Earlier this year, a Gallup poll announced that one in six Gen Zers identify as LGBT. That was a significantly higher number than ever reported in any previous years. Then, last month, a new survey released by Arizona Christian University reported that about 39 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds claim the label.

Even granting that polling data should always be carefully studied, and often taken with a grain of salt, that’s a shockingly high number. And, in addition to challenging Christians about how much the culture around them has changed, these numbers also challenge the way people have been taught to think about sexuality and, specifically, cultural assumptions about sexuality.

“Born This Way”

For years, the main idea driving activism around sexual orientation was that gay and lesbian people were “born this way.” Since, went the argument, no one is attracted to someone of the same gender through any fault of their own, we must let them be who they truly are and love who they want to love. And we must, the argument continued, erase any notion that heterosexuality is “normal,” and homosexuality is not.

That idea proved quite persuasive, especially the more it was portrayed in song, film, and television. Millions of dollars went to research looking for the genetic causes of same-sex attraction. Though such causes were never found, professional activists were successful in conflating sexual decisions with already protected classes of race, sex, and disability. Even as it has become more and more obvious that sexual orientation is not fixed, the idea that it is an innate, unchangeable component of identity has already served its purpose, shifting the moral norms of society and establishing this new way of thinking about sexuality. So, today, most Americans either believe that sexual orientation is something not chosen or that it is something that should never be questioned.

The Ever-Growing Acronym

However, polls like this one should make us question what many in our culture now take for granted about sexual orientation. Otherwise, how can the explosion in self-identified LGBTQ youth be explained?

The obvious answer is: it can’t. We either have to keep foolishly pretending that nearly 40 percent of young people have always been gay, lesbian, bisexual, or (especially now) transgender, or we must admit that our ideas about sexuality have consequences for others. After all, it didn’t take long for the other letters in the ever-growing acronym to ride the success of this strategy. So today, anyone who defies traditional “sexual norms” is given elevated moral status, considered “courageous” and experts on all kinds of things, and basically given a free pass not afforded to anyone else. Given the new social climate, is it any wonder young people want to join those ranks, at least on a subconscious level?

As one of my colleagues pointed out recently, a teen who identifies as “bisexual” doesn’t actually have to do anything to gain a status boost. They can keep dating people of the opposite sex or not date at all. They can be sexually active or not. It’s the label that does the magic. It’s no accident that the B and the T in the acronym have seen the most growth.

Choices and Consequences

Even if the social costs of identifying as a sexual minority are lower than ever (and the benefits higher than ever), the consequences for young people are severe. For one thing, young people are constantly taught to see every relationship they have as potentially sexual. Among other things, this robs them of platonic friendships, especially with members of the same sex. C.S. Lewis famously wrote that “few value (friendship) because few experience it.” This has become even more true today for the loneliest generation on record.

To be clear, people’s sexual desires almost never feel “chosen.” Though the research has not fully eliminated any biological or genetic factors in same-sex attraction, there’s no justification for treating it as immutable (much less for treating gender dysphoria that way). However, given all of the cultural pressure to assume such things, it’s clear that merely believing the right things about sexuality is insufficient for eliminating someone’s same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria. To put it differently, this generation has been thoroughly catechized into anthropological confusion, literally changing the definitions of normal and abnormal, of moral and immoral, of who we are and what we do.

The sexual choices people make create, reinforce, and amplify their sexual feelings. It’s a vicious cycle that mirrors the Apostle Paul’s words, “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”

Though the Gospel doesn’t promise instantly repaired sexual desires, it does tell us to “be transformed by the renewing of [our] minds.” In a culture obsessed with sex, drowning in loneliness, and careening towards self-harm, it’s good news that renewing our minds is even possible. We must point a generation of confused youth toward the compassion and clarity of this much better story as if their lives depend on it, because they do.

Apprise your U.S. Senator of your feelings about the “Equality Act”! Find their contact information here: https://www.votervoice.net/ILFI/Address

Our notorious Illinois lawmakers must really want to hasten the exit from Illinois public schools and the state. A woke committee created by the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) concocted a partisan amendment to the ISBE teacher standards. The amendment is called “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards”—heavy emphasis on “leading.” The wokesters are trying to strengthen their iron grip on the hearts and minds of Illinois children by requiring government schools to disseminate leftist beliefs about identity politics—beliefs that derive from Critical Race Theory/Critical Theory and which inform BLM and the 1619 Project.

read more

In the article describing “hate speech” tactics,[i] we saw how people are called haters if they oppose the homosexual or transgender agenda. The intent is to shame the opponents into silence, that the activists’ march through American culture can continue unopposed. In this article, we’ll see how the activists try to punish those who actually do stand against them. It touches on these points:

• When people are brave and unfazed by accusations, the activists turn to the personal destruction tactics of cancel culture.

• The effects of cancel culture can be expensive and physically dangerous. The idea is to eliminate the target’s opposition and discourage others.

• Even businesses and politicians are using these tactics.

• Defenses against political cancel culture involve forcing politicians to treat all of us fairly, and to honor our Constitutional rights.

• Defenses against business and social media cancelling involves diversification, greatly multiplying our communications choices.

No compromise is possible for attackers of America’s culture

America started with a strong Christian identity. But thanks, in part, to Christians saying that culture isn’t important,[ii] we no longer have a solid consensus about what our culture should be. Because “the Supreme Court follows the election returns,”[iii] we now have legalized “gay marriage,” even though our society is still fighting about it.[iv] Then there is the matter of transgender behavior, which its proponents expect all of us to unconsciously accept, not merely tolerate. We’re supposed to mindlessly support these things:

• Accept that a man or woman is whatever sex they choose to dress up as.

• Let those individuals use whatever sex-segregated public facility they choose to, just because they say so.

• Address them by whatever pronoun they’re pleased to use, whether it be “Mr,” “Miss,” “Xi,” “They,” or a great number of other odd pronouns.[v]

Or as Professor Karen Blair says, you shouldn’t care whether your potential mate is a man or woman. If you care then you’re adding to social injustice. She says:

Just as sociologists have tracked acceptance of inter-racial relationships as a metric of overall societal acceptance of racial minorities, future fluctuations in the extent to which trans and non-binary individuals are included within the intimate world of dating may help to illuminate progress (or lack thereof) with respect to fully including trans and non-binary individuals within our society. After all, it is one thing to make space for diverse gender identities within our workplaces, schools, washrooms and public spaces, but it is another to fully include and accept gender diversity within our families and romantic relationships. Ultimately, however, this research underscores the consequences of shared societal prejudices that impact our trans friends, partners, family members, and coworkers on a daily basis.[vi]

God condemns homosexual and transgender behavior. We see this both in the Old Testament (Leviticus 20:13) and New Testament (Romans 1:26-27).[vii] Christians can’t be faithful to God and also accept these behaviors in society. In turn, the promoters of homosexuality and transgenderism can’t back down without admitting that they’re living a lie. The resulting standoff is a culture war, and requires a victor. There is no long-term compromise possible. Soon enough one side gets overwhelmed. Remember when the call was to “please just tolerate gays?” The new call is for no dissent from their dogma, and full participation in their coming culture.

