The Left believes minors should be able to access medical help in rejecting their unchosen, unwanted physical embodiment but then wants to prohibit minors from accessing medical help in rejecting their unchosen, unwanted same-sex attraction. So, how do “LGBTQIAAP” activists reconcile yet another of their incoherent propositions and ironies? They just make up some novel terms that embody queer (pun intended) ideas.

Every time the incoherence or fallaciousness of their arguments is exposed, they frantically invent a new theory and a new term to advance their irrational agenda. Just keep dangling dazzling neologisms in front of the public’s blurry eyes and they won’t notice the idiocy and perversion that is destroying the lives of children while serving the desires of adults.

For example, the Left invented the politically useful term “gender identity,” which is the sex with which one identifies and with which one is supposedly born. In this queer ontological universe “gender identity” has no intrinsic relation to physical embodiment. So, sometimes one’s “gender identity” accidentally aligns with physical embodiment, and sometimes it doesn’t. When people’s “gender identity” and physical embodiment align, they are deemed “cisgender”—yes, another novel rhetorical construction that embodies very queer ideas.

In a more rational, less cowardly culture, we would just say that “gender identity” denotes the disordered desire to be the opposite sex. We would call it gender confusion or Gender Identity Disorder or Gender Dysphoria. Oh, wait, we tried that, but it didn’t serve the desires and social and political goals of the gender confused among us.

So moving on, if your “gender identity” does not align with your objective biological sex, you are not cisgender or a ciswoman or a cisman, you are transgender, a trans-man (that is, an actual woman) or a trans-woman (that is, an actual man).  In this new queer vernacular I, for example, am a ciswoman. Bruce Jenner is trans-woman.

Now stay with me.

When Leftists argue that minors should be able to access medical help in rejecting their physical embodiment, they won’t state it exactly like that, because that would expose their hypocrisy and incoherence. Instead, they employ their novel terms to explain their queer ideology. They will say trans-minors are not seeking to change anything. They’re seeking to “align” their bodies with their inherent, immutable “gender identity,” which is either a trans-man (that is, an actual woman) or trans-woman (that is, an actual man). And when trans-people have healthy body parts amputated, they’re no longer having either “sex change surgery” or  “sex reassignment surgery.” They’re now having “gender confirmation surgery.” This new term diverts the public’s attention from the truth that no one can change his or her sex. And it serves to reinforce the belief that subjective feelings are the ultimate arbiter of reality. In the Gnostic world of trans-activism, healthy, objective, material bodies must submit.

Well, two can play this foolish game.

Oh, and just to forewarn you, there are two other novel terms embodying queer ideas peeking over the rainbow-hued horizon: GSM and GSRM. GSM means Gender and Sexual Minorities, and GSRM means Gender, Sexual and Romantic Minorities. The Left needed to invent these because they were being mocked for the silliness of LGBTQIAAP.  You gotta give it to the Left. They are a rhetorically nimble and imaginative bunch.

Right now, liberals in Springfield do not have the votes to pass HB 217–the anti-autonomy, anti-choice Reparative Therapy Prohibition Act–even though they control both houses of the legislature. The lack of support for this bill is something liberals and their water-carriers in the mainstream press don’t share with the public.

But “LGBTQIAAP” activists are working like trans-madmen to garner support for this bill. Illinoisans need to match and exceed their fervor and tenacity in order to retain the right of minors to access medical help in aligning their unchosen, unwanted sexual desires with their inherent, immutable “sexual orientation identities” or in constructing identities that do not affirm unchosen, unwanted same-sex attraction.

TAKE ACTION: CLICK HERE to contact your state representative and state senator urge them to protect the rights of minors to seek help for their unwanted attractions. Urge a “No” vote on HB 217 and SB 111.

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with Dr. Erwin Lutzer

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Written by Thaddeus Baklinski, LifeSiteNews.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the good news is we can effect positive change.

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

An Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) ruling that gender identity is covered by Title VII’s prohibition against discrimination based on sex is being hailed as a ”sea change’‘ by transgender activist organizations. But an attorney for Liberty Counsel Action notes that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was never intended to cover gender identity and the ruling “basically says that a Bible bookstore owner, for instance, could not turn away a homosexual, cross-dressing man, a man who likes to wear a miniskirt and lipstick….”

You may remember Laurie Higgins’ articles identifying Georgetown law professor Chai Feldblum, a lesbian activist who became President Obama’s appointee to lead the EEOC.  Laurie pointed out that Feldblum sees the battle between “gay rights” and moral opposition to homosexuality as a zero sum game.  One side will win, and the other will lose.   Feldblum is on record saying: 

“Sexual liberty should win in most cases.  There can be a conflict between religious liberty and sexual liberty, but in almost all cases the sexual liberty should win because that’s the only way that the dignity of gay people can be affirmed in any realistic manner.”  And yet when push comes to shove, when religious liberty and sexual liberty conflict, she admits, “I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win.”

Of course, Feldblum is correct.  Religious freedom and special homosexual so-called “rights” cannot co-exist. 

Passage of nondiscrimination legislation – specific to sexual orientation – has been attempted since 1974 in the U.S. Congress. Currently, several bills promoting ENDA are circulating in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives promoting ENDA.  Homosexual activist and U.S. Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) is the chief sponsor in the U.S. House. 

While media pundits and liberal activists feign “concern” about the prominence of “social issues” in the GOP primary race for president, liberal activists tirelessly work to advance their social agenda. Whether it is the mandate from Washington D.C. that requires all healthcare insurance plans to provide free contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilization services or the introduction of a “same-sex marriage” bill in Springfield merely nine months after “civil unions” became legal in Illinois, the Left aggressively promotes its social agenda, often with the approval of the mainstream media.

