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Leftist State Board of Ed and Lawmakers Collude to Indoctrinate Illinois Students

Conservative parents with kids in Illinois public schools, WAKE UP! Leftists on the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) and in Springfield aren’t anywhere near done with their indoctrination mandates. A new amendment to Illinois State Board of Education teacher standards has been proposed by an ISBE committee to infuse the assumptions of Critical Race Theory, identity politics, BLM, and the 1619 Project into 1.  all teacher-training programs/education majors, 2. all Professional Education Licensing (PEL), and 3. all public school classrooms. The proposed standards are called “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards”–translated: Leftist Responsive Indoctrinating Diktats.

In an excruciatingly detailed 2,400- word document, leftists laid bare the comprehensive nature of the indoctrination they seek to mandate. These “standards” will apply to all teachers, administrators, school counselors, school psychologists, school social workers, school nurses, and speech language pathologists.

Not surprisingly, the ten-member steering team of the Diverse and Learner Ready Committee that concocted the new indoctrination standards has three lawmakers—all Democrats (Fred Crespo, Mary Edly-Allen, and Maurice West).

Knowledge of objective facts and the development of the capacity to think logically through critical examination of diverse ideas are relegated to the back of the “education” bus in favor of promoting propaganda about identity, “systems of oppression,” “sex and gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, racism, sexism, homophobia, unearned privilege,” and “Eurocentrism.”

I will attempt to make clear the loathsome outlines and dangerous implications of this proposal while sparing readers many of the excruciating details.

Teachers are expected to accept as objective truth and implement the following:

1.) Understand and value the notion that … there is not one “correct” way of doing or understanding something.

2.) Affirm students’ “backgrounds and identities.”

3.) 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.

4.) 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.

5.) Align expectations … used in the classroom with the values and cultural norms of students’ families.

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

7.) Consistently solicit students’ input on the curriculum.

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

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

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

11.) Intentionally embrace student identities and prioritize representation in the curriculum.

12.) “Curate the curriculum.”

13.) Employ authentic and modern technology usage inspiring digital literacy through an equity lens.

14.) Ensure assessments reflect the enriched curriculum that has embedded student identities.

15.) Embrace and encourage progressive viewpoints and perspectives … toward traditionally marginalized populations.

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

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

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

19.) Use a resource tool to assess the curriculum and assessments for biases.

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

21.) Consider a broader modality of student assessments, such as … “community assessments, social justice work, action research projects, and recognition beyond academia.”

So many issues raised by this ethically repellent, logically contradictory bill:

  • Should lawmakers, the ISBE, or departments of education that train teachers require school professionals to value the dubious claim that “there is no correct way of understanding or doing something”? If so, does that claim apply to the claim itself? Perhaps the claim that there is no correct way of understanding or doing something applies to the entire amendment, in which case it must, by its own logic, be rejected.
  • Is it the proper role of lawmakers, the ISBE, or departments of education to require school educators to affirm all “identities”? Would those identities include trans-racialists like Rachel Dolezal? Trans-ethnicists? Trans-speciesists? Minor-Attracted Persons? Polyamorists? Zoophiles? Infantilists? Trans-ableists who identify as amputees or paraplegics? Who gets to decide which “identities” educators must embrace and affirm? I guess if there’s no correct way of doing or understanding anything, then “educators” must include all those marginalized groups or any others that may emerge.
  • Don’t be fooled by any of the tricksy rhetoric used in this amendment. None of the marginalized groups that will be valued, embraced, affirmed, coddled, and mollycoddled will be conservatives or theologically orthodox Christians. The leftists who wrote this amendment are not interested in the “backgrounds, communities, or cultures” of conservative students or theologically orthodox Catholics or Protestants.
  • Does anyone think the “enriched,” “curated” curricula and assessments, or the community speakers and robust consciousness-raising discussions will include conservative beliefs on race, cross-sex identification, and homosexuality?
  • The “broader modality of assessments” is a way to incentivize and reward leftist activism. Leftists want, for example, an award for youth activism from BLM or a “trans” cultic organization to count toward a student’s grade.

Lest anyone be unclear of the focus of these new standards, Capitol News cites ISBE spokeswoman Jackie Matthews, who said this about the proposed standards:

Culturally responsive practices are especially important in better supporting Illinois’ LGBTQ+ youth.

As reported by Capitol News,

The state board is scheduled to act on the [proposed standards] at its Dec. 16 meeting. If the board approves them, the new rules would be published a second time, starting another 45-day period during which the proposed standards would be reviewed by the General Assembly’s Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, or JCAR.

If approved by JCAR, the standards would become part of the standards by which all teachers and administrators are evaluated.

This is how garbage gets into our children’s classrooms: It starts by either leftist professors in education departments, or state boards of education committees, or in state legislatures using their positions to advance their ideological beliefs.

Illinois leftists in control of everything have already mandated that K-12 public schools teach positively about homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation, and now they’re about to mandate that all college and university teacher training programs and all professional educators affirm leftist beliefs about systemic racism, homosexuality, and “trans”-cultism. If conservative Illinoisans are unwilling or unable to stop this, they better get their kids out of our government indoctrination centers pronto.

Those whose kids are grown or who don’t have kids ought not be complacent, because this indoctrination will use their taxes to infect the hearts and minds of kids who will be their culture-makers in 10-20 years. Those whose children are in private schools ought not be complacent because this amendment will affect teachers in their schools as well.  And home schoolers should care because their taxes are being used to infect the hearts and minds of kids who will be their culture-makers in 10-20 years—culture-makers who will one day try to ban homeschooling. Leftists are nothing if not all-inclusive totalitarians.

Leftist lawmakers in Illinois, who with their supermajorities in both the state Illinois House and Illinois Senate own our public schools, are hell-bent on supplanting education with indoctrination. The concern of leftist lawmakers and leftist activists operating in our public schools is to indoctrinate Illinois school children with leftist dogma on race, sexuality, and American history–dogma that will undermine faith and foment yet more division. They want to make it impossible for conservative parents to shape their own children’s views on these fundamental issues. Leftists achieve that goal through legislation, ISBE guidelines, professional development, curricula, and fervent opposition to school choice.

Teachers, leave those kids alone.

Take ACTION: It is vital that the members of the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules (JCAR) hear from all Illinois taxpayers. Please click HERE to send a message to this committee urging them to vote against any proposal that would mandate left-leaning standards for educators in Illinois public schools.

The Democratic Co-Chairman is Illinois Senator Bill Cunningham (D-Chicago). His office number is (773) 445-8128.

The Republican Co-Chairman is Keith Wheeler (R-North Aurora). His office number is (630) 345-3464.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Indoctrination-Efforts-Accelerate.mp3


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Ideological Fascism at American Colleges and Universities

Written by Dr. Everett Piper

Once there was a prominent landowner who had a son. Even though the boy was quite well cared for and had everything he needed, he became restless. One day he approached his dad and said: “Father, I don’t want to wait for my inheritance. Frankly, I am suffocating living under your rules and your expectations. I want my freedom. I want my money. It is time for me to move out of the house, get my own place, and live as I want.”

Well, even though the father was understandably brokenhearted, he relented. He gave his son the freedom and the money he demanded. He let the boy decide how to use (or abuse) his inheritance. He permitted the prodigal to leave home. He gave his son his own way.

So, the son packed his bags and moved to the big city and rented an apartment. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he squandered everything he had. He had his freedom. He had his money, and he wasted it all by living his own way.

About the time he was spending his last few dollars of inheritance, a severe recession occurred. Having nothing left, the young man began living on the streets and scavenging in back alley dumpsters for food. He was so hungry he resorted to eating garbage to survive.

As the story goes, one day, this wayward son woke up. He came to his senses and said to all his vagabond friends: “All the ranch hands back home working for my father are much better off than we are. They, at least, sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I am going back home.”

