If we learned anything from the recent midterm elections—and we should have learned a lot—it should be that “social issues” are not the third rail of politics. The claim that they are the third rail is a manipulative lie told ad nauseum by RINOs who are so foolish they don’t understand that the social issues are essential for the health of any society.

From the midterm elections, conservatives should have learned that Republicans won elections from coast to coast in part because they have been “leaning in” to the “social issues” rather than fleeing from them. And we should have learned from the bellicose responses of Leftists that their only defenses are calling names and lying.

Republicans won in part because they justifiably worry about inflation and crime, both the results of doctrinaire leftist Big Government, pro-criminal, globalist policies. Republicans won also because they were disgusted with and animated by the usurpation of public education by leftist change-agents who use their jobs to promote their social, moral, and political ideologies on sexuality—including abortion—and race.

Taxpayers are fed up with obscene, profane, and age-inappropriate materials being presented to their children.

Taxpayers are fed up with divisive, exclusionary, racist, misogynistic, misandrist, misanthropic, anti- science beliefs that leftists identify as unifying, inclusive, anti-racist, philogynist, philandrist, humanitarian, and scientific.

Taxpayers are fed up with paying the salaries of leftwing propagandists who identify as “educators” and “experts” who believe they should have absolute autonomy over the curricula they teach to other people’s children.

Taxpayers are fed up with children being taught that whites are racist oppressors by virtue of their skin color, that masculinity is toxic, that homosexuality is ontologically and morally equivalent to heterosexuality, that all family structures are equivalent, or that boys can be girls–none of which are true.

Taxpayers are fed up with the sexual integration of private spaces and girls’ sports.

Taxpayers are fed up with the Orwellian de facto suppression of First Amendment speech protections as evidenced in speakers being canceled and jobs being lost.

They’re fed up with leftists screeching that conservatives are racist, homophobic, and transphobic when conservatives express their moral or political views with the clarity and confidence that leftists express their deluded, destructive views.

They’re fed up with the lie that conservative moral beliefs about homosexual acts, or same-sex “marriage,” or cross-dressing constitutes hatred of persons who identify as “gay” or “trans.”

I hope conservatives are learning that addressing the social issues is not only critical to winning elections but also that the “social issues” are critical to the health and future of any society. Dave Rubin, Guy Benson, and Tammy Bruce may be smart, articulate, and right on many issues, but embracing their views on homosexuality and marriage will be a political and humanitarian nightmare for the GOP and America.

It’s not just leftist ideas about sexuality that will destroy. Embracing ideas found in critical race theory (CRT) or allowing our children to be taught those ideas as inarguable truth out of fear of being called “racist” will be equally destructive.

Now that many more Republicans have raised their voices against the racist ideas embedded in CRT, leftists are screaming “racist” with increased volume. They feel the wind changing. Their con has been revealed. Their jig is almost up. Well, it will be if Republicans remain unified and fearless.

Not only are leftists shrieking “racist” louder, but they’re also making the disingenuous case that public schools “don’t teach critical race theory.” What they’re not saying is that the ideas promulgated in public schools on race, race relations, and American history are the same ideas on race, race relations, and American history promulgated by CRT and by both the ideologies that preceded CRT and the many money-making operations promoting CRT-derived ideas.

Leftist ideas about identity groups, “systemic bias,” and “systems of oppression” come from numerous ideological frameworks, including critical theory, critical pedagogy, and CRT. Thinkers associated with these theoretical frameworks include Paulo Freire, Herbert Marcuse, Peter McLaren, Henry Giroux, bell hooks, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado, and Peggy McIntosh.

Anyone who wonders whether schools teach CRT should spend some time reading what these ambitious scholars promote and then read the resources their local schools provide to students or teachers on institutional racism, intersectionality, oppression, education, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

All the indignant claims from school administrators that they don’t teach CRT are now stinking red herrings tossed out in a frantic attempt to distract opponents from all that inconvenient opposing.