A decade ago, homosexualist activists were arguing that legalizing same-sex “marriage” was all about “acceptance” and “love,” and that it would have absolutely no impact on the daily life of most ordinary citizens. Opponents of same-sex “marriage” were routinely mocked with statements like: “How is it any of your business what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedrooms?”, or, “If you don’t support gay marriage, don’t get one.” In other words: why get yourself worked up about something that has nothing to do with you?

However, just as pro-family advocates warned at the time, things haven’t turned out that way.

There are just too many examples of how same-sex “marriage”, and LGBT ideology in general, have impacted the daily lives of every citizen to cite in a single column. We saw this in a dramatic way throughout June – so-called “pride month.” One could scarcely open a website, or walk down the street, without being confronted by rainbow flags or other overt celebrations of licentious sexual practices. Many schools, libraries, and city and state legislatures flew the flag and held “pride” celebrations, while any effort to question the wisdom of using public buildings in this way was immediately shouted down as “homophobia” and bigotry.

However, this total saturation of the public space with pro-LGBT propaganda is merely one of the milder ways that LGBT extremism has inserted itself into everybody’s lives. Far more troubling is the way that the LGBT movement is propagandizing and recruiting children, often right under the noses of their parents. As a result, many well-meaning parents who decided not to speak out against same-sex “marriage” out of a desire to be more tolerant, are finding that they are losing their very children to belief-systems that they do not, in fact, support.[viii]

Christianity is evangelistic by nature. Through its obedience to God, His church illuminates the world with examples of God’s righteousness and mercy.[ix] It is a faith of action, of doing (James 2:14-26). When the church has freedom of action then God uses it to change the world. The homosexual and transgender activists can’t allow this, so they try to shut us up, with accusations of hate speech.[x] If we don’t voluntarily silence ourselves, and let them win unopposed, then they apply muscle to their demands. Cancel culture is their weapon of choice.

Cancel culture is how they silence our objections

The online Cambridge Dictionary has this definition for “cancel culture:”

a way of behaving in a society or group, especially on social media, in which it is common to completely reject and stop supporting someone because they have said or done something that offends you[xi]

The definition has interesting suggestions for using it in conversations:

Cancel culture has its place – it helps to call out and remove problematic people from mainstream culture.

In a cancel culture, we appoint ourselves the arbiters of right and wrong and also the judge and jury, because thanks to social media, we get to dole out punishment.

People participating in cancel culture mean to deprive their victims of social legitimacy and the privileges of community life. If this also inflicts economic loss or physical harm, so much the better. Since they can do these attacks without personal consequence, we see activity like this:

• Ruin someone by digging up a now unfashionable comment. In 1987 the young Navy pilot Niel Golightly wrote an opinion of why women should be kept out of combat roles. In 2020 this comment was discovered and Golightly got targeted. He lost his job for once having had a now politically incorrect opinion.[xiii]

• Punish someone who criticizes your cause. The professor Harald Uhlig criticized “Black Lives Matter” for being unrealistic about police funding. The cancel culture mob searched for things to use against him. Finding some minor incidents, they claimed that these proved how Uhlig was unfit to head a national academic journal. They demanded his firing.[xiv] The intended lesson is to never criticize “Black Lives Matter”.

• Change the culture through vandalizing history. Abraham Lincoln is accused of not having believed “black lives matter.” The mob ginned up support to remove his name from buildings, and statues honoring him are being vandalized and torn down.[xv] George Orwell pointed out, in his novel 1984, that if you can control what the public thinks, or can learn, about its past, then you can steer them into a future of your choice.[xvi] The mob has learned how to cancel history.[xvii] They also found that vandalism pays.

Political activists for homosexual and transgender issues have learned how to apply cancel culture tactics against “problematic people.” A small sample:

• Church ostracized from arts community because of sermon. The Crossing Church in Columbia, MO had an arts outreach ministry, giving money to local artists. But because of a sermon on God vs. transgender behavior, the church is now persona non grata in the arts. Galleries and theaters are pressured to stay away from the church’s assistance, or they themselves will get cancelled.[xviii]

• Feminist-supporting author cancelled for defending biology against transgenderism. Robert Jensen writes books and gives lectures. But his audience dried up once he asserted that biological sex is immutable. Bookstores won’t accept his books, he’s disinvited from speaking engagements, and he’s shouted down at other events. His views are inconvenient to the transgender behavior community.[xix]

• Pizza parlor forced to close after statements about not catering to “gay weddings.” The Memories Pizza parlor was reported to be unwilling to cater to a “gay wedding.” What followed was criticism, threats of vandalism against the business, and death threats against the owners.[xx] They never were actually asked to do that catering, but a reporter decided to create a news story. Despite the First Amendment, and Indiana religious freedom laws, apparently even advertising your Christian beliefs is a capital offense deserving of summary death.

These victims of cancel culture didn’t break any laws. In fact, their views and statements are generally mainstream culture. In a real sense, cancel culture is a form of social terrorism. It is effective, too, even if the results are temporary. The actual or imagined costs of being targeted by mob action – money, injury, vandalism – works to deter others from opposition, or even from offering silent support. This definition of cancel culture rings true:

Cancel culture is a call on organizations to terminate the financial sustenance (e.g., fire employees, stop hiring entertainers for gigs) or means of communication (removing from media platforms) of individuals who have done something objectionable. The objectionable thing may be an expressed opinion, or a statement made or action performed in the past. The act may have been unintentional, the person may have been unaware that it was objectionable, or it may be something that was not widely considered objectionable at the time. Since it is a past act, clearly the intention is not to return to favor by stopping the objectionable thing, it is to permanently punish and shun the transgressor.[xxi]

Businesses get into the cancel culture action

Business managers are human, and sometimes seek to make their businesses act as extensions of their own wants and desires. That’s how you end up with snack cracker ads “encouraging people to rethink what it means to be family,”[xxii] or assertions that “years of manufacturing and selling toothpaste make Colgate uniquely qualified to address questions around gender.” [xxiii] These ads show the world their managers’ political and cultural positions.

Running ads doesn’t interfere with the rights of anyone else, but cancel culture does. On the internet, it’s when a company blocks posts, and suspends the posting rights of people, because the company managers disagree with the posts’ cultural or political content. It’s when they block your company from getting any internet hosting at all, for the same reasons. Everyone else can have their say, but not you.

With Twitter and Facebook acting this way, it has become dangerous to our culture. Consider these reasons.

• Presented as being politically and culturally neutral. Since their content is user-generated, Twitter and Facebook supposedly have a fair slice of American opinion, reasonably reflecting the strengths and diversity of our culture. We know now that they aren’t neutral, but people still think that they are.

• Monopoly position. Twitter and Facebook have each gained a monopoly share in their particular specialty. Few people even realize that there are competitors.

