1

The Trans Divide

The world’s richest man has it right. Last Friday Elon Musk tweeted, “[a]ny parent or doctor who sterilizes a child before they are a consenting adult should go to prison for life.”

Twenty years ago this would not have been a controversial statement. The general response would have been, “of course.” But today it is a position at the very edge of a massive chasm that exists between the left and the right. How did this happen, and why?

It is not as if Elon Musk is a distant observer, who emerges from his executive suite from time to time to issue statements just to weigh in on current controversies. For him it is also a personal matter. A month ago, Musk’s 18-year-old son by a previous marriage filed a a petition for a name change in the Santa Monica Superior Court. He also petitioned for a new birth certificate, changing his sex to female. The wide rift that exists in our culture, apparently is equally as wide within the billionaire’s own family.

So called “trans-affirming care” — puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery — have been restricted, banned or are under consideration in 15 states: Indiana, Idaho, West Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia, Iowa, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Dakota, Utah, Florida, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas and Kansas.

In the remaining states the care remains legal and several have passed or are attempting to pass laws that will make the states trans sanctuaries.

A bill is under consideration to do just that in Illinois, but it has remained in the Assignment Committee since February, with no other action taken so far. California, by law, already is a trans sanctuary and in Minnesota legislation has passed in the House to become a sanctuary state. By Executive Order, Governor Tim Walz already has required protection for “gender-affirming” care since March 8th.

In Colorado, Governor Jared Polis signed a bill on April 14th making that state the third official sanctuary state. On April 12th, the Washington State House passed an amended version of a Senate Bill that protects runaway trans children and allows them to get hormone therapy and surgery without parental consent, although the Department of Children, Youth and Families has to be involved.  That bill apparently needs Senate approval before being sent to the Governor. Many other states are taking up this issue as well.

The Biden Administration is fully behind “trans-affirming” care and has declared it “settled science.” Biden, himself, just released a statement opposing H.R. 734, a bill that would require children to play on teams that align with their biological sex. The President says if it reaches his desk, he will veto it.

It is simply incredible and nonsensical that this deep divide exists. Even Saturday Night Live, which was once a comedy show, took up the issue over this past weekend. In an unfunny skit with Molly Kearney, the show took shots at several red states for banning what she called “health care for trans kids.” The left refuses even to look at the possibility that chemicals that sterilize, and surgery that mutilates and sterilizes children could be viewed as destructive, not helpful.

Anyone who speaks out against medical intervention for children risks condemnation and even physical assaults. Those who favor medical intervention become completely unhinged by any challenge to their views, making it impossible to have a civil debate. There is no debate, according to the left, pointing to the endorsement of “gender-affirming” care by the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, Children’s Hospital Association, and others as confirmation for their position.

We cannot get a coherent answer to the question of why these organizations support such care, when in Europe, where trans hormone therapy and trans surgery started, the medical clinics are being shut down. The preferred therapy there is now talk therapy.

Why the difference?

Popular bloggers, Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster, recently hosted Jamie Reed on their podcast, Triggernometry. Reed is the whistleblower who exposed the destructive transgender care practices at Washington University Transgender Clinic in St. Louis, MO. The clinic currently is under criminal investigation by the Missouri Attorney General.

Reed is a gay woman who is married to a transgender man and worked in the clinic managing the care for the clinic’s patients for the last several years. Initially it was expected the clinic would care for 50 or so patients a year, but 50 turned into hundreds, then thousands.

Kisin asked Reed how she explained this explosion of trans-identifying children. While Reed’s observations cannot be generalized to other populations, she has come to a few conclusions based on the thousands she saw. Her view was interesting.

She observed that white children in the U.S. are indoctrinated to believe they are privileged, and because of that they are seen as “oppressors.” Many are desperate to escape that label. Because they are white, it is difficult for them to claim a different race or ethnic identity. They can’t claim poverty when their family is affluent, and they find it too difficult to identify as gay or lesbian. It is easier for them to claim to be non-binary or trans. Trans seems to be the path of least resistance to become a member of an oppressed group, freeing them from condemnation as an oppressor.

