I was hoping not to wade into the gutter with the critics of Douglas Wilson, who in IFI’s view is one of the most important truth-tellers on the corrupt American scene. But the calumny hurled at Wilson is so manifestly unjust that we cannot remain on the curb any longer.

For those who don’t know Douglas Wilson, he is a faithful, wise Christian, a theologian, and pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho with the increasingly rare gift for foreseeing where intellectual trends are leading both the church and the culture and for fearlessly warning against these trends. He is a brilliant writer with a gift for incisive metaphor and biting satire, which he has employed to critique, among other things, toxic feminism, toxic un-masculinity, unbiblical egalitarianism, the failure of churches to apply biblical church discipline, and “pomosexuality” (i.e., post-modern sexuality, including “trans”-cultism).

Wilson is semi-regularly attacked in an unholy effort to destroy him by false allegations, innuendo, lies of omission, and idiotic out-of-context memes. All of these tactics are aided and abetted by the poor reading skills of Americans, a stubborn refusal to do the hard work of closely and objectively examining sensationalistic allegations, and a faux-Victorian sensibility that sends some to the fainting couch following an encounter with toasty rhetoric (as opposed to church lady-approved milquetoasty rhetoric).

The most recent attack comes by way of that purveyor of wisdom and virtue: Vice Magazine—or as Wilson aptly calls it Vile Magazine. In an article titled, “Inside the Church That Preaches ‘Women Need to Be Led by a Firm Hand,’” feminist and opponent of theological orthodoxy, Sarah Stankorb, admits to interviewing only “12 former and current church members and Logos students.” Logos schools is the K-12 school founded by Christ Church.

For some perspective, Christ Church currently has 900 members. Logos school has 562 current students and 583 alumni. And the college affiliated with Christ Church, New Saint Andrews, currently has 196 undergraduate students and 40 graduate students, and has issued over 500 Bachelor of Arts degrees. Anyone could find a dozen disgruntled complainants from among well over 2,000 to gripe about any institution, pastor, or teacher.

Stankorb refers to the “communal ecosystem” in Moscow, Idaho composed of “the K-12 Logos School; a publishing house, Canon Press; an unaccredited pastoral ministry program, Greyfriars Hall; and a private college, New Saint Andrews.” Take note of the adjective/pejorative “unaccredited,” intended to tacitly discredit the pastoral ministry program. Leftists are all googly-eyed about “accreditation.”

I guess this makes Moscow, Idaho similar to the communal ecosystem found in the Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago where Stankorb would find the pre-K-12 University of Chicago Lab Schools; a publishing house, the University of Chicago Press; the accredited University of Chicago Divinity School; and a private university, the University of Chicago.

Maybe, just maybe, Christians want the freedom and ability to do some of the things leftists, who control public K-12 schools, most colleges and universities, and publishing companies, enjoy.

Stankorb tells the story of a woman called “Jean” who details her abusive marriage, implicating unnamed leaders of Trinity Reformed—a Christ Church plant—as facilitators of her abuse, none of whom were Doug Wilson.

“Jean,” whose real name is not used, alleges that since she divorced her husband and left Christ Church, her car has been vandalized multiple times and she’s been called “whore, b*tch, and c*nt,” online. None of the miscreants have been named. And neither Stankorb nor “Jean” provided any evidence that Doug Wilson or Christ Church leaders or parishioners were involved in any of these offensive acts.

The pseudonymous “Jean” also told Stankorb that an unnamed man in Christ Church “told her a man is allowed to rape his wife.” Again, not Wilson, and the article did not say that “Jean” shared this comment with Wilson who has made it clear that he abhors marital rape as does every other decent man.

Stankorb brings up two of Wilson-haters’ favorite stories, and she does what all Wilson-haters do: She gives astonishingly short shrift to very complicated stories several of whose central characters have lied (not Wilson) and subsequently admitted to lying (not Wilson). Stankorb likely assumed that very few readers would take the time necessary to research the stories in depth.

The Bible commands Christians to “judge with righteous judgment,” so here is a link to information provided by Wilson on these two controversies for those interested in seeing evidence before forming judgments.

