Why is it that organizations like the SPLC can designate conservative Christians as hate groups while ignoring radical leftists like Antifa? Why is it that Facebook and Google and YouTube and Twitter appear to punish conservatives disproportionately for alleged violations of community guidelines?

The answer is as disturbing as it is simple. The left believes it is so morally and intellectually superior to the right that it can see nothing wrong with its extreme positions and hostile words. Is it wrong to be intolerant of bigots? Is it wrong to hate (or even punch) a Nazi?

In short, if I’m a member of the KKK, is it wrong for you to disparage and mock me? If I’m a dangerous homophobe, is it wrong for you to vilify and exclude me? If I’m a hate-filled propogandist spreading dangerous lies, is it wrong for you to mark me and marginalize me?

Of course, there are double standards on all sides of the debate, on the right as well as on the left. And there is more than enough hypocrisy to go around, from the most progressive to the most conservative.

All of us also have our share of blind spots, so we tend to condemn in others what we justify in ourselves. Welcome to human nature.

Still, it is conspicuous that the same behavior gets treated differently by the leftist elite (including many a university professor) and by watchdog groups like the SPLC and by the internet giants.

Back in 2004-05, when I first began to address gay activism, I was widely mocked for saying, “Those who came out of the closet want to put us in the closet.”

The response was consistent: “No one wants to put you in the closet!”

A few years back, I noticed a change in tone: “Bigots like you belong in the closet!”

But of course!

While being interviewed on a Christian TV program back in 2011, I quoted the comment of a Christian attorney. He told me that those who were once put in jail (speaking of pioneer gay activists) will want to put us in jail.

For having the audacity to say this on Christian TV, I was vilified and maligned.

Yet when Kim Davis was jailed in 2015 for refusing a court order to grant same-sex marriage licenses, there was widespread rejoicing on the left: “Kim Davis is ISIS! Lock her up!”

Again, I’m aware of double standards on all sides, and it’s a point of personal reflection and self-examination in my own life.

For example, I believed that, in 2004, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom should have been disciplined for issuing same-sex marriage licenses in violation of the law. Yet I believe that Kim Davis was within her rights in refusing to issue such licenses and her home state of Kentucky failed to protect her, under the law.

These are debates we can (and should) have.

What I’m talking about here has to do with fundamental attitudes, with the basis of our judgments, with the inability to see wrong on one’s own side. I’m talking about a dangerous hypocrisy. (For the record, I never compared Gavin Newsom to Muslim terrorists.)

In my May, 2016, article “Is Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg a Well-Intended Liberal with a Massive Blind Spot?”, I referenced the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann, the notorious Nazi mass murderer, who was apprehended by two Israeli agents while living quietly with his family in Argentina.

They had to wait for several weeks before smuggling him out of the country, during which time they spent many hours in private conversation with him, somehow managing to restrain themselves from taking the law into their own hands.

During one of the conversations, one of the agents realized that Eichmann had given the order to exterminate the village in which his wife’s family lived, killing every single one of them.

When asked how he could do such a thing, Eichmann seemed perturbed, responding, “But they were Jews.”

Of course he gave the order to kill them. What else was he to do?

Again, to be clear, I am not comparing the SPLC or Facebook or Google to Eichmann and the Nazis. That would be as bad as leftists comparing conservatives to Nazis. Not a chance.

I’m simply pointing out that in Eichmann’s twisted world, he was only following orders and doing what was right.

So also, in Antifa’s twisted world (although, again, I emphasize, not as twisted as that of the Nazis), they are doing what is right in violently opposing the tyrannical right. Somebody’s got to do it!

Thankfully, there is an ongoing, healthy push-back against this liberal hypocrisy. In fact, just this week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions called out the SPLC for using hate group labels to “bully” conservatives. Let their hypocrisy be exposed.

But remember: You have been prejudged as guilty, so your mistreatment is well-deserved.

It is this highly bigoted attitude we must overcome with truth, reason, determination, and love.

This article originally posted at Townhall.com.

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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Some readers may be blissfully unaware of DOJ Pride, the “Association of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Employees of the U.S. Department of Justice and Their Allies.” According to its website, “DOJ Pride is the recognized organization for all Lesbian, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgend employees and allies in all DOJ Offices, Boards, and Divisions; the ATF, BOP, DEA, FBI, USMS, OJP, and USAO; and contractors in any of these components.”

In celebration of “pride” month, DOJ Pride is hosting its annual event on June 28, 2017 in the “in the Great Hall of the department’s main building on Pennsylvania Avenue, in between the Capitol and the White House.”

At this event, DOJ Pride will award its Gerald B. Roemer Community Service Award to “Gavin” Grimm, the girl who masquerades as a boy and who filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against her Virginia high school for prohibiting her from using the boys’ restrooms.

Her case made it to the U.S. Supreme Court and would have been heard this month had Attorney General Jeff Sessions not rescinded Obama’s edict to public schools, which threatened loss of federal funds to schools that prohibited co-ed restrooms and locker rooms.