Sure, schools and the organizations that profit from promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion” in schools may not technically teach CRT and may not use the term CRT. Instead, they extract CRT’s assumptions and repackage them to make them seem less controversial, less scholarly, and more palatable to the gullible among us. For the outside organizations that profit from keeping racism alive, the goal is to make repackaged CRT more marketable to government schools.

From this election, conservatives should have learned that name-calling and lies rather than logic, reasons, and evidence are the chief weapons in the leftist arsenal. They should have learned that courage, boldness, unity, and perseverance in the service of truth are powerful. And they should have learned from the ideological corruption that is now systemic in schools that we must be committed to seeking and speaking truth in the public square even if they have to do it alone and even when doing so is costly.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Social-Issues-Are-Not-the-Third-Rail.mp3

I and others have been shouting from our virtual rooftops for over a decade that there is no greater threat to First Amendment protections than that posed by the subversive “LGBTQ” movement. Can conservatives not yet see the end of the short pier toward which GOP leaders have long been pushing them? Really?

(Im)moderate Republicans, Libertarian-leaning Republicans, Republicans with dollar signs rather than Scripture reflected in their myopic eyes have been pushing conservatives toward the end of the short pier, hoping that either spines will crumble or conservatives will tumble into the dark waters. Supremacist Court Justice/lawmaker Neil-the-Usurper-Gorsuch just gave conservatives a huge shove toward the watery abyss.

U.S. Senator Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) is “fine” with Gorsuch’s Law—or as some euphemistically call it, a “Supreme Court decision.” U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said he’s “not disappointed by Gorsuch’s decision:”

“It’s the law of the land. And it probably makes uniform what a lot of states have already done. And probably negates Congress’s necessity for acting.”

No siree, can’t have Congress legislating, especially on controversial issues. “Let unelected Supreme Court justices make law. They’re accountable to no one,” say our cowardly lawmakers.

Conservatives get all giddy with chills running up their legs when homosexuals like Guy Benson, Dave Rubin, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Brandon Straka express Republican-ish views. “Oh gosh, the cool kids like us, they really like us!”

Meanwhile, those smart, articulate, good-looking homosexuals seek to change the Republican Party from within—like a cancer or a Guinea worm (am I allowed to call it the Guinea worm any longer?). We welcome camels into the tent at our peril.

We shouldn’t forget U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) who supported the radical redefinition of marriage to include intrinsically non-marital homoerotic unions. Did Portman defend his betrayal of the Republican Party and biblical truth with rational arguments? Nope. He said because his son is homosexual, he now supports anti-marriage. If there’s a conflict between faith and sexual license, sexual license has got to win—says Portman. Let’s hope Portman doesn’t have any polyamorous kids.

And then there’s U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) who, along with his father, pushed for and passed a Florida law that legalized adoption by homosexuals without even a piddly carve-out for faith-based adoption agencies. In other words, Gaetz does not recognize that children have an inherent right to be raised by a mother and a father. Either mothers or fathers are expendable in the foolish view of Gaetz.

When Gaetz was on The View, he defended cross-sex passers serving in the military: “We shouldn’t be banning anybody based on who they are or who they love. That’s not the kind of Republican I am.” That’s leftist rhetoric that serves leftist social, moral, and political ends.

The ways socially and morally ignorant Republicans seek to transform the party are ways that pertain to our most cherished and fundamental freedoms. The result will be government schools unfit for children, loss of parental rights, loss of religious freedom, loss of speech rights, loss of association rights, loss of private spaces, loss of Christian colleges’ accreditation status, and the destruction of women’s sports.

Here’s an idea: How about those with conservative fiscal, environmental, and foreign policy views but liberal views on social policy join the Democratic Party and try to change it from within on fiscal, environmental, and foreign policy rather than  remain in the Republican Party and seek to change its position on sexual matters.

Some “socially liberal” Republicans who don’t really respect Scripture abuse Scripture to shame conservatives, saying “Well, Jesus spent time with sinners.” True enough, he did, and we should emulate what he said when spending time with sinners (which, btw, means all humans).