And here’s a link to information provided by Wilson on other controversies ginned up by secular leftists and Christians who hate complementarianism and piquant rhetoric.

I must acknowledge that Stankorb is a skillful writer, and by “skillful,” I mean cunning. She writes in such a way as to be able to claim she was truthful, while tainting Wilson’s character through innuendo and critical omissions.

Stankorb, whose previous articles expose her personal animus toward theological orthodoxy, goes on to criticize Wilson indirectly by criticizing his father, the liberal townies’ feelings about Christ Church’s land purchases, Christ Church’s disciplinary policies and theological positions, and Logos School’s dress code and biblical beliefs on the nature and roles of men and women.

Another of the Wilson critics cited by Stankorb is Sarah Bader who identifies herself as a “cult fighting” “atheist” and “humanist.” As evidence of just how dishonest Bader is, she posted this quote on her Twitter feed implying it was about Wilson:

Let me be clear, strange grown men cannot go around bending near-pubescent girls over desks to spank them then be surprised when somebody brings up the obvious sexual element.

That quote was not written by Bader, and it was not about Wilson. It was written by another woman Stankorb cited, Kamilla Niska, on her Facebook page on September 29, 2021 at 8:12 a.m. And it wasn’t written about Wilson but about a former Logos teacher and current superintendent Matthew Whitling, whom Niska alleges spanked her to get his sexual jollies.

Those who aren’t members of the “Believe All Women,” club would need more than this allegation to condemn Whitling. Moreover, there is no allegation from Niska that Wilson had any knowledge of the alleged spankings.

One of Wilson’s essays that popped the eyes and twisted the knickers of some Christians was a rip-snorting critique of the morally repellent, heretical Lutheran “pastor” Nadia Bolz-Weber, the tatted up supporter of “ethically sourced” porn and  other forms of sexual deviance about whom I have written.

Three years ago, in a condescending effort to mock sexual purity by mocking “purity rings,” Bolz-Weber asked her disciples to send their rings to her, after which she melted them and had them sculpted into a statuette of a vagina, which she ceremoniously presented to feminist icon Gloria Steinem.

In analyzing this act, Wilson used the word that best describes the shockingly evil, obscene rebellion against God’s creation and moral order to which Christians have become desensitized:

Bolz-Weber most certainly does understand symbolism, and she also understands—just as well—the utter inability of conservative critics to read or understand what she is saying by that symbolism. Here we have two feminist women, created by God to be the image and glory of man, and in high rebellion against that glory one of them makes a symbolic idol out of purity rings, in order to celebrate impurity. …

So let me tell you what this symbolism really means. This is what they are saying. They are shamelessly declaring to the world that they are just a couple of c*nts.

Wilson was decidedly not calling any women “c*nts.” He was saying that’s what Bolz-Weber and Gloria Steinem are, in effect, calling themselves by their actions. To bowdlerize their work by prettifying the description would be to allow Christians to continue in their blithe indifference and inadequate responses to the gangrenous rot that now engulfs America’s children.

Some Wilson critics argue that using the “c” word in any context constitutes a violation of the biblical command that Christians are to be “above reproach.” But on what basis are they claiming his use of the “c” word in this context is a reproachable sin? Because they don’t like his use of it in this context or in any context?

I suspect some of these critics would find it a reproachable sin if Wilson called women fat or lazy cows as the prophet Amos does. I suspect some of these critics would find it a reproachable sin if Wilson were to talk about the unfaithful as whores who lust after lovers with genitals like donkeys whose “emissions” are like those of stallions as Ezekiel does. I suspect some of these critics would object to Wilson comparing—in contemporary language—the unfaithful to women who melt down gold and silver to sculpt into a male object with which to have sex as Ezekiel does.