She didn’t explain what accounts for other racial or ethnic groups who identify as trans, other than to say that most of the upsurge, she believes, is fueled by social media. These children are encouraged to join the oppressed class. She said if you took most of these kids to a farm in Montana and took away their phones, it would be better for them than the treatment they receive in gender clinics. The idea they were trans would most likely vanish.

Doctors, too, are affected by social and professional pressures. More important, she said, is that each medical professional is merely a “cog in a spinning machine.” The machine involves multiple professionals, each one carrying out his or her specific task. If any one of them stops or does something different the entire machine breaks down. Each professional performs his assigned task to the best of his ability, without the necessity to evaluate the entire spinning machine. That is someone else’s responsibility. They don’t think about it.

It reminds me of an examination of the people who were involved in Hitler’s death camps. Both Hannah Arendt and Christopher Browning looked at the phenomena of seemingly normal people committing mass murders in places like Auschwitz and multiple other concentration camps.

Both authors pointed to the Nazis using a division of labor as a way that allowed each worker an out. They were just one cog in a very large wheel, disconnected from ultimate responsibility for the mass exterminations. Someone else was responsible for designing the machine and keeping it going, not them.

The church, too, has taken sides on transgender divide, many of them coming down on the side of genital mutilation in the name of love, as the church from Revelation’s Thyatira might have taken. Most won’t adopt a position, being too cowardly to pick a side, much like the church at Laodicea would have done.

Very few follow the model of the church at Philadelphia, which faithfully followed God’s will.

Today the church is not driving the culture. It is being driven by it, transformed by it. Nothing is going to change in Chicago, or Springfield, or Washington D.C. until the church stands up and becomes an instrument of both truth and grace. That looks like that’s a long way off, but it could happen overnight if enough Christians answer the call.

Can you hear it?


Read more:

Analysis: Illinois One of 29 States Allowing Boys to Play Girls’ High School Sports (Prairie State Wire)

The Trans Quagmire – How We Got Here (Thomas Hampson)

[VIDEO] Transgenderism is The Most Dangerous Extremist Movement in The U.S. (Tucker Carlson)

[VIDEO] Riley Gaines Speaks Out Against Trans-Insanity in Women’s Sports

[VIDEO] Transgender Agenda Run Amuck (Fox News Channel)

New CA Bill Requires Foster Parents to Swear Allegiance to LGBT Ideology (California Family Council)

Opposing Transgenderism Is Not Genocide (Oliver Perry)

30 Transgender Regretters Come Out Of The Closet (The Federalist)

[PODCAST] Generation Indoctrination: Inside the Transgender Battle (Christian Post)





Oren Jacobson: Another Foolish Illinois Activist

Why has Illinois become a stinking bog of degradation, violence, and fiscal collapse? It’s because we have scores of “leaders,” and activists who are as unable to distinguish right from wrong as they are unable to distinguish men from women. One of those activists is Oren Jacobson, devoted advocate for the slaughter of preborn humans, founder of Men4Choice, board member of pro-human slaughter Personal PAC, self-identifying “thought leader,” and self-promoter extraordinaire who recently said,

Everything we’re doing is focused on getting what are really millions of men—who in theory are pro-choice but are completely passive when it comes to their voice and their energy and their time in the fight for abortion rights and abortion access—to get off the sidelines and step in the fight as allies.

And here I thought men were supposed to shut up about abortion.

In an interview on MSNBC with Zerlina Maxwell after the U.S. Supreme Court draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito was leaked, Jacobson emoted,

I want to say one thing to … all the women watching, everybody who can get pregnant, how deeply sorry I am that we’re in this moment. I’m feeling very emotional about that.

He had to add that last statement in case everybody who can get pregnant didn’t notice his phony voice-cracking indicating he was about to fake-cry. Jacobson wants everybody who can get pregnant to know he has Deep Feelings about the possibility that pregnant women—and men—may not be legally allowed to slaughter their offspring. Nuttin’ means nuttin’ without Deep Feelings.

And boy, oh, boy does the emotive Jacobson have Deep Feelings—deep feelings and a vivid imagination. The mere thought of women not being free to slaughter their unborn leads Jacobson to imagine a horrific dystopian handmaid’s tale where rapists roam free and women’s very humanity is denied:

If this is, in fact, the ruling that the Court will hand down, that in at least 13 states right away and most likely in 25 0r 26 states pretty quickly, a rapist will have more rights than a woman in those states. And it is beyond horrifying to imagine a future in which your humanity, your dignity, your ability to control your life is valued less than a rapist.