Reflecting on this parable of the arrogant and wayward son causes me to think of today’s colleges and universities.

I think of higher education’s “birthright and inheritance” as seen in the original mission statements of many of our nation’s seminal institutions: Of Harvard’s Christo et Ecclesia, “For Christ and the Church,” of Princeton’s Vitam Mortuis Reddo, “I restore life to the dead,” of Yale’s expressed goal for its students “to know God in Jesus Christ and … to lead a Godly, sober life.”

I think of the academy’s prodigal path, where colleges and universities, contrary to their founding creeds, now refuse even to allow traditional Judeo-Christian ideas to be openly discussed and freely debated on their respective campuses.

I think of faculty who have been denied tenure because they dared to assume they could engage in an open exchange of ideas on matters such as human origins, climate change, identity politics, intersectionality and critical race theory.

I think of the consequences of “living our own way” and eating from the “back alley dumpsters” of safe spaces, gender-neutral pronouns, trigger warnings and micro-aggressions.

I think of the routine reports of binge drinking, date rape, sexual abuse, escalating suicide rates and the pandemic reality of STDs.

But, I also think of our father and his provisions and his teachings: of Veritas; of “Truth”; of Harvard’s early affirmation on its school shield – “If you hold to my teachings you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”

Finally, I think of the historical “home “of the academy and the intellectual freedom we used to have under our father’s roof as opposed to the ideological fascism we now experience at the hand of our arrogance and rebellion.

In the story of the prodigal son, Jesus tells us: “Not long after squandering his birthright, there was a bad famine in the land, and the son began to hurt. Having nothing left but his “way,” this young man began working in the fields, feeding the pigs, thinking he must do so to survive. He was so hungry he was now eating the corncobs in the pig slop.”

As a lifelong educator, I look at my academic peers in today’s colleges and universities and I can’t help but ask myself, “has our own way resulted in what we expected when we told our father we wanted to move out of his house?” Did we get what we wanted when we spent our inheritance? Is our chosen path as liberating as we hoped?

Have “our wildest dreams” led us to where we expected or have we stumbled into a nightmare, wading in fields of pig slop and eating the “corncobs” of abuse, dysfunction, selfishness and addiction? Did we get the freedom we hoped for when we left home or have we become slaves to the consequences of frivolous spending and childish irresponsibility?

One last question: Is it possible that “Dad” was smarter than we thought he was all along?

Perhaps it is time for American education to leave the corncobs behind and go home.


Dr. Everett Piper, former president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, is a columnist for The Washington Times and author of “Not A Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery 2017).




Identity Politics: Statism, Paganism, and Cultural Marxism

American political conservatives continue to offer the American public a vision for how we should govern ourselves. While it is outlined in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution (as well as state constitutions), a more specific approach is delineated in the Republican Party’s National Platform. The Illinois GOP Platform is also a conservative document.

Here are just a few specifics in a nutshell:

  • Limited government and lower taxes — conservatives don’t see government as the source of solutions for all of society’s or our economy’s ills.
  • Parental control over education via school choice.
  • Lower cost energy through tapping our nation’s abundant energy supplies.
  • A foreign policy that can be summed up as “peace through strength.”
  • A health care system that is consumer-centered because greater competition can lead to lower costs and better quality.

The list goes on and on.

Leftists, or as they like to call themselves, “progressives,” would prefer that we go backwards and combine statism, in relationship to the size of government, and paganism, in the context of culture.

Statism is a path towards greater government control and less freedom for American citizens. Leftists are increasingly coming out of the closet and pushing policy steps that would put us on a road to socialism in some form or another.

Paganism has been pushed by Leftists for decades as a way to undermine the family and increase the need for ever-bigger government. One only need study Cultural Marxism to understand why anyone would want to follow that trail.

It is not always easy to convince a free people to embrace the loss of freedom, so many actions are needed to divide and conquer. One action that we’ve been chronicling in this series, identity politics, is the aggressive push to inspire tribalism as way to move Americans away from the basic principles that continue to unite us as a people.

While identity politics may have crested as a useful tactic for Leftists, it is still a clear and present danger to the country. The good news is that conservative commentators continue to shine light upon this insidious phenomenon. Here are just three examples where a bright light is illuminating the dangers of identity politics, especially as manifested through the LGBTQIA(etc.) agenda.

In an article titled “Go ahead: Establish a government-wide initiative to respect religious freedom,” Doug Mainwaring writes:

More and more, our government seeks to undermine faith and family – the only real barriers between individuals and unbridled, tyrannical government control of our lives.

. . .

Upholding constitutional rights and the human dignity of those who are same sex-attracted is one thing — a matter of the common good and basic human decency. Few, if any, would dispute that. Same-sex marriage is something completely different. These are unrelated issues, mischievously, masterfully, diabolically conflated — to the point that redefining marriage to include same-sex couples can neither be questioned nor resisted in the public square without calling down a hailstorm of accusations of bigotry and hatred.

. . .

Is America a more rich, diverse, and varied culture if the wisdom of every religious tradition and culture from around the world that has come together in this great melting pot is swept away? Are genderless marriage and genderlessness meant to supplant the rich tapestry of America? — or to unravel it and reweave it into a monochrome fabric?

. . .

America will grow and prosper if burdensome regulations are removed from the books. Likewise, our culture will prosper if religion and faith are neither suppressed nor oppressed. Let’s keep this the land of the free.

Bethany Mandel’s bio says she is “a stay-at-home mother of three children under four and a writer on politics and culture” and “a columnist for the Jewish Daily Forward,” among other things. In an article titled “How The Transgender Crusade Made Me Rethink My Support For Gay Marriage,” she writes:

The Left has shown the totalitarian manner in which it exacts support, or at least silence, from everyday Americans. We’ve seen how lives were destroyed in the wake of the gay marriage debate, how many individuals were shouted down into submission by the side that proclaims itself to be “open-minded” and employed the slogans “No H8” and “Love Wins.” For many conservatives, including myself, the lesson has been learned.

With every tweet aimed at publicizing and shaming my position on transgenderism, the progressive Left is solidifying my decision to call Bruce Jenner by his given name instead of the name he has chosen because of a condition that mental health professionals once took seriously. Playing along with delusions isn’t a kindness to those suffering from other psychological conditions, and it isn’t a kindness for those with gender dysphoria either.

Finally, just a link to a very interesting article by John Skalko over at Public Discourse. His article was titled and subtitled as follows:

Why There Are Only Two Sexes
Men are men, and women are women. There is no third option.

Read more:  Series: Identity Politics & Paraphilias



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‘This is Not Your Father’s Culture War’

Months before I started alternating between Identity Politics and Paraphilias, incest was featured in one of my articles. At the end of it was this question: “How will society respond when those who practice incest start self-identifying as such and begin clamoring for their ‘rights’?” “Rights” in this context means, among other things, the right to get married, complete tolerance and acceptance by society and for their incestual relationships to be viewed as completely normal.

Earlier this month, the Daily Wire featured a post with this headline and lede:

LOVE WINS: Cosmo Pushes Incest
“This Is What It’s Like to Fall In Love With Your Brother”

Recently, the Illinois Family Institute’s David E. Smith said that “this is no longer your father’s culture war.” Rather, he said, it has “evolved into a debate over identity politics and even common-sense biology. That’s a war we can win.”

Joshua Mitchell, a professor at Georgetown University, backs up Dave’s optimism in a 3500-word article at City Journal titled “The Identity-Politics Death Grip.” He makes many good points – here are just a few excerpts:

Normal politics—liberal politics, classically understood—involves speech, argument, and persuasion, followed by voting on ideas or proposals that can be overturned in the next election cycle. Normal politics presumes that we can rise far enough above our small-group attributes—our race, class, gender, ethnicity, religion—and that we can arrive at a political arrangement that works well enough for us to live together as part of a larger polity until the next election, when we commence the process again. But for the Democrats, absolute certainty has prevailed over normal politics—and the certainty, at bottom, rests on a single idea: identity politics.