Lesbian activist and recently appointed — not elected — StateRepresentative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) is fast becoming Illinois’ champion of all things liberal. Leftwing zealot Cassidy is co-sponsor of the following bills: “same-sex marriage” (HB 5170), universal health care (HB 311), “medical” marijuana (HB 30), “comprehensive” sex education (HB 3027), a two percent sales-tax increase on firearms ammunition (HB 5167), a resolution to support the Occupy protesters (HR 610), and chief sponsor of another onerous “bullying” bill (HB 5290), which I will address in a future IFI E-Alert.

But it is Rep. Cassidy’s sponsorship of a legislative proposal that would add Gender Identity Disorder (euphemistically referred to as “gender identity”) to the existing “hate crime” law in Illinois (HB 4725) that is the subject of this article.

Enumerated “hate crime” laws are intellectually and ethically flawed and dangerous. This proposed amendment would only make a bad law worse.

It is important to remember that opposition to hate crime laws does not constitute endorsement of criminal acts committed against anyone. One can oppose both criminal acts of all kinds and the pernicious purported solution of hate crime laws, which pose a serious threat to liberty.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to contact your state representative to ask him/her to oppose HB 4725 and the addition of Gender Identity Disorder to existing hate crime law. You can also call the Springfield switchboard at (217) 782-2000 and speak to your local representative’s administrative aide about your concerns with this proposal.

It is interesting to note that this bill was originally heard in the Judiciary II committee last Friday, but failed by a vote of 2 yea, 2 nay and 3 present.  Yesterday, however, two of the lawmakers who voted “present” [Reps. Bill Cunningham (D-Chicago) and Esther Golar (D-Chicago)] were substituted by Rep. Toni Berrios (D-Chicago) and the chief sponsor of the legislation, Rep. Cassidy. Obviously, Rep. Cassidy, who was appointed to the General Assembly last summer, has enough clout with Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) for this kind of maneuvering. This exposes Madigan’s eagerness to cater to the aggressive efforts of homosexual activists to promote their “social issues” in the General Assembly.

Problems with hate crimes laws in general:

• American jurisprudence traditionally and rightly takes into account the mens rea, or state of mind, of perpetrators of crimes. In the prosecution and sentencing of crimes, we take into account whether the perpetrator was negligent, reckless, knowing, or purposeful. These categories reveal that our system takes into account the perpetrator’s mental state or the degree of intentionality with regard to his or her actions.
  
  In contrast, hate crime laws are concerned not with the perpetrator’s mental state with regard to his or her actions, but with the beliefs, feelings, or values that impel a particular criminal act. Hate crime laws depend on an evaluation of what the perpetrator believed to be true of the victim, and whether he or she acted because of that belief. This constitutes the most troublingly intrusive form of Big Brother thought control.
  
  There is no ethical justification for meting out more severe punishments for identical actions based on the beliefs, feelings, or values of the perpetrator. The beliefs, feelings, and values of citizens — even beliefs, feelings, and values that society or some segment of society views as erroneous — should be off-limits to the law.
  
  The enhancement of punishments based on the beliefs, feelings, or values of perpetrators opens the door to unconscionable government intrusion into the minds and hearts of citizens. Such intrusion into and evaluation of the beliefs, feelings, and values of citizens is inappropriate in regard to any conditions, including conditions that have no moral implications, but it’s even more problematic when it pertains to volitional behavioral conditions of which questions of morality are central (e.g., homosexuality, cross-dressing).

• The purpose behind enhanced punishments for particular beliefs, feelings, or values is to eradicate those beliefs, feelings, or values, which is decidedly not the role of government or the law.

• Equality before the law is a principle upon which this country is founded. That principle is undermined by establishing particular groups as more worthy of protection than others. Our legal system is based on punishing behavior, not selecting out particular victims for special treatment. Preferential treatment for one group, particularly a group that is constituted my subjective desires and volition, establishes a troubling precedent.

• Preferential treatment for one group will exacerbate rather than reduce inter-group tensions and hostilities.

• Establishing particular groups as deserving of special protections, preferential treatment before the law or establishing other groups as deserving of harsher punishments for committing the same criminal act because of their beliefs, feelings, or values creates a social and political climate that will affect the administration of justice.Imagine a scenario in which the victim of a mugging is a cross-dresser and the perpetrator is known to hate cross-dressers, but the perpetrator had not committed the crime because of his hatred for cross-dressing. Rather, he had committed it because the cross-dresser was alone and appeared to be wealthy. Could the perpetrator be treated fairly before the law? Should his feelings about cross-dressers be the concern of the government? Would the kind of politically charged legal context we are creating with laws that evaluate feelings ever concede that such feelings did not play a role in the commission of the crime? What crimes are prosecuted, and what sentences are levied become political acts.One writer explains this:

Prosecution is selective. This means that the district attorney or prosecutor decides which cases to pursue and which to dismiss. They also decide which charges to file. In most cases this is mainly about expediency, but there is always an element of politics involved. When it comes to hate crimes, the political element grows immensely in a potential prosecution. This is because the hate crime casts an offense against an individual or small group of individuals as an offense against an entire demographic subset.

Problems with the inclusion of the term “gender identity”:

• The term “gender identity” is a biased, non-neutral, political term that was created to disassociate certain behaviors (e.g., cross-dressing) from the psychological disorder that impels them. The neutral terms are “gender dysphoria” and Gender Identity Disorder. We object to the inclusion of “gender identity” because embedded in it are a number of non-factual assumptions about the nature of gender dysphoria and the morality of particular behaviors associated with gender dysphoria and Gender Identity Disorder.

• This term “gender identity” was invented as a rhetorical tool to legitimate or normalize behaviors that citizens have every right to view as disordered and immoral.

• The term “gender identity” was invented as a rhetorical tool to stigmatize those who view gender aberrant behaviors as disordered and immoral.

