How far gone is Illinois? And by “gone,” I mean arrogantly and divisively leftist.

Well, despite statewide and even nationwide condemnation of the proposed “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards,”  the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules (JCAR) failed to stop the controversial standards.

In a vote delayed by one day, JCAR voted 6-5 along partisan lines to, in effect, approve these standards, which will infuse the assumptions of Critical Race Theory/ identity politics/BLM into 1. all teacher-training programs, 2. all Professional Education Licensing (PEL), and 3. indirectly into all public school classrooms.

Not even yesterday’s plea from the left-leaning Chicago Tribune Editorial Board to JCAR not to pass these controversial standards—standards that the editorial board described as politicized—was sufficient to stop the Democrats in JCAR from further exploiting government schools for leftist propaganda purposes.

Ideological diversity—already a rare commodity in government schools—will be now be further diminished in favor of promoting arguable leftist beliefs about identity, “systems of oppression,” “sex and gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, racism, sexism, homophobia, unearned privilege,” and “Eurocentrism.”

The standards were created by a committee hand-picked by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE), which is controlled by leftists. While having the effect of law, these standards constitute an amendment to existing school code, so they did not have to go through the normal lawmaking process, which would involve more transparency, floor debates in Springfield, and every Illinois lawmaker publicly voting.

In the wake of nationwide criticism of the “woke” standards, the ISBE issued a statement with this chuckle-worthy, chuckleheaded claim:

The standards were developed by a diverse group of educators from around the state.

Just curious, how many in this “diverse group of educators” are critics of Critical Race Theory and BLM, or find fault with the ideas of Ibram X. Kendi, Ta-Nehesi Coates, and Robin DiAngelo?

The ISBE’s statement also said the following:

The Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards apply to teacher preparation programs, not to K-12 school curricula. ISBE also will offer optional professional development on the standards to current educators. Educators and school districts maintain local control over what professional development they choose.

This is a transparent effort to mollify and silence critics of the infusion of leftist beliefs on race, American history, homosexuality, and “trans”-cultism into curricula. But “deplorables” are not stupid. We all know that “teacher preparation” is intended to and will shape both professional development and curricula.

As a result of the widespread condemnation of the leftist-created standards, the ISBE begrudgingly tossed an insignificant sop in the direction of Illinoisans who oppose the divisive politicization of education. Nervous ISBE leftists changed the word “progressive” to “inclusive.” For example, here is an original pre-condemnation sentence from the standards:

The culturally responsive teacher and leader will … Embrace and encourage progressive viewpoints and perspectives that leverage asset thinking toward traditionally marginalized populations.

Here is the worthless, one-word, post-condemnation change ISBE wokesters threw to Illinois serfs:

The culturally responsive teacher and leader will … Embrace and encourage inclusive viewpoints and perspectives that leverage asset thinking toward traditionally marginalized populations.

As I wrote last week, the unelected wokesters on the ISBE committee that created these radical standards think Illinois conservatives are stupid. They think we don’t realize that their definition of “inclusive” excludes conservative viewpoints.

They also think conservatives won’t notice the inclusion of the adverb “traditionally,” which necessarily excludes contemporary marginalized populations, like the theologically orthodox Christian population, which is today excluded, hated, and cancelled.

This is what’s called a distinction without a difference—a distinction intended to dupe the deplorables.

In another document, the ISBE makes another chuckle-worthy, eye-roller of a statement about the effects of these new ideological diktats:

The standards will help combat the teacher shortage. They will help educators become better teachers and experience higher job satisfaction, which makes them more likely to stay in the profession.

No acknowledgment of the teachers who will leave the profession or of those future teachers who will no longer consider teaching in Illinois because they know that Illinois schools are places of oppression that require ideological submission.

Here are just a few of the controversial ideas that Illinois will now force teacher-training programs and professional licensure to impose on all future “teachers, school support personnel” and administrators. Please note, that “identities” include homosexuality, cross-sex impersonation, and “gender fluidity”:

• Value the notion that … there is not one “correct” way of doing or understanding something.

• “Assess how their own biases and perceptions affect their teaching practice and how they access tools to mitigate their own racist, sexist, homophobic, Eurocentric behavior or unearned privilege.”

• Be aware of the effects of power and privilege and the need for social advocacy and social action to better empower diverse students and communities.

• Encourage and affirm the personal experiences … students share in the classroom.

• Consistently solicit students’ input on the curriculum.

• Co-create, with students, the collective expectations and agreements regarding the physical space and social-emotional culture of the classroom.

• Create a risk-taking space that promotes student activism and advocacy.

• Invite family and community members to teach about topics that are culturally specific and aligned to the classroom curriculum or content area.

• Intentionally embrace student identities and prioritize representation in the curriculum.

• Implement and integrate the wide spectrum and fluidity of identities in the curriculum.

