The infamous William “Will” Thomas, who now pretends to be a woman and goes by the name “Lia,” has had a long-time goal of swimming in the Olympics—a goal thwarted by the fact that he is not fast enough. A little thing like insufficient speed, however, is no obstacle for a man who thinks he can become a woman by wishing really hard. Superstitions die hard, especially in a science-denying culture that worships the self and believes fentanyl use is “empowerment.” So, Thomas soldiers on wearing womanface and a woman’s speedo covering his man parts, hoping to make Olympic trials in 2024.

In an interview with Good Morning America, Thomas said,

I knew there would be scrutiny against me if I competed as a woman. … but I also knew I don’t need anyone’s permission to be myself.

Thomas’s self is male, so taking estrogen and cross-dressing constitute a denial of himself.

Thomas is not seeking permission to be himself. He’s demanding to swim on a women’s team when he’s a man. Objecting to a man swimming on the women’s team is not a denial of permission to be himself. It is a denial of his demand that everyone play along with his desire to masquerade as a woman.

When asked about his change in rankings after he began swimming on the women’s team, Thomas responded that swimming success didn’t factor into his decision. All that he sought was to be his “authentic self”:

The biggest change for me is I’m happy. … Trans people don’t transition for athletics. We transition to be happy and authentic and our true selves. 

All that matters to Thomas are his feelings—not the feelings of female teammates or competitors who too have trained their whole lives only to see hopes and dreams destroyed because Thomas wishes he were a woman.

It is widely reported that Thomas—a man with all his man parts—undressed in women’s locker rooms. Many women strongly feel that as women, they should not and do not want to undress in the presence of male peers. For some of these women, those feelings derive from their faith. Thomas, therefore, denied them permission to be their authentic selves. He made them unhappy.

Well, finally the World Swimming Coaches Association (WSCA) has found some sanity and courage in a dusty corner of a chlorine-choked locker room and tossed another obstacle in the lane of Will Thomas.

On May 13, 2022, the WSCA issued its position statement on “transgender” swimmers, that is, on swimmers who pretend to be the sex they are not and never can be. The statement, unfortunately infused with “trans”-cultic language, reads in part,

[T]he inclusion of transgender people into female sport cannot be balanced with fairness due to the retained differences in strength, stamina and physique that are present when comparing the average female with the average transgender female/non-binary person who was assigned male at birth (whether with or without the involvement of testosterone suppression). This is the primary factor to be considered in an endeavour to balance fairness with inclusion.

A “transgender female” is a male. Non-binary persons don’t exist.  And no one is “assigned” either a sex, or a gender, or a gender identity at birth. But at least the WSCA acknowledges that men and women are different, and those differences matter when it comes to sports.

The WSCA offers a solution:

One … solution is to create a Trans Division. The Trans Females [i.e., men or female impersonators] will race each other. The Trans Males [i.e., females or male impersonators] will race each other. There is an argument that the Trans Males have been completely lost in this debate because they are uncompetitive in our current structure. This would also allow those of indeterminate gender to be factored into such a solution.

This solution would enable Thomas to be his “authentic” self: a “trans” person.

Evidently, the WSCA is not up to date on current Newspeak. “Gender” refers to the aggregate of behaviors, conventions, roles, and expectations associated with sex of male or female. As such, there is no such thing as a person possessing an “indeterminate gender.”

Perhaps the WSCA was using “gender” in the old-fashioned way, as a synonym for biological sex. If so, neither Will Thomas nor any other “trans”-identifying swimmer has an “indeterminate gender.” Smith has a definite “gender,” and it’s male.

Like other supporters of the sexual integration of sports who grasp at any defense they can concoct, Thomas trots out the tired and patently silly claim that since there is physical diversity among women athletes, women’s sports should include men:

I’m not a medical expert, but there is a lot of variation among cis female athletes or cis women who are very tall and very muscular and have more testosterone than other cis women. Should that then disqualify them?

Well then, why should women’s sports be limited to women? Why should only men who pretend to be women be allowed to participate in women’s sports?

If the fact that some women have more testosterone than others justifies allowing men who pretend to be women to participate in women’s sports, why not let men who don’t pretend to be women participate in women’s sports? Thomas can’t say, “Well, they’re not women,” because he’s not a woman either. And he can’t say, “Well, they’re not transgender” because that would constitute discrimination based on “gender identity.”

Leftists claim that anti-discrimination policies and commitments to equality demand that men who pretend to be women be treated exactly like women. Such a claim is nonsense. If commitments to anti-discrimination were intended to prohibit all distinctions based on both sex and “gender identity,” then there should be no sex-segregated activities for anyone anywhere.