• Making possible enhanced punishments for crimes committed against those who experience gender confusion raises the question of whether those who experience other disorders/conditions that have volitional behavioral implications will demand inclusion of their conditions in enumerated hate crimes laws.

• Using laws to make social, moral, and political statements about moral beliefs that one group doesn’t like is unethical and dangerous.

Conclusion:

We are becoming a society increasingly removed from fundamental American principles of justice. The law is being used to treat people differently depending on their group membership and to invade the thoughts minds and feelings of people, all in the service of transforming the social, moral, and political beliefs of Americans.

The Chicago Tribune published an article by Associated Press medical writer Lindsey Tanner which states that a growing number of teenagers and even younger children “who think they were born the wrong sex” are finding doctors willing to give them “sex-changing treatments.” Tanner says the issue “raises ethical questions.”

Tanner tells the story of an 8-year-old girl in L.A. who at 18 months announced “I a boy.” Her parents parents now refer to her as a boy and are “watching for the first signs of puberty.” The child’s mother says that when “he” was told he could get shots to block breast development, “he was so excited.”

Leading the charge to facilitate this cruel deception is Dr. Norman Spack of Boston’s Children’s Hospital, a doctor who is no stranger to media attention for his work. “If you open the doors, these are the kids who come,” Dr. Spack says. He believes  that the psychiatric diagnosis of “gender identity disorder” for children who wish they were born the opposite sex is a “misnomer.”

Dr. Margaret Moon, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ bioethics committee, cites ethical concerns with offering “sex-changing treatment” to kids under the age of eighteen. She says that some kids may get a psychiatric diagnosis when they are just uncomfortable with “narrowly defined gender roles” and that it is harmful “to have an irreversible treatment too early.”

Dr. Spack’s “Gender Management Service” clinic opened in 2007, and he reports a fourfold increase in patients, up to 19 each year, versus four in the late 1990s. Once younger children begin to show signs of puberty, they are given puberty-blocking drugs, in monthly injections or implants imbedded in the arm. Later, teens are given hormones, which can have serious side effects, including blood clots and cancer.

The article concludes with comments from Dr. Jo Olson, medical director of a transgender clinic at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Olson said that reports appearing in the medical journal Pediatrics should help persuade more doctors to offer these kids “sex-changing” treatment or refer them to specialists who will. “It would be so nice to move this out of the world of mental health, and into the medical world,” Olson said.

Gender confusion is not confined to the world of mental health, as Dr. Olson asserts.  It is now a major issue political issue and is on the fast track to normalization in our schools and halls of legislation.  In the Illinois General Assembly, lesbian activist and State Representative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) has even sponsored legislation (HB 4725) to add Gender Identity Disorder to the list of “hate crimes.”  (Thanks to IFI’s lobbying efforts, HB 4725 failed to advance out of committee on February 23rd. Two voted in favor, three voted “present,” and two voted no.)

Read IFI’s position paper on HB 4725, authored by IFI’s Laurie Higgins.

Today, Monday, December 19, 2011, the Chicago Tribune included not one, but three articles (click HERE,HERE, and HERE) on “transgenderism” by Rex Huppke, their designated proselyte for “progressive” views of homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder (GID). (In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the American Psychiatric Association uses the term Gender Identity Disorder to designate the phenomenon that Huppke refers to as “transgender issues.”)

In response to these articles, I sent this brief letter to Mr. Huppke and to the Tribune editorial board:

Dear Mr. Huppke,

Once again, you’ve written an editorial masquerading as a news story. Your lengthy article (or three articles) on “transgender” issues includes one mention of American Family Association’s dissenting views on Gender Identity Disorder and one quote from Focus on the Family’s position statement on Gender Identity Disorder.

Apparently, you didn’t solicit any comments from either public policy organizations or mental health professionals who hold different views on the nature of Gender Identity Disorder, the morality of cross-dressing, or the ethics of “sex reassignment” surgery. The absence of any substantive exposition of dissenting views is particularly notable in light of two articles written by psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow that lit up the blogosphere, particularly among those who identify as homosexual and transgender. (Read Dr. Ablow’s articles HERE and HERE.)

It would have been illuminating to interview some theologians and philosophers on the nature of reality. For example, is “reality” merely a construct of our minds or our subjective feelings, or does an objective reality exist?

Another interesting question concerns allowing people to change their birth certificates: Does such an act make the state complicit in fraud?

Or, what evidence do you have for your clear implication that “discrimination” is the cause of the the increased risk of suicidal ideation among those who experience Gender Identity Disorder. And what do you mean when you use the word “discrimination”? Do all expressions of moral disapproval of behavior constitute illegitimate “discrimination” or just those with which you disagree?

But alas, it’s abundantly clear that your mission is not to report or discuss, but to exploit your position as a journalist to write an extended apologetic for your personal moral, philosophical, and political views, painted over with a rhetorical patina of neutrality.

What is equally troubling is that your bosses find this acceptable.

Sincerely,

Laurie Higgins
IFI Cultural Analyst

Take ACTION: Chicago Tribune reporter Rex Huppke continues to write pro-homosexual opinion pieces, presenting them as “new” articles.

Send email complaints to the Tribune editorial board about Mr. Huppke’s lack of balance and failure to present views from mental health professionals who hold different views on the nature of Gender Identity Disorder, the morality of cross-dressing, or the ethics of “sex reassignment” surgery.

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

Phone: (708) 781-9328
Fax: (708) 781-9376

Evil men don’t understand the importance of justice,
but those who follow the Lord are much concerned about it.
~Proverbs 28:5

On Dec. 6, 2011 Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a speech in honor of International Human Rights Day which is celebrated on Dec. 10, the date in 1948 when the United Nations formally adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But as we should have expected from a representative of the fervently pro-perversion Obama Administration, Clinton used the occasion to promulgate unproven, liberal assumptions about homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder (GID).