Unfortunately, Sessions really mucked things up a couple of days ago. When asked about the upcoming DOJ Pride event, Sessions said this:

We are going to have a pride group, in this very room… so that’s perfectly appropriate, and we will protect and defend and celebrate that — and protect the rights of all transgender persons…. [W]e are not going to allow persons in this country to be discriminated against or attacked in any way for their sexual orientation—”

What the heck does that mean? Is he saying it’s “perfectly appropriate” for the government to celebrate homoeroticism? Or it’s perfectly appropriate for the government to celebrate the “trans” cult ideology? Or it’s perfectly appropriate for the government to protect and celebrate the non-existent right of pretend-boys and pretend-girls to force their way into opposite-sex restrooms? Is he suggesting that subjective homoerotic feelings and volitional homoerotic activity (i.e., “sexual orientation”) should constitute the basis for a protected class? Is he suggesting that, for example, those who refuse to provide goods or services for celebrations of faux-marriages are guilty of unjust discrimination or attacking homosexuals?

No one should be mistreated or attacked. Neither Gavin Grimm, nor any other person who rejects her or his sex, nor any person who identifies as homosexual should be mistreated. But opposition to bullying or other forms of abuse does not require humans to relinquish their privacy. And opposition to bullying or other forms of abuse certainly does not require the government to celebrate homoeroticism or gender-rejection.

Homosexuals and people who reject their sex are no more or less deserving of celebration than any other person, but the reasons to celebrate them do not include their homoerotic desires, their sex-rejection, or their efforts to sexually integrate restrooms, locker rooms, showers, and shelters.

Session’s statement is the kind of ambiguous statement born of foolishness, cowardice, and political correctness run amok that sows confusion and helps advance the social, political, and moral agenda of Leftists. Many conservative Americans expect more of Sessions.

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Written by William Choslovsky

Imagine this: Upon taking his oath of office, President Donald Trump instructs his new attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to ignore civil rights laws.

How would that go over?

Before you yell, “But we are a nation of laws!” you can thank President Barack Obama and his prior Attorney General Eric Holder for magnifying this issue.

Basically, the Obama administration made it standard operating procedure to ignore laws they thought unfashionable or unworthy.

The best example of this is marijuana.

To be clear at the outset, I am neither pro-pot nor anti-pot. And, in fact, marijuana is not even the issue — rather, the Constitution is. Marijuana is just the symptom that exposes the problem.

As pieces of paper go, our Constitution has proved remarkably durable, as it has structured our democracy for more than two centuries.

Old news now, marijuana laws are sweeping the country. More than half the states, including Illinois, have legalized some form of marijuana use.

But there is one little problem. Long ago Congress passed a law making marijuana, in all forms, illegal. No exceptions. Whether wise or not, it is the law of the land, no different from the thousands of other federal laws on the books.

Given this conflict, the question arises, can state law really trump federal law? Is marijuana really “legal” in those states?

The short answer is “no,” it remains illegal under federal law.

The constitutional lesson is simple: federal law is top dog, and it trumps all conflicting state law.

If Congress says your toilet bowl can hold only 2 gallons of water, and Illinois passes a law saying it can hold 3 gallons, Congress wins, and your toilet will have only 2 gallons to flush with.

It is called the Supremacy Clause, and it is all you really need to know to be a constitutional scholar.

But amazingly, Holder — Obama’s first attorney general — directed the Department of Justice to ignore federal law. He instructed his deputies and the FBI not to investigate, arrest or prosecute marijuana growers and users in states where it was “legal.” In short, he told them to look the other way, the rule of law be damned.

Though this issue surfaces through pot, it is dangerous, even subversive, stuff — however well-intended.

As the nation’s top law enforcement officer, the attorney general’s duty is to enforce the law — whatever it may be — not to make law. In failing to do so, he violates his oath to uphold the Constitution.

At bottom, this is no different than a rogue local sheriff choosing to enforce some laws while turning his eye on others.

To be clear, our federal law banning marijuana might be terrible. But that issue is above the attorney general’s pay grade, as his job is to enforce — not make — the law.

And the irony in all this is that there is a simple fix.

If our nation’s pot laws are terrible, then Congress can, and should, amend the existing law. Heck, it could just repeal the law altogether. It could do so in five minutes, which the Constitution allows.

But the Constitution does not allow the attorney general to simply ignore otherwise valid federal law because he, or others, think the law unwise. That is what happens in banana republics where men, not laws, rule.

Long ago, President Abraham Lincoln said: “The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly.”

And the issue — enforcing valid laws, even bad ones, until repealed — is not limited to marijuana.

The same analysis applies to other important issues of the day, including immigration laws and mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses. Good or bad, these laws should be enforced until properly repealed or ruled unconstitutional.

Obama, a constitutional scholar, understands this.

In fact, in 2014 when some liberal groups criticized him on immigration policy and called him the “deporter in chief,” he responded, “I cannot ignore those laws any more than I can ignore any of the other laws that are on the books. That’s why it’s important to get comprehensive immigration reform done.”

Yet when Congress failed to act on immigration reform, Obama tried to get his way through executive order.