When with sinners, Jesus called them to repent and follow him. He didn’t affirm their sin. I can’t recall a single Bible story in which Jesus said kudos to a sinner for his sin. I suppose it’s possible that God affirmed someone’s homoeroticism before he burned them up at Sodom and Gomorrah—nah.

To love others with Christ’s love is to model his interactions with the lost. He called them to repent and follow him. There is no evidence that he went around praising those who spread lies about sexuality and marriage as Benson and Portman do.

I hope people can hear the frustration in my virtual voice as I say, what the heck is wrong with Christians who have been rationalizing their cowardly silence and capitulation for decades? Those with eyes to see have been writing for decades that First Amendment protections for Christians are slowly eroding, and just now with Gorsuch’s intellectually and constitutionally indefensible act of lawmaking, Christians are fretting about their potential loss of rights.

When “sexual orientation” and then “gender identity” were added to anti-discrimination policies and laws; when public schools started attacking conservative beliefs as “homophobia” through “anti-bullying” programs; when public school teachers started presenting pro-homosexuality novels, articles, essays, and movies to other people’s children; when SCOTUS jettisoned sexual differentiation as a constituent feature of legal “marriage”; when schools sexually integrated bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports; when foster care and adoption agencies lost the right to place children with only heterosexual couples; when schools started firing Christians for refusing to refer to boys as girls or vice versa, Christians largely said nothing. Now courts are starting to remove children from homes if their parents don’t affirm “trans”-cultic practices. And today, when the word “sex” is essentially redefined in the Civil Rights Act by six hubristic SCOTUS justices, what will Christians do?

Do Christians ever ask themselves what kind of culture and what kind of oppression their silence, their capitulation, their spinelessness over the past 10, 20, or 30 years is bequeathing to their children? What will it take for Christians to wake up and do something? When their children can’t send their kids even to private schools free of cross-dressers anymore, will they say something? When the state takes their own grandchildren away from their parents, will they say something? When their daughter or granddaughter has a double-mastectomy at age 13, will they say something? Please, tell me, what will it take for Christians to be part of the solution?

Oh wait, I know when they’ll start pulling their weight. They’ll start right after we get almighty tax policy just right.

Long before the Gorsuch decision, the erasure of public recognition of sex differences was made inevitable by the ignorant decisions made all over the country to add the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to “anti-discrimination” policies and laws. These inclusions in laws and policies—including in school policies—were aided and abetted by the silence of conservatives, and with those inclusions there now remains no way to maintain any sex-segregated spaces for anyone.

If, for example, a university allows a confused biological man called “Sue” to use the women’s locker room, there remains no rational or legal way to prohibit a normal biological man called “Bob” from using it as well. The university can’t say, “Bob may not use it, because he’s a biological man.” First, they’ve already allowed another biological man—i.e., “Sue”—to use it, and second, such a prohibition would constitute discrimination based on sex. And the university couldn’t say “Bob may not use the women’s locker room, because he’s not ‘transgender.'” Such a prohibition would constitute discrimination based on “gender identity.”

The intellectual and legal groundwork has been laid and fertilized for the eradication of all public recognition of sexual differentiation everywhere for everyone, which means no private spaces anywhere for anyone. And in those private spaces, children are likely to see biological men with gravity-defying breasts and the usual male apparatus (yes, they do that). Spend a moment ruminating on that disturbing image, for that is where conservative fear of being labeled “hater” has led us.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Self-Identifying-Republicans-Are-Destroying-Liberty.mp3

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Prager University (PragerU) was started in 2009 by Dennis Prager as a way to circumvent the left-leaning educational universe and bring conservative ideas to the public in general but especially to young people. This week, PragerU released a deeply disappointing video featuring Guy Benson, political editor for Townhall Magazine and frequent contributor on Fox News Channel.

Guy Benson is immensely gifted. He is a bright, thoughtful, articulate young man with a quick mind and a gracious, winsome manner. He is also telegenic, which makes him a perfect spokesperson in a culture mediated by visual media. But those very gifts and his appeal to young people will enable him to have a corrosive effect on some conservative values.