Identity politics rejects the model of traditional give-and-take politics, presupposing instead that the most important thing about us is that we are white, black, male, female, straight, gay, and so on. Within the identity-politics world, we do not need to give reasons—identity is its own reason and justification. Because identity politics supposes that we are our identities, politics does not consist in the speech, argument, and persuasion of normal politics but instead, in the calculation of resource redistribution based on identity—what in Democratic parlance is called “social justice.”

The irony of identity politics is that it does not see itself as political; it supposes that we live in a post-political age, that social justice can be managed by the state, and that those who oppose identity politics are the ones “being political.” What speech does attend this post-political age consists in shaming those who do not accept the idea of identity politics—as on our college campuses. In the 1960s, college students across the country fought so that repressed ideas would receive a fair hearing. These days, college students fight to repress all ideas except one: identity politics.

“Thoughtful Democrats see that identity politics is a dead end,” Mitchell writes, but the “militants are hunkered down.” Hence, he adds, “the Democratic Party is on life support.”

That doesn’t sound like victory in the culture war to me. Later in the article Mitchell writes:

It may be that the only way that the Democratic Party can rise, Lazarus-like, from its deathbed is if African-Americans call out identity politics as the disaster that it has been—for them and for the country. If the party cannot find a cure for its confusion, it will expire in the paroxysm that identity politics produces.

David Smith also said that today, if you don’t bow to the reality of 63 genders “you’re on the wrong side of history. Yes, really, 63 – Google it.”

If you want to dismiss that kind of foolishness as just plain silly, you might want to read another City Journal article, this one by Seth Barron:

What’s in a Pronoun?
An awful lot, say transgender activists.

The word gender or transgender or gender-free (etc.) shows up 34 times. I challenge you to read it without laughing or rolling your eyes. I’ll close this post with a paragraph from Seth Barron’s article:

A new California law, the Gender Recognition Act, allows people to designate their gender as “nonbinary”—meaning that they “may or may not identify as transgender, may or may not have been born with intersex traits, may or may not use gender-neutral pronouns, and may or may not use more specific terms to describe their genders, such as agender, genderqueer, gender fluid, Two Spirit, bigender, pangender, gender nonconforming, or gender variant.” The Golden State has also required nursing homes and other long-term care facilities to “use a resident’s preferred name or pronouns after being clearly informed of the preferred name or pronouns.”

That’s why Dave Smith is right — this is a war we can win.

Up next: Our next paraphilia of the day.


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‘Identity Politics Aim for the End of America Itself’

The above title was used as a subheading in this article by Elizabeth Kantor at The Federalist: “Donald Trump Isn’t Fighting a Culture War but A Cultural Revolution.”

Underneath that subheading, Kantor writes:

[T]he genius and the miracle of America was that our identity as Americans was once inextricably tied to abstract principles about the rights of all human beings. To identify as an American was to believe in the Bill of Rights. To be an American patriot was to defend the God-given equality of all men as articulated in the Declaration of Independence.

The rights the American revolutionaries fought for were an inherent part of themselves, always referred to as “the rights of Englishmen.” It was identity politics, but fought for an identity bound up in natural rights, one that could eventually be adopted by every American of every national origin, ethnicity, and race.

That American identity is what the cultural revolutionaries are determined to replace with their very different identity politics.

Kantor asks two questions without answering them:

“Is there a way out of the newly gelling mutually hostile tribal identities that are replacing it? Can we ever climb back into an e pluribus unum identification with all Americans as members of one tribe?”

She closes with this: “[R]eforging that American identity seems to be what Trump is trying for: “We are all Americans first.”

Let’s look at two other articles where the writers partially answer Kantor’s question, expressing doubt that the Leftists’ use of identity politics can succeed. First, is Dr. Michael Brown, focusing on the identity of the hour, “transgenderism.”

In his article, “Why Transgender Activism Will Not Succeed in Changing America,” Brown writes:

Transgender activism will never succeed in reshaping our society for one simple reason: It is not natural. Biological differences are too deeply instilled in the human race. Male-female distinctives are too obvious and real. It is futile to declare war on gender.

It is one thing to be asked to empathize with those who struggle with gender identity confusion. It is another thing to declare that biological categories do not determine reality.

It is one thing to recognize that some people do not fall within the normal, male-female spectrum due to genetic abnormalities. It is another thing to claim that gender is whatever you perceive it to be.

After listing examples where people and organizations are sticking to common sense over this new identity of the day fad, Brown writes, “Will the whole world be turned upside down because of the confusion and sensitivities of less than 1 percent of the population?” “Watch and see,” he says, “The pushback against transgender activism will continue.”

Our last article is from Linda Harvey. In her post, “Is Gender Confusion Insanity Finally Beginning to Wane?,” she asks, “Do we dare hope that a new era of sanity is dawning?” Regarding the growing trend towards the reversal of sex “reassignment” surgery, Linda Harvey writes:

Such an option still offends many on the left, who dig in their heels and continue to push unisex bathroom laws and bans on therapy to overcome “transgender” delusions and same-sex attraction.

An increase in people seeking a return to their birth gender is reported in Europe. A renowned “sex change” surgeon in Serbia noted more requests for complicated and expensive reversal surgery.

A young boy in Australia recently received international publicity for wanting to be a boy. After several years of estrogen, he no longer wants to pretend to be a girl.

Why is this controversial? The default response of every human should be a longing to be that woman or man as nature intended.

Harvey asks another question: “Aren’t liberals supposed to be flexible?” “But a rigid adherence to identity politics,” Harvey notes, “ties the typical leftist in notes”:

Secretly, a social liberal is often a mess, exhausted from the convoluted mental and spiritual energy needed to reconcile the nonsense of pretense.

Ouch. Linda Harvey gives examples where Leftists are unwilling to give up on their goal of doing away with the reality of biological sex, but then writes:

And yet promising glimmers of truth keep emerging. In Miami-Dade County, a measure to prohibit counseling of minors to overcome same-sex attractions was just defeated after hard work by the Christian Family Coalition and other pro-family advocates.

. . .

This victory comes as good news after a long series of defeats for common sense on this issue. Numerous cities and states have passed laws limiting counseling for minors who want to embrace the natural design of their heterosexual bodies as male or female.

Since “Attorney General Sessions ended the Eric Holder/Obama imaginary application of Title VII sex discrimination law to those with gender confusion, Harvey writes, “Activist groups are expressing fury that their fascist fantasy is ending.” Ouch again.

Read more:  Series: Identity Politics & Paraphilias



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The Culture War Is Not Over: Leftists Fight Over Identity Politics

Here is a recent headline from the Independent Journal Review: “Salon: Identity Politics Is ‘Dragging the Progressive Agenda Down.’” IJR’s Pardes Seleha explains that yes, indeed, a “far-left publication” [Salon] is “finally denouncing its long-embraced identity politics…”

Salon isn’t the only place on the political left to find critics of I.D. politics. Last November, Mark Lilla, a professor at Columbia wrote an op ed that ran in the New York Times titled, “The End of Identity Liberalism.” Here was his opening:

It is a truism that America has become a more diverse country. It is also a beautiful thing to watch. Visitors from other countries, particularly those having trouble incorporating different ethnic groups and faiths, are amazed that we manage to pull it off. Not perfectly, of course, but certainly better than any European or Asian nation today. It’s an extraordinary success story.

But how should this diversity shape our politics? The standard liberal answer for nearly a generation now has been that we should become aware of and “celebrate” our differences. Which is a splendid principle of moral pedagogy — but disastrous as a foundation for democratic politics in our ideological age. In recent years American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing.

So, Lilla writes, “the age of identity liberalism must be brought to an end.”

