity. The questioner cannot fathom nor allow for a party where people celebrate politically incorrect labels like “boy” and “girl.” Such a party violates the moral code of the transgender movement.

Indeed, the moral unction behind this question is breathtaking. Scenarios like this come, not on the leading edge of a moral revolution. Rather, the moral revolution must have made significant gains before an ethics column in the New York Times Magazine begins to get letters with this kind of moral outrage at a gender-reveal party.

Christians thinking about this moral confusion must first stop at the vocabulary used in this article—particularly the word, “cisgender.” Using that term plays into the entire gender revolution. The term indicates that someone born a male is quite comfortable with being male. Even adopting the vocabulary, therefore, becomes an enormous problem because the vocabulary assumes that you accept the ideology of the transgender revolutionaries—that gender fluidity exists and that the gender assigned at one’s birth may or may not be factual. “Cisgender” signifies that you buy into the idea that all of humanity must be identified on a spectrum, with cisgender at one end and gender-nonconforming, or, transgender at the other end.

Secondly, Christians need to note the kind of moral outrage indicated in the question. The questioner, filled with indignation, lashes out at a set of parents who had the audacity to throw a gender-reveal party—a party that apparently does nothing more than perpetuate binary stereotypes. Indeed, according to this article in the New York Times Magazine, gender-reveal parties could damage relationships between parents and their transgender children who find out that mom and dad threw a party which revealed an “incorrect gender.” This argument asks the reader to make incredible leaps in logic and to possess an imaginative framework which obfuscates all reality.

But here’s the third thing we come to understand about this article: It tells us that the writers, editors, and publishers of the New York Times Magazine believe that these are the kinds of questions we should be concerned about and that we too should experience the confliction, indeed, the outrage present in the question posed to “The Ethicist.”

The question, by itself, poses enormous problems and reveals the erosion of any sane ethic. The answer to the question, however, reveals the extent of this moral erosion. Professor Appiah, who currently teaches at New York University, responds to the questioner by saying, “First, let’s distinguish between two different issues. One is what you’re calling gender binarism—the idea that everyone is naturally either male or female. The other is the fact that trans people will identify with a gender other than the one they were assigned on the basis of their bodily appearance at birth. You could be trans in that sense and still believe in binarism: to say that you were assigned the wrong gender isn’t necessarily to reject the idea that there are two.”

Professor Appiah’s answer takes an interesting turn when he writes that “celebrating the discovery that a baby is a boy or a girl need not in itself stigmatize trans or intersex or non-binary people.” Appiah went on to say, “A parent celebrating the coming birth of a girl could be someone who’d be perfectly happy if the child turned out later to be a boy or neither a boy nor a girl. Indeed, as it becomes easier to identify intersex people prenatally, you could one day imagine having a party that revealed that the child was neither male nor female. And people who do have a hard time dealing with gender-nonconforming people aren’t likely to have their minds changed by the disappearance of gender-reveal parties.”

At certain moments, it appears that a society inches its way right up to the edge of a cliff. At other times, however, you see an argument that sprints towards the edge and leaps right off. That’s exactly the direction Appiah takes his answer.

Appiah goes on to state, “If there’s a problem with these parties, it’s mainly that they encourage the idea that gender is fixed in the womb and by your body. Let’s call that biological determinism about gender. The science in this area is very much a work in progress. But, we already know that gender identification isn’t fixed by your sexual organs and that the social meaning of gender is informed by culture.” Appiah makes a generalized, unsubstantiated claim that rejects any argument that would question his premise. He says that “we already know that gender identification isn’t fixed by your sexual organs.” Appiah’s reasoning demonstrates how the sexual revolution, through moral coercion, creates a change in an entire mentality and worldview. Appiah’s argument enshrines the principles of sexual revolutionaries who make audacious and radical assertions based solely upon the authority of the gender revolution. Anyone who dares to disagree with this unassailable authority represents an antiquarian ignorance and bigotry which must be eradicated.

Again, effectively upping the ante of political correctness, Professor Appiah responds to this questioner by saying that “many aspects of gender are not… biological. You can’t necessarily read from people’s bodies what their gender means to them.” In other words, biological sex has nothing to do with gender identity.

Christians operating from a biblical worldview understand Appiah’s assertions as manifest nonsense. The morally important distinction between male and female is essential. Indeed, the biblical worldview clearly grounds the distinction as a vital component for true human flourishing.

Gender debates dominate the news these days, dumping with them an incredibly toxic level of madness. While Christians should experience alarm, they should also possess greater awareness of the determination that grips the moral and sexual revolutionaries. Articles like this one in the New York Times Magazine, and arguments like Professor Appiah’s, demonstrate the unceasing desire of the LGBTQ agenda to invert civilization itself. As relentless as they might be, the moral revolutionaries aim at insanity and position arguments as reality that have no basis in any scientific court or, for that matter, common sense. Indeed, as demonstrated in Appiah’s argument, the sexual revolution hinders any serious inquiry into sexuality and blatantly obfuscates fundamental questions about the “research” advertised to the public as the new law which must govern opinion, policy, and morality.

We live in a society that has set off a massive chain reaction of confusion. Christians, however, equipped with a biblical worldview and empowered by God’s grace, can clear up the confusion, address the insanity, and promote true human flourishing.

This article was originally published at AlbertMohler.com

Despite a lack of evidence proving the safety and efficacy of chemical and surgical interventions and social “transitioning” for those who experience gender dysphoria, “progressives” plow forward mutilating the healthy bodies and manipulating the psychology of children who feel they are or wish they were the sex they are not.

The science-denying, incoherent “trans” ideology affects all of society. The end game for “trans” activists and others in cultic thrall to this superstition is not access for a few boys and girls or men and women to opposite-sex private spaces and sports. The end game is the eradication of all public recognition of sex differences everywhere for everyone. Think about what that means:

• It means children will be raised under the delusion that their anatomy signifies nothing. All that matters is “gender identity.” It means society will tell them that no one—not doctors, parents, or anyone else—knows if they’re male or female.

• It means putting at risk the psychological welfare of students, particularly younger students and those already struggling with other issues, including autism; depression; anxiety; body dysmorphia; eating disorders; OCD; and the effects of molestation, family dysfunction, and bullying. Introducing the “trans” ideology, which teaches the disordered nonsense that a boy can be a girl or vice versa, to at-risk children will confuse and disturb them and will provide a distorted lens through which they may misinterpret their experiences.

• It means that we must all pretend that humans with congenital penises and fake breasts sashaying through our women’s locker rooms in the altogether are women. (Many who identify as “trans” don’t believe surgery is necessary to pass as the opposite sex, which is why you’ll hear terms like “chestfeeding men” or claims like “women can have penises.”)

• It means that at public pools, beaches, and parks, our children will see topless women who pretend to be men but opt to keep their breasts.

• It means that men’s roommates in semi-private hospital rooms may be biological women. And it means women who seek sanctuary from abusive boyfriends and husbands in shelters may be forced to share rooms or private facilities with biological men.

• It means many of us will lose jobs if we refuse to refer to colleagues by incorrect pronouns, which is to say, if we refuse to lie.

• It means that our taxes will continue to subsidize the indoctrination of children with the “trans” ideology through government schools

• And it means the sterilization and mutilation of the healthy bodies of children.