Some of Wilson’s critics cherry-pick Scripture to condemn Wilson but ignore the part about exposing the unfruitful works of darkness. Do they agree with C.S. Lewis that Christians “must be trained to feel … disgust and hatred at those things which really are … disgusting and hateful”? (emphasis added)

Are those pastors who refuse to boldly condemn homoerotic acts and relationships, same-sex “marriage,” fornication, and cross-dressing guilty of reproachable sin? Are those pastors who refuse to boldly condemn public schools that introduce homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation to children guilty of reproachable sin? Are those pastors who say and do nothing while children in their congregations are “educated” in institutions that teach them that evil is good guilty of reproachable sin? Are pastors who use incorrect or socially constructed pronouns that embody lies guilty of reproachable sin?

A lesser but likely problem attendant to all this judgy-judging is that once Christians make repeated public indictments of a fellow Christian, pride can begin to creep in, providing an incentive to maintain their position even in the face of countervailing evidence. In fact, pride incentivizes tightly squeezing closed their eyes, plugging their ears, and stopping up the access and passage to remorse.

As the saying goes, this isn’t Wilson’s first rousing rodeo. He has been attacked before by both the evangelical right (of which I am a part) and the secular left. Some of the rage against him is now spilling over onto Illinois Family Institute. We are accused of inviting him to speak and promoting his work.

“Guilty” as charged.

We have invited him to speak, and we promote his work because we believe he is one of the truly good guys in the cultural war between light and dark. And we have examined the allegations against him and found them false.

We have looked at the biblical consonance of his words, the soundness of his prognostications, the wisdom of his advice, and both sides of the allegations against him and believe he is more than worthy of support.

We at IFI are accustomed to attacks, generated ultimately by the father of lies whose goal is to marginalize and destroy truth-tellers. Satan delights in destroying the ability of Christians to expose the unfruitful works of darkness and preach the whole gospel, including the culturally inconvenient bits.

While some Christians may not like Wilson’s writing style, many others do. Both the content and style inspire and embolden them. What those who detest his style believe is not merely that Wilson should not write the way he does but that no Christian should. I’ve been told that no Christian should ever use “sarcasm” or “call names”–not even when discussing evil and those who promote it. Those Christians probably hate Juvenal and Jonathan Swift too.

For your edification and enjoyment, here are some YouTube videos of Pastor Doug Wilson at IFI events:

Should Christians Send Their Children to Public School?

Should Christians Use Transgender Pronouns?

What is a Christian Worldview?

How is Transgenderism Unbiblical?

‘Trans’ Identification & Creational Norms

Pastor Doug Wilson – Sanity as Insurrection

An Interview with Pastor Doug Wilson (2015)

Pastor Doug Wilson’s Keynote Remarks at the 2015 IFI Annual Banquet

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/The-Smearing-of-Doug-Wilson.mp3

In a 2020 interview with The Guardian, Fleetwood Mac singer Stevie Nicks revealed her over-inflated sense of the importance of Fleetwood Mac in her rationalization of the decision to end the life of her unborn child:

If I had not had that abortion, I’m pretty sure there would have been no Fleetwood Mac. There’s just no way that I could have had a child then, working as hard as we worked constantly. And there were a lot of drugs, I was doing a lot of drugs … I would have had to walk away. … And I knew that the music we were going to bring to the world was going to heal so many people’s hearts and make people so happy. And I thought: you know what? That’s really important. There’s not another band in the world that has two lead women singers, two lead women writers. That was my world’s mission.

In Nicks’ view, drug use and the music of Fleetwood Mac are of more value than the life of her child. Somehow the omniscient Nicks just knew that Fleetwood Mac’s music would “heal” more hearts and make more people “happy” than her child would have. In Nicks’ view her world mission depended on the intentional killing of her child.

Here are some questions for anyone nodding in agreement with Nicks’ self-absorbed, grandiose claims:

• Has anyone’s heart been healed more by Fleetwood Mac music—or any music—than by the ministrations and love of people?

• Is there a human who would choose to spend their last days listening to Fleetwood Mac songs over sitting with their spouses, children, grandchildren, or siblings?

• What kind of a narcissist or fool thinks the glass ceiling-tapping presence of two female lead singers and writers in a rock band is of greater value than the existence of a human being—any human being—including those deemed imperfect, inconvenient, or the least accomplished by worldly standards?

Nicks is not alone in her self-centered ignorance. Recently, the morally vacuous political animal and Catholic apostate U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) was asked by a reporter,

Is an unborn baby at 15 weeks a human being?