• Ensure text selections reflect students’ classroom, community, and family culture.

• Ensure teacher and students co-create content to include a counternarrative to dominant culture.

• Promote robust discussion with the intent of raising consciousness that reflects modern society and the ways in which cultures and communities intersect.

• Consider a broader modality of student assessments [i.e., grades and testing], such as … “social justice work.”

In my mind’s eye, I see more Illinois families planning their exit from public schools and more families planning their exit from this politically “woke,” intellectually slumbering, and morally vacuous state.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Illinois-Passes-Controversial-Leftist-Teacher-Training-Mandate.mp3

Please support the good work of Illinois Family Institute.

Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.

If you haven’t been called it yet, surely, you’ve heard it: the ubiquitous epithet “transphobe.” It’s the evil spawn of “homophobe.” I don’t mean those accused of being “transphobes” are evil spawns of “homophobes.” I mean the term “transphobe” is the evil spawn of the spurious term “homophobe.” In a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, British writer…

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If you haven’t been called it yet, surely, you’ve heard it: the ubiquitous epithet “transphobe.” It’s the evil spawn of “homophobe.” I don’t mean those accused of being “transphobes” are evil spawns of “homophobes.” I mean the term “transphobe” is the evil spawn of the spurious term “homophobe.”

In a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, British writer “Juliet” Jacques, a 38-year-old man who pretends to be a woman, claims “Transphobia … is a respectable bigotry in Britain, shared by parts of the left as well as the right.”

Jacques claims that there are two virulent strains of “transphobia”: One strain “rejects … the idea that gender might not be determined only by biological traits identifiable at birth,” and the other strain, “argues that trans women’s [i.e., biological men’s] requests for gender recognition are incompatible with cis women’s [i.e., normal women’s] rights to single-sex spaces.” Jacques claims that both strains “rely on the conceit that trans and nonbinary people should not determine their own gender identities.”

Translated from “trans”-tortured Newspeak into plain English, Jacques is describing two groups of people still tethered to reality. The first group rejects the idea that biological sex is subordinate to subjective feelings about sex in importance and in how it’s treated in society. The second group believes women have a right to private spaces free from the presence of biological men.

For those not fluent in Newspeak, “gender identity” refers to the subjective internal (or is it infernal?) feelings of reality-untethered people about their maleness, femaleness, both, or neither. Jacques errs when claiming that both reality-tethered groups believe “trans” and “nonbinary” people should not determine their own “gender identities.”

Generally speaking, reality-tethered, biocentric people have no opposition to the reality-untethered determining their own “gender identities.” The problem is the reality-untethered are demanding that society treat their subjective feelings as if they are more important than biological sex and accommodate their subjective feelings in radical ways that rob the reality-tethered of their right to privacy and free speech.

The reality-untethered are demanding that in shared spaces, their subjective feelings about maleness and femaleness supersede biological sex. Those who believe that spaces like locker rooms and activities like sports should correspond to biological sex are being denied their right to determine their sex identities. And the reality-untethered bio-rejectors are demanding that others use language that denies biological reality. They’re demanding that others use language that affirms an imaginary worldview. They’re demanding that their “hurt feelings” determine how others must speak. While they demand that I respect their “reality,” they ignore that my reality includes not just me but everything in the world.

To advance a reality-untethered social and political universe requires the silencing of rational and moral arguments, and that, in turn, requires cultural oppression, known colloquially as bullying.

“Transphobe” is the term of bullying art used to shame and silence anyone who believes biological sex has meaning and that it is more important than subjective, internal feelings about one’s maleness, femaleness, both, or neither.

• A “transphobe” is anyone who feels it is a good thing for humans to identify as the biological sex they are and ever will be.
• A “transphobe” is anyone who believes that females are entitled to be free of the presence of biological males to whom they are unrelated by blood or marriage in places where they undress, shower, sleep, and engage in bodily functions. A “transphobe” is anyone who believes men are similarly entitled to be free of the presence of unrelated biological women in those same kinds of places.
• A “transphobe” is anyone who doesn’t want to have a romantic or erotic relationship with a person or persons of the same sex who pretend to be the other sex.
• A “transphobe” is anyone who believes cross-dressing is wrong.
• A “transphobe” is anyone who believes harm is done to children when they are allowed to cross-dress, adopt opposite-sex names, and be referred to by opposite-sex pronouns.
• A “transphobe” is anyone who believes the medical profession should not prescribe cross-sex hormones to anatomically and biochemically healthy persons to treat their disordered feelings.
• A “transphobe” is anyone who believes the medical profession should not lop off the healthy body parts of teens or adults as a way to treat disordered and often fluid feelings about their maleness or femaleness.
• A “transphobe” is anyone who believes that cross-dressing men should not be reading stories to or twerking in front of toddlers in public libraries.