• The go-to place for reaching people. The masses flock to Facebook to keep up with their friends and interesting people. They go to Twitter for timely news. Politicians post there because their constituents are already there. And it’s free to use, no subscription fees. These sites have become de-facto public squares, where people congregate to hear what is going on in their communities and the world. And supposedly, if it isn’t being said there then nobody is saying it at all.

• Hard to displace. It is a truism, that if you’re not paying for the product then you are the product. Twitter and Facebook make tremendous amounts of money from our being there. They get money from companies posting ads and from those buying audience information. A potential competitor would have to suffer years of heavy economic losses in hopes of taking back even a small share of the audience.

• Invisible hand in shaping opinions. People who visit Twitter or Facebook see posts, both deep and trivial, and think that this is the entire scope of American political and cultural discourse. These firms shield their viewers from non-approved content. People are propagandized, not through salesmanship but by omission. They’re being misled and haven’t a clue about it.

Through Twitter and Facebook meddling, America gets all the disadvantages of a one-newspaper town, except that the effects are national. It’s been shown many times that Twitter [xxiv] and Facebook [xxv] block conservative posts, and block proscribed people from posting. There are way too many outrage stories to list here. The important point is that they do interfere with American culture, seeking to influence us to accept the “progressive” way by choking opposing speech.

When companies can lever the opinions of its owners and managers into American culture, we become an oligarchy.[xxvi] The masses are ruled not by representatives but by an elite few. The actions of the people running Twitter and Facebook match those you’d expect of those aspiring to the oligarchy. We used to prosecute such companies for being monopolies.

Then there is the curious case of Apple and Google, which recently blocked the Parler application from their app stores.[xxvii] They effectively prevent people from accessing Parler until that service starts censoring posts Twitter-style. Through their actions, Apple and Google claim the right to censor what people say on forums. Although people can access Parler through a laptop computer, but not having a smartphone app cuts out a huge part of Parler’s potential audience.

Apple gave Parler 24 hours to “remove all objectionable content from your app … as well as any content referring to harm to people or attacks on government facilities now or at any future date.” The company also demanded that Parler submit a written plan “to moderate and filter this content” from the app.[xxviii]

These blocking activities come from cancel culture, for they seek to shut down a nexus of conversation because the companies disagree with the content. It is also monopolistic and anti-competitive,[xxix] but the government seems quite selective about what firms it goes after.

Politicians use cancel culture against their cultural opponents

We generally elect politicians because they’re opinionated. Their beliefs and views of our possible futures are important to us. But when they act on their opinions there are at least two ways where they can go wrong and betray their offices:

• Passing unconstitutional laws. A constitution is a charter for government, stating what acts it can try and the limits of its powers. Despite this, constitutions are exceeded quite frequently. For example, the U.S. Constitution’s commerce clause is leveraged by Congress to regulate most everything, even when the regulated activity doesn’t involve interstate commerce.[xxx] It is excused by all with a wink and a shrug.

Americans also have the Bill of Rights, amendments to the U.S. Constitution and, because of the Fourteenth Amendment, applying to all state governments.[xxxi]. These amendments don’t grant rights to the citizens. We don’t have religious freedom, etc., because of these amendments. Rather, these are warnings to, and restrictions on, the government. These are assertions that our rights pre-exist the Constitution, and a government that touches them overreaches its bounds. For example, the Ninth Amendment essentially says “if we’ve missed some of the citizens’ rights, then these, too, can’t be restricted by the government.”[xxxii] Note that these rights restrict the government, while modern activists want rights that expand government to provide new goodies.[xxxiii]

If an unconstitutional law is in place it is hard to get it overturned. Fighting off even the most blatantly wrong law takes lots of money and effort. And if you get a justice who favors that law – doesn’t it seem that only they get these cases? – this protracts the repeal efforts. So, passing an even obviously bad law could hurt many people for an awfully long time. When only those with enormous resources can get justice, then justice is generally denied. But that topic is out-of-scope for this article.

• Playing favorites when enforcing the law. “Nobody is above the law” is often said, but lots of people have charges dropped or overlooked because they “know somebody.” God doesn’t condone government favoritism (Leviticus 19:5), and these officials are “servants of God” (Romans 13:6) whether they like it or not. Some politicians are elected even though they’ve goals to overturn our Constitution.[xxxv] When laws are selectively applied then some citizens become more equal than others. When rioters aren’t arrested and prosecuted,[xxxvi] but their victims are,[xxxvii] then officials are participating in cancel culture.

A politician or bureaucrat practices cancel culture through denying some citizens their constitutional rights, and by treating groups differently depending on their political or cultural leanings. Consider these examples:

• Claims that your religious practices are illegal. Cultural activists create conflicts, inviting a District Attorney or Human Rights Commission to claim that you can’t actually practice your religious beliefs (James 2:14-26). Look how the Masterpiece Cakeshop was sued three times because the owner has Christian principles.[xxxviii] When a Commission, or a state’s attorney, works to disregard the accused’s religious rights, despite the First Amendment, it declares that some citizens have fewer rights than others. It also claims that a civil rights law is superior to the Constitution. These officials are trying to cancel the citizens and also our legal system.

• Create laws to ban your religious practices, and even force you to violate them. The Equality Act of 2020 would “prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation.”[xxxix] Besides its actual provisions, it forces the changes onto the public and invalidates any religious objections. It’s been called the “Criminalizing Christianity Act.” It amounts to a cultural revolution through legislative fiat. It’s blatantly unconstitutional, but if it gets passed in the future then just try to get justice.

It is good and necessary to defend our Christian-based culture

The Christian basis of our founding is still rather alive in America’s culture. If it weren’t then there wouldn’t be these fierce cultural battles. The people practicing cancel culture want to break resistance to their aims of a political coup. They apparently don’t want to wait for our culture to gradually come over to their views. Perhaps they’re afraid of repentant Christianity.

But before renewing an expensive and exhausting defense of our culture, we should review why we want it. Is it worth fighting for? It is, for these reasons:

• The Christian believes that God created us, and that through Jesus redeemed us to be His children. We’re living for His sake.

• God’s tells us what is right and wrong. No other standard will do. From the Bible we learn how to relate to God, to live in righteousness, and to live peaceably with each other.

• Our faith is acted out in daily life. It isn’t a faith of mere meditation, but also of activities and decisions coming from that faith (James 2:14-26).

• Our resulting society must be righteous and God-honoring, or else. God judges all nations, whether ancient Israel, the rest of the ancient world (Daniel 4:27-37; Jeremiah 18:7-10), or any modern nation (Luke 3:14; Acts 12:21-23). God holds all the world to his standards, and woe to them who spurn His reproof.[xli]

A Christian society will endure if its members maintain their standards, and teach their children to do likewise. But if it slacks off its watchkeeping, then people with other ideas will reach our children, training them instead in the humanist, socialist religion.[xlii]

Make our politicians respect our Constitutional rights

A person taking a seat in the U.S. Congress promises to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”[xliii] A similar oath is taken by members of the various state legislative bodies. But when a politician promises to “take back” guns (Second Amendment), or make the “Equality Act” override religious objections (First Amendment), isn’t that oath breaking? And why isn’t it called “dereliction of duty” when government overreach is shown to them and they won’t set things right? These legislators are trying to sneak through overrides of the Constitution without going through the amendment process, and that is wrong.