What precisely are the “rights” rapists will have that women will not in states that acknowledge the humanity of unborn humans? And how are the humanity and dignity of women diminished by recognizing the humanity and dignity of their offspring and protecting their right not to be exterminated?

I’m not exactly sure what the self-identifying “thought leader” Jacobson means when he says that restricting or banning human slaughter means women’s humanity, dignity, and ability to control their lives are “valued less than a rapist.” Rape is illegal, and if caught, rapists are arrested and punished.

Maybe he’s referring to opposition to abortion in cases of rape. Many people who believe in the sanctity, humanity, and dignity of all human life believe that humans created through criminal acts should not be punished for the crimes of their fathers. Such a belief does not constitute either a devaluation of women or an elevated valuation of rapists.

Rather than feeling horrified that 64 million humans have been slaughtered since 1973 because they were imperfect, inconvenient, or unwanted by their mothers, Jacobson is horrified that the killings may stop.

Jacobson sidestepped an awkward question from interviewer Maxwell who said the quiet part out loud, tacitly admitting that men and women use human slaughter as a means of contraception:

One of the things I think we need to talk about … is how men benefit from abortion. … There are men who would not be CEOs but for access to contraception. Tell us how men benefit.

Jacobson was politically canny and cunning enough to avoid responding to that question. Instead, he launched into an autonomy answer that—again—ignores the person with the most at stake and no voice whatsoever:

I want every pro-choice male to step into this out of an obligation to stand up for the freedoms to those most directly impacted. … You deserve the right, within the context of a healthy relationship, to make decisions with your partner that are in the best interest of your family. … In my own personal life, when we have had moments in planning our family … at no point did I give a rip what Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump, Mike Pence, or any other of these anti-abortion men with power across the country thought about what my wife and I should do. And that is why, to me … this isn’t just a woman’s issue.

When considering whether the “product” of conception between two humans is a human; whether that “product” has humanity, dignity, and value; whether the “product’s” body is her mother’s body; and whether a more developed human should be able to kill the “product,” I don’t give a rip what Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, J.B. Pritzker, Jared Polis, Jan Schakowsky, Gavin Newsom, Oren Jacobson, or any other pro-human slaughter men and women with power who refuse to recognize that abortion involves two human bodies thinks.

And that’s why this isn’t just a woman’s issue.

Jacobson continues with his dissembling and evasion:

The simple reality is that the men in America who oppose abortion, who are using their privilege and their power, are not shy, and they are not quiet. So, the question isn’t why shouldn’t men get loud. It’s why haven’t we been getting louder sooner.

Surely, Jacobson knows that men who support the legal right of women to off their offspring have been “using their privilege and power” to rob the unborn of their right to live. In fact, it was seven men, six of whom were white, who in a raw exercise of their power and privilege denied the humanity, dignity, and right to life of preborn humans in Roe v. Wade.

And surely, Jacobson knows why men haven’t “been getting louder sooner.” The reason is that feminist harpies have been shrieking for years that men have no right to speak on abortion—despite the fact that the babies killed have fathers too.

But I agree with Jacobson. Men should get involved. Men should donate to pro-life crisis pregnancy centers and advocacy organizations.

Men, who should be the protectors of and providers for women and children, should march shoulder-to-shoulder with women in pro-life marches. Men should listen to the voices of women who were pressured to have their sons and daughters killed, who live with bone-deep grief and regret, and who are angry that their country tolerates the slaughter of thousands of babies every year.

And to quote Jacobson,

Men, your job is to carry the voices of those women to your peers and buddies, to call them, text them, post on social media about this, to start lifting up those voices and owning this conversation amongst your friends.

The very lives of humans depend on the voices of men and women who know truth.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Jacobson-Another-Foolish-Illinois-Activist.mp3





Affluence and Elected Office

The Democratic Party and liberal pundits are trying to make the case that because Mitt Romney is extraordinarily wealthy, he can’t relate to the struggles of average or economically disadvantaged folk; and if he can’t relate to their struggles, he doesn’t care; and if he doesn’t care, he is unworthy of the office of president.

