In October of last year, in a “girls” high school volleyball game in North Carolina, a student was injured painfully. The ball was spiked by a member of the opposing team—only it wasn’t by a biological female but a biological male—a transgender player. That had to leave a mark. Watch the video for yourself.

Today that girl, Payton McNabb, is speaking out to support a bill that would disallow biological males from competing in girls’ sports.

In our Brave New World, people can claim to identify as a member of the opposite sex, and so it is. But that neither comports with the Bible nor science.

In his new book, The War on Virtue, Dr. William Donohue, the president of the Catholic League, writes, “Among many members of the ruling class, gender ideology is all the rage. But the fact is that we cannot change our sex. We are either male or female. We cannot change our chromosomes.”

Congress acted last week to bar biological males from competing with biological females in schools and colleges that receive federal funds. It passed in the House, 219-203.

The sponsor of the bill, Greg Steube (R-Florida) said, “The integrity of women’s sports must be protected.” Kevin McCarthy (R-California) called it a “great day for America, a great day for girls and women and for fairness in sports.”

Sadly, not one Democrat voted for it. No, not one. And President Biden threatens to veto it.

Furthermore, punishment awaits those who deviate from the new “sexual orthodoxy” that claims a man can be a woman if he so wills it. Such as a Christian school in New England.

Last month, the New York Post reported, “A Vermont high school has been banned from participating in state athletics after its girls’ hoops team forfeited a playoff game against a team with a trans player.” And so it goes in our Brave New World.

Terry Schilling, executive director of the American Principles Project, has become an outspoken critic of the transgender movement. In a radio segment on its impact on women’s sports, Terry told me: “The transgender movement believes that sex is not important. What is really important is your gender identity or who you identify as. Men and women are different. Our founding fathers would have said it is a ‘self-evident truth’ that men and women are different.”

Schilling adds, “We have studied this scientifically—the biological difference between males and females, and there are many of them. When they come to sports, they apply the most. Men have more bone density than women do. Men are taller on average. Men are typically faster. They have more muscle mass….This is what scientific research has shown time and time again. And it’s all related to our hormones and our biological makeup, and it’s why we needed to create Title IX.”

The federal government notes that Title IX is a part of the Education Amendments of 1972: “Title IX protects people from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance.”

Out of Title IX grew women’s sports leagues. So that women could compete against women.

But the transgender movement is disrupting all this. Many girls who have practiced for years in a particular sport are now losing to biological males who have a natural advantage over them. The girls then lose out on valuable scholarships.

What are biological males doing in women’s sports? It is grossly unfair. Sometimes it’s even dangerous—as in the volleyball example.

One of the great ideals of America is basic fairness. It’s abiding by the Golden Rule, articulated by Jesus, that we should treat others as we would want to be treated. If you were a biological female, would you want to have to compete with biological males claiming to be girls?

Some of our presidents noted the importance of the Golden Rule in a variety of contexts:

• Teddy Roosevelt told the Congress: “The Golden Rule should be, and as the world grows in morality it will be, the guiding rule of conduct among nations as among individuals.”

• President Harry Truman noted, “All the questions which now beset us in strikes and wages and working conditions would be so much simpler if men and women were willing to apply the principles of the Golden Rule. Do as you would be done by.”

• Before he became president, California Governor Ronald Reagan asserted, “With freedom goes responsibility. Sir Winston Churchill once said you can have 10,000 regulations and still not have respect for the law. We might start with the Ten Commandments. If we lived by the Golden Rule, there would be no need for other laws.”

The longer society goes down this path, the longer we abandon our moral sanity, the worse off we are.

[Hat tip to Bill Federer and his America’s God and Country for help with the quotes.]

A national group of Satanists is putting their cards on the table.  They are opposing abortion restrictions and adamantly defending abortion as worship of their god.

Meanwhile, a group of liberal pastors in Maine claims that abortion can supposedly be the Christian thing to do. In an op-ed in the Bangor Daily News, “Why a Christian minister supports abortion rights,” their leader writes of the importance of “reproductive justice.”