The people don’t have the tools to directly remove faithless legislators. For example, only Congress can remove its own members through expulsion. The best the people can do about those seats is to ensure that the offending politicians don’t win reelection. But there are still tools available to us. As former Senator Everett Dickson said, “when I feel the heat, I see the light”.[xliv] Heat costs dedication, time, and money. How hot do you want to make your politician? Even hard line progressives tend to love their perks more than their ideology, and will work to appease you.

Then there are politicians who take sides in the culture war and render unequal civic services. For example, how the mayors tell the police to stand aside during Antifa riots in Portland and Minneapolis, and when the district attorneys won’t charge the rioters. They’re not rendering equal justice, but instead discriminating based on politics. Surely there are any number of laws that these officials are breaking, and there are many suits that can be filed. Justice is expensive, very much so. But the choice seems to be either expensive justice or no justice.

One thing that cancel culture warriors do is to dig up dirt on their targets, and then tell everyone about it. In other words, they do investigative reporting. We can, too. The newspaper and on-air reporters tend to hide bad news about the politicians they like.[xlv] This means that other people are going to have to investigate these faithless politicians. It is likely that, once the news is out, they’ll be destroyed by their own friends.

Every remedy mentioned here involves giving lots of time and money, and learning how to work with like-minded people. But we must do these things, and pay the costs, because our politicians fail us. It’s the price of defending our Christian culture. It’s also a witness to our enemies, and the currently uninvolved, of how we value what we still have.

Beating censorship through diversity and anonymity

The internet has millions of sites, such as the one hosting this article. Out of all of them, Twitter and Facebook are considered the American “go to” places for news and announcements. But since they’ve proven to be unfaithful at that, Americans ought to relearn the habit of seeking out multiple news sources. We can’t literally force people off of these services, but through small efforts can start an exodus, which we hope leads to bigger things.

• Stop posting on Twitter and Facebook. If you post worthwhile content on Twitter, your posts only increase its viewership. Likewise, if your social club is hosted by Facebook, it increases their advertising numbers but doesn’t benefit you any. Go ahead and move your internet home to some other service. Wherever you land, your audience will still seek you out. They might even like the relief from sponsored ads.

• Stop reading Twitter or Facebook. There ought to be other, equivalent sources for your news and entertainment. And every defection from Twitter and Facebook drops their revenue stream. If you have sources which only appear on Twitter, such as a politician or a funny writer, ask them to also post their messages elsewhere. You’re now building your own “not Twitter” network.

• Advertise your own “goodbye” movement. Compared to their total viewership, there aren’t that many people getting cancelled by Twitter or Facebook. But if people get the idea that it’s trendy to leave, and start doing it, you will have started a movement.

But diversity doesn’t mean just visiting more web sites. The internet itself is an information bottleneck, a trap. If your communications are only through the internet, being blocked from it would leave you deaf and dumb. There is little solace in having our First Amendment rights if we’ve no place to practice them. There’s safety in having backup plans (Ecclesiastes 11:2). What sorts of alternative communications can there be?

• Printed newspapers. Newspapers have been dying in the internet era. This is partly because they put content on the internet for free, and partly because so many of the papers have the same progressive slant. They’re just not worth reading. Yet small town local news, such as a village town hall, goes unreported for lack of a printed forum. Wouldn’t locals want to buy a weekly paper if it contained local news? How about a paper whose reporting reflects the community’s values, rather than fighting against them? We can only hope…

• Email lists. Email lists are still used in places. Subscribers periodically get an email with news, articles, or comments from other subscribers. They then submit their responses back to the central service. Because the back-and-forth of an argument depends on sequential posts from the central server, a conversation might take days to resolve. The virtue here is that these communications are available “off the web.”

• FidoNet messaging network. Before the modern internet appeared, people could set up a network of communicating computers, using software called FidoNet. This network operated much like an email list does, but did its work using phone calls. It had great flexibility for routing messages, and could work even with part of the network out-of-service. It required an expert to configure, but it worked. It’s almost forgotten today. Want to set up a secretive network? Why not use a forgotten technology?

• The practice of printing and distributing handbills has always been with us. You see them under windshield wipers, slid onto screen doors, and attached to light poles. The whole neighborhood will know that your group has been there. Although how many flyers you can distribute is limited by your manpower, any number of groups can distribute copies of that flyer, wherever they might be. And when your groups coordinate, they’re gaining networking skills. Consider buying a genuine printing press, because using ordinary computer printers cost way more for the volumes of leaflets you’ll generate.

Once you’re a target, seemingly anything can be accessed if your opponents have clout. Who would have expected to lose their privacy in these circumstances?

• Obama got his opponents’ sealed divorce proceedings revealed. During the 2004 campaign for the U.S. Senate, Obama’s campaign people twice got the newspapers to reveal divorce proceedings of his opponents.[xlvi] First came details about his Democratic primary opponent, then those of his Republican general election opponent. Sticking with a winning tactic, President Obama’s reelection campaign of 2012 tried, but failed, to get Mitt Romney’s tax records. Similar attempts are still being made to get President Trump’s tax records. That the courts are willing to reveal sealed records shows that government promises of confidentiality can’t be trusted.

• Donors to Proposition 8 revealed, harassed, and attacked. In 2008, California held an election concerning Proposition 8, which essentially banned “gay marriage.” Many people donated to the campaign trying to pass the measure. After the election, opponents of the measure got the list of campaign donors and published it. This led to donors getting harassed and attacked. [xlvii] Some donors suffered property loss. Others lost their jobs, once news of their donations came out.

• Cell phone tracking identifies rally participants, traces them home. In 2020, people protested at the Michigan state capitol about the coronavirus virus lockdown decrees. After they went home, much cell phone data was harvested by political advocates.[xlviii] This is because many protestors had set their phones to permit location tracking by third parties. Organizations like VoteMap, which works with Democratic political campaigns, got the data and was able to trace these people almost all the way home.

You can sometimes evade becoming a cancel culture target. You’re not required to broadcast your location to everybody. Whether you’re at home or away, if you stay “communications anonymous” then you can’t be singled out for later harassment. Here are ways to reduce, or hide, your own tracks.

• Avoid using your credit card when out and about. When you’re on the road and use your credit card, the company knows where your card has been. By looking at the details, people can make guesses about what you were doing between purchases. There are lots of credit card employees willing to breach their company’s secrecy and spill that data to activists. It’s better if that data doesn’t exist at all. Ask at some gas stations, and you’ll be surprised by how many people are paying with cash.