If sports cannot take into account either sex or “gender identity,” then there should be no single sex sports at all. If swim teams allow Will Thomas to swim on the women’s team, then they should allow Michal Phelps to as well. Allowing Thomas to swim on the women’s team while prohibiting Phelps would constitute discrimination based on “gender identity,” and as Thomas believes, we can’t have that.

With regard to equality: commitments to equality entail treating like things alike. Equality does not entail or require treating unlike things alike. Will Thomas is a thing unlike those things called women. The fundamental distinction in sports is not height, muscle mass, and hormone levels. The fundamental distinction is biological sex, which shapes average biological differences. Sure, the fastest female swimmer may be faster than the slowest male swimmer. But the fastest males will always be faster than the fastest women.

We ignore “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices at our own peril. Left unopposed, they threaten our First Amendment speech rights and religions liberty. They threaten the right of parents to raise their children in accordance with truth. They threaten the privacy of all Americans in spaces in which men and women engage in personal acts, like going to the bathroom, undressing, and tending to menstrual needs–which only women do. They threaten women’s sports. And they threaten the safety of girls and women.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Finally-a-Sports-Association-Commits-to-Fairness.mp3

Alex Marlow, News Editor-in-Chief at the rightwing website Breitbart.com, recently made the claim that “TikTok is Chinese mind control,” pointing to how it has captivated the “increasingly A.D.D. American mind” with its constant scrolling. Is there any truth to this claim? And is TikTok more dangerous than we realize, not just because of the mindless distraction it provides but because of its content?

Ironically, although TikTok was developed by a Chinese company and is owned by a Chinese company, it is banned in China, along with a number of other, major social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. How interesting! So, the app is good for kids in America and the world but not good for kids in China?

Still, to say that “TikTok is Chinese mind control,” as if the Chinese developers intentionally built an app that could help destroy the Western mind, could be quite a stretch.

Yet that doesn’t mean that there is not real danger with TikTok, and not simply because it exacerbates our problem with distraction. Rather, there is real danger because of some of its destructive content, appealing especially to children and young people.

To give a shocking case in point, according to a recent video by Matt Walsh, “TikTok Is Making Mental Illness Trendy.”

He noted how destructive ideas and behavior and concepts “can go from fringe to trendy to mainstream quite literally overnight.” He added, “What was unusual one moment might be ubiquitous the next, and people, especially young people, can get caught in the current and drowned before they even notice that their shoes are wet.”

He pointed to the latest TikTok fascination with what is called Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), as a result of which large numbers of young people are wrongly diagnosing themselves with this unusual condition.

Walsh played a clip from Good Morning America, where this phenomenon was discussed with real concern, as the host noted that videos with hashtags like #Dissassociativeidentitydisorder and #Borderlinepersonalitydisorder have been viewed hundreds of millions of times. This really has become epidemic.

Walsh then explained that the young person who self-diagnoses with MPD refers to himself or herself as “the system,” with each personality within “the system” being called an “alter.” And what effect does this have on young people?

It was a concerned mother who sent me the Walsh video, wanting to tell me about the latest developments with her 18-year-old daughter, who now identifies as a male. (We’ll call the daughter Rachel to hide her identity.) She wrote,

“Do you know anything about this??? I’m literally livid. This is how it started with us. Rachel went on some social media site, convinced herself she was a system with lots of personalities, like 100. And did this exact same thing!! When I spoke to the psychiatrists about this, they had no clue what I was talking about. No one has been helpful with this. Why is no one talking about this?!?! I’m so angry right now. Part of what the issue is with Rachel, she thinks she has several alters with all different genders. Why would any doctor give her testosterone acting like this???”

So, trained psychiatrists have not heard about this destructive TikTok trend, but millions of impressionable young people are intimately familiar with it. And, here in America, where the daughter now resides, a licensed doctor was willing to give this teenager a testosterone shot to help her “transition” to male, even though her mental instability should have been visible at once.

The mother continued, “She is so wrapped up and so deep in lies. I don’t know how to bring her to truth. . . . Her roommate, also a ‘system’ won’t allow me to talk to my child. She is the gate keeper to any communication. How can a trained therapist even accept this nonsense???”

Nonsense indeed. And some of you can identify with this mother’s pain and anger and frustration.

It’s really as if a foreign entity has invaded the hearts and minds of our kids, what Jordan Peterson recently referred to as a “sociological contagion.”