Since the “trans” ideology is metastasizing throughout the sinews of American life—including our schools—all stakeholders must understand the “trans” orthodoxy better. In previous articles, I provided questions that anyone who affirms the “trans” ideology should be asked.[1] In this article, I provide information of which many are unaware, that may be useful to anyone opposing co-ed private spaces in schools, and that should make society reevaluate the barbaric path we’re treading:

• At birth, doctors identify the sex of babies. They do not assign them a “gender.” A person’s sex can never change. Biological sex is not a disorder, illness, deficiency, shortcoming, or error. Scientists and other medical professionals have recognized that biological sex is a neutral, objective, and immutable fact of human nature. Likewise, puberty is neither a disease nor a disorder.

• There is no conclusive, research-based evidence proving that if there is incongruence between one’s objective, immutable, biological sex (and its attendant healthy, normally functioning anatomy and physiology) and one’s subjective, internal sense of being male or female that the problem resides in the body rather than the mind.

• The article “Hormone Therapy for the Treatment of Gender Dysphoria” in the May 19, 2014 issue of the highly respected Hayes Directory reports that the use of hormones and surgery to treat gender dysphoria in adults is based on “very low quality of evidence” and that the use of hormones and surgery to treat gender dysphoria in children and adolescents has no evidence base.[2]

• There are health risks and complications attendant to the use of puberty-suppressing drugs. Boys whose puberty is suppressed will have micro-penises which present surgical problems if they should one day seek vaginoplasty (i.e., there isn’t enough skin to turn into “vaginas,” so more complicated and risky procedures must be used). The health risks of the off-label use of puberty-blockers for the treatment of gender-dysphoria include the arrest of bone growth, decrease in bone density, the “prevention of sex-steroid-dependent organization and maturation of the adolescent brain, and the inhibition of fertility by preventing the development of gonadal tissue and mature gametes for the duration of treatment.”

• “There is an obvious self-fulfilling nature to encouraging a young boy with GD to socially impersonate a girl and then institute pubertal suppression. Given the well-established phenomenon of neuroplasticity, the repeated behavior of impersonating a girl alters the structure and function of the boy’s brain in some way—potentially in a way that will make identity alignment with his biologic sex less likely. This, together with the suppression of puberty that prevents further endogenous masculinization of his brain, causes him to remain a gender non-conforming prepubertal boy disguised as a prepubertal girl.”[3]

• Some of the effects of the off-label use of cross-sex hormones are permanent and long-term risks are unknown:

– Sterility and voice changes are permanent for both men and women.

–An interagency statement published by the World Health Organization states that “sterilization should only be provided with the full, free and informed consent of the individual” and that “sterilization refers not just to interventions where the intention is to limit fertility… but also to situations where loss of fertility is a secondary outcome…. Sterilization without full, free and informed consent has been variously described by international, regional and national human rights bodies as an involuntary, coercive and/or forced practice, and as a violation of fundamental human rights, including the right to health, the right to information, the right to privacy.”[4] Since parents or guardians must provide consent for hormonal interventions, and since parents are not being made aware of the experimental nature of the off-label use of hormones for the treatment of gender dysphoria, or of the fact that most children with gender dysphoria outgrow it by late adolescence if otherwise supported through natural puberty, parents and guardians are unable to provide fully informed.

–For biologically healthy men who take estrogen to treat their subjective, internal feelings about their sex, there is an “increased risk of liver disease, increased risk of blood clots (risk of death or permanent damage), increased risk of diabetes and of headaches/migraines, heart disease, increased risk of gallstones, and increased risk of noncancerous tumour of the pituitary gland.”[5] Breast tissue growth in men who take estrogen is permanent.

–For biologically healthy women who take testosterone to treat their subjective, internal feelings about their sex, there is an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and possibly of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, or uterine cancer. Taking testosterone can have a “destabilizing effect” on “bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder, and schizophrenia.”[6] “Male”-pattern baldness and body and facial hair growth in women who take testosterone are permanent.

• Surgery (e.g., mastectomy, orchiectomy [i.e., castration]) is irreversible.

• Men who choose penile inversion vaginoplasty are castrated and their penises inverted to fashion a fake vagina (aka “neo-vagina”). For the rest of their lives, surgeons recommend that they use vaginal dilators once a week. Since the skin of fake vaginas is not vaginal tissue, men must also douche 2-3 times per week for the rest of their lives.

• Some men are unable to have inversion vaginoplasty. For example, because 18-year-old boy and reality TV star Jazz Jennings, who was recently castrated, started puberty blockers so young, his penis was the size of a prepubertal boy’s penis, and, therefore, too small to provide enough skin for a fake vagina. In these cases, skin from the colon or small bowel is used:

This technique… is naturally self-lubricating…. Since the secretion is digestive there is a risk of malodor and frequent secretions, and secretions are constant rather than only with arousal. Wearing panty liners or pads may be necessary for the long term. Bacterial overgrowth (diversion colitis) is common and may present with a greenish discharge…. The bowel lining is also not as durable as skin. Use of intestinal tissue also places the vagina at risk of diseases of the bowel including inflammatory bowel disease, arterio-venous malformations (AVM) or neoplasms [i.e., abnormal growths].[7]

• The Christian Medical and Dental Association “believes that prescribing hormonal treatments to children or adolescents to disrupt normal sexual development for the purpose of gender reassignment is ethically impermissible, whether requested by the child or the parent.”[8]

• The Catholic Medical Association (CMA) “urges health care professionals to adhere to genetic science and sexual complementarity over ideology in the treatment of gender dysphoria (GD) in children. This includes especially avoiding puberty suppression and the use of cross-sex hormones in children with GD. One’s sex is not a social construct, but an unchangeable biological reality.”[9]

• Neuroscientist, professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of The Teenage Brain, Dr. Frances Jensen, explains that,

Teenagers do have frontal lobes, which are the seat of our executive, adult-like functioning like impulse control, judgment and empathy. But the frontal lobes haven’t been connected with fast-acting connections yet…. But there is another part of the brain that is fully active in adolescents, and that’s the limbic system. And that is the seat of risk, reward, impulsivity, sexual behavior and emotion. So they are built to be novelty-seeking at this point in their lives. Their frontal lobe isn’t able to say, “That’s a bad idea, don’t do that.” That’s not happening to the extent it will in adulthood.

• The oft-cited suicide rate of 41% for those who identify as “trans” is based on an erroneous understanding of a study by the Williams Institute—an understanding that ignores the acknowledged and serious limitations of the study.[10] There is no evidence that surgery or chemical disruption of normal, natural and healthy development or processes reduces the incidence of suicide.[11] J. Michael Bailey, Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University, and Dr. Raymond Blanchard, former psychologist in the Adult Gender Identity Clinic of Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) from 1980–1995 and the Head of CAMH’s Clinical Sexology Services from 1995–2010, have written the following[12]:

–Children (most commonly, adolescents) who threaten to commit suicide rarely do so, although they are more likely to kill themselves than children who do not threaten suicide.

–Mental health problems, including suicide, are associated with some forms of gender dysphoria. But suicide is rare even among gender dysphoric persons.

–There is no persuasive evidence that gender transition reduces gender dysphoric children’s likelihood of killing themselves.

–The idea that mental health problems–including suicidality–are caused by gender dysphoria rather than the other way around (i.e., mental health and personality issues cause a vulnerability to experience gender dysphoria) is currently popular and politically correct. It is, however, unproven and as likely to be false as true.