Book-ending his five-minute PragerU video, Benson says, “I’m a Christian; a patriotic American, and a free market, shrink-the-government conservative who also happens to be gay.”

The phrase “happens to be gay” is an attempt to diminish the significance of his choice to affirm homosexuality as central to his identity. Please note, I did not say Benson chooses to experience same-sex attraction. Rather, he has freely chosen to place his unchosen homoerotic feelings at the center of his identity, and that is not something that just “happens.” Nor is it something trivial.

Benson goes on to say that “Far too often people are sorted by their gender, or their skin color, or their sexual orientation, or any other immutable characteristic that has nothing to do with ideas or values.”

This short sentence contains a number of troubling propositions.

Like “progressives,” Benson suggests that “gender”—and by “gender,” I assume he means biological sex—and skin color are analogous to “sexual orientation.” First, “sexual orientation” is a Leftist rhetorical construction intended to communicate the false idea that heterosexuality and homosexuality are flipsides of the sexuality coin and morally equivalent. In contrast, others argue that homosexuality represents a disordering of the sexual impulse.

Second, homosexuality per se has no points of correspondence to sex or skin color. Biological sex and skin color are genetically determined and carry no behavioral implications, thereby rendering moral disapproval of them irrational.

In contrast, homosexuality is constituted by subjective feelings, whose cause or causes are unknown, and volitional activity for which moral assessment is both rational and legitimate—no matter what the cause or causes for the feelings.

Third, what does Benson mean when he refers to homosexuality as an “immutable characteristic”? Is he referring to the powerful, persistent, and seemingly intractable nature of his desires? If so, in his view is it morally acceptable to act on all powerful, persistent, seemingly intractable feelings? If he doesn’t believe the powerful, persistent nature of feelings confers automatic moral legitimacy on actions impelled by such feelings, how does he determine which ought not be acted on?

And how does he respond to the brilliant Rosaria Butterfield, a former feminist English professor and lesbian who has written eloquently about her spiritual conversion and rejection of a lesbian identity?

Fourth and most intellectually dishonest, Benson makes the remarkable claim that the affirmation of a homosexual identity “has nothing to do with ideas or values.” Does Benson really believe that his (or anyone else’s) homosexual attraction has anything to do with his ideas about and support for the legal recognition of same-sex unions as marriages?

And does he really believe that his homosexual attraction has nothing to do with his hermeneutics (i.e., methods of biblical interpretation)? Benson claims he is a Christian and that his Christian identity sits at the tiptop of his list of personal identifiers. For him to identify as a homosexuality-affirming Christian, Benson must have first embraced a very late 20^th Century revisionist hermeneutic that rejects the plain reading of Scripture and 2,000 years of church history, and which emerged not from newly discovered documents but from the mid-20^th Century sexual revolution.

Arguably the preeminent theologian writing on the Bible and homosexuality, Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon, writes this in response to Benson’s PragerU video:

Marriage is the single most significant structure in society. Radically redefining it at its very foundation so as to make gender differentiation irrelevant is a decisively non-conservative political stance, not to mention an unfaithful anti-Christian position that tacitly rejects the God of Abraham and Moses as well as the lordship of Jesus Christ. There can be no negotiation on this point without upending the rug on which the conservative table is set. It takes more courage to hold the line here than on any other position. Conservatives should be known for courage, not cowardice; clarity, not confusion.

In an unsuccessful attempt to prove that his homosexuality does not affect his “ideas or values,” Benson points to the relatively small amount of time he spends addressing “LGBT issues”:

To be candid, in my day-to-day life and work, I spend a lot more time thinking and writing about the failures of Obamacare, for example, than I do about LGBT issues.

But that’s a non-sequitur. It does not follow that because he spends more time thinking and writing about the failures of Obamacare than he does about “LGBT” issues that his homosexual “identity” does not affect his ideas or values. Thinking and writing less on “LGBT” issues than Obamacare means precisely nothing about whether his homosexuality affects his ideas and values on “LGBT” issues.