Pelosi hissed evasively,

Let me just say that I am a big supporter of Roe v. Wade. I am a mother of five children in six years. I think I have some standing on this issue as to respecting a woman’s right to choose.

Perhaps she could enlighten people as to why having given birth to five children in six years grants her some special standing to decide which humans can be slaughtered.

Since her viperish response didn’t answer the question, the intrepid reporter tried again. This time the always-humble public servant Pelosi ignored the question entirely. The arrogant and powerful assume the right to refuse to justify their words and actions—actions that potentially affect the lives and existence of millions of people.

Friday Night Lights and Titans actress Minka Kelly rationalizes her abortion via prophecy:

When I was younger I had an abortion. It was the smartest decision I could’ve made, not only for myself & my boyfriend at the time, but also for this unborn fetus. … Having a baby at that time would have only perpetuated the cycle of poverty, chaos and dysfunction I was born into.

Kelly employs the classic and relentlessly employed fallacy of the false dichotomy. She implies there are only two choices: abortion or a life of poverty, chaos, and dysfunction. But there’s a third choice: adoption. Moreover, it’s grotesque to suggest that it’s better for a human to be dead than poor.

Kelly continued, saying,

outlawing abortion has never stopped women from attempting it.

True, and outlawing murder, theft, and rape hasn’t stopped people from murdering, stealing, and raping either, so should we apply Kelly’s principle consistently?

Here are some surprising and relevant statistics from the pro-human slaughter Guttmacher Institute:

In 1930, abortion was listed as the official cause of death for almost 2,700 women. … The death toll had declined to just under 1,700 by 1940, and to just over 300 by 1950 (most likely because of the introduction of antibiotics in the 1940s, which permitted more effective treatment of the infections that frequently developed after illegal abortion). By 1965, the number of deaths due to illegal abortion had fallen to just under 200.

Compare those numbers of tragic accidental deaths to the intentional slaughter of 63,000,000 humans in the womb in the United States since 1973. Every one of the 200 accidental deaths of women in 1965 could have been prevented by those women not choosing to pursue the murder of their unborn children. The 63,000,000 humans intentionally slaughtered since 1973 had no choice about what was done to their bodies.

In discussing her decision to have the child she conceived with Warren Beatty in 1961 killed, actress Joan Collins demonstrated the worldly values that impel child sacrifice:

It would have been absolute career death for me to have done that. … it would have been unthinkable to have a child.

[Warren Beatty] didn’t have any money, I had nothing, and I believe if you are going to bring a child into the world that you have to have a responsibility to that child.

I’m so happy that [Collins’ daughter] Tara … was my first child, I love her dearly and it would not have been the same had I had another child.

Collins’ warped view of familial responsibility apparently includes killing members of impoverished families. (Never mind that Collins had appeared in 22 movies between 1952 and 1961; that in 1961 Warren Beatty starred in the award-winning, box office blockbuster Splendor in the Grass; and that his sister Shirley MacLaine had been a Hollywood star for six years. Maybe Collins was using the phrase “didn’t have any money” figuratively. Or maybe Hollywood actors aren’t good at sharing or helping loved ones in need.)

What kind of moral compass leads a woman to conclude that the best solution to presumed future poverty is having her child killed? What kind of person believes her love for her second child would have been diminished had she not had her first child killed?

Perhaps feminist icon Gloria Steinem’s reason for having an illegal abortion in 1956 when she was 22 best illustrates the self-worship that impels the human slaughter movement:

I just knew that if I went home and married, which I would’ve had to do, it would be to the wrong person; it would be to a life that wasn’t mine, that wasn’t mine at all.

Like so many other cultural movements since the sexual revolution, the human-slaughter movement is shaped and impelled by self-worship and its necessary corollary, self-indulgence. Career aspirations, alleged lack of money, and a distorted understanding of love justify feticide for the selfish and self-absorbed.

Leftist entertainers pontificate endlessly about the value and importance of their “craft,” while denying the value and importance of their children, deeming them unworthy of even a drop of the sustaining milk of human kindness.