• There is no phenomenon of women trapped in men’s bodies or vice versa, or of men having women’s brains or vice versa. Science has not proven that the brains of transgender individuals are “wired differently” than others with the same biological sex. In other words, there is no conclusive evidence of a “female brain” being contained in a male body or vice versa.[13] In fact, it is impossible for an opposite-sexed brain to be “trapped” in the wrong body. Every brain cell of a male fetus has a Y chromosome; female fetal brains do not. This makes their brains intrinsically different. Additionally, at 8 weeks gestation, male fetuses have every cell of their body—including every brain cell—bathed by a testosterone surge secreted by their testes. Female fetuses lack testes; none of their cells—including their brain cells—experience this endogenous testosterone surge.

• “[C]urrent studies on associations between brain structure and transgender identity are small, methodologically limited, inconclusive, and sometimes Even if they were more methodologically reliable, they would be insufficient to demonstrate that brain structure is a cause, rather than an effect, of the gender-identity behavior. They would likewise lack predictive power, the real challenge for any theory in science.”[14]

• Desistance is “the tendency for gender dysphoria to resolve itself as a child gets older and older.”[15] The best research to date suggests that without social or medical “transition” most (60[16]-90%[17]) gender-dysphoric children will come to accept their biological sex after passing naturally through puberty. [18] While “12- 27% of ‘gender variant’ children persist in gender dysphoria; that percentage rises to 40% amongst those who visit gender clinics.” Research shows that persistence rates rise significantly among those who are given puberty-blockers and “gender-affirmative psychotherapy,” thus suggesting that such interventions lead minors “to commit more strongly to sex reassignment than they might have if they had received a different diagnosis or a different course of treatment.”[19]

• Detransitioning is the process by which someone who has been identifying as the opposite sex, presenting himself or herself as the opposite sex, taking cross-sex hormones, and possibly had surgery rejects his or her “trans” identity and accepts his or her objective, immutable biological sex. The American College of Pediatricians confirms what “detransitioners” assert: There are many possible post-natal, environmental causes for gender dysphoria: Family and peer relationships, one’s school and neighborhood, the experience of any form of abuse, media exposure, chronic illness, war, and natural disasters are all examples of environmental factors that impact an individual’s emotional, social, and psychological development.[20]

• “Mounting evidence over the last decade points to increased rates of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and autism traits among children and adults with gender dysphoria…. It is possible that some of the psychological characteristics common in children with ASD—including cognitive deficits, tendencies toward obsessive preoccupations, or difficulties learning from other people—complicate the formation of gender identity.”[21] A study published in May 2018 “further confirmed a possible association between ASD and the wish to be of the opposite gender by establishing increased endorsement of this wish in adolescents and adults with ASD compared to the general population controls.”[22]

• J. Michael Bailey and Dr. Raymond Blanchard explain the phenomenon of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD):

The typical case of ROGD involves an adolescent or young adult female whose social world outside the family glorifies transgender phenomena and exaggerates their prevalence. Furthermore, it likely includes a heavy dose of internet involvement. The adolescent female acquires the conviction that she is transgender. (Not uncommonly, others in her peer group acquire the same conviction.) These peer groups encouraged each other to believe that all unhappiness, anxiety, and life problems are likely due to their being transgender, and that gender transition is the only solution. Subsequently, there may be a rush towards gender transition…. We believe that ROGD is a socially contagious phenomenon in which a young person–typically a natal female–comes to believe that she has a condition that she does not have. ROGD is not about discovering gender dysphoria that was there all along; rather, it is about falsely coming to believe that one’s problems have been due to gender dysphoria previously hidden (from the self and others). Let us be clear: People with ROGD do have a kind of gender dysphoria, but it is gender dysphoria due to persuasion of those especially vulnerable to a false idea.[23]

• Brown University Researcher Dr. Lisa Littman conducted a survey of parents whose children developed Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria. Littman writes,

In recent years, a number of parents have been reporting in online discussion groups… that their adolescent and young adult (AYA) children, who have had no histories of childhood gender identity issues, experienced a rapid onset of gender dysphoria. Parents have described clusters of gender dysphoria outbreaks occurring in pre-existing friend groups with multiple or even all members of a friend group becoming gender dysphoric and transgender-identified in a pattern that seems statistically unlikely based on previous research. Parents describe a process of immersion in social media, such as “binge-watching” Youtube transition videos and excessive use of Tumblr, immediately preceding their child becoming gender dysphoric. These descriptions… raise the question of whether social influences may be contributing to or even driving these occurrences of gender dysphoria in some populations of adolescents and young adults…. The worsening of mental well-being and parent-child relationships and behaviors that isolate teens from their parents, families, non-transgender friends and mainstream sources of information are particularly concerning. More research is needed to better understand rapid-onset gender dysphoria, its implications, and scope.”[24]

• The number of children “being referred for transitioning treatment” in England has increased 4,400% for girls and 1,250% for boys, which has resulted in calls from members of Parliament for an investigation.[25]

• Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) shares several features with gender dysphoria. BIID is a condition in which “Sufferers… experience a mismatch between their physically healthy body and the body with which they identify. They identify as disabled. They often desire a specific amputation to achieve the disabled body they want.”[26] As with some cases of gender dysphoria, scientists say there is evidence for neurological involvement as a cause of the experience of BIID,[27] and yet physicians largely oppose elective amputations of healthy anatomical parts:

According to the principle of nonmaleficence physicians must not perform amputations without a medical indication because amputations bear great risks and often have severe consequences besides the disability…. for example, infections [or] thromboses.  Even though some physicians perform harmful surgeries as breast enlargement surgeries, this cannot justify surgeries that are even more harmful. Even if amputations would be a possible therapy for BIID, they would be risky experimental therapies that could be justified only if they promised lifesaving or the cure of severe diseases and if an alternative therapy would not be available. At least the first condition is not fulfilled in the case of BIID, and probably the second is not fulfilled either. Above all, an amputation causes an irreversible damage that could not be healed, even if the patient’s body image would be restored spontaneously or through a new therapy…. But since all psychiatrists who have investigated BIID patients found that the amputation desire is either obsessive or based on a monothematic delusion, and since neurological studies support the hypothesis of a brain disorder (which is also supported by the most influential advocates of elective amputations), elective amputations have to be regarded as severe bodily injuries of patients.[28]

• The American College of Pediatricians, “a national medical association of licensed physicians and healthcare professionals who specialize in the care of infants, children, and adolescents” and that split from the American Academy of Pediatrics because of its politicization of the practice of medicine, describes puberty-suppression, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries variously referred to as sex-change, sex reassignment, gender reassignment and gender confirmation surgeries as child abuse.”