• Stifle your cell phone. When you let your phone’s location data be collected by others, as in the Michigan rally story, you’re asking that your activities get spied on. You can disable that yourself. Even so, all cell phones constantly seek out the nearest cell phone tower. They’re calling home, and leaving an auditable trail of where they’ve been, whether it is to a rally, to church, or to a restaurant. This tower seeking occurs even when the phone is supposedly turned off. Only removing the battery truly turns the phone off, but many phones don’t have removable batteries. You could leave the phone at home, or you could put the phone in a Faraday bag. This envelope-like wallet blocks all signals into or out of the pouch, preventing the phone from snitching on you. Be aware that if you take the phone out of the pouch it will resume announcing its position until it is put away again. These pouches are cheap ($20 or so) and readily available online – look them up.

• Avoid using a car having GPS or satellite radio. A car with GPS map navigation, or satellite radio, knows where you are. The location is presumably recorded, as with a cell phone. If you want to travel without being tracked, you’ll have to find ways to disable this communication. If you’re carrying a portable device, such as that from Garmin, then disconnect its battery. If the GPS or satellite radio is built in, perhaps you can disconnect the antennas (which might also disable your radio). You could also try adding a GPS jammer to your car, to overwhelm the car’s own GPS antennas.

When you centralize your communications you get easy, one-stop shopping for news, etc. You are also easily controlled. Pay the costs of diversification to preserve your own uncensored communications. By doing this you might even play a part in monopoly busting.

Continue transforming the world for Christ

Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is like yeast, affecting every corner of society (Matthew 13:33). Through our obedience to God, how we live, our relationships, and the standards we insist on, God’s church spreads throughout society and transforms it. We’re not in a lifeboat awaiting salvation, we’re of the Great Commission, making disciples of all the nations (Matthew 28:19-20). In the face of all trials, continue being the transforming yeast God wants us to be.[xlix]

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois! 

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

Some people have asked me what shaped my conservative worldview. One of the things that formed it was my time in college. I attended a Southern Baptist university in Missouri. Before you assume that it was the school’s worldview, it wasn’t.  In some ways it was just the opposite. I saw and heard things expressed that conflicted with the school’s principles which made me examine my own worldview. Certainly, I benefited greatly from Biblical teachings, but I also had to stand for what I believed was right as liberal ideas crept into many classes, and to a greater degree, among students raised in the church.

So, I guess I am not surprised to hear of another Christian university that appears to have conformed to the views of the culture. But what is shocking is the specific ministry that this school opposed. It is a group that uniquely defends Christianity in an insightful way that our culture can hear.

Think about how Satan can desensitize people and compromise values through humor, whether it be TV sitcoms or shows that are funny, but advance lifestyles or agendas that conflict with a Christian worldview. If you recognize this, then you probably understand what The Babylon Bee does so well by making people think, through humor and satire.

Palm Beach Atlantic University has disinvited Seth Dillon, CEO of the Bee from speaking at their chapel service even though Seth is an alumnus of the college.

Apparently, several students were upset that the Babylon Bee has exposed Black Lives Matter as a radical Marxist organization and has shown the LGBT agenda to be intolerant of Christian beliefs.

Seth, naturally, had some direct words for this. “Cancel culture has come for me . . . I’m just too dangerous and divisive to be permitted to speak on the campus of my alma mater,” Dillon said.  “Since when do you have to support terrorist organizations that use violence and intimidation to advance their agenda to be welcome on a Christian campus?”

BTW – Dillon’s appearance was meant to be a series of lighthearted questions about his experience as an alumnus and a Christian media interpreter with questions like “Who was your favorite professor?”

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana. 

Earlier this week I reported how YouTube had come under attack from various LGBT websites and YT channels and social media accounts. The internet giant had committed the cardinal sin of playing conservative Christian ads on LGBT channels. How dare they!

To add insult to injury, YouTube had previously demonetized many of these LGBT videos, just as YouTube demonetized hundreds of my videos. They were deemed not appropriate for all advertisers. Now, YouTube had the gall to advertise a video like “Can You Be Gay and Christian?” on these very same channels. This was too much to bear.

The Twitter world was set ablaze, and a number of YouTubers expressed their disappointment and anger. (See my previous article for details.)

In reality, though, this was not really a very big story.

This very week, I received word that an ad encouraging gay men to get HIV testing appeared before one of my videos. These things happen, and I doubt YouTube can be 100 percent sure that an offending ad will never pop-up.

But it’s not the end of the world. No one was raped or molested or tortured or robbed or killed.

And I seriously doubt that the conservative Christian ads were appearing day and night on these LGBT channels. In fact, for the most part, I keep seeing reference to the same one or two ads appearing on the same one or two LGBT channels. What’s the big deal?

But now, this is a story. A big story. A cause for moral outrage. A cause calling for justice. Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill.

Outrage Overkill

Already this week, the story has been covered by Forbes, Business Insider, the Advocate, and the Independent (UK), along with a host of other sites, including LGBTQ Nation, Pink News, and the Verge. (There are too many to link here.) It’s even made it to the Spanish language Posta site. (Perhaps other languages too?)

YouTubers with large followers have weighed in as well, including Phillip DeFranco, with 6.1 million subscribers (his video had more than 1.2 million views in less than two days; and, again, I could cite many more YouTube examples).

Almost every story included clips (or still shots) from our “Can You Be Gay and Christian?” video. And for the most part, interviewers have focused on FTM transgender Chase Ross, one of the most offended parties involved and one of the first to speak out on YouTube.

As a result, our video has been swarmed by angry members of the LGBT community, with one woman rallying others to take over our video feed. (She posted, “Where are all my gay motherf—kers at? We taking over this b—ch.”)

Prager U remains in a legal battle with Google and YouTube over the truly outrageous treatment it received. In contrast, what happened with our ads running on a few LGBT channels is hardly a story at all, let alone a cause around which people should rally.

The negative exposure has been such that we went from a 10-1 positive response (roughly 670 to 70, which would be a typical ratio for videos watched by our subscribers) to barely 2-1 positive (at present, 2,098 to 929).

Of the nearly 1,100 comments (it would be much higher if we didn’t have to delete lots of posts for incredibly vulgar and offensive language), many are quite ugly. They include choice comments like, “die you old bast—d”. And, “oh and some people can’t help being gay it’s just like what paedophiles like you can’t help you dumb a– doctor can’t do jack sh-t no one will miss you when i kill you.” And, “you look like pedophile colonel sanders.” And, “Breeders are f—ing disgusting.” And, “I seriously hope that every single one of you twisted, evil monsters that liked this video are hit by a bus. This isn’t exaggeration. I want the plague you’re spreading wiped off the face of the planet.” (Remember: There are others too vile to print, even while omitting some of the profanity.)

And every day, the outrage grows greater. How dare YouTube do such a monstrous thing!

And the more it is reported, the more the story grows, until it has become a cause for social justice. Just look at how unfairly LGBT’s are being treated!