History demonstrates that that argument fails miserably.

In 2010, the Wall Street Journal published a list of the inflation-adjusted net worth of past American presidents. Some of our finest presidents and some presidents that the Left love were also men of considerable means. Some inherited their wealth, some made it themselves.

  • John F. Kennedy (according to WSJ, “Although he never inherited his father’s fortune, the Kennedy family estate was worth nearly $1 billion”)
  • George Washington ($525 million)
  • Thomas Jefferson ($212 million)
  • Theodore Roosevelt ($125 million)
  • Andrew Jackson ($119 million)
  • James Madison ($101 million)
  • Franklin Delano Roosevelt ($60 million)
  • Bill Clinton ($38 million)
  • James Monroe ($27 million)
  • John Quincy Adams ($21 million)
  • John Adams ($19 million)
  • Dwight Eisenhower ($8 million)

And let’s not forget the extraordinarily wealthy Democrats who have served or are serving in Congress (some of whom sought to be president). Information comes from Roll Call and The Center for Responsive Politics :

Democratic U.S. Senators:

  • John Kerry ($193.07 million)
  • Jay Rockefeller ($81.63 million)
  • Ted Kennedy ($43-163 million)
  • Mark Warner ($70.30 million)
  • Frank Lautenberg ($55.07 million)
  • Richard Blumenthal ($52.93 million)
  • Dianne Feinstein ($45.39 million)
  • Claire McCaskill ($17 million)
  • Tom Harkin ($10.28 million)
  • Herb Kohl ($9.23 million)
  • Jeff Bingaman ($7.41 million)
  • Kay Hagan ($70.6 million)
  • Ben Nelson ($6.56)

Democratic U.S. Representatives:

  • Nancy Pelosi ($35.20 million)
  • Jared Polis ($65.91 million)
  • Nita Lowey ($15.46 million)
  • Carolyn Maloney ($10.14 million)
  • Shelley Berkeley ($9.29 million)
  • Lloyd Doggett ($8.53 million)

If being raised by wealthy parents or possessing wealth renders people unable to relate to the poor and unable to be compassionate, are George Clooney, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffet callous men unable to feel the pain of the disadvantaged? Are they unable to provide solutions to the problems that plague those with fewer material blessings?

What about Obama’s daughters? They have never known poverty. They are being raised in privilege and affluence, attending the most expensive private schools in the country. Are their characters being deformed by such affluence and privilege? Will they become callous young women unable to relate to the disadvantaged, lacking in compassion, and unable to contribute to solutions for those who have far fewer privileges?

Chelsea Clinton was raised in affluence, attended the best schools in the country, and married a wealthy Wall Street hedge fund employee who previously worked as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. Is she a heartless, selfish elitist unfit for serving the less privileged?

According to CNBC , Hillary Clinton’s current net worth is $85 million. What will Democrats say about that if she decides to run for president in four or eight years?

If wealth renders people compassionless and unsuitable for elected office, Democrats need to tell Americans how much wealth disqualifies a person for the office of president. And does wealth equally disqualify someone for fitness for Congressional office?

The truth is that one doesn’t have to “relate” to those who are poor to have deep sympathy and empathy for their suffering.  Wealthy people often have the luxury to travel and read deeply about the world. Through these experiences, their eyes, minds, and hearts are opened to the suffering around the world and here at home. It’s true that among the wealthy there can be found greed, self-absorption, and cruelty, but there can also be found thankfulness, selflessness, generosity, and kindness. Sometimes people who have been given much or earned much are acutely aware of their blessings and believe that to whom much is given, much is required.

There is ample evidence that those who have been raised in privileged circumstances and those who have worked doggedly to be successful are fully capable of feeling compassion, demonstrating service, and finding solutions to even the most challenging social problems.  The argument that wealthy people cannot serve the poor is foolish, dishonest, and—as is so often the case with liberal arguments—inconsistently applied only to conservatives.




Federal Government Loves Homosexuality

Some may remember the scene from the film Moonstruck in which Cher slaps Nicholas Cage upside the head and yells “Snap out of it.” Somebody better slap the conservative community upside its collective head before the federal government spends all its time cooing at homosexuality.