• Lisa Simons, pediatrician at Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, stated in a PBS Frontline documentary that “‘The bottom line is we don’t really know how sex hormones impact any adolescent’s brain development….’ What’s lacking, she said, are specific studies that look at the neurocognitive effects of puberty blockers.” [29]

• Kenneth Zucker, one of the world’s leading authorities on gender dysphoria, states that,

Identity is a process. It is complicated. It takes a long period of time… to know who a child really is…. There are different pathways that can lead to gender dysphoria…. It’s an intellectual and clinical mistake to think that there’s one single cause that explains all gender dysphoria…. Just because little kids say something doesn’t necessarily mean that you accept it, or that it’s true, or that it’s in the best interest of the child…. Little kids can present with extreme gender dysphoria, but that doesn’t mean they’re all going to grow up to continue to have gender dysphoria.[30]

• Eric Vilain, a geneticist at UCLA who specializes in sexual development and sex differences in the brain, says the studies on twins are mixed and that, on the whole, “there is no evidence of a biological influence on transsexualism yet.”[31]

• Sheila Jeffreys, lesbian feminist scholar, warns against the “transgendering” of children: “Those who do not conform to correct gender stereotypes are being sterilized and they’re being sterilized as children.”[32]

• Heather Brunskell-Evans, social theorist, philosopher, and Senior Research Fellow at King’s College, London, UK, and Michele Moore, Professor of Inclusive Education and Editor-in-Chief of the world-leading journal Disability & Society, critique the “transgender” ideology:

[O]ur central contention is that transgender children don’t exist. Although we argue that ‘the transgender child’ is a fabrication, we do not disavow that some children and adolescents experience gender dysphoria and that concerned and loving parents will do anything to alleviate their children’s distress. It is because of children’s bodily discomfort that we argue it is important families and support services are informed by appropriate models for understanding gender. Our analysis of transgenderism demonstrates it is a new phenomenon, since dissatisfaction with assigned gender takes different forms in different historical contexts. The ‘transgender child’ is a relatively new historical figure, brought into being by a coalition of pressure groups, political activists and knowledge makers…. Bizarrely, in transgender theory, biology is said to be a social construct but gender is regarded as an inherent property located ‘somewhere’ in the brain or soul or other undefined area of the body. We reverse these propositions with the concept that it is gender, not biology, which is a social construct. From our theoretical perspective, the sexed body is material and biological, and gender is the externally imposed set of norms that prescribe and proscribe desirable behaviours for children. Our objection to transgenderism is that it confines children to traditional views about gender.[33]

• Stephanie Davies-Arias, writer, communication skills expert, and pediatric transition critic, writes that “changing your sex to match your ‘gender identity’ reinforces the very stereotypes which [transgender] organisations claim to be challenging… as, in increasing numbers, boys who love princess culture become ‘girls’ and short-haired football-loving girls become ‘boys’. Promoted as a ‘progressive’ social justice movement based on ‘accepting difference’, transgender ideology in fact takes that difference and stamps it out. It says that the sexist stereotypes of ‘gender’ are the true distinction between boys and girls and biological sex is an illusion.”[34]

• Increasing numbers of young men and women experience “sex-change regret” and are “detransitioning.” Unfortunately, some effects of “medical transitions” are irreversible. A BBC documentary includes “Luke,” a young biological woman who regrets taking cross-sex hormones and having a double mastectomy at age 20 shares her experience:

The assumption from the outset was that if I said I was transgender, then I must be. Nobody, at any point, questioned my motives. The only cure for this would be hormones and surgery…. I became very self-conscious of my body. I was developing breasts and periods which, for me, felt like there was an alien crawling out of the inside of my body.  I became very depressed. I thought the only explanation for my gender dysphoria must be that I was actually a man. I was struggling with self-harm and had attempted suicide on a number of occasions and was very much told by the community that if you don’t transition, you will self-harm and you will kill yourself. I became convinced that my options were transition or die. I didn’t understand that the degree of disconnect from and hatred of my body could be considered a mental health problem…. The darkest moment was when I realized that I had actually looked normal for a girl. That I had actually been slim and pretty. That my body hadn’t been grotesque the way I thought it was. Now, as a result of having transitioned, I will always have a female body that is freakish. I will always have a flat chest and a beard and there’s nothing I can do about that…. Nobody wants to question the received knowledge that transition is the only option because nobody wants to be the one person that puts their head up and says “hang on, I don’t think this is all right”.… If I was talking to a gender-dysphoric girl who hated her body the way I hated mine, I would tell her to get out into the mud, to climb trees, to find ways of inhabiting her body on her terms.[35]

• While the American Academy of Pediatrics has formally endorsed chemical and surgical interventions and social “transitioning” for children and teens who wish they were the sex they are not, no one knows exactly how many of the 67,000 academy members agree with this position since only about 55 members created and voted on it. [36]

It is unconscionable for anyone who cares about children and the future of America to remain ignorant of and silent on this issue.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Surprising-Stuff.mp3

Footnotes:

[1] https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/homosexuality/questions-restrooms-locker-rooms-leftists-must-answer/

[2] http://www.hayesinc.com/hayes/htareports/directory/sex-reassignment-surgery-for-the-treatment-of-gender-dysphoria/. Accessed 3.24.16.

[3] http://www.jpands.or g/vol21no2/cretella.pdf

[4] http://www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/media_asset/201405_sterilization_en.pdf

[5] https://apps.carleton.edu/campus/gsc/assets/hormones_MTF.pdf

[6] https://apps.carleton.edu/campus/gsc/assets/hormones_FTM.pdf

[7] http://transhealth.ucsf.edu/trans?page=guidelines-vaginoplasty

[8] https://www.cmda.org/resources/publication/transgender-identification-ethics-statement

[9] http://www.cathmed.org/assets/files/Gender_Dysphoria_Treatment_of_Minors.pdf

[10] http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/AFSP-Williams-Suicide-Report-Final.pdf

[11] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/

[12] https://4thwavenow.com/2017/09/08/suicide-or-transition-the-only-options-for-gender-dysphoric-kids/comment-page-1/

[13] L Mayer, P McHugh, “Part Three: Gender Identity,” The New Atlantis, https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/part-three-gender-identity-sexuality-and-gender

[14] https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/part-three-gender-identity-sexuality-and-gender

[15] https://www.thecut.com/2016/07/whats-missing-from-the-conversation-about-transgender-kids.html

[16] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18981931

[17] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18194003

[18] http://www.sexologytoday.org/2016/01/do-trans-kids-stay-trans-when-they-grow_99.html

[19] https://www.thenewatlantis.com/docLib/20170619_TNA52HruzMayerMcHugh.pdf

[20] https://www.acpeds.org/the-college-speaks/position-statements/gender-dysphoria-in-children

[21] https://www.forbes.com/sites/zhanavrangalova/2017/11/15/growing-evidence-for-a-link-between-gender-dysphoria-and-autism-spectrum-disorders/#26953173153e

[22] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-018-1218-3

[23] https://4thwavenow.com/2017/12/07/gender-dysphoria-is-not-one-thing/

[24] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0202330

[25] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/09/16/minister-orders-inquiry-4000-per-cent-rise-children-wanting/

[26] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/body-integrity-identity-disorder-the-condition-where-sufferers-want-to-be-disabled-a6680306.html

[27] http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2009/03/27/voluntary-amputation-extra-phantom-limbs/

[28]https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15265160802588194 

[29] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/when-transgender-kids-transition-medical-risks-are-both-known-and-unknown/

[30] https://vimeo.com/247163584

[31] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/a-boys-life/307059/

[32] https://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/sheila-jeffreys-the-mccarthyism-of-transgender-and-the-sterilization-of-transgender-children/

[33] http://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/64273

[34] http://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/64273

[35] https://vimeo.com/247163584 

[36] https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/homosexuality/55-members-of-american-academy-of-pediatrics-devise-destructive-trans-policy/ 

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Majorities in both houses of the Illinois General Assembly recently flunked the kind of science test that used to be given to grammar school students. The question, which just a few years ago was not controversial, was “can a man become a woman?” “Can a woman become a man?”

Earlier this month, the Weizmann Institute in Israel released a study and posted an article about it under this headline: “Researchers Identify 6,500 Genes That Are Expressed Differently in Men and Women.”

This (un)shocking study was also reported on by Liberty Counsel:

“This recent study from Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science further proves that you cannot fool Mother Nature,” said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel.