It’s On

Again, as I stated earlier in the week (and as the Advocate fairly quoted me), we never intended for our video to be advertised on LGBT channels, and my preference is that it not be advertised there. I had no desire to go into someone’s own “territory” and present to them something they didn’t want to see. Nor did I ask for a veritable flood of profane comments and negative responses. (On the flip side, we produced the video to be viewed, so we’re thrilled with the day and night publicity, even if it’s negative. Let the message get out!)

Yet all the while, Prager U remains in a legal battle with Google and YouTube over the unfair treatment it received, treatment which really was outrageous. In contrast, what happened with our ads running on a few LGBT channels is hardly a story at all, let alone a cause around which people should rally. But rallying they are, and so the story now takes on a life of its own. We’re watching it unfold in front of our eyes.

But let me not end here by merely observing what is happening. Instead, may I ask for five seconds of your time? I’m simply asking you to click on the link to my video, and give it a thumbs up. (If you haven’t watched it yet, it’s only 6 minutes long, so watch and then respond. You can even leave a comment!)

One viewer said, “It’s a gospel version of a Prager U video.” Sweet!

Your five second investment of time will help us push back against the tide of angry LGBT activists and their allies. If the battle is on, then let it be on. And may truth triumph in the end.

This article originally posted at Stream.org.

Written by Sean Maguire

Based on a quick survey of news articles and blogs on Mississippi’s law, HB 1523, you could conclude that gay, lesbian, transgender, and people who have sex outside of marriage, are about to be in great danger.

That is because the news articles and blogs are filled with hyperbole about how hated these groups of people must be. You will read about how scared lesbian women are when they travel to Jackson. You will read that opponents of the law say unmarried women will not be able to get birth control. You will read that people will be “hurt” and won’t have access to health care and governmental services. You will read that this law “leaves LGBT people in Mississippi in the crosshairs of hate and humiliation.”

And that’s about all that you will read about it. Based on the news reports alone, this law sounds like the worst thing ever to happen in Mississippi.

So it was fair to assume, based on the news and blogs, that the Supreme Court would protect the people of Mississippi from such a terrible law. Yet, the Supreme Court didn’t do that. This week, the high court announced that it isn’t going to hear the challenge brought against this law.

This is good news for the Mississippi government, which passed the law in the first place. But is it bad news for all the people the news and blogs have been crying out for?

Journalists, bloggers, and even Business Councils have talked about the “environment of discrimination” that this law might generate.

The name of this law is the, “Protecting Freedom of Conscious from Government Discrimination Act.”  So there’s no doubt, the law is about discrimination.

It’s telling that only one of the news articles called this act by its name. All the others, and all the blogs, called it “HB 1523” or “The Religious Freedom Act.”

Instead of talking about the dangers of governmental discrimination against religious persons, all the news articles and blogs have been going on about the dangers of discrimination by religious persons.

In reality, this law will not result in a discriminatory environment against individuals.

(This law does nothing to change the state of the law against individual discrimination. Churches are already allowed to make hiring decisions based on their religious beliefs. Individuals are already allowed to discriminate against same-sex weddings. This was reported in the one news article that actually called the act by its name.)

The “Protecting Freedom of Conscious from Government Discrimination Act” does just that. It protects religious individuals and organizations from discrimination by the government. After what we’ve seen done to Jack Phillips in Colorado, Baronnelle Stutzman in Washington, Kevin Cochran in Atlanta, Aaron and Melissa Klein in Oregon, and so many others, that kind of protection is definitely warranted.

Article originally posted on FamilyFoundation.org.

The Trump administration’s Department for Civil Rights at the Department of Education has issued a memo to schools stating that civil rights investigations will be launched against individuals at schools who refuse to address transgender students by their preferred gender pronouns.

The memo, signed by Candice Jackson of the Office of Civil Rights reads in part:

“OCR may assert subject matter jurisdiction over and open for investigation gender-based harassment… (i.e., based on sex stereotyping, such as acts of verbal, nonverbal, or physical aggression, intimidation, or hostility based on sex or sex-stereotyping, such as refusing to use a transgender student’s preferred name or pronouns when the school uses preferred names for gender-conforming students.”

This directive equates a refusal of a student or teacher to refer to another student by their preferred name as “verbal, nonverbal, or physical aggression, intimidation, or hostility.” A student can decide that one day they want to be referred to by one name and another day an entirely different name, and if a teacher or another student refused to address them by that name, that teacher or student would be penalized.

Practically speaking, this means that the federal government will pressure teachers and students to refer to transgender students as “ze, em, ver, xyr, perself,” or a whole multitude of other gender pronouns. For teachers, the consequences of not complying could easily look like being forced to resign, and students could possibly be expelled for non-compliance.

Don’t teachers and school districts already have enough problems to deal with? The last thing teachers need to be concerned about is whether they could get fired if they forget each transgender student’s preferred gender pronoun or preferred name. The last thing students need to deal with is a multitude of gender pronouns confusing their proper learning of the English language.

Family Policy Alliance notes:

…[P]erhaps the directive shouldn’t have come as a big surprise.  The person who issued the memo, Candice Jackson, is the acting director of the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education.  Given that she was appointed by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos – who has been attacked mercilessly by the Left – some may assume that Jackson is a pro-family conservative.

Yet Jackson, who has been in a same-sex marriage for more than ten years, is known for her vocal support of the LGBT movement. In January, she tweeted an article about the gay community getting an ally in Trump, adding the comment: “Reasonable LGBT citizens (as opposed to the militant leftwing LGBT movement) have reason to cheer POTUS Trump; he’s shifting the GOP.”

This directive must be rescinded or altered or it will continue to pose a threat  to free speech and religious liberty of faculty and students across the entire nation.

Last fall Breakpoint’s John Stonestreet posted an op ed titled and subtitled, “LGBT Is not a Color: Stop Hijacking Civil Rights,” and here was the introduction: “Are sexual orientation and gender identity the same as race? That message is being snuck in all over the place.”

He writes about the “conflation between skin color and sexual orientation”:

Nobody wants to be on the wrong side of today’s equivalent of the Civil Rights struggle, or to be viewed like racists by future generations.

But the fact remains, the two issues are just not the same. And black leaders—many of whom fought for the right to be treated as equal human beings decades ago—keep telling us this.

Writing at the Charlotte Observer last summer, Clarence Henderson, the chairman of the North Carolina Martin Luther King, Jr., Commission, called it “insulting to liken African Americans’ continuing struggle for equality” to the LGBT movement.

“The language of ‘civil rights’ shouldn’t be hijacked to give privileges to the politically vocal while taking away freedoms” for everyone else, said Bishop Patrick Wooden at a gathering of black faith leaders in Raleigh. And Pastor Leon Threatt of Christian Faith Assembly in Charlotte, agreed: “Restrooms and showers separated by biological sex is common sense.”

. . .