Abortion is a spiritual battle. So what does the Bible have to say abortion?

I write this shortly after the 49th anniversary of Roe v. Wade (and its companion decision, Doe v. Bolton) of January 22, 1973, that gave us abortion on demand. And here we are 63 million abortions later. That’s nothing to celebrate—but much to mourn.

Psalm 106:37 speaks of a time of disobedient Israelites, noting, “They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to false gods. They shed innocent blood…and the land was desecrated by their blood. They defiled themselves by what they did.”

Did Christ ever address abortion? Not directly. But note how His brilliant statement on human relations, the Golden Rule (Matthew 7:12), has direct application to the subject of abortion.

“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them,” He said in the Sermon on the Mount. You were once an unborn baby. Would you have wanted your mother to kill you in utero? The majority of those mothers feel forced, against their will, to abort.

When Ronald Reagan was running for president in 1980, he was asked why he wasn’t “pro-choice.” He responded, “I’ve noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born.” Touché.

Dr. D. James Kennedy once said, “If you’re pro-choice, you should get down on your knees and thank God that you’re mother wasn’t pro-choice.”

Some people say that abortion doesn’t kill human beings. And yet everything you and I are—our sex, how tall we will be, the color of our eyes—all of these things were determined at the moment of conception.

And from conception to birth, it’s all one continuous period of growth. The Mayo Clinic documents the humanity and growth of the preborn baby in the womb until birth.

We look back at previous generations, and we say, “How could they have been slave-owners?” Well, I believe future generations will look back at us and ask, “How could they have been so complacent about abortion—especially when they had 3-D sonograms, giving them a window to the womb?”

Many times when a pregnant woman contemplating an abortion gets to see the sonogram of her unborn baby, she changes her mind.

David states in Psalm 139, “For you created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

The prophet Jeremiah says this in the very opening of his book: “The word of the Lord came to me saying, ‘Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.’” So, here’s this little unborn baby being appointed a prophet of the nations by God Himself.

Jumping ahead to the New Testament, in Luke 1, we read of two pregnant relatives visiting with each other. Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist, and Mary, who was pregnant with Jesus. Elizabeth says, “As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.” Baby? The Greek word in Luke 1 is brephos, which means baby.

Luke 2:12 says: “The angels told the shepherds, ‘This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.’” The same word, brephos, is used there. Thus, whether in English or in Greek, the word baby is used for born and unborn alike.

The Bible also says that God has made human beings in His image. He has made us a “little lower than the angels” (Psalm 8:5). But many people today believe that we’re essentially “a little higher than the apes.” As the abortion ethic has spread in our culture, like a cancer, it has cheapened human life all the way around.

It’s time we follow the Biblical ethic and treat the unborn as we ourselves would want to be treated. Let them live.

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

Written by Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon 

In a blog post titled “‘Fairness For All’: Smart Politics, Or A Sellout?” (Dec. 13), Rod Dreher, senior editor at The American Conservative,  reports a defense of the recent decision by the boards of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) and the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) to support “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” “federal antidiscrimination law in exchange for religious liberty guarantees written into the same law.” The defense was made by “a prominent conservative Evangelical political strategist who works at both the national and state levels” and whom Dreher calls “Smith.” Rod himself professes to be unsure about the whole subject; an uncertainty that appears to be fueled by his usual belief that voting Republican changes nothing.

The substance of the defense is essentially born of naïve utilitarianism, overlaid with a veneer of high rhetoric about standing up for the “rights” of LGBTQ persons. In effect: We are losing the battle over human sexuality in the culture so, while we still can, let’s cut a deal with proponents of all things “gay” and “transgender” that gives us something in return. They will (allegedly) recognize our good will and then become favorably disposed to protect our “religious liberties” in both the short- and long-term.