“The saying, ‘I think, therefore, I am’ is best left to philosophy and not science. Gender confusion is mental, not physical or biological. God made male and female and no amount of protestation will change the natural created order. The fiction that a person can chose their gender does not help those who are confused” said Staver.

Changing the sex listed on a birth certificate also does not help a person suffering from gender confusion.

Yet on May 31st, HB 1785 passed in the Illinois State Senate by a vote of 32-22, and on May 25th it passed in the House by a vote of 63-32. That bill allows gender-dysphoric persons to falsify their birth certificates, which are both legal and historical documents. This will have consequences with regard to the relentless cultural assault on physical privacy through the sexual integration of previously sex-segregated spaces.

Simply put, biologically intact men will have legal access to women’s restrooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms, shelters, semi-private hospital rooms, nursing home rooms, and prisons.

The state of Illinois has no duty or right to be complicit in fraud by making it easier for men and women who wish they were the opposite sex to falsify their birth certificates, nor should Illinois public policy affirm deceit.

Now that it has passed in both chambers, it will be sent to Governor Bruce Rauner. Once he receives it, he will have 60 days to veto or sign it. If he does nothing, it automatically becomes law.

Take ACTION: Click Here to email Governor Bruce Rauner. Urge him to veto HB 1785 (and get an ‘A’ on this grammar school science test!). 

Please continue to call the governor’s public comment line every day until this is resolved: (217) 782-0244 and (312) 814-2121.  Also ask him to veto HB 40 – taxpayer funding of abortion while you are at it!

And let us not grow weary of doing good, 
for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.
~Galatians 6:9

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The performance was stunning, as New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard absolutely smoked the competition, beating her nearest competitor, a Samoan woman, by nearly 20 kilograms. The only problem is that Laurel is a biological male, born Gavin, which is why a number of the competitors felt the competition was unfair.

But of course it’s unfair. Hubbard is a male, not a female, and even after months of hormone treatments, he still has unfair advantages over the other women, who sacrificed for years to make it to this elite level, only to lose to a man. How is that right?

As one woman tweeted in response to this news, “Imagine training for this your whole life, as a woman, only to have a known leader in men’s weightlifting take your title.”

When “Equality” Isn’t Fair

Gavin Hubbard had “previously competed at a national level in men’s weightlifting,” making it all the more absurd that he would now be competing against women, which is why his presence was “met with criticism from Australian competitors who believe a transgender athlete in the female weightlifting category was not an equal playing field.”

Not an equal playing field indeed — no more than it was an equal playing field when a female high school wrestler taking testosterone defeated all the other girls she wrestled against (she’s on hormone treatments as part of her “transitioning” to male) and no more than it was an equal playing field when a male-to-female mixed martial artist manhandled (literally) her female opponents.

After the wrestling competition, Patti Overstreet, the mother of another wrestler, said, “She’s standing there holding her head high like she’s the winner. She’s not winning. She’s cheating. It’s not equal. It’s never going to be equal.”

In response to this, cultural commentator Bill Muehlenberg wrote, “Nope, it sure ain’t equality, and it sure never will be. Trying to treat unequal things equally will always result in blatant, appalling inequality. And in the case of sports, it will result in more women being taken to hospital — if not the morgue.”

When it comes to the weightlifting competition, one of the other lifters said, “We all deserve to be on an even playing field. It’s difficult when you believe that you’re not. If it’s not even, why are we doing the sport?”

Exactly? Why compete at all? Why have men compete against men and women compete against women? Why have weight classes? Why not just throw everyone into the same competition and have the world’s strongest (or fastest) human — of either sex, in any weight class, at any distance, in any event? Why not blur all distinctions, if a man can now compete side by side with women?

Ridiculously, Phil Gifford, described as a prominent sports writer, said “Hubbard had every right to compete with the women after passing ‘straightforward’ hormone regulations.”

Specifically, he argued, “It’s testosterone levels which is a much more scientific way of measuring male gender, female gender than anything else that is currently known. And Lauren has passed all of those tests over the last 12 months.”

So, then, a man who had lowered testosterone levels but all the other physical advantages a male would have over other women should be allowed to compete with the ladies? Just a glance at the pictures in the news report, in which Hubbard dwarfs his competitors, would tell you that something is not fair here.

When the World Revolves Around Revolving Genders

But no, the whole world must revolve around the perceptions of those who identify as transgender, regardless of how it hurts others, regardless of how it inconveniences others, regardless of what new inequities it causes. As one trans activist asked me after a lengthy twitter interaction, “So where are we supposed to go to the bathroom?” — meaning that the social issue that mattered was the convenience of trans individuals. Any consideration of the needs of others was immaterial.

Not surprisingly, David Mills recently shared this report from a distressed mother who encountered a man in the ladies’ room at Disneyland: “He wasn’t even peeing, washing his hands or doing anything else that you’d do in a restroom. He was just standing off to the side looking smug … untouchable … doing absolutely nothing.”

As described by Kristin Quintrail, this man “did a lap around the restroom walking by all the stalls. You know, the stalls that have 1 inch gaps by all the doors hinges so you can most definitely see everyone with their pants around their ankles and vagina clear as day.”

As Mills explains, “The man, apparently a fairly large man, wasn’t a man ‘transitioning’ to try to be a woman. The ‘very progressive’ Quintrail would have been fine with that. He was a predator. His way of being a predator was to transgress a boundary — the women’s room door — so that he could intimidate women and their children.”

So, this was apparently a heterosexual predator, not a transgender male-to-female, yet none of the women had the courage to ask him to leave, fearing if they did “he might respond by claiming to identify as a woman.”

As some of us have warned for some time now, and as an increasing number of cases confirms as a real danger, when the law says that you can use the bathroom of your perceived gender, that opens the door to abuses such as this. After all, if the only criterion is who I perceive myself to be, who can argue with it?

Quintrail rightly exclaimed at the end of her blog article, “Gender just can’t be a feeling. There has to be science to it. DNA, genitals, amount of Sephora make up on your face, pick your poison. … I’m sorry it can’t just be a feeling when there’s but a mere suggestion of a door with a peep hole separating your eyes from my vagina or my children’s genitals.”

And the science needs to be better than the “science” being used in Olympic sports worldwide, which allowed for the totally unfair results in the recent, aforementioned weightlifting competition.

Time to Say “Enough”

Speaking of unfair, Neil Munro reported last week that, “Two women were kicked out of a homeless shelter to make room for a man because he said he is a transgender woman, according to a Canadian news report.

“The women objected when they were told they would have to share a bedroom and live in the shelter with the man, and so ‘both were asked to leave the shelter for good,’ said the TV reporter.”

One of the women, named Tracey, said, “I was uncomfortable with my roommate being transgender. He wants to become a woman, I mean that is his choice but when a man comes into a women’s shelter who still has a penis and genitals, he has more rights than we do.”

And that says it all: This man who identifies as a woman has more rights than the other women, and they have to leave to make room for him.

Can you join me in saying “Enough!”

Let’s continue to look for ways to help those struggling with gender identity confusion while protecting the rights of the rest of society. If enough of us raise our voices, positive change will come.

This article was originally posted at The Stream.

Leftists smugly ask what they perceive to be THE “gotcha” question about trannies in restrooms: “So, are we going to have genital police?” To those smugsters, I ask, “How will you determine whether the burly, bearded, bulging-biceped person in the women’s restroom or locker room is a member of the “trans” cult or a predator pretending to be a member of the “trans” cult?”