Recently, the lovestruck Department of Justice, White House, and Congress have wasted valuable time and public resources servicing homosexual activists via a White House conference, a Department of Justice video, and three proposed bills.

Last week, President Barack Obama held an “anti-bullying” (nudge nudge, wink wink) conference at the White House to which he invited the infamous homosexual “safe schools” czar Kevin Jennings; openly homosexual Fort Worth city councilman Joel Burns; the 16-year-old executive direct of Gays and Lesbians United Against Discrimination; at least two representatives from the Gay, Lesbian and Straight “Education” Network; someone from the Human Rights Campaign; someone from the National Center for Transgender Equality; and someone from the Trevor Project.

The White House also invited the foul-mouthed, anti-Christian homosexual activist Dan Savage, creator of the “It Gets Better” project. Savage said the conference was “of tremendous symbolic importance,” but also complained that “What was never addressed is when the parents are the bullies.” Someone should ascertain exactly what Savage views as parental “bullying.”

The government has created a website dedicated to ending bullying, a noble mission concealing an ignoble ultimate goal and troubling underlying philosophy. The underlying philosophy includes three central assumptions: 1. Homosexuality is equivalent to race, 2. Homosexuality is morally positive, and 3. The expression of conservative moral beliefs constitutes illegitimately discriminatory speech, which contributes to bullying.

The ultimate goal is the eradication of conservative moral beliefs and the creation of a social and legal climate that make it impossible for them to be expressed. For those who have eyes to see, the website offers clues to this goal and philosophy.

There are three image links at the bottom of the homepage: one is a link to information on cyberbullying; one is a link to information on the White House Conference; and one is a link to information on “LGBT Bullying.” Remarkable. Of all the conditions for which students may be bullied, there’s a special image link and section dedicated to only two: homosexuality and “transgenderism” (more accurately, Gender Identity Disorder). Not one other disorder gets special attention — not attention deficit disorder, not attention deficit hyper activity disorder, not Asperger’s Syndrome.

And homosexuality and “transgenderism” are the only conditions constituted by subjective feelings and volitional acts that many consider immoral that get special attention. Promiscuous students and drug-users, for example, are often bullied. Why don’t those conditions get image links to their own special sections?

This Obama administration effort follows close on the heels of a pinheaded and inappropriate decision by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) to create a video for Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” project. Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Thomas Perez showed the DOJ video to public high school students in Silver Spring, Maryland. Here are a few of the comments made by DOJ employees, most of whom identify as homosexual, in their roles as government employees:

  • “Being different is cool.”
  • “Don’t be ashamed of who you are. Keep being yourself.”
  • “If I knew when I was eight that the thing that was causing me so much pain… would actually define me in a way that makes me very, very proud, I would get through it.”

These should be shocking comments to hear in a publicly funded project of the federal government. The federal government has made the astonishing public claims that homosexuality is “cool”; that no one should be ashamed of homosexuality; and that homosexuality should be a source of pride. The individuals who appear in this video are, of course, entitled to their own non-factual ontological and moral beliefs. In their roles as government employees, however, they have no right to promote those unproven, subjective, non-factual beliefs.

This video should be a public scandal. Imagine if philosophically conservative government employees appeared in a publicly funded video in their professional roles, saying that it is not cool to engage in homosexual acts; that homosexual acts are shameful; and that homosexuality is not something of which to be proud.

It is objectively true that no one should be bullied. It is not objectively true that homosexuality is cool; that people should keep living a homosexual life; or that homosexuality is worthy of pride or respect. No employee of the government acting in their official position has any right to promote those arguable moral beliefs.

At the conclusion of the high school propaganda session, likely held during Mr. Perez’s working hours, students were invited to sign the “It Gets Better” pledge, the first sentence of which states, “Everyone deserves to be respected for who they are.” A feckless statement, but oh so persuasive with non-thinking people. The statement suggests without stating that those who identify as homosexual should be respected for their homosexuality. That is a moral proposition which is widely rejected and which no representative of the government has any right to promote in their professional role.