The problem with the argument is that it amounts to a policy of appeasement with sexual extremists who advocate (from our perspective) a grossly immoral sexual policy and have never exhibited a “we’ll stop here approach” before. It is an appeasement that requires us to sacrifice our basic principles to get some statutory assurance that can easily be retracted by legislative vote after a full-court indoctrination surge, predicated on the new law, overwhelms remaining resistance. In addition, it is an appeasement that provides only the narrowest of exemptions for religious institutions while throwing under the bus the vast majority of Christians who work and live outside those institutions.

It requires us to sign our own persecution warrant by conceding on a federal level that homosexual practice, “gay marriage,” and sexual mutilation surgery are (as Houghton College President Shirley Mullen, who sits on the boards of both evangelical organizations argued in a position paper) “basic human rights.” Elevating these high acts of sexual immorality to the status of “human rights” in turn slanders reasoned moral arguments against such acts as virulent prejudice akin to racist views.

It gives jurists and legislators the ammunition they need to dismiss any remaining Evangelical resistance to a program of coerced indoctrination and enforcement as inconsistent residual bigotry rather than an instance of rational moral conviction. As Lydia McGrew has pointed out,

[T]his could sabotage any attempt to get an even clearer baker/florist, etc., religious liberty ruling from the Supreme Court in a subsequent case…. A *federal* law enshrining “public accommodations’ non-discrimination rules for sexual orientation could be just what would influence someone like Kavanaugh and possibly others to reverse course rather than going more clearly in the direction of the Masterpiece [Cake] ruling.

Once Evangelical “elites” support special “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” legislation they have conceded (whether they know it or not) that a man having sex with another man and a man subjecting himself to voluntary castration and adopting a female persona are honorable life decisions deserving full government promotion and support.

When the Czechs were compelled to give up the Sudetenland in the Munich Agreement of 1938 in exchange for a contractual assurance of German respect for their sovereignty, they gave up the most defensible and defended part of the country, relying solely on the “good will” of someone who had shown absolutely no previous interest in respecting territorial boundaries. LGBTQ advocates won’t be rounding us up in concentration camps to be gassed, to be sure. Yet they will continue to press for the elimination of every last vestige of “homophobia” and “transphobia” in society by every and any legislative and judicial means. By their own rhetoric they will still regard as hateful ignorant bigots on the level of the Klu Klux Klan, all the more given new federal “anti-discrimination” legislation from which we now seek immoral exemption.

Evangelicals who think otherwise are foolish in the extreme, giving our enemies the club with which to beat us and then taking them at their word that (for the moment) they won’t beat us with it. Then why give them the club in the first place?

According to Smith, “pluralism is about accommodating deep difference” and that requires Evangelicals to “accommodate sexual minorities” and to acknowledge the latter’s “rights.” It is evident already in Smith’s own language that he has given up the store. He has appropriated language of “minorities” and “rights” previously associated with the cause for African American civil rights and applied it to the “LGBTQ” agenda. By definition, then, any resistance to that agenda is “heterosexist” and “cis-sexist.”

Race is about an intrinsically benign, non-behavioral, and immutable facet of human existence. Don’t confuse rhetoric rightly used to support the cause of racial justice with rhetoric that promotes desires (however innate) to do things at fundamental odds with one’s biological design. Contrary to what Smith claims, it is not part of the “common good” to provide special rights for such behavior that will invariably lead to severe state indoctrination and attenuation of both freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion (whatever exemptions we are briefly granted in the law by LGBTQ powers for our detestable prejudices). Smith says that “gay people have a right to be wrong.” They already have that right. What they want is the right to compel others to do things that violate conscience.

Pluralism has its limits. Would Smith apply the same argument to Evangelical hostility against polyamory and adult-consensual incest (these too involve “sexual minorities” and questions about “rights”)? In a pluralist society must we eventually accommodate these “deep differences” too once there is a societal push for such acceptance? How could he possibly argue otherwise given the fact that moral logic predicates opposition to such behavior on a male-female prerequisite for sexual relations and the integrity of a biologically based sexuality, an opposition now surrendered in the public sphere?