With the usual cunning of the Left, Clinton begins her speech by referring to the “beating, terrorizing, and executing” of homosexuals, but then with some skillful bait-and-switch rhetoric, she starts talking about undefined “discrimination.” Such a speech would be justified if Clinton were actually concerned only with real human rights abuses such as draconian laws that call for the execution of homosexuals or for acts of violence ignored by police. But anyone familiar with the incoherent world of “progressivism,” understands that moral disapproval of homosexual acts becomes “discrimination” which ineluctably results in “bullying” or “terrorizing.”

Clinton’s repeated use of the absurd comparison of race to homosexuality reveals that intelligence is no guarantee of wisdom. Even really smart people often hold ignorant and foolish ideas. Whereas race is 100 percent heritable, in all cases immutable, and has no behavioral implications that are amenable to moral evaluation, homosexuality is not biologically determined, is in some cases changeable, and is constituted by volitional acts that are legitimate objects of moral evaluation. Someone should ask Clinton to explain the ways she believes race is analogous to homosexuality.

Clinton asserts that “Because we are human, we therefore have rights. And because we have rights, governments are bound to protect them.” Of course, she spent little time explaining exactly what rights she believes all people are entitled to because they’re human. She referred ambiguously to “the full measure of liberty, the full experience of dignity, and the full benefits of humanity,” [emphasis added] which sounds benign enough. To progressives, however, such noble phrases don’t mean only freedom from involuntary servitude, free speech, or the right to vote. To homosexual activists and their ideological allies, the “full measure of liberty, the full experience of dignity, and the full benefits of humanity” demands, for example, that they be given the unilateral right to reconstruct the legal definition of marriage.

Since Clinton can’t appeal to reason, she pulls on the heartstrings of those in her audience for whom “feelings” trump moral reason: “We need to ask ourselves, ‘How would it feel if it were a crime to love the person I love?'” If there are laws somewhere in the world that criminalize “love,” I haven’t heard of them. There are countries around the world that have unjust marital laws, but marital laws — just and unjust — prohibit acts, not feelings.

Here in the U.S., we have laws that prohibit polyamorists from marrying all the people they love, but there are no laws that criminalize their love. We have laws that prohibit close blood relatives from marrying, but there are no laws that criminalize their love. And most states have just and reasonable marital laws that prohibit men from marrying men and women from marrying women, but there are no laws that criminalize their love.

Clinton alludes to the Obama Administration’s troubling intention to withhold foreign aid from countries that don’t share the moral views of American “progressives” on homosexuality and cross-dressing and of the Obama administration’s creation of a Global Equality Fund which will use $3 million of taxpayer money to fund homosexuality-affirming efforts around the world. Peter Sprigg aptly describes this as “cultural imperialism.” The Obama Administration is using our taxes to disseminate non-factual, fallacious moral, philosophical, and political propositions throughout the world.

Clinton shared that she has experienced a “deepening” of her convictions about homosexuality as she has “devoted more thought to it, engaged in dialogues and debates, and established personal and professional relationships with people who are gay.” In the past, Secretary Clinton has been open about her Christian faith, and in this speech, she shared that her “religious belief and practice is a vital source of meaning and identity, and fundamental to who” she is. One wonders if in all her dialogues, debates, and thinking, she ever seriously studied the work of scholars throughout the history of the church on the topic of homosexuality. Since prior to the late 20th Century, no Old Testament or New Testament scholar affirmed what some refer to as “gay theology,” it’s surprising to see intelligent people like Clinton (and Obama) embracing what many of the best scholars, including contemporary biblical scholars, would consider heresy.

Clinton concluded with these words: “As it has happened so many times before, opinion will converge once again with the truth, the immutable truth, that all persons are created free and equal in dignity and rights.” Ever the diplomat, Clinton implies without explicitly stating that her beliefs about the nature and morality of homosexuality are “immutable truths.” Whereas it is true that all humans are equal in worth and dignity, it is not true that all beliefs and behavioral choices are equal in worth or dignity. The troubling notion that permeates Clinton’s speech is that a society that honors the dignity and liberty of all must embrace the ontological and moral beliefs of homosexuals.

For progressives, powerful, persistent feelings and volitional acts — at least powerful, persistent homosexual feelings and acts — are constitutive of identity and inherently moral. For progressives, to believe such feelings are disordered and such acts immoral represents an act of illegitimate discrimination against persons. But Christians understand that in this fallen world, our feelings are disordered, our will perverted, and our intellect corrupted — hence the need for laws.

And on that point IFI agrees with Secretary Clinton who accurately stated that “progress comes from changes in laws…. Laws have a teaching effect.” The question is, will America have laws that embody and teach truth — or not?

This should be a Saturday Night Live skit, but, oh no, this is real life in the mixed up, muddled up, shook up world of “Lola” and Cook County.

Chicago’s homosexual newspaper the Windy City Times reports the following:

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart announced that Cook County Jail has instituted a policy for housing transgender detainees based on their gender identity, rather than birth sex.

The policy became effective on March 21. It is thought to be the first of its kind in the United States.

Particularly with this issue, we wanted to do it right,” Dart told Windy City Times, adding that “medical and sociological” concerns for transgender people “even superseded security issues.”

The seven-page policy mandates that transgender detainees be allowed to consult with a “Gender Identity Panel” of physicians and therapists before being placed into male or female housing. It also directs correctional staff to allow transgender people to wear clothing/ own hygiene products consistent with their gender identity. Further, it requires that corrections staff, physicians, and therapists undergo gender-related sensitivity training administered by the sheriff’s department….

[T]he new policy includes clinical information on gender identity disorder, a glossary of terms and, most significantly, a recommendation that transgender people be placed in accordance with their identity (as opposed to genitalia). Dart hopes the policy will be adopted elsewhere and said it will be featured on the Department of Justice website… .