Please read this short blog post from liberal California mom Kristen Quintrall whose eyes were (partially) opened by an experience in the women’s restroom at Disneyland:

I didn’t know if I was going to write this blog or not. A part of me was scared it’d be shared as some transgender hot piece about yet another homophobic mom lashing out at Disney and then I’d have to deal with the wrath of the internet telling me to kill myself. So let me be clear. This isn’t that story. This is a story about a biological man in the women’s restroom.

I’ve lived in Los Angeles for over a decade and have seen my fair share of transgender/gender fluid people. They in no way offend me. I’d consider myself pretty progressive and tolerant of most things….But how transgender people feel, how they choose to dress or any surgeries they get, don’t infringe on any parts of my life, so I support their decision to live as they see fit. I’ve also seen my fair share of transgender women in the women’s restroom before. Not ALL the time. But over the past few years, I’d say 4-5 that I noticed. Men…who were in some stage of transition and making every attempt to be a woman from mascara to heels. Transgenders who certainly felt comfortable in the women’s room and probably frightened to go into the men’s. At these times, I smiled…I peed…and life went on. But 2 weeks ago something very different happened. 

I was at Disneyland with my son, my friend and her son. We were over in California Adventure in the food court area. We’d just finished eating and decided to pee before we headed out to The Little Mermaid. I went to the bathroom while she watched our boys in their strollers, and then I did the same…. 

I was off to the side waiting with the two boys, when I noticed a man walk into the restroom. My first thought was “Oh sh*t, he’s walked in the wrong restroom by mistake. lol” He took a few more steps, at which point he would’ve definitely noticed all the women lined up and still kept walking. My next thought was, “Maybe he’s looking for his wife…or child and they’ve been in here a while.” But he didn’t call out any names or look around. He just stood off to the side and leaned up against the wall. At this point I’m like, “WTF? Ok there is definitely a very manly hispanic man in a Lakers jersey who just walked in here. Am I the only one seeing this?” I surveyed the room and saw roughly 12 women, children in tow…staring at him with the exact same look on their faces. Everyone was visibly uncomfortable. We were all trading looks and motioning our eyes over to him…like “what is he doing in here?” Yet every single one of us was silent. And this is the reason I wrote this blog. 

If this had been 5 years ago, you bet you’re a*s every woman in there would’ve been like, “Ummm what are you doing in here?”, but in 2017? the mood has shifted. We had been culturally bullied into silenced. Women were mid-changing their baby’s diapers on the changing tables and I could see them shifting to block his view. But they remained silent. I stayed silent. We all did. Every woman who exited a stall and immediately zeroed right in on him…said nothing. And why? B/c I…and I’m sure all the others were scared of that “what if”. What if I say something and he says he “identifies as a woman” and then I come off as the intolerant a*shole….? So we all stood there, shifting in our uncomfortableness…trading looks. I saw two women leave the line with their children. Still nothing was said. An older lady said to me out loud, “What is he doing in here?” I’m ashamed to admit I silently shrugged and mouthed, “I don’t know.” She immediately walked out…from a bathroom she had every right to use without fear.

So there lingered this unspoken doubt everyone had….that .00001% chance this wasn’t a man. Let me be clear. This was totally a man. If this wasn’t a man, this was a woman who had fully transitioned via surgery and hormones into a man and had also gotten an adam’s apple implant, chest hair and size 9-10 shoes ….and at that point, wtf are you doing in the women’s restroom?

And let me be clear, my problem wasn’t JUST that there was a man in the restroom. Its that he wasn’t even peeing, washing his hands or doing anything else that you’d do in a restroom. He was just standing off to the side looking smug…untouchable… doing absolutely nothing. He had to of noticed that every woman in the long line was staring at him. He didn’t care. He then did a lap around the restroom walking by all the stalls. You know, the stalls that have 1 inch gaps by all the doors hinges so you can most definitely see everyone with their pants around their ankles…..

So here I am…writing this blog, because honestly I need answers. We can’t leave this situation ambiguous any more. The gender debate needs to be addressed….and quickly. There have to be guidelines. It can’t just be a feeling. I’m sorry. I wish it could, but it can’t. I’m fine going by “if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck…it’s a duck.”…But this notion that we’re shamed into silence b/c we might offend someone, has gone too far.

There was a man in the bathroom. Not transgender. There was a man who felt entitled to be in the woman restroom, because he knew no one would say anything. There were 20-25 people by the time I left, who were scared and uncomfortable by his ominous presence. And the only thing stopping us, was our fear of political correctness and that the media has told us we don’t know what gender is anymore. I never want to be in the position again. Im not asking for permission to tell transgender people to get out my bathroom. I need to know it’s ok to tell a man, who looks like a man, to get the f*ck out. Gender just can’t be a feeling. There has to be science to it. DNA, genitals, amount of Sephora make up on your face, pick your poison, but as a very progressive woman…I’m sorry it can’t just be a feeling when theres but a mere suggestion of a door with a peep hole separating your eyes from my vagina or my children’s genitals.

I commend Quintrall for her courage and partial insight, but she doesn’t see the intellectual and moral incoherence that yet animate her new position.

She says this man wasn’t transgender. He was a “biological male.” She says there “has to be science to it.” Well, science tells us that the sex of persons can never change. Men who identify as “trans” remain always biological males. So, the man who through castration and cross-sex hormone-doping looks like a woman and talks like a woman remains forever a man. And women should be no more comfortable with the frock-wearing, Sephora-painted man sashaying past women doing their business in stalls than they would be if a construction worker in Carhartts lumbered past the stall door.

Objective sex either matters in private spaces or doesn’t matter. And if it doesn’t matter—if biological sex has no intrinsic meaning—we should eradicate all single-sex contexts everywhere. That would include restrooms, dressing rooms, locker rooms, showers, saunas, steam rooms, and semi-private hospital rooms.

Quintrall suggests that if this man-appearing person were actually a fully-“transitioned” “transman” (i.e., a woman), she should be using the men’s restroom. Wrong. Women cannot become men, and no women—not even women in disguise—belong in men’s restrooms.

And this brings us to the thorny problem of where these confused people should go to do their private business. Not to be unkind, but that’s a problem of their own creation. With regard to restrooms, most places of public accommodation have single-occupancy family restrooms that fully-disguised men and women can use. With regard to locker rooms, they’re out of luck. They should change and shower at home.

If people would bother to read more deeply on this critical cultural issue—that is, the meaning of sexual differentiation—they would learn that sexual anarchists seek to obliterate any and all public recognition of and respect for sexual differentiation.

The ignorant among us do not yet know that the “gender” eradication movement believes that “identifying” as the opposite sex requires nothing more than a verbal assertion. No diagnosis, no cross-dressing, no cross-sex hormone-doping, no surgery needed. Don’t misunderstand me. None of those can transmute men into women or vice versa. Unfortunately, I hear even from some purported conservatives that they’re fine with men who wish they were women using women’s restrooms as long as they’ve been castrated. But such a statement implies that the only issue with trannies in private spaces is the risk of physical predation in the form of peeping or assault. It’s not.

The central issue is the meaning of objective, immutable biological sex.

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The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia sued the Gloucester County School Board in Virginia over its policy that protects students’ privacy and safety by reserving restrooms and locker rooms for members of the same biological sex, while providing an alternative private facility for students uncomfortable using a facility that corresponds with their sex. The ACLU asserted inaccurately that the school board violated Title IX, a federal law, and the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause when the district declined to allow a female student to use the boys’ restrooms. Title IX specifically authorizes schools to have single-sex restrooms and locker rooms.