Tragically, in our idolatrous culture, these are our “influencers.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/2-Self-Worship-and-the-Slaughter-of-the-Unborn.mp3

In their pursuit of replacing culture with anti-culture, the spanking new 21st Century culture Reformers are going to be very busy. Rather than nailing 95 theses on a church door, they’re going to tear down 950,000 monuments and place names honoring imperfect and altogether yucky colorless people and replace them I guess with the names of perfect colorful people. This provides yet more evidence of the silliness of Barack Obama’s out-of-context quote, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” It also provides evidence of the truth of Dr. Martin Luther King‘s use of the quote, first spoken by 19th Century pastor Theodore Parker:

Evil may so shape events that Caesar will occupy a palace and Christ a cross, but that same Christ will rise up and split history into A.D. and B.C., so that even the life of Caesar must be dated with [Christ’s] name. Yes, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Neither Theodore Parker nor Dr. King was making the point that history moves always and ineluctably toward justice. They were making the point that ultimately Christ will redeem history. Christ has already won. It’s interesting that leftists have adopted BCE and CE in order to no longer refer to Christ. No matter, Christ still wins.

In the meantime, the devil roams the earth lying and destroying.

Now, after decades of canceling conservatives through a thousand tiny cuts and an occasional deep slash, the Reformers smell all that yummy human blood and are mercilessly cannibalizing their own.

The cannibals at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art forced out their curator, Gary Garrels, “[c]onsidered one of the country’s most prominent curators,” for the sin of saying he “would not stop collecting work by white men lest the institution take part in ‘reverse discrimination.’” The cannibals leapt on him. First, he tried futilely to stop the attack by groveling, saying,

I want to offer my personal and sincere apology to every one of you. I realized almost as soon as I used the term ‘reverse discrimination’ that this is an offensive term and was an extremely poor choice of words on my part.

His groveling delayed their devouring by seconds. The Cannibal Reformers responded, yum yum eat ‘im up. He’s gone, baby, gone.

The Cannibal Reformers have been noshing on Lin-Manuel Miranda, the beloved leftist author of the beloved musical Hamilton, for being insufficiently Reformed.

Homosexual, slightly conservative and now former New York magazine writer Andrew Sullivan was nibbled on for writing in ways about the protests that “triggered” “sensitive junior editors.” He resigned before being eaten alive.

And on social media and in her former place of business, writer Bari Weiss, who describes herself as  “center left on most things … and … socially liberal,” was gnawed on mercilessly. When the Cannibal Reformers, with blood dripping from their ghoulish mouths, paused to catch their breath, Weiss fled and used her best weapon to try to stop the cannibalization. She wrote and posted a resignation letter that exposes the intolerant, bigoted, ideologically non-diverse work environment at the New York Times:

[T]he lessons that ought to have followed the [2016] election—lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism, and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society—have not been learned. …

My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist. … Several colleagues perceived to be friendly with me were badgered by coworkers. My work and my character are openly demeaned. …  [S]ome coworkers insist I need to be rooted out if this company is to be a truly “inclusive” one, while others post ax emojis next to my name. Still other New York Times employees publicly smear me as a liar and a bigot on Twitter with no fear that harassing me will be met with appropriate action. They never are. …

[T]he truth is that intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at The Times. … Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.

Weiss’s resignation echoes what leftist journalist Matt Taibbi wrote in June:

It feels liberating to say after years of tiptoeing around the fact, but the American left has lost its mind. It’s become a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness.

I worked with such Robespierres and experienced firsthand their bigotry and hypocrisy at Deerfield High School on Chicago’s North Shore. Ironically, some of the most vicious bullies were those who most vigorously claimed to honor all voices and to value diversity even as they promoted only one set of assumptions on how to think about race, sex, and erotic attraction. All views with which district oppressors disagreed were designated “hateful” and  their imperious judgments justified silencing—through bullying if necessary—all dissenting voices. While proclaiming that everyone should “Speak” their “Truth,” they ostracized anyone who expressed truths they hated.