Homosexual practice and transgenderism are not “run of the mill” sexual offenses. They are extreme sexual offenses that attack the very foundation of all sexual ethics. The CCCU and NAE want us to promote legislation that honors and protects such behavior and provides the legal reasoning for coercing acceptance in the whole population.

Smith even admits that LGBT activists believe that

Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 dealt a powerful blow to their hopes…. Now they have Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, and Justice Ginsburg aged and frail. LGBT strategists believe that the likelihood of litigating their way to preferred policy outcomes is low under this Court.

Then Smith argues that, despite this perspective, our cause is hopeless because Trump and a Republican-led Congress haven’t done everything in two years. He completely ignores the fact that we haven’t lost federal ground in the sexuality wars and are on the road to strengthening materially our position vis-à-vis the Court without having to surrender our moral convictions in the public sector.

Smith assures us,

I don’t think they’re doing it as a bad-faith stalling tactic.

How ridiculous. Every political example points in the direction that LGBTQ activists will continue their inexorable pursuit of stamping out homophobic and transphobic prejudice (so-called) by all means necessary. These Evangelical appeasers have the “innocent as doves” demeanor down but not the “wise as serpents” part. California moved from outlawing sexual orientation “change therapy” on the part of licensed clinicians for minors to five or six years later making a concerted effort to outlaw it for adults on the part of pastors where an exchange of funds is involved. LGBTQ politicians will push their agenda to the bitter end.

Once we abandon the moral conviction that homosexual and transgender immorality are not “human rights” requiring state promotion, we have no basis for opposing our further persecution. Bigots (in the thinking of LGBTQ activists) are not entitled to exemptions in the long run for a bigotry that harasses “sexual minorities” and induces suicide attempts. LGBTQ activists won’t think us to be any less bigoted because of our surrender. They will simply view us as conviction-less and unprincipled bigots who deserve what is coming to them.

Most galling of all is that Smith even cites the Golden Rule to justify his position:

In Smith’s view, in a pluralistic society like America 2018, ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ is a good rule for religious liberty advocates and gay rights supporters alike.

Jesus didn’t formulate the Golden Rule to provide special legal protections for, and promotion of, immoral behavior. He formulated it to encourage us to act in the best interest of others rather than to engage in vengeful behavior as a response to wrongs committed against one’s self. Since no true Evangelical can possibly believe that self-dishonoring homosexual behavior and attempted erasure of one’s biological sex are positive goods in the best interests of the practitioners, no Evangelical can support the kind of legislation that the CCCU and NAE are now endorsing.

With this kind of reasoning on the part of Smith, it is little wonder that he wants to remain anonymous.

Robert A. J. Gagnon is Professor of New Testament Theology at Houston Baptist University. He has a B.A. degree from Dartmouth College, an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School, and a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. His main fields of interest are Pauline theology and sexual issues in the Bible. He is a member both of the Society of Biblical Literature and of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas [Society of New Testament Studies]. He is the author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001; 520 pgs.); co-author (with Dan O. Via) of Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003; 125 pgs.); and, as a service to the church, provides a large amount of free material on his website dealing with Scripture and homosexuality.

A national coalition of pro-family organizations is urging parents to call their children out of school on the Day of Silence (DOS), an annual event sponsored by the partisan political action group, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). On the DOS, students and sometimes teachers are permitted to remain silent during instructional time to protest the bullying of students who identify as homosexual or transgender.

The coalition that opposes the DOS believes that it’s inappropriate to allow political protests to intrude into instructional time. Grove City College professor, Dr. Warren Throckmorton, on the other hand, is recommending that students join his “Golden Rule Pledge” effort which urges them to remain in school and pass out cards on which the Golden rule is printed. Apparently, he finds greater moral offense in parents removing their children from class on the DOS than he does in school-sanctioned political protest in the service of GLSEN’s goals, which extend far beyond reducing bullying. Unlike Dr. Throckmorton, we believe that the worthy ends of ending bullying do not justify the means of exploiting instructional time.