Peterson also opined that opening the boundaries of “sex categories” would “fatally confuse thousands of young girls,” a claim that the New York Post found to be “unsubstantiated.” Really? Unsubstantiated?

Perhaps this Newsweek headline from October 2021 provides some of the necessary substantiation for Peterson’s claim: “Nearly 40 Percent of U.S. Gen Zs, 30 Percent of Young Christians Identify as LGBTQ, Poll Shows.”

This spike of more than 4,000 percent, from roughly 3 percent of the population to the current 40 percent, did not happen in a vacuum. Instead, this is what takes place when a society loses its boundaries, casts off traditional biblical values, and inundates its young people with a constant flood of pro-LGBTQ messages and propaganda. The latest TikTok trends provide yet another avenue for such mass deception, as kids are self-diagnosing themselves with all kinds of alleged mental disorders.

Last month, Erica Komisar, author of the book Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters, wrote an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal under the headline “Political Correctness is Bad for Kids.”

In her first paragraph, Komisar writes:

Family life shouldn’t be politicized, but a new poll suggests that it is. Only 33% of U.S. liberals “agree that marriage is needed to create strong families,” according to the survey from the Institute for Family Studies. The figures are 80% of conservatives and 55% of moderates.

Despite her status as a liberal and self-declared feminist, Komisar goes on to write that,

“On this subject, the conservative majority is right. Marriage provides children both emotional and material security, and the ideal environment for children is a loving household with both a sensitive and empathic mother and a playful, engaged and protective father. It’s a shame that political correctness inhibits discussions of what’s best for children.”

It’s remarkable, isn’t it? We’ve come to the point in America when standing up for traditional views on marriage and motherhood is controversial. James Taranto, in a 2017 piece for The Wall Street Journal, quotes Komisar as saying that the publication of her book had made her “a bit of a pariah” on the left. She had been interviewed on Christian radio and Fox & Friends but couldn’t get on NPR. She had been “rejected wholesale” by the liberal press, and when she went on ABC’s Good Morning America, the interviewer told her right before they went on that, “I don’t believe in the premise of your book at all. I don’t like your book.” All of this presumably because she was challenging mothers to “prioritize motherhood” to the maximum extent they could, which, apparently, is perceived as a threat to the idea that a woman can have it all, all at the same time.

I don’t have any data on this, but I suspect we wouldn’t have to rewind history very far to find virtually universal support for both marriage and motherhood. But in today’s increasingly liberal society, traditional views on these matters are fading.

The Bible, of course, gives us the truth on these subjects. God created marriage, therefore we know it’s important. God placed children in families, therefore we know that parents matter.

It’s not just the Bible. The very nature of creation also points to the importance of traditional families.

Have you ever considered the possibility that God could have created human existence in any way he chose? He was under no constraints to create marriage and the nuclear family as the basis for bringing children into the world and raising them to adulthood. Remember, He was starting with a blank canvas—He could have done anything. Hey, He could have created the world in such a way that human babies spring into existence through spontaneous generation and raise themselves to adulthood in baby communes deep in the forest. Why not? Just because it sounds crazy to us doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be completely normal if that’s the way it had always been. God gets to decide reality, and if He had chosen to create reality in a different way, that’s His privilege as the all-powerful Creator.

The fact that He chose to create the world in a certain way gives us clues as to how He intends human life to work best. The fact that He created marriage, family, and both mothers and fathers tells us something important: this is the way God wants the world to work. This is the way He created us to flourish and experience the best of His plans for us as His creation. And what the created order tells us implicitly, the Word of God tells us explicitly: marriage and parents are vital.

The bottom line is, God is the Creator of reality, and we have the best chance of happiness, satisfaction, joy, and success when we conform our lives to God’s created reality. When we shun the created order that God established—by rejecting marriage, for instance—we put ourselves at odds not simply with a moral code, but with reality itself.

On the other hand, if we reject God as creator, we’re left to come up with our own ideas of reality and how human life should work. We’re seeing this daily with the redefinition of marriage, the concept of “gender fluidity,” the rise of intentionally single mothers, and so on. We’re remaking family in whatever shape and form we choose because we’ve rejected God’s created reality and the truth of His Word. We think we can flourish in whatever way we choose. But violating reality will never produce the best results.

The cultural trends may be discouraging, but take heart. If you’re following God’s plan as outlined in Scripture and His created reality, trust Him to bless you and your family. Live as a testimony to the superiority of God’s ways. And in the midst of a culture increasingly out of alignment with God’s plan for humanity, you and I have the opportunity to shine as bright lights. Who knows? Perhaps your happy marriage can be the very thing God uses to draw others to Himself.

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