So who, pray tell, is footing the bill for the “Gender Identity Panel” with whom the gender-confused detainees get to consult? And who is footing the bill for the mandatory sensitivity training administered to corrections staff, physicians, and therapists?

Here’s another pragmatic thought: Does anyone actually believe that women who wish they were men will want to be detained in the men’s facility at Cook County Jail? Doubtful. What we’re really talking about then is housing men who wish they were women in the women’s facility at Cook County Jail. Men who wear women’s cosmetics and women’s clothing are, in reality, men. Even men who take female hormones and have their penises amputated are, in reality, men. Why should female detainees have to room with seriously confused men?

Owen Daniel-McCarter, attorney with the Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois, objects to the use of the term “Gender Identity Disorder” in the new policy, arguing that it is offensive to label “transgender people has (sic) having a disorder,” even though this is the clinical designation assigned by the American Psychiatric Association. No matter. To radicals like Daniel-McCarter, doctrinaire ideology takes precedence over reality and truth. Sexual anarchists seek to manipulate language in an attempt to convince the public that cross-dressing and elective amputations of healthy body parts are not signs of disordered thinking. These rhetorical stratagems must be opposed at every turn, whether they occur in anti-discrimination and anti-bullying laws and policies, comprehensive sex ed, or fatuous, costly jail policies.

Some may remember the scene from the film Moonstruck in which Cher slaps Nicholas Cage upside the head and yells “Snap out of it.” Somebody better slap the conservative community upside its collective head before the federal government spends all its time cooing at homosexuality.

Recently, the lovestruck Department of Justice, White House, and Congress have wasted valuable time and public resources servicing homosexual activists via a White House conference, a Department of Justice video, and three proposed bills.

Last week, President Barack Obama held an “anti-bullying” (nudge nudge, wink wink) conference at the White House to which he invited the infamous homosexual “safe schools” czar Kevin Jennings; openly homosexual Fort Worth city councilman Joel Burns; the 16-year-old executive direct of Gays and Lesbians United Against Discrimination; at least two representatives from the Gay, Lesbian and Straight “Education” Network; someone from the Human Rights Campaign; someone from the National Center for Transgender Equality; and someone from the Trevor Project.

The White House also invited the foul-mouthed, anti-Christian homosexual activist Dan Savage, creator of the “It Gets Better” project. Savage said the conference was “of tremendous symbolic importance,” but also complained that “What was never addressed is when the parents are the bullies.” Someone should ascertain exactly what Savage views as parental “bullying.”

The government has created a website dedicated to ending bullying, a noble mission concealing an ignoble ultimate goal and troubling underlying philosophy. The underlying philosophy includes three central assumptions: 1. Homosexuality is equivalent to race, 2. Homosexuality is morally positive, and 3. The expression of conservative moral beliefs constitutes illegitimately discriminatory speech, which contributes to bullying.

The ultimate goal is the eradication of conservative moral beliefs and the creation of a social and legal climate that make it impossible for them to be expressed. For those who have eyes to see, the website offers clues to this goal and philosophy.

There are three image links at the bottom of the homepage: one is a link to information on cyberbullying; one is a link to information on the White House Conference; and one is a link to information on “LGBT Bullying.” Remarkable. Of all the conditions for which students may be bullied, there’s a special image link and section dedicated to only two: homosexuality and “transgenderism” (more accurately, Gender Identity Disorder). Not one other disorder gets special attention — not attention deficit disorder, not attention deficit hyper activity disorder, not Asperger’s Syndrome.

And homosexuality and “transgenderism” are the only conditions constituted by subjective feelings and volitional acts that many consider immoral that get special attention. Promiscuous students and drug-users, for example, are often bullied. Why don’t those conditions get image links to their own special sections?

This Obama administration effort follows close on the heels of a pinheaded and inappropriate decision by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to create a video for Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” project. Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Thomas Perez showed the DOJ video to public high school students in Silver Spring, Maryland. Here are a few of the comments made by DOJ employees, most of whom identify as homosexual, in their roles as government employees:

• “Being different is cool.”
• “Don’t be ashamed of who you are. Keep being yourself.”
• “If I knew when I was eight that the thing that was causing me so much pain… would actually define me in a way that makes me very, very proud, I would get through it.”

These should be shocking comments to hear in a publicly funded project of the federal government. The federal government has made the astonishing public claims that homosexuality is “cool”; that no one should be ashamed of homosexuality; and that homosexuality should be a source of pride. The individuals who appear in this video are, of course, entitled to their own non-factual ontological and moral beliefs. In their roles as government employees, however, they have no right to promote those unproven, subjective, non-factual beliefs.

This video should be a public scandal. Imagine if philosophically conservative government employees appeared in a publicly funded video in their professional roles, saying that it is not cool to engage in homosexual acts; that homosexual acts are shameful; and that homosexuality is not something of which to be proud.

It is objectively true that no one should be bullied. It is not objectively true that homosexuality is cool; that people should keep living a homosexual life; or that homosexuality is worthy of pride or respect. No employee of the government acting in their official position has any right to promote those arguable moral beliefs.

At the conclusion of the high school propaganda session, likely held during Mr. Perez’s working hours, students were invited to sign the “It Gets Better” pledge, the first sentence of which states, “Everyone deserves to be respected for who they are.” A feckless statement, but oh so persuasive with non-thinking people. The statement suggests without stating that those who identify as homosexual should be respected for their homosexuality. That is a moral proposition which is widely rejected and which no representative of the government has any right to promote in their professional role.

Everyone deserves to be respected because they’re human beings created in the likeness of God. It should be obvious, however, that not every subjective feeling or behavioral choice is worthy of respect. Humans deserve to be respected for their humanness in spite of their disordered inclinations and immoral volitional acts.