Benson supports “narrow exemptions for small businesses adjacent to the wedding industry” and he “chafe[s]” at the idea that “all opposition to expanding marriage is framed as ‘hate.’” Since he is a rising star in the GOP, I guess we should be thankful for that.

The talented Guy Benson and others like him pose a threat to conservatism and Christianity. Widespread cultural approval of the homosexuality-affirming ideology threatens the foundation of any society. And if the church affirms heresy, we put at risk the eternal lives of people like Guy Benson.

Since Dennis Prager is committed to the free exchange of ideas, perhaps he’ll invite someone to appear on another video to debate the ideas expressed by Guy Benson, whose embrace of a “gay”  identity suggests that homosexuality—not Christianity—sits at the tiptop of his identity list.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Prager-Universitys-Troubling-Video-with-Homosexual-Christian-Guy-Benson.mp3

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The political editor of a nominally conservative website, Townhall.com, revealed this week that he is a practicing homosexual. Guy Benson will write in a book coming out soon that he is gay and a supporter of marriage based on the “infamous crime against nature.”

In fact, he admits that “from time to time” he may well become an occasional activist on behalf of the homosexual agenda. He also believes that the Republican Party’s embrace of natural marriage, the institution God designed and defined at the dawn of time, is a “barrier to entry to the party,” a barrier which he believes must come down. He seems dedicated to do his part to demolish this barrier and turn the GOP into a sodomy-promoting political machine.

Benson is young, smart, and articulate and often appears on Fox News as a pundit on all manner of political issues. This makes him a particular risk to the conservative cause of defending natural marriage.

Now I don’t know Mr. Benson, and he certainly seems like a particularly nice and friendly individual. But this is not about his personality. It’s about his politics.

Townhall, by the way, is owned by Salem Media Group, which describes its mission as “targeting audiences interested in Christian and family-themed content and conservative values.” To my knowledge, Salem has yet to explain how paying an openly homosexual activist to be the political editor of its main public policy publication is consistent with this mission.

If Salem leadership is to be at all true to its own mission statement, Benson must be replaced. His values on homosexuality are not Christian, family-themed, or conservative.

In truth, the term “gay conservative” is an oxymoron, along the lines of “honest thief.” The first term is flatly and inescapably contradictory to the second.

There is nothing “conservative” about homosexuality or the homosexual agenda. To be a conservative under any understanding of the term means to conserve, protect and defend the values on which America was built. To put it bluntly, those values do not include celebrating, endorsing and promoting unnatural sexual expression.

If the term “conservative” is to have any meaning at all, it must include certain ideals and exclude others. No one can legitimately call himself a conservative if he does not vigorously and robustly defend the institution of natural marriage as the sole relationship in which sexual expression may legitimately be enjoyed and as the optimal nurturing environment for children.

Natural marriage is the first institution God created, before he created the institution of the state or the church. It is the sole foundation on which any healthy, stable, and prosperous society can be built. Every civilization which has abandoned natural marriage and thestandard of monogamy within it has wound up on the ash heap of history. No man can call himself a conservative who does not labor to protect this most precious institution.

Now homosexuals who call themselves conservatives may well believe in smaller government and a strong military, two of the three pillars on which modern conservatism is built. That makes them two-thirds conservative and one-third libertarian.

One website which claims to triangulate on this issue calls itself the “Gay Patriot” and dedicates itself to “freedom, fairness, free speech, privacy and true American values.” What such folks are blinded to is that they have become willing accomplices in supporting an agenda which will in the end refuse to allow any of these values to be honored in American culture. Just ask the Christian bakers in Oregon who are now facing $135,000 in fines for not bowing the knee to the god of gayness.

So a new term must be invented to describe those who share Mr. Benson’s predilection for smaller government and non-normative sexual expression.

Some such individuals call themselves “homocons.” Perhaps “gayservatives” or “gaytarians” or some other such concoction will suffice. Just don’t call them “conservatives,” for that most certainly is not what they are.

This article was originally posted at the AFA website.