The “fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups,” he adds. Ouch. Trigger alert!

At the level of electoral politics, Lilla says, “identity liberalism has failed most spectacularly, as we have just seen. National politics in healthy periods is not about ‘difference,’ it is about commonality.”

Why is this series about identity politics running at the Illinois Family Institute’s website? Because those who have been running up the white flag of surrender in the “culture war” should pull down that flag immediately.

Another name for that culture war is identity politics. Aggrieved groups demand their rights. Women are to be treated to taxpayer funded abortion. The LGBT(etc.) crowd are to be treated as if their sex-centric identity is legitimate. College campus snowflakes are to be treated as if they were grown-ups.

Professor Lilla’s article attracted a good bit of attention on both the left and the right.

Here was Rich Lowry writing at the National Review:

A recent essay in the New York Times elegantly diagnosed the problem and inadvertently illustrated it. Mark Lilla, a professor at Columbia and highly respected intellectual historian, wrote that “American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender, and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing.”

His piece itself occasioned a moral panic, focused overwhelmingly on how Lilla is, in fact, himself a white male. His op-ed was denounced from the left as “the whitest thing I’ve ever read,” and part of an “unconscionable” assault on “the very people who just put the most energy into defeating Trumpism, coming from those who will be made least vulnerable by Trump’s ascension.”

Lilla was so undeterred by the criticism from his fellow Leftists that he decided to turn the topic into a 160 page book, The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics.

Beverly Gage, writing at the New York Times, wasn’t completely happy with the effort.

Still gobsmacked by the 2016 election, many liberals may be yearning for a thoughtful, generous and well-informed book to put it all in perspective, a strategic account of where they’ve been, where they are now and where they ought to go. In “The Once and Future Liberal,” Mark Lilla, a professor of the humanities at Columbia and a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, says his aim is to unify today’s fractured liberals around an agenda “emphasizing what we all share and owe one another as citizens, not what differentiates us.” Unfortunately, he does this in a way guaranteed to alienate vast swaths of his audience, and to deepen left-of-center divisions. Rather than engage in good faith with movements like Black Lives Matter, Lilla chooses to mock them, reserving a particularly mean-spirited sneer for today’s campus left. “Elections are not prayer meetings, and no one is interested in your personal testimony,” he instructs “identity” activists, urging them to shut up, stop marching and “get real.”

You can see why I included that entire paragraph. It was too much fun not to.

So, it’s clear that not everyone on the political left wants to move past identity politics — and that is very good news for those of us on the political right. Again, here is Beverly Gage:

This is not, of course, a work of historical scholarship. It is a polemic about the dangers of “identity liberalism,” and a critique of the misguided professors and students who seem so enamored of it.

Beverly in not a fan, either:

Despite his lofty calls for solidarity, Lilla can’t seem to get out of his own way — or even to take his own advice. He urges fellow liberals to focus on “the hard and unglamorous task of persuading people very different from themselves to join a common effort,” then proceeds to insult his own audience…

“The Once and Future Liberal” is a missed opportunity of the highest order, trolling disguised as erudition.

One note of thanks to Ms. Gage: Since I’m not going to read Lilla’s book, I appreciate her including this quote in her review — again, too much fun:

“Elections are not prayer meetings, and no one is interested in your personal testimony,” [Lilla] instructs “identity” activists, urging them to shut up, stop marching and “get real.”

Let me close with Michael Brown, also writing last December partly in response to the Lilla op ed:

[Leftist] radical agendas can only go so far before the people begin to push back, and that it is partly what happened with the recent elections.

Enough with the divisive ways of identity politics. Enough with the attack on traditional American values. Enough with the assault on our religious freedoms. Enough.

So, in that sense, yes, we are witnessing a larger moral and cultural backlash, even if some of these issues were not front and center in the Trump campaign. And to the extent we can make the case for a biblically-based, moral conservatism, one that treats everyone fairly but that recognizes that certain boundaries are healthy and good, we can turn the hearts of the younger generation as well as recapture the hearts of the older generation.

As my close colleagues and I have said for the last 15-plus years, on with the revolution.

Also worth reading on this topic is Kay S. Hymowitz‘s article “Why Identity Politics Are Not All-American,” where she opens with a reference to Mark Lilla’s NYT article.

Read more:  Series: Identity Politics & Paraphilias



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We have stood firm for 25 years, working to boldly bring a biblical perspective to public policy.

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Series: Identity Politics & Paraphilias

The cultural war is going to continue to become weirder. Some might reasonably think that nothing stranger can follow the Leftists’ call for everyone to accept transgenderism as normal.

But then there are all those other letters that follow the “T” in LGBT. You may have seen different variations on the list: LGBTQIA is a popular one (Q=queer or questioning/I=intersex/A=Ally). That’s only 3 more letters you say, that’s no big deal. Except that the list continues on — you can read just three of many articles from Leftists here, here and here.

What is learned from those lists is that we’re in for a long haul. Whether it is a distorted view of “gender,” or the many varieties of sexual desires, each group could be in line to get their own letter and join in for “equal justice.” This series — aimed at expounding upon the cultural phenomenon of identity politics, also will be featuring the many “paraphilias,” which is defined by the liberals at Wikipedia this way:

Paraphilia (also known as sexual perversion and sexual deviation) is the experience of intense sexual arousal to atypical objects, fetishes, situations, fantasies, behaviors, or individuals. […] The number and taxonomy of paraphilias is under debate; one source lists as many as 549 types of paraphilias.

If you think things are out of hand now with high school “transgender” boys being able to use the girls’ locker rooms, just wait. That number of “549 types” promises even worse possibilities ahead.

Articles in this series, from oldest to newest:

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Introducing a Series

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Incest

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Body Integrity Identity Disorder

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Impact & Transgenders

Transgenderism a Choice or Disorder?

Why the Term “Sexual Orientation” is Nonsense

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Man’s Search for Meaning

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: LGBT Is Not a Color & Fetishism

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: ‘Public Discourse’ Weighs In & Bisexuality

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: More from ‘Public Discourse’ & Autassassinophilia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: An Ugly Fight & Bestiality/Zoophilia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Tribalism & Urolagnia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Ideas & Voyeurism

Charlottesville: A Return to the Topic of Identity Politics

Paraphilias of the Day: Pedophilia, Hebephilia, Ephebophilia, and Pederasty

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Sports & Exhibitionism

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Normalizing Deviance & Sadomasochism

The Culture War Is Not Over: Leftists Fight Over Identity Politics

Paraphilia of the Day: Gerontophilia

‘Identity Politics Aim for the End of America Itself’

Wikipedia and Our Paraphilias of the Day: Acrotomophilia and Apotemnophilia

Paraphilias of the Day: Frotteurism and Toucherism

Identity Politics in 2018 and Beyond: Are Conservatives Ready?

Peodeiktophilia and Homeovestism

Autovampirism/Vampirism and Auto-haemofetishism

Identity Politics: Is America & the World Running Out of Patience w/LGBTQIA Activism?

Paraphilias of the Day: Abasiophilia, Agalmatophilia, Algolagnia, and Andromimetophilia



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Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Normalizing Deviance & Sadomasochism

In our must-read first installment in this series we used Wikipedia’s definition of the word paraphilia:

Paraphilia (from Greek παρά para “beside” and -philia φιλία “friendship, love”) is the experience of intense sexual arousal to atypical objects, situations, or individuals. Paraphilic behavior (such as pedophilia, zoophilia, sexual sadism, and exhibitionism) may be illegal in some jurisdictions, but may also be tolerated.

It is in the spirit of tolerance that we’ve been examining paraphilias other than the ones represented by the letters LGBT. Why should just those four get all the attention?