But it’s not just the executive branch that’s dancing to GLSEN’s gay tunes. Our homosexuality-affirming legislators have been busy little bees of late, including our very own junior U.S. Senator, Mark Kirk. The technically Republican Kirk, who has a special fondness for all pro-homosexual legislation, has joined 18 Democratic senators and one independent to introduce the Senate version of the Safe Schools Improvement Act — S. 506, which will deny elementary, middle, and high schools federal funds to combat drugs and violence unless they also agree to explicitly address homosexuality and transgenderism.

Openly homosexual U.S. Representative Jared Polis (D-CO) and comedian U.S. Senator Al Franken (D-MN) have re-introduced their recently moribund Student Non-Discrimination Act (SNDA) bill — H.R. 998. According to the Human Rights Campaign, this act “would prevent schools from discriminating against students because of the actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity of a person with whom that student associates or has associated.” If passed, SNDA will be used to censor any resources that express the view that volitional homosexual acts are not moral acts.

The Human Rights Campaign makes the amusing claim that SNDA has “broad support.” Here are the organizations that they offer as evidence of breadth of support:

SNDA is has broad support from over 33 national organizations, including: The American Association of University Women, American Federation of Teachers, American Civil Liberties Union, American Psychological Association, American School Counselor Association, Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, Family Equality Council, Gay-Straight Alliance Network, GLAD (Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders), GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network), Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), National Association of School Psychologists, National Association of School Safety and Law Enforcement Officials, National Association of Secondary School Principals, National Center for Transgender Equality, National Council of Jewish Women, National Council of La Raza, National Education Association, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund, National Women’s Law Center, PFLAG (Parents, Families, & Friends of Lesbians and Gays), People for the American Way, SAVE (Suicide Awareness Voices of Education), School Social Work Association of America, The Trevor Project and Transgender Law Center.

But that’s not all, two New Jersey lawmakers have recently reintroduced the troubling “Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act,” which will require colleges and universities that receive federal funds to add “sexual orientation” to their anti-discrimination policies, and asks for a “$250 million grant program to help schools form or expand campus anti-bullying programs.” The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is repeating its warning about the dangers this bill poses to First Amendment rights.

And if our busy legislative bees fail in these efforts to pollinate our schools with their unproven, unstated ontological and moral propositions on homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder, it is reported that they will simply hide their dubious pieces of legislation in the Elementary and Secondary School Act, which is “the key federal statute governing primary and secondary education.”

When will our ideologically askew and overreaching administration compel Americans to abandon their cowardly, unilateral “truce” on the “social issues”? C’mon, conservatives, snap out of it!

Take ACTION: Contact your federal elected representatives and tell them not to support any legislation or taxpayer subsidized efforts that espouse either implicitly or explicitly the following ideas: that homosexuality is normative, good, a source of pride, ontologically analogous to race, or morally equivalent to heterosexuality. Such ideas are non-factual, unproven, controversial assumptions. No arm of the government has any business using public money to advance them.

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Bullying in schools is a serious problem that must be addressed. In a misguided, poorly reasoned attempt to address it, Illinois legislators recently passed the disastrous “School Anti-Bullying Act” (SB 3266).

The problem of bullying did not necessitate any new state laws in that virtually every school in the state has more than adequate anti-bullying policy. The problem is not with a lack of policy, and the solution is certainly not this new, poorly constructed law.

For those who naively believe that “anti-bullying” policies, programs, and legislation are centrally about ending bullying, please note where and when Governor Pat Quinn signed into law the Illinois “School Anti-Bullying Act.” The symbolism of the time and place of the signing ceremony points to the real purpose of the legislation, which is to exploit legitimate anti-bullying sentiment and Illinois public schools to undermine traditional beliefs about the nature and morality of homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder. If this legislation were not a Trojan Horse for getting homosexuality-affirming resources into public schools and were truly about addressing all forms of bullying, why would Quinn sign it into law on the Sunday morning of the Chicago “gay pride” parade, and why hold the ceremony at Nettelhorst Elementary School — the Chicago elementary school that has marched in the “gay pride” parade for two years — which happens to be located in the homosexual neighborhood called Boystown?

SB 3266 was initiated by the homosexual advocacy group Illinois Safe Schools Alliance (ISSA), which grew out of the unholy alliance of the Chicago chapter of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and the Coalition for Education on Sexual Orientation. According to the homosexual newspaper the Edge, “ISSA and its allies and predecessors worked more than a decade to get the legislation passed.” ISSA Executive Director Shannon Sullivan praised the passage of this legislation. You may recognize this name: Shannon Sullivan is the lesbian who has been working to introduce resources that affirm homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder to elementary school children in Oak Park.

Below are some excerpts from the actual text with the most problematic language emphasized:

Bullying on the basis of actual or perceived race, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, physical or mental disability, military status, sexual orientation, gender-related identity or expression….

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

…

causing a substantially detrimental effect on the student’s or students’ physical or mental health….

substantially interfering with the student’s or students’ academic performance; or substantially interfering with the student’s or students’ ability to participate in or benefit from the services, activities, or privileges provided by a school….

Bullying, as defined in this subsection (b), may take various forms, including without limitation one or more of the following: harassment, threats, intimidation, stalking, physical violence, sexual harassment, sexual violence, theft, public humiliation, destruction of property, or retaliation for asserting or alleging an act of bullying. This list is meant to be illustrative and non-exhaustive….

Each school district and non-public, non-sectarian elementary or secondary school shall create and maintain a policy on bullying, which policy must be filed with the State Board of Education.

This legislation is disastrous for two reasons.

First, it is disastrous because it is an “enumerated” law which means it includes the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender-related identity or expression” (i.e., “transgenderism,” “transsexuality,” and cross-dressing) in the list of conditions for which students cannot be bullied. Why, in a non-exhaustive list that omits other conditions for which students are bullied, would these two be specifically named? Do our legislators and the crafters of this legislation actually expect the public to believe that there are more students bullied for their same-sex attraction or cross-dressing than for being shy, socially awkward, impulsive, overweight, studious, or athletically challenged? And why not use the proper term for “gender-related identity or expression” which is Gender Identity Disorder (GID)?