The Civil Rights comparison will continue to crop up, but we’ve got to vocally and repeatedly point out why it’s false. Sexual urges don’t determine who we are, and recognizing the fact that God created us male and female isn’t racism. It’s reality.

“Sexual urges don’t determine who we are” isn’t difficult to understand; no one should be confused. Yet the advance of the “LGBT agenda” owes its success in promoting identity politics to just that kind of lack of understanding.

The premise of this series is that one important way to breakthrough to the confused is to make it clear how many possible “identities” there are, and thus just how many letters follow the first four — “LGBT.” It’s time for our next paraphilia — today let us focus on “fetishism.”

As previously noted, this investigation into the many paraphilias is a remedial education effort to put the discussion of so-called “gay rights” in its proper perspective. Experiencing and acting upon same-sex attraction is not comparable to race, but rather is comparable to the myriad and many ways people experience sexual arousal outside of natural sex between men and women.

Here is the Wikipedia page on fetishism as this article goes to press:

Sexual fetishism or erotic fetishism is a sexual fixation on a nonliving object or nongenital body part. The object of interest is called the fetish; the person who has a fetish for that object is a fetishist. A sexual fetish may be regarded as a non-pathological aid to sexual excitement, or as a mental disorder if it causes significant psychosocial distress for the person or has detrimental effects on important areas of their life. Sexual arousal from a particular body part can be further classified as partialism.

One more note of interest that actually increases our list of possible letters to follow “LGBT” — here is Wikipedia’s paragraph on types of fetishes:

In a review of 48 cases of clinical fetishism, fetishes included clothing (58.3%), rubber and rubber items (22.9%), footwear (14.6%), body parts (14.6%), leather (10.4%), and soft materials or fabrics (6.3%). A 2007 study counted members of Internet discussion groups with the word “fetish” in their name. Of the groups about body parts or features, 47% belonged to groups about feet (foot fetishism), 9% about body fluids, 9% about body size, 7% about hair (hair fetish), and 5% about muscles (muscle worship). Less popular groups focused on navels (navel fetishism), legs, body hair, mouth, and nails, among other things. Of the groups about objects, 33% belonged to groups about clothes worn on the legs or buttocks (such as stockings or skirts), 32% about footwear (shoe fetishism), 12% about underwear (underwear fetishism), and 9% about whole-body wear such as jackets. Less popular object groups focused on headwear, stethoscopes, wristwear, and diapers (diaper fetishism).

Are you overwhelmed with what the future holds as all these categories demand their rights and equality and recognition?

Let’s close with our next question in our long list of questions regarding all the various paraphilias: How will schools respond to requests to start pro-fetishism clubs to support students who experience such feelings and who seek to come out of the closet? Will the Day of Silence expand to include fetishism?

Up next: Leftists Can’t Navigate it Either.

Image credit: Breakpoint.

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

Subscribe to the IFI YouTube channel
and never miss a video report or special program!

Last time we introduced transgenderism, the next letter on the LGB…T march into the new world. There is way too much to cover in just one more post but I’ll do my best. If you’re like me, you’re pretty tired of this topic after the past couple of years.

We left off with the first paragraph from the transgender Wikipedia page — here are the third and fourth paragraphs:

The degree to which individuals feel genuine, authentic, and comfortable within their external appearance and accept their genuine identity has been called transgender congruence. Many transgender people experience gender dysphoria, and some seek medical treatments such as hormone replacement therapy, sex reassignment surgery, or psychotherapy. Not all transgender people desire these treatments, and some cannot undergo them for financial or medical reasons.

Most transgender people face discrimination at and in access to work, public accommodations, and healthcare. They are not legally protected from discrimination in many places.

Later on the page under the heading LGBT Community our Wikipedia friends provide some helpful information:

The concepts of gender identity and transgender identity differ from that of sexual orientation. Sexual orientation describes an individual’s enduring physical, romantic, emotional, or spiritual attraction to another person, while gender identity is one’s personal sense of being a man or a woman.

Got that? Here is Matt Barber:

[T]here remains a larger question still. If a person’s “actual sex” needn’t be rooted in biological reality, then why should anything be rooted in biological reality? […] As long as we’re tinkering with scientific and moral truth, why stop at a person’s biologically determined and fixed sex? Why stop at “gender identity”?

I’ll wager that next year Reuters scores a 150 percent on HRC’s “equality index” if it offers a category for “species identity.” If “a person’s innate, deeply felt psychological identification” is all that matters, then who is Reuters — who are any of us — to discriminate if an employee wants to get in touch with his inner horse and run the Kentucky Derby?

For that matter, what about “racial identity?” Again, why the intolerant and arbitrary “gender-identity” narrow-mindedness? Roseanne Barr is a short, obnoxious white woman today, but who’s to say that tomorrow she won’t develop an “innate, deeply felt psychological identification” as a seven-foot black man? Watch out, NBA.

Three years ago at American Thinker, Chad Felix Greene penned the article, “Transphobia: A Reasonable Response?” In it, he summed up some important recent history:

The DSM – 5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) in 2013 changed the condition from Gender Identity Disorder to Gender Dysphoria. This was celebrated by the LGBT (the “T” is for Transgender) community as a victory for equality.

The goal was to “remove the ‘stigma’ associated with having a mental illness.” Greene quotes one supporter of the change: “A right-winger can’t go out and say all trans people are mentally ill…”

Green weighs in:

Regardless of the opinion if Transgenderism is a mental illness, a biological error, a personal choice or an emotional and psychological imperative we are free to embrace or dismiss the concept. By demanding that all people accept gender expression as relative to the presenter, we are stigmatizing natural impulses. It is wrong to demand that a person be labeled as a bigot for not viewing another person as that person demands to be viewed. In the end liberals do not create a more tolerant and open world, they merely create new and irrational categories of people to discriminate against. Appreciating the personal journey of an individual changing their gender is equally as tolerant as disapproving of the fluid manipulation of gender in the first place.

It might seem as if we are jumping back and forth between topics — but we’re not — they’re all “identities,” and thus all related.

Up next: Why the Term “Sexual Orientation” is Nonsense.

IFI exists to serve the Christian community in Illinois with email alerts, video reports, pastors’ breakfasts, special forums, worldview conferences and cultural commentaries. We do not accept government funds nor do we run those aggravating popup ads to generate funds.  We depend solely on the support of readers like you.

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

As with many topics, identity politics can be approached on any number of levels, such as intellectual, spiritual, and emotional.

Yet, too few Americans actually talk about what we’re really talking about when the subject of the “LGBT community”/identity politics comes up. LGBT represents only four letters — thus, 4 identities.

What are the terms of this expanding identity politics phenomenon, and what is the long range impact going to be on our society and culture? What is the nature of human identity, and has God had something to say about it? What’s the proper response to those with deep feelings about who they are? Like the old Almond Joy/Mounds candy bar commercial — sometimes they feel like a nut, sometimes they don’t.