Seeing the cannibals eating their own, ethics (or panic) seized 153 men and women who work in journalism, academia, and the arts—mostly leftists—and penned an open letter in Harpers in which they “raise their voices against” the “new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity.” The signatories include Margaret Atwood, Noam Chomsky, Todd Gitlin, Garry Kasparov, Damon Linker, Steven Pinker, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Jonathan Rauch, J.K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie, Gloria Steinem, Randi Weingarten, Garry Wills, Matthew Yglesias, and Fareed Zakaria.

After first taking potshots at conservatives, as is their wont to do, they wrote this:

The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. … [C]ensoriousness is … spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters.

But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. … the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.

This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation.

Some of the most bloodthirsty cancel culture cannibals live and move and have their anti-being in the “trans” cult, and when Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling said men can’t be women, the Cannibal Reformers came for her with bared fangs and unsheathed drag queen talons. Fortunately, Rowling has an impenetrable armor made of gold bricks. Unfortunately, few Americans have such armor. Maybe AOC, Bernie, and Biden can provide some to each and every American—oh, and while they’re providing free stuff, I’d like my fair share: a Martha’s Vineyard mansion just like the Obamas’.

While this letter is a good start in undoing the damage done to the Republic by leftists, seeing the name of the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, undermines trust in the sincerity of the signatories in that teachers’ unions are at the forefront of leftist politicking, including using schools to advance their leftist ideology.

Not surprisingly, when the letter was published, the Cannibal Reformers lost what was left of their minds, beginning with Todd VanDerWerff, whose “trans” alter ego is “Emily” VanDerWerff. To be clear in the miasmic ontological fog created by the noxious exhalations of the “trans” cult, “Emily” is a biological man—forever.

He, like Harper’s letter signatory Matthew Yglesias, is a writer at Vox, and VanDerWerff laughably claimed that upon seeing Yglesias’ signature near the signature of J.K. Rowling, he felt “less safe working at Vox.” And the Cannibal Reformers were off and terrorizing.

Leftist stormtroopers unaccustomed to pushback kicked up a Twitter storm, and fearing for their professional lives, a handful of Harper’s letter signatories bailed. Three days later, a racist counter letter appeared, griping that many of the Harper’s letter signatories were “white, wealthy, and endowed with massive platforms.” Of course many were wealthy and endowed with massive platforms because only those with wealth and massive platforms can survive the Cannibal Reformers’ Purges.

What we need now is massive pushback against ideological Robespierres, storm troopers, and Cannibal Reformers. Don’t let their tactics intimidate you. Don’t be manipulated. Don’t be deceived. Don’t hold your fire. And don’t send your kids to their re-education camps.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Leftists-Canceling-and-Cannibalizing-Their-Own_audio.mp3

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Once upon a time in America, society demanded civility and honored women and motherhood.

But honor seems to have been tossed by the wayside in this modern era and exchanged for a cheap view of the female sex.

What happened to so utterly change the widespread estimation of the “fairer” sex?

First, we must understand that our nation’s mores were built upon a biblical worldview. We read this in Proverbs:

Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing,
But a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised. (Proverbs 31:30)

He who finds a wife finds a good thing,
And obtains favor from the Lord. (Proverbs 18:22)

The Founders — many of whom were devout Christians and the rest of whom believed in a Creator and respected biblical Christianity — envisioned a country of free men and women and families devoted to one another, worshipping freely.

During the years when Americans adhered to the original worldview of the first settlers and Founders, individuals were treated with respect. Each person was acknowledged as created by God and thus intrinsically valuable.

Women were protected and honored. Pregnant women were protected and honored. Mothers were respected and honored.

But with the twentieth century came some wholly destructive changes.

In 1921, Margaret Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, which became Planned Parenthood in 1942, and ushered in the radical notion that babies in the womb had no intrinsic worth. Their worth was determined by their usefulness to society.

Sanger convinced many women that motherhood was not a blessing and that some people by virtue of their mental abilities or race were not worthy of life. This was a monumental lie based on a Darwinist worldview.

Planned Parenthood’s nefarious founder accepted and promoted the philosophical assumptions of “materialism“:

a theory that physical matter is the only or fundamental reality and that all being and processes and phenomena can be explained as manifestations or results of matter.