A year ago this month, IFI’s Laurie Higgins posted an article titled “Homosexuality, Race and Identity.” In it, she summed up how homosexual activists “sought to transform cultural disapproval of homoeroticism into approval,” and as part of their strategy, they sought to “co-opt the fight of blacks for racial equality.”

In short, this is what liberals think—or pretend to think—in the service of normalizing sexual deviance:

* Blacks were mistreated.
* Homosexuals were mistreated.
* Therefore skin color and homoeroticism are equivalent.

“The fallacious and odious comparison of race to sexual perversion,” Higgins writes, “has been an effective stratagem in our increasingly non-thinking culture, but there was yet more rhetorical gimcrackery to come.”

The homosexual activists also began “transforming the concept of “identity”:

They sought to recast identity as something intrinsically inviolable, immutable, and good. They sought to refashion identity in such a way as to make it culturally taboo to make judgments about any constituent feature of identity. They re-imagined identity in such a way as to move homoeroticism from the category of phenomena about which humans can legitimately make moral distinctions to one about which society is forbidden to make judgments.

“By conflating all the phenomena that can constitute identity,” Higgins writes, progressives “demanded that society should no more make judgments about feelings and volitional acts than they should about skin color.”

“The Left demands that society affirm all subjective feelings not only as good but also as signifiers of objective reality,” Laurie Higgins explained, and that word “all” is key when it comes to “subjective feelings.” A lot of people have a lot of different feelings. The politics of identity promises many, many more variations — and thus complication.

Something tells me, though, that few in the homosexual community foresaw just how many possible “identities” there were (and are still) to come “out of the closet.”

Before getting to our paraphilia of the day, here is how IFI’s Laurie Higgins introduced the following video that she embedded in her article:

For your chuckle ‘o’ the day, watch this short video to see the ideological Gordian knot from which post- Dolezalians can’t seem to extricate themselves:

You can read Laurie Higgins’ entire article here.

Now for everyone’s favorite part of these articles. On one side is nature’s design and intent (natural sex between men and women), and on the other is everything else. Is society prepared to give “equal rights” to the “everything else” — such as the paraphilia sadomasochism?

Technically, I think we get credit for two paraphilias (sadism and masochism) — note the italicized sentences that are included on this Wikipedia page  (and note the shocking use of the word “disorder” — those intolerant bigots!):

“S&M” redirects here. For other uses, see S&M (disambiguation).
This article is about the general historical concept of sadomasochism. For consenting partners engaging in sexual play behavior, see BDSM. For the medical condition involving unwilling victims, see Sexual sadism disorder. For the medical condition where pain or humiliation is required for sexual arousal and causes distress or impairment, see Sexual masochism disorder.
Sadomasochism is the giving or receiving pleasure from acts involving the receipt or infliction of pain or humiliation. Practitioners of sadomasochism may seek sexual gratification from their acts. While the terms sadist and masochist refer respectively to one who enjoys giving or receiving pain, practitioners of sadomasochism may switch between activity and passivity.

And to our question of the day: will therapies to help minors change their unwanted sadomasochistic desires be banned?

Articles in this series, from oldest to newest:

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Introducing a Series

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Incest

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Body Integrity Identity Disorder

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Impact & Transgenders

Transgenderism a Choice or Disorder?

Why the Term “Sexual Orientation” is Nonsense

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Man’s Search for Meaning

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: LGBT Is Not a Color & Fetishism

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: ‘Public Discourse’ Weighs In & Bisexuality

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: More from ‘Public Discourse’ & Autassassinophilia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: An Ugly Fight & Bestiality/Zoophilia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Tribalism & Urolagnia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Ideas & Voyeurism

Charlottesville: A Return to the Topic of Identity Politics

Paraphilias of the Day: Pedophilia, Hebephilia, Ephebophilia, and Pederasty

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Sports & Exhibitionism


PLEASE consider a financial gift to IFI to sustain our work.
We have stood firm for 25 years, working to boldly bring a biblical perspective to public policy.

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Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Irrationality & Necrophilia

Oh, those poor comedians. What used to be a joke is now, well, supposed to be taken seriously. How can those witty comics compete with the LGBT movement and its irrationality?

I’m just going excerpt three paragraphs from an article by Taylor Fogarty at The Federalist:

Why Trans Activists Will Destroy Homosexual Rights
Instead of fighting the inhumane treatment of gays outside of the West, the top human rights issue for LGBT activists is making sure we don’t hurt feelings of people who dispute the definition of being gay.

Fogarty does yeoman’s work attempting to outline the flat out silliness of the radical social policy leftists that are getting tripped up by their own confused thinking.

Trans activism insists [the definitions of ‘man’ and ‘woman’] are faulty while failing to provide an alternative. To them, the only relevant “fact” of identity is what is self-determined. The movement fails to coherently define the sexes because its entire political argument relies on suppressing this question in the first place. In reality, their true standard for being a woman or man is simply a strong “feeling” or “conviction” that you are one.

. . .

A “homosexual” is defined as“a person who is sexually attracted to people of their own sex,” with “sex” defined as: “either of the two main categories (male and female) into which humans and most other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions.” If the biological terms “male” and “female” have no bearing when defining people, what’s the point of defining sexuality?

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are erased from LGBT protections without coherent definitions of biological sex. When anyone can identify as a class of people, the law is not only negated but unnecessary, because by trans logic, we can just identify our way out of any and all oppressive structures.

Can you hear it? That’s the sound of many thousands of LGB’ers facing an existential crisis of personal identity. Now is a good time to be a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist. The next few years will see those professionals prosper like never before.

Note too this line from Fogarty, “When anyone can identity as a class of people…” Exactly. That’s what this series is all about. We’ll use that to transition to our paraphilia of the day: Necrophilia. Necrophiliacs are included in the “anyone” category along with all the other letters of the rainbow alphabet.

This article is being published in May, 2017, but there’s little doubt that for many months and years into the future visitors will be finding their way here by clicking on various links found in hysterical and dishonest posts which claim that “John Biver says that homosexual sex is the equivalent of sex with the dead.”

For the record, the back end of a man is as appealing to many as a dead body, but putting that aside, I didn’t list same-sex-sex alongside necrophilia, the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders did. Both, along with quite a few other variations, are listed as paraphilias. It must be noted that the APA is a highly politicized organization that is constantly moving classifications around in order to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings. (And we all know that there is nothing more important in life than avoiding that.)

Here’s our old friend Wikipedia:

Necrophilia, also called thanatophilia or necrolagnia, is the sexual attraction to corpses. It is classified as a paraphilia by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. The word is derived from the Greek words: νεκρός (nekros; “dead”) and φιλία (philia; “friendship”). The term was coined by the Belgian alienist Joseph Guislain, who first used it in a lecture in 1850.

Just one more thing: It’s important to note that necrophiliacs typically aren’t in long-term relationships. (Sorry.)

Now it is time for a question. We close all of these articles with a question as a public service in order to help society prepare for the future.

If someone were to donate to an organization that lobbies against Necrophiliac “rights,” will this donor be fired from the company Mozilla?

Articles in this series, from oldest to newest:

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Introducing a Series

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Incest

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Body Integrity Identity Disorder

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Impact & Transgenders

Transgenderism a Choice or Disorder?

Why the Term “Sexual Orientation” is Nonsense

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Man’s Search for Meaning

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: LGBT Is Not a Color & Fetishism

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: ‘Public Discourse’ Weighs In & Bisexuality

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: More from ‘Public Discourse’ & Autassassinophilia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: An Ugly Fight & Bestiality/Zoophilia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Tribalism & Urolagnia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Ideas & Voyeurism

Charlottesville: A Return to the Topic of Identity Politics

Paraphilias of the Day: Pedophilia, Hebephilia, Ephebophilia, and Pederasty

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Sports & Exhibitionism

The entire Identity Politics and Paraphilias series can be found here.