The answer is that the motives behind both the inclusion of these particular terms as well as the refusal to use the correct term, GID, are wholly political. Those who proposed and promoted this legislation are seeking to end bullying based on “real or perceived” homosexuality or GID by transforming the moral and political views of students. This new law with its inclusion of the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender-related identity and expression” will be used to introduce resources that implicitly and explicitly affirm homosexuality and GID in even elementary schools and will be used to simultaneously censor resources that espouse traditional views.

Second, it is disastrous because of its ambiguity. For example, the bill identifies bullying as “any severe verbal conduct that can be reasonably predicted to cause a substantially detrimental effect on a student’s mental health.”

• How is the vague phrase “substantially detrimental effect” defined? If a teacher brought in two scholars to debate same-sex adoption and one of the conservative scholar’s arguments was that homosexual acts are inherently morally flawed, could a homosexual student claim that he experienced a substantially detrimental effect on his mental health? Or what if a classmate made such a point in a classroom discussion?
• Do athletic codes that prohibit genetic males from joining the girls’ swim team “substantially interfere” with the ability of a boy who has GID to “participate in the activities provided by the school”?
• What if a teacher in order to have students study both sides of the public debate on same-sex marriage assigned reading from conservative scholars or columnists that asserted that same-sex marriage should not be legalized because homosexual practice is not moral? Could a homosexual student claim that he was publicly humiliated?
• Does this new legislation render illegal a high school dress code that prohibits boys from wearing lipstick and dresses to school?
• If a school counselor were to provide a student or his parents with information about GID counseling, could that be considered gender identity discrimination or bullying if the student claimed the provision of such information humiliated him or had a detrimental effect on his health?
• If a school prohibited a boy with GID from using the girls’ bathrooms, could the school be found liable for violating this law?
• Does this require all public and private non-religious schools to create policy on bullying that specifically mentions “sexual orientation” and “gender-related identity and expression”?

Since the list of bases on which bullying is prohibited is deliberately “non-exhaustive,” what is the justification for the exclusion of other conditions for which students may be bullied? The current legislation gives examples from three broad categories of conditions but offers no reasons for the inclusion of some conditions and the exclusion of others:

1. Disorders (e.g., GID): Why does the bill include only one disorder (i.e., GID) while excluding other disorders, like Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Attention Deficit Hyper-Active Disorder (ADHD), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), anorexia, bulimia, and Aspberger’s Syndrome, all of which can lead to behaviors for which kids are bullied? And why does the bill not use the correct designation, Gender Identity Disorder, rather than the politically biased terms “gender-related identity and expression”? It seems likely that there are more students in public schools who are ridiculed for behaviors related to ADD, ADHD, or Aspberger’s Syndrome than there are students who are ridiculed for behaviors related to GID.

The inclusion of only this one psychological disorder and the failure to use the correct designation reflect the acceptance of particular assumptions regarding the nature and morality of cross-dressing that are controversial and unproven. The use of the politically biased phrase, “gender-related identity and expression” exposes the political nature of this bill and the influence of the “transgender”-affirming Illinois Safe Schools Alliance in the creation of this legislation.

2. Conditions centrally defined by impulses and volitional behavior that carry moral implications (e.g., “sexual orientation” and Gender Identity Disorder): Why does the bill exclude other behaviors that many consider immoral and for which kids may be bullied, like “sexting,” aggression, stealing, plagiarizing, drug use, and promiscuity? For example, students who use drugs are called “druggies” and “stoners,” and girls who are promiscuous are called “sluts” and “hos.” Obviously, schools no more need policy that specifically mentions homosexuality to protect homosexual students than they need policy that mentions promiscuity in order to protect promiscuous students.

The reason that no other conditions that are centrally defined by desire and volitional acts that many deem immoral are included is that the crafters of this legislation seek to use law to promote the unproven belief that homosexuality and GID are analogous to race. By including these conditions in a list of morally neutral conditions, they seek to reinforce implicitly their false assumption that homosexuality and GID are morally neutral. Indeed, the use of the political term “sexual orientation,” which embodies the ideas of biological determinism, immutability, and moral neutrality, rather than “homosexuality” further exposes the political nature of this legislation. When crafting their own policy, schools should replace “sexual orientation” with the less political term “homosexuality.” (Further, when replacing the term “sexual orientation,” there is no reason to add the term “bisexuality,” because no one is bullied for the heterosexual part of bisexuality.)

3. Conditions that carry no moral implications (e.g., race, sex, and disability): the crafters of this bill excluded other morally neutral conditions for which far more students are bullied, like obesity, nearsightedness, farsightedness, acne, speech impediments, shyness, social awkwardness, or lack of athletic ability. These omissions further reveal the political nature of this legislation.

Focus on the Family’s anti-bullying project, True Tolerance, warns against the inclusion of specific categories:

Listing certain categories creates a system ripe for reverse discrimination, sending the message that certain characteristics are more worthy of protection than others. Instead of bringing more peace and unity, this can politicize the school environment and introduce divisiveness among different groups of students and parents.

A more general, and therefore more inclusive, description would be far superior. It’s too bad Illinois legislators didn’t consider the apolitical, concise, and inclusive anti-bullying policy created by the Alliance Defense Fund.

The new Illinois law requires the creation of a fifteen-member Task Force whose responsibility it will be to make recommendations “for preventing and addressing bullying in schools in this State.” The Task Force is required by this bill to include a high school or college student who has been bullied. This student should be someone who has been bullied for characteristics such as race or disability that have no behavioral manifestations about which there is moral controversy.