Everyone deserves to be respected because they’re human beings created in the likeness of God. It should be obvious, however, that not every subjective feeling or behavioral choice is worthy of respect. Humans deserve to be respected for their humanness in spite of their disordered inclinations and immoral volitional acts.

But it’s not just the executive branch that’s dancing to GLSEN’s gay tunes. Our homosexuality-affirming legislators have been busy little bees of late, including our very own junior U.S. Senator, Mark Kirk. The technically Republican Kirk, who has a special fondness for all pro-homosexual legislation, has joined 18 Democratic senators and one independent to introduce the Senate version of the Safe Schools Improvement Act — S. 506, which will deny elementary, middle, and high schools federal funds to combat drugs and violence unless they also agree to explicitly address homosexuality and transgenderism.

Openly homosexual U.S. Representative Jared Polis (D-CO) and comedian U.S. Senator Al Franken (D-MN) have re-introduced their recently moribund Student Non-Discrimination Act (SNDA) bill — H.R. 998. According to the Human Rights Campaign, this act “would prevent schools from discriminating against students because of the actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity of a person with whom that student associates or has associated.” If passed, SNDA will be used to censor any resources that express the view that volitional homosexual acts are not moral acts.

The Human Rights Campaign makes the amusing claim that SNDA has “broad support.” Here are the organizations that they offer as evidence of breadth of support:

SNDA is has broad support from over 33 national organizations, including: The American Association of University Women, American Federation of Teachers, American Civil Liberties Union, American Psychological Association, American School Counselor Association, Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, Family Equality Council, Gay-Straight Alliance Network, GLAD (Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders), GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network), Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), National Association of School Psychologists, National Association of School Safety and Law Enforcement Officials, National Association of Secondary School Principals, National Center for Transgender Equality, National Council of Jewish Women, National Council of La Raza, National Education Association, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund, National Women’s Law Center, PFLAG (Parents, Families, & Friends of Lesbians and Gays), People for the American Way, SAVE (Suicide Awareness Voices of Education), School Social Work Association of America, The Trevor Project and Transgender Law Center.

But that’s not all, two New Jersey lawmakers have recently reintroduced the troubling “Tyler Clementi Higher Education Anti-Harassment Act,” which will require colleges and universities that receive federal funds to add “sexual orientation” to their anti-discrimination policies, and asks for a “$250 million grant program to help schools form or expand campus anti-bullying programs.” The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is repeating its warning about the dangers this bill poses to First Amendment rights.

And if our busy legislative bees fail in these efforts to pollinate our schools with their unproven, unstated ontological and moral propositions on homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder, it is reported that they will simply hide their dubious pieces of legislation in the Elementary and Secondary School Act, which is “the key federal statute governing primary and secondary education.”

When will our ideologically askew and overreaching administration compel Americans to abandon their cowardly, unilateral “truce” on the “social issues”? C’mon, conservatives, snap out of it!

Take ACTION: Contact your federal elected representatives and tell them not to support any legislation or taxpayer subsidized efforts that espouse either implicitly or explicitly the following ideas: that homosexuality is normative, good, a source of pride, ontologically analogous to race, or morally equivalent to heterosexuality. Such ideas are non-factual, unproven, controversial assumptions. No arm of the government has any business using public money to advance them.


Support IFI’s Division of School Advocacy!

Would you prayerfully consider pledging a monthly gift of $25 or more to support this important division of IFI? A promise of this kind will help us form a strategic plan that budgetary constraints often makes impossible. Would you consider giving a tax-deductible gift to support our work? 

Click HERE to donate today! IFI is supported by voluntary donations from individuals like you across the state of Illinois.

Donations to IFI are tax-deductible.




Chicago Tribune’s Rex Huppke Gaga for Homosexuality

Rex Huppke, who purports to be a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, but is, in reality, a mouthpiece for homosexual activism, has written yet another propaganda piece about homosexuality. Huppke wrote an article — not an opinion piece — but an article that doesn’t even attempt a pretense of objectivity.

In language dripping with bias, Huppke wrote about the plight of Americans who define their identity by their homosexual desires and behavior and who have non-American sexual partners. Huppke wrote a thinly disguised endorsement of U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez‘ disastrous immigration reform proposal which would allow “foreign-born partners of gay and lesbian Americans the same path to citizenship as heterosexual spouses.” It was an endorsement so thinly disguised it could be mistaken for a bare-naked, Hollywood-produced public service announcement.