PLEASE consider a financial gift to IFI to sustain our work.
We have stood firm for 25 years, working to boldly bring a biblical perspective to public policy.

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Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Sports & Exhibitionism

Leftists are increasingly making it easier for social conservatives to convey their message of common sense to the public at large. No better example of this exist than how male/female sports are being impacted. Here are short excerpts from two writers on the topic — first up is Joy Pullmann — here is the title of her post:

Boys Will Keep Winning Girls’ Sports Trophies Until We Are Willing To Re-Assert Sex Distinctions
The assumption in Obergefell that the sexes are interchangeable is affecting laws and regulations that concern sex differences in many other forms.

From the article:

The latest girls’ 100- and 200-meter dash winner from Cromwell High School in Connecticut has some broad shoulders, manly biceps, and a mustache — because he’s not a girl. The power of social stigma is strong enough, however, in this politically and culturally Left community to coerce an entire girls’ track team and their families to affirm an idea their eyes and experiences can easily disprove and which is directly harmful to their own aspirations and children.

. . .

Obergefell is a head domino, and we’re about to see it knock down a lot more sex-distinct policies. It’s a pretty sure bet Americans did not expect tolerance for two consenting adults doing whatever behind closed doors to become a spearhead for forcing naked boys to shower next to naked girls and make girls second-class players on their own fields. That’s what happens when you base social policy on feelings retroactively justified by pretend reasoning, and use courts as a major vehicle for turning those feelings into policy rather than through elected officials more responsive to legislating by consent.

Here is Dr. Michael Brown’s title:

Is this what leftists and progressives mean by ‘equality’?
When it comes to male and female athletic competition, we divide based on biological sex.

From the article:

In recent weeks, we’ve read about a female high-school wrestler who identifies as male and who has been taking testosterone to prepare to “transition” to male. Unsurprisingly, she defeated the other girls, all of whom are not taking testosterone.

We also read about a male weightlifter who now identifies as female. Unsurprisingly, he defeated the women he competed against, setting a new record along the way.

“Today,” Brown writes, “common sense is in danger of extinction, and concepts like fairness and equality are turned upside down.”

Even according to activist ideology, gender is a social construct but sex is biological. And when it comes to male and female athletic competition, we divide based on biological sex.

In the end, this is just one more example of why I believe LGBT activism will ultimately defeat itself.

You cannot wage a winning war against gender distinctions any more than you can redefine marriage while preserving its integrity.

. . .

And so, I appeal to progressivists, leftists, feminists, and LGBT allies and their allies, along with all those who cherish fairness, equality, and justice. Look carefully at the trajectory of your activism, and ask yourself: Is this really the kind of world that you want?

Onto our paraphilia of the day: Exhibitionism. Here is Wikipedia:

Exhibitionism is the act of exposing in a public or semi-public context those parts of one’s body that are not normally exposed – for example, the breastsgenitals or buttocks. The practice may arise from a desire or compulsion to expose themselves in such a manner to groups of friends or acquaintances, or to strangers for their amusement or sexual satisfaction or to shock the bystander. Exposing oneself only to an intimate partner is normally not regarded as exhibitionism. In law, the act of exhibitionism may be called indecent exposure, “exposing one’s person”, or other expressions.

Wikipedia provides more information by having sections on “types of exposure” and “classifications.” I’ll spare the reader the details and move onto our closing question.

Will “Exhibitionism” be added to enumerated anti-discrimination policies and laws? If America is to be truly free, shouldn’t all sexcentric-identified individuals be treated equally under the law?

The entire Identity Politics and Paraphilias series can be found here.

Up next:

Articles in this series, from oldest to newest:

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Introducing a Series

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Incest

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Body Integrity Identity Disorder

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Impact & Transgenders

Transgenderism a Choice or Disorder?

Why the Term “Sexual Orientation” is Nonsense

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Man’s Search for Meaning

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: LGBT Is Not a Color & Fetishism

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: ‘Public Discourse’ Weighs In & Bisexuality

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: More from ‘Public Discourse’ & Autassassinophilia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: An Ugly Fight & Bestiality/Zoophilia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Tribalism & Urolagnia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Ideas & Voyeurism

Charlottesville: A Return to the Topic of Identity Politics

Paraphilias of the Day: Pedophilia, Hebephilia, Ephebophilia, and Pederasty


PLEASE consider a financial gift to IFI to sustain our work.
We have stood firm for 25 years, working to boldly bring a biblical perspective to public policy.

donationbutton




Charlottesville: A Return to the Topic of Identity Politics

It is time to return to our Identity Politics and Paraphilias series, and events surrounding Charlottesville serve as the path back.

This focus on identity politics is important because while it’s being written about a lot, in my view it’s still not receiving the serious level of discussion that it deserves.

Leftists want to fundamentally transform the United States. Unfortunately, they do not nearly have the level of support they need to accomplish it. What they would sell—socialism which leads to Venezuela-type poverty and tyranny—they can’t, so they seek to distract and destroy with divisive identity politics.

They need countless aggrieved sects fighting each other. This has always been a big part of the strategy of the cultural Marxists.

The purpose of the other part of this series — our highlighting of paraphilias — is to outline more fully the dangerous agenda of the identity politics champions. Many of these champions ride under the banner of LGBTQIA. What they don’t want you to know is that those letters represent only the beginning of the show.

The country has now been introduced to a growing number of genders — who knew that there could be so many? Silly common sense used to hold that there were only two. Here is one list that runs 13 pages.

The number of paraphilias is far greater than both the number of letters currently listed following LGBT and the count of gender varieties.

Thus, paraphilias deserve attention. According to Leftists, if America is to be truly free, all sexcentric-identified individuals should be treated equally under the law. Therefore, there is no logical answer from them as to why discrimination should be allowed for any other perversions.

So — identity politics and paraphilias fit nicely together. The Leftists know that we can’t remain a county whose motto is “out of many, one.” They want the opposite, “out of one, many.” Did I mention that not all the identities involve sex and gender? There are also “oppressed” minority groups. And a lot of them!

And now Charlottesville has brought into the spotlight a few more labels — such as crazies and anarchists: Neo-Nazis, KKK members, Antifa, and Black Lives Matter.

Commentator Tammy Bruce penned an article with this title and lead:

The deadly impact of identity politics
By conflating white supremacists and Trump supporters, the ‘Resistance’ pours hate on hate

Americans know full well the environment of hate and violence that identity politics has served us.

The concerted effort by the so-called “Resistance” to further divide this nation is disgusting and dangerous. By singularly focusing on such a craven goal of race hatred and suspicion, and conflating white supremacists with all Trump voters, they not only ignore the real issue of the danger of identity politics, they contribute to it.

In the wake of Charlottesville, commentator Michael Brown wrote:

Identity politics can be just as dangerous as outright racism. Both are divisive, both demean the value of others, and both make judgments based on skin color or ethnicity.

Writing at Mercatornet, Jarrett Stepman notes:

In a country of 320 million people of stunningly diverse ethnic backgrounds and philosophies, this is a fire bell in the night for complete cultural disintegration. The end result will be uglier than the already sickening events that took place this past weekend.

Bruce Thornton, one of my favorite writers, notes in an article at Front Page Mag:

Identity politics based on grievance and victimization requires that there always be grievances and victims. Progress cannot be admitted, no more than any of us can be born free from Original Sin. The permanence of racial sin, and the need for whites to act in ways that advantage the “victims,” forbid such reconciliation.

It used to be called the “culture war.” The phase we are moving into will make that war look like the good old days. Now it’s bigger, and on purpose. Fueled by Leftists on a mission, violent radical groups are, in the words of Jarrett Stepman, stepping up “their efforts to plunge the nation into constant social unrest and civil war.”

Up next: Paraphilias of the Day: Pedophilia, Hebephilia, Ephebophilia, and Pederasty

Articles in this series, from oldest to newest:

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Introducing a Series

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Incest

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Body Integrity Identity Disorder

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Impact & Transgenders

Transgenderism a Choice or Disorder?