According to the DOS website, last year “Hundreds of thousands of students” participated in the Day of Silence, yet school administrators persist in telling gullible parents that this political action is not disruptive to the educational process. DOS participants have a captive audience, many of whom are made uncomfortable by the politicization of their classroom.

Perhaps it’s easier to notice the disruption by imagining what would happen if an anti-war group wanted to remain silent during class to draw attention to the voices of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan; and another group wanted to remain silent during class to draw attention to the silenced voices of women in Muslim countries; and another wanted to remain silent during class to draw attention to the plight of persecuted Christians around the world; and an animal rights group wants to remain silent during class to draw attention to animals killed during medical research; and another group wanted to show solidarity with conservative Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, and Orthodox Jews who are silenced by the hostility of left-leaning educators who dominate discourse in public schools.

Dr. Throckmorton suggests that the “Walkout” is ironic in that it is even more disruptive than silence. I agree that the Walkout is disruptive, but school administrations have turned a deaf ear to reasoned pleas to remove divisive political action from the classroom. Whereas the DOS is intended to politicize the classroom, the “Walkout” is intended to remove children from exposure to yet more pro-homosexual activism and restore political neutrality to the classroom.

Dr. Throckmorton misapplies the “Golden Rule” in his efforts to promote heretical views of the nature and morality of homosexuality. The Golden Rule, which is found in both Luke 6:31 and Matthew 7:12, properly understood, does not mean that believers should affirm all seemingly intractable human desires. Nor does it mean that Christians should refrain from making public statements regarding the immorality of homosexuality. “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets,” means that Christians should affirm to others God’s Word–the entirety of God’s Word–in a godly way. It is absurd to suggest that in order to live out the Golden Rule faithfully Christians must affirm every desire that another human experiences, including even sinful desires.

Last year on his website, Dr. Throckmorton offered an account of ugly behavior on the parts of purported Christians, thus perpetuating, perhaps unintentionally, the myth that all Christians are hateful. Clearly, people who exhibit the behavior described are not living authentic Christian lives. But living authentic Christian lives and protecting those who are being persecuted do not require intrusive classroom political action.

Dr. Throckmorton also raises the specter of “judgmentalism.” Often homosexualists proclaim “Judge not, that you be not judged” as biblical justification for the position that Christians ought not to state publicly that homosexual behavior is immoral. But this verse means that we are not to engage in unrighteous judgment. We’re not to hypocritically condemn the speck in the eye of others while ignoring the plank in our own. We’re to recognize the universality of sin and offer forgiveness as we have been forgiven. This verse does not prohibit Christians from making distinctions between moral and immoral behaviors.

DOS participants claim they merely want to end bullying. The central problem with this claim is that DOS supporters fail to acknowledge the means by which they seek to curb bullying. Supporters of DOS seek to end bullying by undermining the historical and orthodox Christian belief that homosexual and cross-dressing behaviors are immoral. What Day of Silence supporters rarely if ever admit is that they believe that disapproval of homosexual conduct is bullying, and therefore they are working to undermine that belief and prohibit its expression.

The fallacious claim being leveled at critics of the DOS is that opposition to political action in the classroom constitutes support for bullying. Some speciously claim that those who oppose DOS must not care about the suffering of “GLBTQ” teens. Put another way, this implies that the only way parents, students, and teachers can prove they care about the suffering of “GLBTQ” students is to allow classroom political protest. Those who level this charge are suggesting that there are only two options: either you support political protest during instructional time or you support bullying. This is a classic false dilemma. The truth is that students, parents, and teachers can oppose bullying while concomitantly opposing the politicization of instructional time.

DOS participants claim they seek to end discrimination. The problem is that DOS supporters believe that moral convictions with which they disagree constitute discrimination. If, however, we allow schools to define discrimination so expansively as to prohibit all statements of moral conviction, character development is compromised and speech rights are trampled. And if administrators continue to define discrimination in such a way as to preclude only some statements of moral conviction, they violate pedagogical commitments to intellectual diversity and render the classroom a place of indoctrination.