The Task Force must also include representatives from organizations that address bullying. To avoid yet even more policy blunders, these representatives should be from organizations that are not centrally concerned with the partisan socio-political goal of normalizing homosexuality. To avoid the appearance of being a tool for the homosexual movement, the Task Force should exclude representatives from GLSEN and the Safe Schools Alliance or balance them with representatives from conservative organizations like IFI.

So far only twelve states, including, unfortunately, Illinois, have anti-bullying legislation that specifically mentions “sexual orientation” and “gender identity/expression.” The inclusion of these terms in anti-bullying policies and legislation allows homosexualists to use them as cultural battering rams to destroy First Amendment speech and religious protections. The central purpose of the inclusion of these terms in legislation and policy is not to protect homosexuals and “transgenders” but to censor the expression of traditional moral beliefs and ultimately eradicate them.

Many people who live in more conservative communities, for example, in the Midwest and South or rural communities, have been complacent regarding the presence of homosexuality-affirming resources and activities in their schools. They naively assume that their values and beliefs will be reflected in what takes place in their schools. They wrongly assume that resources and activities that espouse “progressive” ideas about the nature and morality of homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder will affect only urban and “progressive” communities.

But those naïve assumptions and subsequent complacency on the part of conservatives are ill-advised. There are many liberal, pro-homosexual activist organizations working at a fever pitch to use all public schools to undermine the truth about homosexuality. Then there are the departments and schools of education that train the nation’s teachers to be “agents of change,” who will use their power and position to shape the moral and political views of other people’s children. And just recently a truly shocking piece of federal legislation was proposed by openly homosexual U.S. Representative Jared Polis (D-CO).

This bill is called the Student Non-Discrimination Act (H.R. 4530). It would prohibit “public school students from being excluded from participating in, or subject to discrimination under, any federally-assisted educational program on the basis of their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity,” and it “Authorizes federal departments and agencies to enforce these prohibitions by cutting off the educational assistance of recipients found to be violating them.” (Click HERE for a summary of this bill.) Schools would be prohibited from treating the objective biological fact of a student’s sex as if it had objective status. It would render the act of making common sense distinctions between boys and girls illegal. Would this mean that high schools that receive federal funds would be prohibited from excluding a boy who wishes he were a girl from participation in, for example, girls’ sports?

Furthermore, this bill, which has 70 co-sponsors, all but one of whom are Democrats, applies not only to high schools but to elementary schools as well.

Take Action: Contact your U.S. Representative to urge him/her to oppose homosexuality affirming laws.

As federal legislation, it would rob communities of the right to control their own schools.

This legislation is not about preventing bullying. Every school in this country already has policy written that expressly prohibits bullying and harassment. The goal of this legislation is to impose the following rules and unproven, non-factual assumptions on all publicly subsidized schools:

• that homosexuality is analogous to race or disability
• that disapproval of volitional homosexual acts constitutes bullying and should be censored
• that Gender Identity Disorder is not a disorder
• that cross-dressing and elective amputations are appropriate therapeutic responses to gender confusion
• to prohibit public schools from making the common sense determination that the biological fact of maleness and femaleness is, indeed, an objective reality (This discussion does not address true intersex conditions which are biological disorders distinct from Gender Identity Disorder.)
• to compel all children in the entire nation to acquiesce to all of these fallacious and destructive assumptions

Because of the efforts of parents of a boy who self-identifies as a girl, an elementary school inMainewas ordered to allow this boy to use the girls’ restrooms. Subsequently, the Maine Human Rights Commission created guidelines to ensure that all schools be similarly required to violate the privacy rights of all children by accommodating the gender confusion of a very small number of students. The Christian Civic League of Maine offers some portentous insight into how this proposed legislation will play out:

[G]ay activists have disclosed new state guidelines requiring schools to allow young children to have access to facilities of the opposite sex. Under the proposed guidelines, boys who self-identify as female will have access to girls’ sports teams and cheerleading squads, girls’ bathrooms, and girls’ locker rooms….

Although the recommendations are offered to public schools, colleges, and other educational institutions in the form of ‘guidelines,’ schools which violate the ‘guidelines’ will be brought before the Commission, and may be subject to further legal action.

The Christian Civic League of Maine believes that these new ‘guidelines’ are not merely an error in judgment on the part of the MHRC. Rather, they represent the latest effort by the homosexual lobby to impose their confused views of human sexuality on society at large. The homosexual lobby has obtained its goals by a strategy of incrementalism, taking an inch of ground at a time in the expectation that society will someday capitulate entirely.

But the latest demand by the homosexual lobby is quite intolerable, having sunk to the level of an impossible absurdity. Gay activists are now demanding that young girls believe and publicly acknowledge that a biological boy in their locker room is, in fact, a girl. Gay activists are now demanding that their own private mental delusions about sex be accepted as public policy. By issuing this demand, radical homosexual activists are asking all of us to participate in a form of collective moral insanity, a mass delusion spread by the homosexual lobby.

Adoption of this policy would mean that every parent of students in that school would have to explain to their young children why a boy is using the girls’ bathrooms. Parents would have to teach their six-year-old girls about a pathological disorder about which no little girl should be taught. And young children would have both their innocence and their privacy rights violated.

A cursory look at the organizations that are over the moon about this legislation should be sufficient to alarm even the most complacent Americans:

the Human Rights Campaign (HRC); the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN); American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU); Gay-Straight Alliance Network; Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD); Lambda Legal; National Association of School Psychologists; National Association of Secondary School Principals; National Center for Lesbian Rights; National Center for Transgender Equality; National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund; National Women’s Law Center; School Social Work Association of America; Transgender Law Center; The American Association of University Women.

According to the homosexual online magazine, D.C. Agenda, U.S. Representative Jared Polis is “planning to push for inclusion of his legislation as a component of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act authorization bill.”