Why the Term “Sexual Orientation” is Nonsense

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Man’s Search for Meaning

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: LGBT Is Not a Color & Fetishism

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: ‘Public Discourse’ Weighs In & Bisexuality

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: More from ‘Public Discourse’ & Autassassinophilia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: An Ugly Fight & Bestiality/Zoophilia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Tribalism & Urolagnia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Ideas & Voyeurism


If you appreciate the work and ministry of IFI,
please consider a tax-deductible donation to sustain our endeavors.  

It does make a difference.




Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Tribalism & Urolagnia

Almost every day in the op eds it’s there — the secret path to victory for economic and social conservatives. Will they see it?

Fiscal conservatives work to present well thought out policies that work in line with human nature and economics. For example, how to structure the health care system so health care is both accessible and affordable for everyone. Leftists, on the other hand, ignore economics and seek “fairness” for aggrieved groups and create a mess like Obamacare.

Social conservatives seek to preserve things that have been proved throughout history to work best for a healthy civilization — the protection of innocent life and the societal building block of marriage and the natural family. Leftists prefer to grant everyone “rights” based upon their feelings. Not even biological sex is recognized as reality.

The secret path to victory for conservatives isn’t a secret at all — it’s in plain view: Leftists push identity politics — and conservatives should draw the contrast using bold colors.

Within weeks, three writers at Front Page Magazine discussed the phenomenon of identity politics and here are a few quotes from them. First, Michelle Malkin:

  • “When all is said and done, one of the most important cultural accomplishments of Donald Trump’s bid will be the platform he created for Americans of all colors, ethnicities, political affiliations, and socioeconomic backgrounds to defy soul-draining identity politics.”
  • “I too often take for granted my own personal awakening about the entrenched tribalism of identity politics at a crazy liberal arts college in the early 1990s. The liberation from collectivist ideology is profound and lasting. Witnessing so many outspoken newcomers arrive at this enlightenment, however circuitous the route, has been the most encouraging and underappreciated phenomenon of the 2016 campaign.”

Next, David Horowitz:

  • “Identity politics are the anti-American way, erasing the individual in favor of the collective.”
  • “Progressive identity politics fix individuals in racial and gender hierarchies, with so-called oppressors — white males — at the bottom. American universities are dedicated to this sinister agenda and have been for decades, and it is now embedded in the attitudes of the cultural elites.”
  • “The totalitarian goal of identity politics is to force everyone into the politically correct mold.”

Lastly, Daniel Greenfield:

  • “[This is] the big problem the Democrats face. Identity politics with its hysterical outbursts of rage and specialized vocabulary of victimhood (privilege, victim-blaming, microaggressions) is toxic nationally, but dominates the academic and big city political populations that are its base.”
  • “Democrats have to choose between identity politics and the working class. Abandoning identity politics would be a painful process while abandoning the working class has proven to be painless and disastrous. But identity politics without mass migration and social transformation is unworkable.”

Identity politics doesn’t solve problems. It  creates them.

On to our focus on the identity politics category of paraphilias. Today we’ll define both (#1) Urolagnia and  (#2) Coprophilia, since they’re obviously related. Here are their Wikipedia entries:

Urolagnia (also urophiliaundinismgolden shower and watersports) is a form of salirophilia (which is a form of paraphilia) in which sexual excitement is associated with the sight or thought of urine or urination. The term has origins in the Greek language (from ouron — urine, and lagneia — lust).

Coprophilia (from Greek κόπρος, kópros—excrement and φιλία, philía—liking, fondness), also called scatophilia or scat (Greekσκατά, skatá-feces), is the paraphilia involving sexual arousal and pleasure from feces. In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association, it is classified under 302.89 — Paraphilia NOS (Not Otherwise Specified) and has no diagnostic criteria other than a general statement about paraphilias that says “the diagnosis is made if the behavior, sexual urges, or fantasies cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning”. Furthermore, the DSM-IV-TR notes, “Fantasies, behaviors, or objects are paraphilic only when they lead to clinically significant distress or impairment (e.g. are obligatory, result in sexual dysfunction, require participation of nonconsenting individuals, lead to legal complications, interfere with social relationships)”.

Let’s get out of here and close with our question of the day: Will we see prime time television programs and movies with lovable Urolagnia and Coprophilia “oriented” characters? If not, that is clear discrimination.

Up next…




Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Ideas & Voyeurism

Here is David French writing at National Review:

Identity politics works like this: Progressives do everything in their power to explicitly and unequivocally stoke race- and gender-related resentments and grievances. Any push-back against identity politics is labeled denialism at best and racism or sexism at worst. Progressive ideas are so self-evidently superior that opposition is best explained as grounded in misogyny or the always-reliable “fear of change.”

“It’s a poisonous ideology,” French writes, and “it’s straining our national unity”:

In the aftermath of the election, the Democrats are doing their own soul-searching, with many of the questions boiling down to a battle between ideas and identities. Did they lose because they nominated a bad candidate who advanced insufficiently attractive ideas? Or did they lose because, in this election cycle at least, there were just too many racists and sexists?

It’s understandable and human that Hillary would point the finger rather than look in the mirror, but if her side wins the argument, look for Democrats to do their dead-level best now and in the future to inflame race- and gender-based grievances. They will tell millions of Americans that the color of their skin and their “gender identity” should dictate their thoughts and beliefs, and that opposition isn’t based on reason or logic but rather hate and fear.

Here’s the thing, though — that destructive narrative is so powerful that, next time, it might just win. If it does, Democrats will feel vindicated, triumphant liberal culture warriors will redouble their assault on conservative ideas and institutions, and the national fabric will continue to fray.

To our paraphilia of the day: Voyeurism. Here is Wikipedia:

Voyeurism is the sexual interest in or practice of spying on people engaged in intimate behaviors, such as undressing, sexual activity, or other actions usually considered to be of a private nature.

The voyeur does not normally interact directly with the subject of his/her interest, who is often unaware of being observed. The essence of voyeurism is the observing but may also involve the making of a secret photograph or video of the subject during an intimate activity.

Let me ask our readers to search their hearts for any bigotry that might be in there concerning voyeurs. It’s who they are.

And our closing question: Will the letter V be added to the LGBTQIA (etc.) abbreviation?

Up next: Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Tribalism & Urolagnia

Articles in this series, from oldest to newest:

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Introducing a Series

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Incest

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Body Integrity Identity Disorder

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Impact & Transgenders

Transgenderism a Choice or Disorder?

Why the Term “Sexual Orientation” is Nonsense

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Man’s Search for Meaning

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: LGBT Is Not a Color & Fetishism

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: ‘Public Discourse’ Weighs In & Bisexuality

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: More from ‘Public Discourse’ & Autassassinophilia

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: An Ugly Fight & Bestiality/Zoophilia



Please Support Neighborhood Pro-Family IFI

Your support of our work and ministry is always much needed and greatly appreciated. Your promotion of our emails on Facebook, Twitter, your own email network, and prayer for financial support is a huge part of our success in being a strong voice for the pro-life, pro-marriage and pro-family message here in the Land of Lincoln.

Please consider making a donation to help us stand strong!




Identity Politics and Paraphilias: An Ugly Fight & Bestiality/Zoophilia

It is worth restating my premise for these articles: The letters “LGBT” don’t really end with the letter “T,” and all the letters that follow deserve an equal footing with the first four. Thus, expect increasing irrationality and craziness from the radical political leftists in the months and years ahead.

Many fiscal conservatives consider themselves “enlightened” and thus look down on anyone concerned about those pesky and backward “social issues.” They can consider this another wake up call. The breakdown of the family and an increasingly divided society resulting from identity politics means your efforts to restore limited government (even a little bit) are doomed to fail.