Dr. Throckmorton believes that “Christian students should be leading the way to make schools safe and build bridges to those who often equate ‘Christian’ with condemnation.” In this statement, Dr. Throckmorton glaringly omits the truth that God condemns homosexuality, and therefore all Christians must condemn volitional homosexual conduct. And to those who view homosexuality as moral, this necessary Christian condemnation of homosexual behavior renders homosexuals “unsafe.” Of course, homosexualists don’t apply this principle consistently. They don’t, for example, say that condemnation of polyamory or adult consensual incest or promiscuity renders those who engage in polyamory, promiscuity, or incest “unsafe.”

Christians are obligated to balance truth with grace and love, but on this issue, the church errs on the side of grace and retreats from truth with all due haste. The body of Christ has become cowardly. American Christians flee from the persecution that inevitably results when we speak the truth about homosexual behavior, and then we rationalize our cultural conformity and self-censorship as Christian compassion. Living an authentically orthodox Christian life is irreconcilable with the goals of GLSEN.

Foolish, superficial thinking has resulted in the commonly held belief that affirming students’ feelings represents the zenith of wisdom and compassion. The truth, however, is that the minds and hearts of fallen humans are rife with thoughts and feelings that ought not to be affirmed, even as we affirm the people who experience them.

Teens who experience same-sex attraction no more choose their feelings than any of us choose ours. But as moral beings living for a time in a fallen world suffused with brokenness of all kinds, we are all charged with the same moral task: We all must determine which of our myriad messy feelings are morally legitimate to act upon. Adults are supposed to help children navigate those murky waters.

Many Christians desire to build bridges between the Christian and homosexual communities. The problem is that they are pursuing this noble effort by concealing from their “GLBTQ” friends the true nature of orthodox theological positions on homosexuality.

The goals of building bridges, cultivating community, and fostering relationships between the orthodox Christian community and the GLBTQ community, and spreading the Good News of Christ’s work of redemption within that community are not only noble but critical goals. And certainly different people are called to approach these goals in different ways. But the methods or strategies employed must never sacrifice, obscure, or compromise truth.

If we strain to find ways to avoid speaking the truth that God proscribes homosexual practices, we do a disservice both to those experiencing same-sex attractions and to our relationship with Christ. Our equivocations, evasions, or ambiguity will either appear as untruthful and manipulative, or they will deceive people into thinking we believe something we do not. We should instead do as we are commanded and speak the truth in love.

Dr. Throckmorton might be well-served by remembering the words of Martin Luther:

“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the Word of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Him. Where the battle rages there the loyalty of the soldier is proved; and to be steady on all the battle front besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.”

Those who self-identify as homosexual are no different from those of us who struggle with other sinful inclinations. All of us come to the cross as sinners, and none will be fully sanctified until Christ’s return, but retreat from or obfuscation of what the Bible teaches about, for example, selfishness, greed, envy, pride, promiscuity, fornication, gossip, gluttony, or any other of the myriad manifestations of sin is simply not scriptural–and therefore not good. We don’t want teens bullied for these or any other behaviors, and yet we likely wouldn’t support days of classroom silence during which teachers and students show support for those who engage in these sinful behaviors.

I can already hear the cries of indignation over my analogy. Supporters of the DOS will take umbrage with it because they view these other behaviors as immoral and not constitutive of identity.

But you see, that is the debate. Orthodox Christians view homosexuality as immoral and not constitutive of identity, and therefore we don’t want public education to be used as a conduit for the spread of beliefs we see as false and destructive.

If parents leave their children in school on the Day of Silence as Dr. Throckmorton recommends, they become complicit in the exploitation of the classroom for partisan political purposes. Dr. Throckmorton’s misguided effort does nothing to restore political neutrality to public education. In fact, his effort will help to further institutionalize GLSEN efforts to use public education to undermine orthodox Christian beliefs on the complex and emotionally charged issue of homosexuality.