“Executive order” is just a fancy way of sometimes ignoring the law.

To put things in perspective, once you start down this path, what if a state chose to legalize heroin? Or child pornography? Or better yet, it passed a law making federal taxes optional?

It is a slippery slope best avoided.

Importantly, this is not a screed against Democrats or Republicans. The Constitution is larger than both.

After all, if a Democrat today ignores pot laws, might a Republican tomorrow choose to ignore civil rights laws?

When you remove the politics, the issue and solution become clear: amend or repeal “bad” laws, but do not ignore them, as such is the beginning of chaos. Though some may scoff at these extreme examples, the underlying concept remains the same in each case: Our Constitution is supreme and must be respected.

William Choslovsky is a Chicago lawyer who appreciates selective enforcement of laws that might someday apply to him.

This article was originally posted at ChicagoTribune.com

The “sweet” young man who killed two people, and then himself, in a Maryland shopping mall on January 25 was a pothead.

But the police revelation that the killer mentions “using marijuana” in a diary has been played down by the media, which in recent months have seemed almost ecstatic about the legalization of the drug in Colorado. President Obama, a one-time heavy user, recently called the drug safer than alcohol.

The link between marijuana and mental illness, documented in the medical literature, is not a popular subject for journalists who themselves may use pot and be reluctant to tell the truth about high potency marijuana and its powerful, psychoactive component.

Just after the murders, the killer, Darion Aguilar, was described in a Washington Post story as a “good kid” with no criminal record who was perceived as “harmless.” His mother called him a “gentle, sweet kid.”

But now the story has dramatically changed.

“Howard County police said on Twitter that Darion Aguilar wrote of using marijuana, expressed ‘thoughts of wanting to die’ and even said he was ‘ready to die,’” reported The Washington Post. But the marijuana reference was buried in the fifth paragraph, even though it helps explain why a “harmless” young man would turn into a psychotic monster.

The police Twitter account reported that Aguilar, in his writings, “indicates he thought he needed a mental health professional, but never told his family. He also mentions using marijuana.”

In Maryland, where the mall killings took place, the Marijuana Policy Project is pushing legal dope. State Senate President Thomas V. “Mike” Miller has endorsed legalization of marijuana and even remarked about taking a “toke” for a toothache.

Less than a week after Aguilar brought a shotgun into the shopping mall in Columbia, Maryland, state police arrested another doper, George Hong Sik Chin, as he threatened employees at the Tumi luggage store in Westfield Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Maryland. “Police searched his truck and found a small amount of marijuana and a pipe, and drug charges were pending,” The Baltimore Sun reported.

Police said he was wearing camouflage, acting disorderly, and threatening to kill employees of the luggage store. Another account said he was “babbling incoherently.”

Nevertheless, the Marijuana Policy Project, which conducts fundraisers at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles, posted five billboards surrounding the stadium that hosted the Super Bowl on Sunday, claiming that “marijuana is safer than both alcohol and playing professional football.” This claim echoes statements made by President Barack Obama, a one-time member of the “Choom Gang” in Hawaii, and a heavy user of marijuana.

U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), during a January 29 Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing of the Justice Department, questioned Attorney General Eric Holder about Obama’s recent statement to The New Yorker that marijuana isn’t more dangerous than alcohol:

Sessions: …did the President make or conduct any medical or scientific survey before he waltzed into The New Yorker and opined, contrary to the position of attorney generals and presidents universally prior to that? That marijuana is not as I’ve quoted him? Did he study any of this data before he made that statement?

Holder: Well, I don’t know, but I think, as I said…

Sessions: Did he consult with you before he made that statement?

Holder:  No, we didn’t talk about that.

Sessions: Well, what about this study from the American Medical Association, October of 2013? ‘Heavy (inaudible) use in adolescents causes persistent impairments in neurocognitive performance and I.Q. And use is associated with increased rates of anxiety, mood and psychotic thought disorders,’ close quote. Or this report from Northwestern University in December—last December. Quote: ‘The study found that marijuana users have abnormal brain structure and poor memory, and that chronic marijuana use may lead to brain changes resembling schizophrenia. The study also reported that the younger the person starts using marijuana, the worst the effect.’ Would you dispute those reports?

Holder: I have not read the reports, but I don’t—if they are—if they are, in fact, from the AMA, I’m sure they are good reports. But that is exactly why one of our eight enforcement priorities is the prevention of marijuana to minors.

Sessions: Well, Lady Gaga said she’s addicted to it, and it is not harmless. She’s been addicted to it. Patrick Kennedy—former Congressman Kennedy—said the President is wrong on this subject. I just think it’s a huge issue. I hope that you will talk with the President—you’re close to him—and begin to push back—pull back from this position that I think is going to be adverse to the health of America.

Liberal commentators laughed at Senator Sessions’ reference to Lady Gaga being addicted to marijuana, but in fact she said she was “smoking up to 15-20 marijuana cigarettes a day,” allegedly to deal with various ailments.  She has been a longtime Obama supporter.

This article was originally posted on the Accuracy in Media website.