You can’t tear up the social fabric and expect a lean government. You can’t have one kind of society and another kind of government. Here’s more bad news: you cannot separate the economic issues from the social issues.

Last November Daniel Payne posted a piece at The Federalist titled, “Why Liberals’ Coming Fight Over Identity Politics Will Be Ugly.” Here was the introductory sentence: “The more practical wing of the Democratic Party and the more manic, single-minded constituency largely comprised of young liberals are in for a giant fight.”

Payne writes:

The tried-and-true formula of liberal success served reasonably well throughout the young twenty-first century and quite well throughout much of the second half of the twentieth. Yet this boiling stew of identity politics centering on race, sex, and sexual orientation failed the Democrats at precisely the moment it should have been their Excalibur.

“There is good reason for the Left to consider an alternative way to do politics,” Payne writes, and suggests that the Leftists discard “identity politics for something better.”

And what might that be? A package of policy proposals guaranteed to work? Like $20 trillion in federal debt? A war on poverty that hasn’t worked? Obamacare and other entitlement programs that are not structured properly? A K-12 and higher education system that is both inefficient and ineffective?

Payne defines identity politics just as I do in this series:

This will be a problem for Democrats looking to soften the party’s approach to identity issues. On questions of “identity,” or what is often broadly termed “social issues,” younger voters are far more liberal than their older counterparts.

Payne continues:

Consider, for instance, the millennial position on LGBT rights. Data suggest that overwhelming majorities of young voters favor “LGBT nondiscrimination protections,” while nearly three-quarters of Millennials favor re-defining marriage to include same-sex couples. Half of the same demographic believes “gender isn’t limited to male and female.”

Yep. The same kids that think Bernie Sanders was onto something are also confused about biology. That’s fixable. It calls for conservatives of all stripes to start fighting and winning the information war. Learning is a lifetime activity and the Millennial generation will require more continuing education than most.

You can read the rest of Daniel Payne’s article here. He touches on other areas of Leftist and Millennial generation ignorance.

Now to our paraphilia of the day: Bestiality/Zoophilia. Sorry, but it is a paraphilia. Are the Millennials ready to embrace this or are they backward bigots? Here’s Wikipedia‘s opening note:

For other uses, see Zoophilia (disambiguation).
“Bestiality” redirects here. For other uses, see Bestiality (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Zoophily.

Certainly none of us want to confuse it with Zoophily.

Zoophilia is a paraphilia involving a sexual fixation on non-human animals. Bestiality is cross-species sexual activity between human and non-human animals. The terms are often used interchangeably, but some researchers make a distinction between the attraction (zoophilia) and the act (bestiality).

Although sex with animals is not outlawed in some countries, in most countries, bestiality is illegal under animal abuse laws or laws dealing with crimes against nature.

One reader brought a 2012 article to my attention written by Antonio M. Haynes, a Cornell University law student: “’Dog on Man’: Are Bestiality Laws Justifiable?” Just to be clear, I only read the first four pages so I have no idea what his argument is. It wasn’t easy getting that far — call it intolerance on my part if you’d like.

The following passage is from the book, Strained Relations: The Challenge of Homosexuality by Bill Muehlenberg:

The Gay Report, a book much praised in homosexual communities, contains testimonials without adverse comment of homosexual encounters with Labrador retrievers, cows and horses. The 1992 report mentioned above found that 15 per cent of male homosexuals and 19 per cent of male bisexuals had sex with animals, compared with three per cent of male heterosexuals. As lesbian activist Sara Cohen puts it: “What’s wrong with a little bestiality?”

Enough said.

To our basic and important question of the day: Should a person who is morally opposed to Bestiality/Zoophilia behavior be allowed to have a show on HGTV?

Up next: Normalizing Deviance & Sadomasochism.

Articles in this series, from oldest to newest:

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Introducing a Series

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Incest

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Body Integrity Identity Disorder

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Impact & Transgenders

Transgenderism a Choice or Disorder?

Why the Term “Sexual Orientation” is Nonsense

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Man’s Search for Meaning

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: LGBT Is Not a Color & Fetishism

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: ‘Public Discourse’ Weighs In & Bisexuality

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: More from ‘Public Discourse’ & Autassassinophilia



Please Support Neighborhood Pro-Family IFI

Your support of our work and ministry is always much needed and greatly appreciated. Your promotion of our emails on Facebook, Twitter, your own email network, and prayer for financial support is a huge part of our success in being a strong voice for the pro-life, pro-marriage and pro-family message here in the Land of Lincoln.

Please consider making a donation to help us stand strong!




Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Leftists Can’t Navigate Either

The recent “March for Women” in Washington, D.C., might have been  a bit vague in its goal, but it sure was vulgar its execution. It also provided nice fodder for this series on identity politics.

This is from the Free Beacon — not The Onion. Really. I’m not kidding. Here is the title and subtitle of a post from freebeacon.com:

Transgender Activists Upset Over ‘White Cis Women March’
Women’s march ‘dangerous space’ with ‘oppressive message’ that ‘having a vagina is essential to womanhood’

If you’re keeping score, here’s the basic substance:

Transgender activists are upset that the women’s march over the weekend was not inclusive to biological men who identify as women, as the protest presented an “oppressive message” that having a “vagina is essential to womanhood.”

Saturday’s event to oppose the inauguration of Donald Trump was largely a “white cis women march,” with too many pictures of female reproductive organs and pink hats, according to trans women and “nonbinary” individuals interviewed by Mic.com.

A fight is brewing between “trans-exclusionary radical feminists,” or “TERFs,” and transwomen, according to the article, “How the Women’s March’s ‘genital-based’ feminism isolated the transgender community.”

The women’s march had an over-reliance on slogans and posters depicting gender norms, like using pink to represent women and girls, said some transgender activists who boycotted the march.

Okee dokee. You can confirm that this isn’t from The Onion by clicking here. Here is just one more excerpt from someone offended by the event:

‘I believe there’s a lot of inequality that has to do with genitals—that’s not something you can separate from the feminist movement,’ the transwoman added. ‘But I feel like I’ve tried to get involved in feminism and there’s always been a blockade there for trans women.’

On the topic of “misguided” “genital-based womanhood” that was espoused by the women’s march, let us quickly move to our paraphilia of the day: Autoandrophilia. First you need to know that for the sake of time I will occasionally include similar paraphilias — in this case, the connecting theme is the need for a terrific imagination. For the sake of space, I’m going to post the abbreviated definitions — you can follow the individual links to learn more. Since I have no idea what the proper listing order should be, let’s just go with, uh, ladies first:

Autoandrophilia: A biological female imagining herself as a male

Autogynephilia: A biological man imagining himself as a female

Autonepiophilia: The image of one’s self in the form of an infant.

Autopedophilia: The image of one’s self in the form of a child.

Autozoophilia: The image of one’s self in the form of an animal or anthropomorphized animal.

I hope our readers won’t mind the abbreviated label “auto*philia” representing all of the above.

Let’s close with a question: Will wannabe auto*philia-loving journalists form professional journalism associations (such as this one) to monitor and exploit the Fourth Estate in the service of breaking down barriers and normalizing auto*philia?

Here’s another question: if America is to be truly free, shouldn’t all sexcentric-identified individuals be treated equally under the law?

Lastly, here is related short interview by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson — here’s the headline and lead-in:

Obama’s transgender bathroom mandate and strange bedfellows

One Christian organization and a radical feminist group are the most unlikely tag team partners in a challenge to former president’s transgender bathroom order.

Image credit: www.webneel.com.

Articles in this series, from oldest to newest:

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Introducing a Series

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Incest

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Body Integrity Identity Disorder

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Impact & Transgenders

Transgenderism a Choice or Disorder?

Why the Term “Sexual Orientation” is Nonsense

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Man’s Search for Meaning


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