Kerri Kupec, Legal Counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, recently filed a friend-of-the-court brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court in support of the student privacy policy of the Gloucester County Public Schools.

Attorney Kupec reacted to a similar brief filed in this case (Gloucester County School Board v. G.G.) by 53 companies who explain that they are in favor of allowing students of the opposite sex into each other’s locker rooms, shower facilities, and restrooms in public schools:

Big business shouldn’t be advocating for boys to share the girls’ locker rooms and showers—and vice versa—in our public schools, and yet that’s precisely what these 53 companies are doing. What they should be supporting is the bodily privacy and dignity of all students, instead of simply disregarding the rights and reasonable concerns of many students and parents.

These companies say in their brief that they ‘recognize that employees cannot work as effectively when they are worried about how their children are being treated at school,’ but the companies are completely unconcerned about the dad who knows his daughter has to change for gym with a boy in her locker room. Worse, the companies would characterize that dad as having a ‘lack of any reasoned justification’ for his concerns, as the brief puts it, or as having a lower ‘level of enlightenment,’ as some activists have revealingly stated.

The first duty of school districts is to protect the bodily privacy rights of all of the students who attend their schools and to respect the rights of parents who understandably don’t want their children exposed in intimate changing areas.”

Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization that advocates for the right of people to freely live out their faith.

For decades the Left has embarked on a science- and morality-defying quest to advance a sexuality ideology that undermines human flourishing. There is no better illustration of that than the radical “trans”-formation of America with regard to “transgenderism.”

Rhetorical clarity

“Progressives” invent or reinvent language to serve their ideological purposes. So, let’s simplify and clarify matters. In this article, “sex” refers to one’s objective, immutable biological sex. “Gender” is a synonym for sex. “Gender identity” refers to a person’s subjective feelings about his or her sex. Men who pretend to be women are pretend-women. And men and women who accept their sex are normal men and women (not “cismen” or “ciswomen” as Leftists call them).

Remember, no one has an ethical obligation to accept Leftist assumptions, use Leftist language, or acquiesce to Leftist demands based on those assumptions and advanced through tortured Leftist language.

Safety

The most radical demand made by Leftists is that society must sexually integrate spaces in which private activities are engaged in, that is to say, activities that involve bodily functions and undressing.

Much of the opposition to co-ed restrooms, locker rooms, showers, shelters, and semi-private hospital rooms focuses on the risks posed to women when objectively male persons are allowed in these private spaces.

Leftists respond that there is no evidence that men who wish they were women pose any risk to women and that pretend-women have been using women’s restrooms for years without incident. What this argument ignores is that allowing cross-dressing men into women’s private spaces makes it easier for male predators to access women’s facilities by claiming to be “transwomen.”

The blog GenderTrender illuminates this real danger:

One of the tropes Transjacktivists use to promote and legalize their desire to eliminate female spaces is to assert that males with GID are speshul snowflakes or claim that males wouldn’t adopt transgenderism in order to prey on women. Or that males who are arrested repeatedly for getting off on watching women perform intimate activities (in places they assume they are free from males) wouldn’t go through the trouble of putting on a wig that makes those same activities legal….Are you out of your mind? Why wouldn’t a guy who risks arrest repeatedly to invade women’s space comply with measures which make his activities legal?? It’s considerably less inconvenient to put on a skirt and some lippy than to be arrested and processed, make bail, go before a judge, etc….

Transjacktivists claim that arrest statistics for peeping and perving don’t show a sharp increase in states where men are allowed in women’s spaces. Well of course they don’t! Making a formerly illegal behavior LEGAL seldom results in more arrests for (now legal) behavior. Duh!

The truth is guys do this sh*t all the time. And they’ll do whatever it takes to perv on females. Here are some of the things they’ll do to get into female spaces:

1. Hide cameras and microphones in female spaces.
2. Crawl through ventilation ducts to view female spaces.
3. Install double mirrors to view female spaces.
4. Drill holes in walls to peep women’s spaces.
5. Place cameras in shopping bags next to females wearing skirts.
6. Risking arrest—and repeat arrest—sneaking into women’s restrooms.

Another Leftist argument regarding safety goes like this: If bathrooms correspond to objective sex, then women who wish they were men and are lumbering about looking like burly men would be compelled to use women’s restrooms. Once burly, bearded women with bulging biceps are seen in women’s restrooms, actual men who are predators will be able to freely enter women’s restrooms looking like the men they are (no need to cross-dress). If, upon entering women’s restrooms, these objectively male predators are questioned, they can merely lie, claiming they are actually “transmen” (i.e., women who are pretending to be men) but aren’t permitted to use the men’s restrooms because of archaic restroom policies that require restrooms to correspond to actual sex. Therefore, according to Leftists, the threat of sexual assault actually increases unless restroom policies allow men who are pretending to be women in women’s restrooms. Got that?

The logical outworking of the “trans” ideology

So, let’s make this quagmire a tad more quaggy and miry.

In challenging current “genital-based” restroom policies, Leftists snottily ask who will be performing “genital inspections.” Let’s assume sexuality-perverts (i.e., those who seek to pervert a proper understanding of all matters sexual) manage to win “gender-identity-based” restroom policies. Who is going to do “gender-identity” inspections? What will society do with those who “identify” as genderfluid, bigender, or trigender? What will be required to establish a “transwoman” or “transman” identity? Must they cross-dress? Take puberty-blockers? Take cross-sex hormones? Have their breasts amputated and fake-penises affixed to their nether regions or conversely have their testes amputated and fake breasts affixed upstairs? In Barack Obama and Loretta Lynch’s brave new world, nothing would be required for men to access women’s locker rooms other than their assertion that they “identify” as women.

Now that cross-dressing has been released from the confines of closets and more elaborate disguises are chemically and surgically available, restroom and locker room use has been complicated. Pretend-men whose use of cross-sex hormones, body-mutilating surgeries, and cross-dressing render them visually indistinguishable from actual men does complicate restroom use for actual men and for women who won’t want bearded ladies in their facilities. Allowing pretend-women, whose expensive costumes conceal their immutable nature, to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms becomes equally problematic.

But who’s to blame for this new problem?

The blame rests with those who subordinate commonsense and truth about the nature and meaning of objective, immutable sex to disordered subjective desires and perverse ideas about objective, immutable sex. And now the chief promoters of sin-bred foolishness and confusion are asserting that society has a moral obligation to acquiesce further to the corrosive effects of their sin-bred confusion and foolishness.

Title IX and Title VII

How are Leftist organizations making headway in public schools? They’re doing so by abusing Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 that prohibits discrimination based on “sex” in public schools. Unelected Leftist bureaucrats with no lawmaking authority in Obama’s Department of Education decided that the word “sex” in Title IX includes “gender identity.” Based on that fanciful redefinition, they have made the ludicrous claim that schools are prohibited from maintaining separate restrooms or locker rooms for objectively male and female students.

To make this rhetorical leap, these bureaucrats ignored this pesky part of Title IX:

A recipient [of federal funds] may provide separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex.

Let’s hope that the new administration undoes the damage done by the Obama Administration.

Leftists who focus their efforts on delegitimizing concerns over safety ignore that safety is not the only concern. The other and equally important issue concerns the meaning of sexual differentiation. Policies that mandate that restroom and locker room usage can no longer correspond to sex embody the false idea that the objective sex of humans has no intrinsic meaning relative to modesty and physical privacy. Accepting such a subversive notion paves the way to the end of sex-segregation everywhere.