Sanger’s philosophical beliefs contributed to the erosion of the view of mankind as the height of God’s creation, replacing it with a “utilitarian” viewpoint. Utilitarianism deems people worthy of life based on their capacity to contribute to society.

In the span of twenty years many Americans were persuaded that people were not intrinsically valuable because God created them, but rather, a person’s value was dependent upon their utilitarian value.

Next came Hugh Hefner and Second-wave feminists like Helen Gurley Brown and Gloria Steinem who persuaded men and women that sex apart from marriage and procreation was fine and dandy. Throw off the chains of old thinking and embrace your sexuality!

Helen Gurley Brown convinced several generations of women to engage in sex outside the safety of a loving marriage. Ms. Brown taught young women, enamored of Cosmo and the free love mantras of the day, that the sole goal of sex was orgasm and pleasure.

Counter that with God’s wondrous idea: sexual intimacy was to be the height of oneness between a man and wife, and the means of procreation. Marriage was intended to be a safe place, a refuge, where a loving husband and wife could raise children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.

But indeed, if humans are not wondrously created by a Creator but, instead, are merely biologic units, then sex is no different than any other biological activity.

Hugh Hefner with his slick Playboy magazine indoctrinated decades of men of all ages with the lie that unrestrained sex is a terrific recreational activity and women’s bodies are the intended venue. Playboy perpetuated the view of women as playmates.

If a man believes that women are good for a thrill, like a ride at Six Flags, he is less likely to consider her character and heart important. He becomes concerned only with her body.

Hefner was a proponent of the “if it feels good do it” movement and convinced millions of men to throw off  archaic, puritanical ideas about womanhood and sex.

It was a very short step from nullifying mankind’s intrinsic value to sex with no restraint.

Add to that horrendous mix of immoral indoctrination the radical feminist movement. If Cosmopolitan magazine was the “bible” of free love, sex and orgasm for the single girl, Gloria Steinem was the prophetess of the sexual revolution.

Steinem founded Ms. magazine in 1969, which happily harmonized with Cosmo, further disseminating the dogma of free love and sex without the tedious tether of marriage.

The devotees of Brown and Steinem–who were once college radicals burning bras, protesting the Vietnam War, rebelling against parental authority, and belittling the institution of marriage–are now ensconced in America’s halls of academia teaching malleable young minds.

We now know what happens when you teach a nation that people have no intrinsic value, that women are mere means to pleasure, that women should want unfettered sex whenever and however, and that humans in utero are disposable.

Women in 2017 are beginning to realize that they’ve been sold a rotten to the core bill of goods.

In 2017, America has been forced to reckon with the consequences of almost a century of humanistic, unbiblical, immoral ideology. Free “love” is neither love nor free. It’s hedonism and it’s costly.

Women are objectified. Sexually transmitted diseases proliferate. Unwanted pregnancies terminated by abortion result in, not only murdered babies, but severe depression in women. Men, being denied their rightful duty and purpose to protect women and children, are emasculated and devalued.

How can we turn this around? How can we once again teach the amazing worth of each man and woman, boy and girl?

How can we teach men that women are not playmates to use but, rather, persons created in the image and likeness of God?

How can we turn back the clock to a time when men honored women–a time when men would stand when a lady entered a room?

America can change only if we as a nation turn to the principles that first made us great: God’s principles.

America can become a safe place once more for women and babies if we teach the transcendent truth that “all men [and women] are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Americans can realize the great heritage of our nation if we repent and acknowledge the words of the Psalmist:

Happy are the people whose God is the Lord!

End-of-Year Challenge

As you may know, IFI has a year-end matching challenge to raise $160,000. That’s right, a great group of IFI supporters are colluding with us to provide an $80,000 matching challenge to help support IFI’s ongoing work to educate, motivate and activate Illinois’ Christian community.

Please consider helping us reach this goal!  Your donation will help us stand strong in 2018!  To make a credit card donation over the phone, please call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.  You can also send a gift to:

Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 876
Tinley Park, Illinois 60477