Congressman Gutierrez — and evidently his PR accomplice Huppke — seeks to write into law the unproven, a-historical assumption that relationships defined by unnatural homosexual desire and immoral homosexual acts are morally equivalent to heterosexual relationships.

In a 747-word article, Huppke allotted a whopping 21 words to an acknowledgment that opposing views exist. This is the entirety of his commitment to presenting both sides:

Invariably the addition of language to benefit same-sex couples will rile some who oppose extending marriage rights to gays and lesbians.

Here are some additional telling stats from the impartial, unbiased reporter Rex Huppke:

  • Number of quotes from Gutierrez: 4
  • Number of quotes from supervising attorney for the National Asylum Partnership on Sexual Minorities at the National Immigrant Justice Center in Chicago (yes, apparently, such a center exists): 2
  • Number of quotes from homosexuals who have foreign-born partners: 3
  • Number of quotes from opponents of Gutierrez’ proposal: 0

It’s not merely the inclusion of quotes from only supporters of the proposal that is problematic; it’s also the soap opera-esque content that is troubling.

Huppke quoted Gutierrez who said that “The underlying part of any comprehensive immigration bill is family unity.” This language manipulates Americans’ deep respect for family and family unity while ignoring the disturbing embedded assumption that two homosexual men constitute a “family” that per se deserves respect.

Huppke then quoted a homosexual Episcopal priest who frets about the possibility of his homosexual paramour being deported:

You can’t imagine the stress we live under daily…To wake up every morning and think this could be the day that we no longer have the resources or support to be together.

And then Huppke delivered his coup de grace in a concluding tear-jerking anecdote. Have your hankies at the ready:

For Josh Lampinen, a 30-year-old Chicago Web designer, a change in the law couldn’t come soon enough. His fiance, Jerome Lienard, lives in France, and the couple are struggling to find a way to be together.

Lampinen said the distance between them is always a strain, particularly in times of crisis. A year and a half ago, Lampinen’s grandmother died, and Lienard couldn’t be by his side.

“That’s when you want your partner there,” Lampinen said. “And he wasn’t. It just wasn’t possible. It’s instances like that that just make it evident how unfair this situation is.”

Unfortunately, in an increasingly non-rational, non-thinking culture, appeals to such tales of woe carry persuasive power. It is these kinds of “narratives” that are shaping the views of even conservative Christians, particularly younger Christians who are not being taught to think critically. As Thomas Sowell, African American Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, writes:

The problem isn’t that Johnny can’t read. The problem isn’t even that Johnny can’t think. The problem is that Johnny doesn’t know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling.

Huppke reported that Gutierrez met with “LGBT community leaders at noon on Monday at the [homosexual] Center on Halsted” where he was joined in his confab by U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) and openly homosexual Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO).

Some concluding and random thoughts:

  • Appeals to emotion are not reasons.
  • The presence of sad feelings tells us precisely nothing about the morality of homosexuality — or any other moral issue.
  • The presence of emotional and sexual feelings and sexual interactions between two (or more) people does not render their relationship a family structure worthy of affirmation or legal status.
  • Rex Huppke is not reporting; he is cheerleading and proselytizing.

 




Student Non-Discrimination Act

Many people who live in more conservative communities, for example, in the Midwest and South or rural communities, have been complacent regarding the presence of homosexuality-affirming resources and activities in their schools. They naively assume that their values and beliefs will be reflected in what takes place in their schools. They wrongly assume that resources and activities that espouse “progressive” ideas about the nature and morality of homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder will affect only urban and “progressive” communities.

But those naïve assumptions and subsequent complacency on the part of conservatives are ill-advised. There are many liberal, pro-homosexual activist organizations working at a fever pitch to use all public schools to undermine the truth about homosexuality. Then there are the departments and schools of education that train the nation’s teachers to be “agents of change,” who will use their power and position to shape the moral and political views of other people’s children. And just recently a truly shocking piece of federal legislation was proposed by openly homosexual U.S. Representative Jared Polis (D-CO).