Policies mandating co-ed restrooms and locker rooms in our elementary, middle, and high schools embody and teach lies. They teach all children that in order to be kind, inclusive, and socially just, they must relinquish their privacy. Such policies teach that physical embodiment as male or female has no intrinsic meaning related to modesty and privacy.

The Left is attempting the same rhetorical slight of tongue with Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which is even broader and therefore more dangerous in its application. Even churches may be vulnerable to federal lawsuits based on charges of “sex” discrimination.

If schools, churches, restaurants, health clubs, hospitals, and shelters are prohibited from “discriminating” based on either objective biological sex or “gender identity” (i.e., subjective feelings about sex), their private spaces will inevitably become co-ed. Once objectively male gender-dysphoric persons are allowed in women’s restrooms, on what basis would normal men be prohibited from entering  women’s restrooms? Prohibiting men from accessing women’s restrooms because they’re men would be unjustifiable because objectively male persons would have already been granted access, and prohibiting men from accessing women’s restrooms because they’re “cisgender” would be deemed discrimination based on “gender identity.” And so the Leftist agenda to eradicate all public recognition and respect for sexual differentiation will have been achieved.

Conclusion

This is a crucial battle to fight.

Language matters. “Progressives” understand this more than conservatives. Do not use opposite-sex pronouns when referring to gender-dysphoric persons who are pretending to be the sex they are not. Do not use the terms “transgender,” “transman,” “transwoman,” or “cis” anything.

Do not share restrooms or locker rooms with opposite-sex persons. Ignore the false accusation that valuing the feelings of modesty and desire for privacy that derive from sex differences is a sign of hatred and ignorance.

And fight policies in your local schools that mandate the grammatically incorrect use of pronouns and that permit co-ed restrooms and locker rooms. Yes, lawsuits are expensive, but fighting for the right to recognize and respect sexual differentiation in private spaces in public schools is worth the cost.

Read more recent articles from Laurie:

New Trier High School Avoids Diversity Like the Plague

Highlights Magazine for Children Affirms Homoeroticism

Cub Scouts Reject Girl Who Wishes She Were a Boy

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In an astonishing act of hubris, abrogation of local control over education, and obsequiousness to Barack Obama, Obama-handmaiden Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has filed a “friend of the court” brief” (i.e., an amicus curiae brief) begging for Illinois to be subject to Obama’s illegal command that public schools allow boys in girls’ restrooms and locker rooms and vice versa.

Following the “guidance” from Obama’s Department of Education via the Office for Civil Rights to integrate sexually all restrooms and locker rooms in government schools, eleven states led by Texas filed a lawsuit in late May requesting that an injunction be issued to stop the implementation of Obama’s “guidance.” This lawsuit includes a 1975 quote from current U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who said that “‘[s]eparate places to disrobe, sleep, perform personal bodily functions are permitted, in some situations required, by regard for individual privacy.’”

Then leftist attorneys general stepped in on behalf of not only their own states but all 50 states to insist on having the federal government rob citizens in every state of their right to decide if they want their local schools to have coed, sex-integrated restrooms and showers for children and teens.

The brief Madigan signed describes concerns of those states opposed to Obama’s diktat as “speculative and inaccurate claims of harm,” adding that “respecting the civil rights of transgender individuals will cause Plaintiffs no harm. Their allegations of safety risks are unsupported hyperbole.”

The sex of humans cannot change. Boys who wish they were girls remain unalterably boys no matter what chemical, surgical, or sartorial changes they make. And boys have no “civil right” to invade the private spaces of girls.

The suggestion by Madigan et al. that claims of harm are “speculative and inaccurate” requires a definition of “harm.” If “harm” is defined solely as physical assault, the risk is low and posed primarily by boys pretending to be girls. But certainly when boys have easy access to girls’ private facilities the risk is not nil.

Under the Obama diktat, all that’s required for a boy to use girls’ private facilities is his claim to be “transgender.” No parental confirmation needed. No medical diagnosis required. No treatment of any kind required. All that’s required is for a boy to claim that he is “trans” or “bi-gendered” or “gender-fluid,” which I guess means he can float fluidly between those binarily fixed facilities until such time as leftists complete their revolution to destroy all public recognition and accommodation of sex differences. On that day, all restrooms, locker rooms, shelters, and hospital rooms will be coed—and not just for those who reject their sex.

Moreover, not even a “medical” diagnosis of “gender dysphoria,” surgical mutilation, and cross-sex hormone doping can turn a boy into a girl or vice versa. And none of these alchemical protocols justify allowing objectively male or female students into opposite-sex facilities.

But harm is not limited merely to physical assault. Included in the concept of “harm” is the violation of modesty and privacy that takes place when unrelated persons of the opposite sex intrude into restrooms and locker rooms. It is likely that Orthodox Jews, Muslims, theologically orthodox Christians, and even some secularists would find these experiences harmful. For those who know that biological sex per se has profound meaning and is the source of feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy, seeing unrelated persons of the opposite sex partially or fully unclothed as well as being seen partially or fully unclothed by unrelated persons of the opposite sex constitutes harm.

Though it’s incomprehensible to morally deadened leftists, many—perhaps most—men and women prefer not to urinate or defecate in stalls with unrelated persons of the opposite sex doing the same in the stall next to them. These feelings of modesty derived from sex differences are the very reason we have separate restrooms in the first place. What possible difference should it make to girls if the boy in the stall next to them wishes he were a girl or not? Being forced to do their business with unrelated persons of the opposite sex in the neighboring stall also constitutes harm.

Madigan et al. are justifiably concerned about the safety of cross-dressing boys using sex-appropriate restrooms. Now that parents and administrators allow boys to wear lipstick, dresses, and Victoria Secret lingerie with their penises taped down to school, they have put these boys at risk in boys’ locker rooms and restrooms. But the solution to the problem leftist created must not include allowing these boys into girls’ restrooms or locker rooms, or to room with girls on overnight school-sponsored functions as Obama’s diktat requires.

The only reasonable accommodation of such tragically disordered thinking (or egregious rebellion) is single-occupancy facilities. If boys who wish they were girls have the purported right to use facilities with only girls, then surely girls have that right.

The federal government—largely controlled by liberals—has been gobbling up vast swaths of American cultural life, including the education of our children. In so doing, leftists are imposing their subjective and arguable assumptions about, among other things, sexuality on other people’s children as well as violating the 10th Amendment which makes clear that public education is the purview of states—not the federal government:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Liberals make the specious argument that federal intrusion with regard to sex-integrated restrooms and locker rooms is warranted just as it was warranted with regard to racial integration of schools. But that comparison is based on the absurd comparison of the behaviorally neutral condition of race to the disordered subjective desire to be the opposite sex accompanied by futile behavioral choices in the service of pretending to be the opposite sex. For an analogy to be sound, there must be points of correspondence between the analogues. What precisely are the points of correspondence between race and sex-rejection?

In order to impose his radical sexual revolution on our nation’s children, Obama—master violator of the Constitution and the separation of powers—is attempting to unilaterally and illegally change the definition of the word “sex” in Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include the rhetorical contrivance “gender identity” (i.e., subjective feelings about one’s sex). And apparatchik Lisa Madigan is helping.

Parents, notify your school administrators and your children’s teachers that under no circumstances may your child or teen use restrooms or locker rooms with persons of the opposite sex, and under no circumstance is your child or teen to be required to use opposite-sex pronouns when referring to any student, staff, or faculty member.