The chief tactic of sexual anarchists to crush their ideological opponents is to attach the word (or forms of the word) “phobe” to any moral claim they, in their ignorance, detest. They detest the moral claims that homoerotic acts are immoral; degrade those engaged in them; and harm children, families, and society. So, anyone who makes these claims is called a “homophobe.”  Even if these claims are expressed out of love for individuals, children, families and society,  the “LGB” community calls those who express them “homophobes,” haters, and bigots because bullying works.

“Trans” cultists detest the claims that biological sex is profoundly meaningful; that private space-usage should correspond to biological sex; and that cross-dressing, cross-sex hormone-doping, and elective amputations of healthy body parts to treat immaterial feelings is harmful, so anyone who expresses these claims is called a “transphobe,” because bullying works.

While “LGB” and “T” activists and their collaborators claim to worship at the altar of inclusion, tolerance, and non-judgmentalism, and claim to loathe all shaming, marginalization, and taboos, they don’t.

They seek to shame, marginalize, and exclude anyone who doesn’t affirm their sexuality dogma.  They judge theologically orthodox Christians as sinners for rejecting sexual insanity. And they justify their judgmentalism by asserting that they have no obligation to “tolerate intolerance.”

What taboos will cultural regressives next seek to shame and eradicate? Polyamory/Sexual non-monogamy? Consensual adult incest “Genetic Sexual Attraction”? Pederasty and pedophilia “Minor Attraction”/intergenerational love? Bestiality Zoophilia?

Soon all those ignorant, hateful, exclusionary bigots who don’t understand that “love is love” will be called polyphobes, kinphobes, pedophobes, and zoophobes. “Shaming” polys, kin-lovers, child-lovers, teen-lovers, and animal-lovers will be deemed analogous to racism.

Next to arrive on the already defiled cultural scene will be activists for other even fringier paraphilias. Those who identify as sadists, masochists, infantilists, and voyeurs will claim that to live authentically requires no one disapprove of their peculiar habits. Normal people who yet have a moral compass and spine will be called sadi-phobes, maso-phobes, infanti-phobes, and voyeur-phobes.

(A word about voyeurs: If no offense has been committed by men who through cross-dressing, hormone-doping, and surgery are able to conceal their sex from women in women’s locker rooms, then surely no harm is committed by men who through technology are able to conceal their presence from and peep on women in women’s locker rooms. If deceiving women about the presence of men is hunky dory in the case of opposite-sex impersonators, then surely deceiving women about the presence of men is hunky dory in the case of voyeurs.)

Exclusion per se is not intrinsically bad, and inclusion per se is not intrinsically good. Disapproval per se is not intrinsically bad, and approval per se is not intrinsically good. Shame is not intrinsically bad, and shamelessness is not intrinsically good. The goodness or badness of exclusion, inclusion, disapproval, or approval depends on what is being excluded, included, disapproved, or approved.

Likewise, social taboos—renamed “phobias” by “progressives” and pagans when they enjoy the taboo acts—are not intrinsically bad. Every society has and needs taboos. Taboos are nothing more than volitional acts that society deems wrong and harmful. Neither “progressives” nor pagans seek to eradicate taboos, shame, exclusion, or marginalization. Rather, they seek to impose and enforce their views on who should be excluded or marginalized, and what should be deemed taboo and stigmatized.

No society will or should eradicate all taboos, stigmas, shame, or marginalization. Therefore, the questions every civilized or primitive society has to answer are, 1. On what basis will some members of society be marginalized, 2. What will marginalization look like, and 3. What volitional acts will be taboo and stigmatized.

The “trans” cult is a solipsistic cult in which the self determines—or imagines—the world, and nothing outside of or in conflict with this self-imagined world matters. This self-determined, imaginary world is also an anti-Christian world in which evil is deemed good and good evil. In this world, expressing biblical truth about sexuality is taboo, and theologically orthodox Christians will increasingly and brazenly be shamed and pushed to the margins of society where they will be denied their right to speak freely, assemble freely, and exercise freely their religion.

Don’t surrender to the morality-phobic monster that prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/The-LGB-and-T-Mobs-Unleash-the-Morality-Phobic-Monster_audio.mp3

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois! 

Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.

Last week ten lawmakers from the Jewish Caucus in Springfield sponsored a resolution condemning Illinois Family Action (IFA) and Illinois Family Institute (IFI) for engaging in what they call “hate speech,” because IFA compared the abortion holocaust to the Jewish Holocaust. Titled “Illinois Family Action-Hate Speech” (HJR 55), the resolution uses subjective hyperbole, disreputable sources and unreasonable inferences that make the alleged offense seem overtly sinister.

If you want an exhaustive, well-argued refutation of the resolution, read “Left-Wing Partisans File Stunning Resolution Against Illinois Family.” HJR 55 is stunning for all the reasons that author Laurie Higgins identifies but also because of its glaring omission: any mention of abortion, the topic of the article that started it all.