This bill is called the Student Non-Discrimination Act (H.R. 4530). It would prohibit “public school students from being excluded from participating in, or subject to discrimination under, any federally-assisted educational program on the basis of their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity,” and it “Authorizes federal departments and agencies to enforce these prohibitions by cutting off the educational assistance of recipients found to be violating them.” (Click HERE for a summary of this bill.) Schools would be prohibited from treating the objective biological fact of a student’s sex as if it had objective status. It would render the act of making common sense distinctions between boys and girls illegal. Would this mean that high schools that receive federal funds would be prohibited from excluding a boy who wishes he were a girl from participation in, for example, girls’ sports?

Furthermore, this bill, which has 70 co-sponsors, all but one of whom are Democrats, applies not only to high schools but to elementary schools as well.

Take Action: Contact your U.S. Representative to urge him/her to oppose homosexuality affirming laws.

As federal legislation, it would rob communities of the right to control their own schools.

This legislation is not about preventing bullying. Every school in this country already has policy written that expressly prohibits bullying and harassment. The goal of this legislation is to impose the following rules and unproven, non-factual assumptions on all publicly subsidized schools:

  • that homosexuality is analogous to race or disability
  • that disapproval of volitional homosexual acts constitutes bullying and should be censored
  • that Gender Identity Disorder is not a disorder
  • that cross-dressing and elective amputations are appropriate therapeutic responses to gender confusion
  • to prohibit public schools from making the common sense determination that the biological fact of maleness and femaleness is, indeed, an objective reality (This discussion does not address true intersex conditions which are biological disorders distinct from Gender Identity Disorder.)
  • to compel all children in the entire nation to acquiesce to all of these fallacious and destructive assumptions

Because of the efforts of parents of a boy who self-identifies as a girl, an elementary school inMainewas ordered to allow this boy to use the girls’ restrooms. Subsequently, the Maine Human Rights Commission created guidelines to ensure that all schools be similarly required to violate the privacy rights of all children by accommodating the gender confusion of a very small number of students. The Christian Civic League of Maine offers some portentous insight into how this proposed legislation will play out:

[G]ay activists have disclosed new state guidelines requiring schools to allow young children to have access to facilities of the opposite sex. Under the proposed guidelines, boys who self-identify as female will have access to girls’ sports teams and cheerleading squads, girls’ bathrooms, and girls’ locker rooms….

Although the recommendations are offered to public schools, colleges, and other educational institutions in the form of ‘guidelines,’ schools which violate the ‘guidelines’ will be brought before the Commission, and may be subject to further legal action.

The Christian Civic League of Maine believes that these new ‘guidelines’ are not merely an error in judgment on the part of the MHRC. Rather, they represent the latest effort by the homosexual lobby to impose their confused views of human sexuality on society at large. The homosexual lobby has obtained its goals by a strategy of incrementalism, taking an inch of ground at a time in the expectation that society will someday capitulate entirely.

But the latest demand by the homosexual lobby is quite intolerable, having sunk to the level of an impossible absurdity. Gay activists are now demanding that young girls believe and publicly acknowledge that a biological boy in their locker room is, in fact, a girl. Gay activists are now demanding that their own private mental delusions about sex be accepted as public policy. By issuing this demand, radical homosexual activists are asking all of us to participate in a form of collective moral insanity, a mass delusion spread by the homosexual lobby.

Adoption of this policy would mean that every parent of students in that school would have to explain to their young children why a boy is using the girls’ bathrooms. Parents would have to teach their six-year-old girls about a pathological disorder about which no little girl should be taught. And young children would have both their innocence and their privacy rights violated.

A cursory look at the organizations that are over the moon about this legislation should be sufficient to alarm even the most complacent Americans:

the Human Rights Campaign (HRC); the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN); American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU); Gay-Straight Alliance Network; Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD); Lambda Legal; National Association of School Psychologists; National Association of Secondary School Principals; National Center for Lesbian Rights; National Center for Transgender Equality; National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund; National Women’s Law Center; School Social Work Association of America; Transgender Law Center; The American Association of University Women.

According to the homosexual online magazine, D.C. Agenda, U.S. Representative Jared Polis is “planning to push for inclusion of his legislation as a component of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act authorization bill.”