There are always hazards when invoking the Holocaust, not least of which is overstating the parallel to a current situation. But that’s not the case here. It is indisputable that the Nazis dehumanized an entire class of human beings defined solely by their ethnoreligious heritage, then rounded them up and shipped them off to be exterminated with lethal efficiency in death camps across Europe.

It’s also indisputable that abortion providers—most notably Planned Parenthood—are also in the extermination business. They and their enablers—most notably regressive Democrats, who increasingly champion infanticide—have dehumanized an entire class of human beings defined solely by their stage of development in situ.

One significant difference between the Jewish Holocaust and our modern holocaust is that abortion clinics don’t have to round up babies and send them to a centralized abortion mill. Instead, Planned Parenthood has conveniently dotted the country with more than 600 of their own little death camps for easy access. It’s the children’s own mothers who—whether they gleefully “shout their abortion” or enter a clinic in desperation—play the role of Hitler’s Schutzstaffel.

The parallels between the two holocausts, made so often as to be in danger of becoming cliché, are strong and obvious—except to the willfully blind.

So why the extraordinary step of a resolution in the Illinois House condemning the comparison? Just this: by making the comparison, Illinois Family conferred personhood on the pro-choicers’ blob of tissue. IFI re-humanized them. The resolution’s assertion that IFI is “recklessly comparing those who disagree with their extreme agenda to Nazis” can only be true if babies aren’t human.

The resolution is a naked halogen bulb blinding observers to their real objective, which is to intimidate and shame IFI into submission. Accusations of unspecified threats, anti-Semitism, “hate speech,” “bigotry,” “homophobia” and “extreme rhetoric” are followed by a call for “a formal investigation” into such speech and asking the Secretary of State to suspend IFI’s lobbying credentials.

One of the resolution’s co-sponsors, State Representative Jonathan Carroll (D-Northbrook), took to Twitter to express his outrage. “This is hate speech and I demand a retraction. Comparing Democrats to Nazis to to [sic] promote your agenda is disgraceful.” He was later quoted as saying, “We call on the Illinois State Police to do a full investigation of these incidents.”

To summarize: the all-Democrat Jewish Caucus of the Illinois House of Representatives has circled the wagons and called for reinforcements because they don’t like a commonly-used analogy comparing the killing of 61,000,000 babies (and counting) to the killing of 6,000,000 Jews—and allegedly fear that they will now be the victims of violence. To address the threat, they are summoning the power of the state to crush IFI.

How very Hitler-esque.

Meanwhile, the State of Illinois is circling the drain. We are the least fiscally solvent state, but pay the highest state and local taxes in the country; we are the third most corrupt state in the nation and boast the worst-in-nation pension crisis; we’re unlikely to successfully weather a recession, we have one of the worst home foreclosure rates in the nation, and we lead the country in number of residents fleeing the state.

If regressives get their way, they’ll also bestow on Illinois the distinction of having the most radical abortion laws in the land. (We’re number one! We’re number one!)

Instead of wasting their time and taxpayer money weaponizing the state to kick around a tiny pro-family organization that enjoys First Amendment protections, how about getting busy fixing the national embarrassment that the land of Lincoln has become?

Instead of indoctrinating five freshman legislators on the finer points of virtue signaling (“Hate has no home here,” right, Rep. Sara Feigenholtz?), how about challenging Jonathan Carroll, Daniel Didech, Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, Yehiel Kalish, Karina Villa, Anna Moeller and Bob Morgan to balance a budget by reining in spending? Instead of demonstrating knee jerk outrage, how about demanding an investigation into how the most corrupt big city in the nation let Jussie “O.J.” Smollett skate after slandering half the country’s citizens and lying about it?

Regressives and their junior commies in the Illinois House have more pressing issues to deal with than some petty disagreement about whether legal abortion is like the Jewish Holocaust or not. Judging by the March 20 turnout to protest the proposed abortion legislation that “overtaxed Capitol security,” there are a lot of people who agree that it is.

The Hebrew prophet Isaiah wrote, “Woe to those who call good evil and evil good, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter” (Isaiah 5:20). Jewish legislators should understand better than anyone the evil of taking innocent life. Rescind the resolution and do what you were elected to do: rescue Illinois.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to contact your state senator and representative to ask them to reject this dangerous resolution. Ask them to vote down HJR 55 and the unprecedented and tyrannical action being taken by extreme partisans in the Illinois General Assembly.

Read more:

Left-Wing Partisans File Stunning Resolution Against Illinois Family (Laurie Higgins)

Truth and Love or Hate? (Rev. Calvin Lindstrom)

SPOTLIGHT: Illinois’ Abortion Holocaust (Podcast)

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.

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.