Many people are writing about the increasing difficulty of taking all of this seriously. New York City now recognizes over 30 “gender” identities. Here is Jazz Shaw writing at HotAir.com:

If the government is willing to not only recognize but mandate the acceptance of a person’s desired gender rather than their actual sex, why should there be any barriers at all. What about people suffering from Cotard’s Syndrome? They fervently believe that they are undead… literally zombies walking the Earth. Can Uncle Sam declare them dead just to honor that belief and force the medical community to treat them as corpses? While that may sound like an extreme comparison, it’s actually the same thing. There is precisely as much scientific evidence that a man identifying as a “transgender woman” is actually female as there is that a Cotard’s sufferer is actually a zombie.

Over at First Things, Katherine Kersten writes about “gender conforming” and “gender-nonconforming.” She writes:

The Judeo-Christian vision, which shaped Western civilization for 1,600 years, holds that God created man—body and soul—with purpose and meaning in an ordered universe. But the post-Christian worldview fast replacing it has no place for God, and perceives no purpose in nature. Christian man has become “psychological man” and the soul has become the self, in the words of Philip Rieff. The free-floating self—unconstrained by reality—is now believed to forge its own “identity” through a creative assertion of will.

Post-Christian man views his body as a tabula rasa—a canvas on which to express his identity and exert his will. In fact, the more contrary to nature one’s new self is, the more “authentic” it can claim to be. The recent mania for tattoos and piercings is a case in point. The desire to be free of the human condition and its limitations has ancient roots.

“Today,” Kersten writes, “transgender advocates are creating a Potemkin Village—built on hormones, surgery, and chest-binders—to solidify the illusion on which their magical reality is based.”

In the near term, transgender ideology will further polarize society and diminish the shared civic space where liberals and conservatives can fruitfully coexist… Longer term, it will mount an escalating attack on the family and religious institutions, the perennial targets of totalitarian forces.

So identity politics is not just about the confused emotional life of “progressives.” Instead, it is a threat to family and religious institutions, the very building blocks of Western Civilization. Again, here is Katherine Kersten:

As we enter the world of fantasy—when reality ceases to matter—it is impossible to predict where our society will crash against nature, as it inevitably will.

It’s time for our paraphilia of the day, and it’s one I’ll only introduce today and revisit with more next time: transgenderism. Wikipedia’s “transgender” page has been rewritten since I cited it a few years ago — and the first section runs four paragraphs. Here is just the first one:

Transgender people are people who have a gender identity, or gender expression, that differs from their assigned sex. Transgender people are sometimes called transsexual if they desire medical assistance to transition from one sex to another. Transgender is also an umbrella term: in addition to including people whose gender identity is the opposite of their assigned sex (trans men and trans women), it may include people who are not exclusively masculine or feminine (people who are genderqueer, e.g. bigender, pangender, genderfluid, or agender). Other definitions of transgender also include people who belong to a third gender, or conceptualize transgender people as a third gender. Infrequently, the term transgender is defined very broadly to include cross-dressers, regardless of their gender identity.

Got it? Let’s close with our next question: Will the expression of disapproval of transgenderism be deemed bullying or hate speech? Of course we already know the answer to that is yes.

Up next: Transgenderism a Choice or Disorder?

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
COMING SOON: Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Transgenderism a Choice or Disorder?
COMING SOON: Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Why the Term “Sexual Orientation” is Nonsense
COMING SOON: Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Man’s Search for Meaning
COMING SOON: Identity Politics and Paraphilias: LGBT is Not a Color

Please subscribe to the IFI YouTube Channel to get timely
video reports & other special presentations!

Our good friends over at National Review Online recently presented what they say is a conservative case for opening up public restrooms and locker rooms to either sex. Although written by an incredibly smart man—Josh Gelernter—the article seems to miss the nature of the issue itself, and by some margin.

His lead-off was not surprising: Conservatives should be cool with transgender folks doing what they want because “conservatism is the mind-your-own-business ideology.” He calls to the stand Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin, who desires that their legislature not consider a trans-bathroom protection bill because “the last thing we need is more government rules.” Putting aside that this feels more like the desire to avoid a nuclear hot potato masquerading as a principled stand, let’s consider the veracity of this line of thought.

First, both rationales are faulty to a fault. Second, Gelernter ricochets quickly from these into endeavoring to show how inadequate the concerns over gender-free bathroom and locker room policies are. It’s easy when you reduce the whole thing down to “It will let predators in” as the primary concern. This is naïve.

De-Gendering Private Spaces Is a New Government Rule

Let’s address the “mind-your-own-business” part first. That is not conservatism. It’s a muscular libertarianism. Good conservatives are more than comfortable telling people they shouldn’t do certain things, and have been for quite some time.

The faithful conservative resists all kinds of behaviors: being a communist, sexual libertinism, creating broken families, not carrying one’s weight, not taking personal responsibility, etc. It’s not conservatives who sport “Don’t Like Abortion? Don’t Have One” bumper stickers on their cars. Conservatism is more like “Work Hard, Be Responsible, and the Newest Ideas Are Not Usually the Best Ideas.” Conservatives conserve. This means conserving the idea that male and female are not subjective feelings, and when opening and removing their clothes outside the doors of their own homes, the sexes should be segregated.

Next, the “we don’t need more government rules” line fails to understand the politics and genesis of this issue. It assumes gender-free restrooms and lockers have always been the rule, and some people now want to come along and put regulations on it. This is not the case, of course. Creating gender-free facilities requires new government rules. This is what the whole thing has been about: municipalities, retailers, and our president telling us we will accept their new regulations…and like it. We were minding our own business and would like for it to have stayed that way.

This Is about Men Seeing Naked Women Without Consent 

This brings us to the last point: Gelernter’s simplistic dismissal of those who have concerns about gender-free facilities. To him, the possibility of predators is anyone’s only concern here.

Women and fathers of daughters know this is not the case. It has to do with the inherent (and higher-order) modesty of women and their protection from the male gaze. He fails to appreciate that according to the rules of transgender politics, these policies mean any person could enter any bathroom, changing room, or locker room and freely do and observe what is done in such places. Anyone.

There is no criteria—medical, legal, physical, or psychological—anyone must meet to be accepted as officially transgender. It is solely up to the person making the claim, and no one can question him or her about it.

Well, many assume, don’t they have to look like the other sex, or at least be trying to do so? Gender orthodoxy demands that no one should have to live by someone else’s assumption of what a man, woman, or any of the other supposed genders looks like or does. They are merely restrictive social constructions enforced by male power that must be cast off.

Thus, the central concern here is that these new policies require that every woman and girl get used to having men invade their male-free sanctuary and violate their naturally strong sense of modesty by simply being present there.

Ask the typical male if he would mind a woman using the men’s locker room. Ask a woman if she would mind a man doing so. It is precisely here that the issue lies. No one has the liberty to violate the modesty of a woman. A good society conserves this important and fundamental human value at all costs. This is the work of the conservative.

This article was originally posted at TheFederalist.com

Written by Richard Ostling

Suddenly transgender rights is the hot “culture wars” topic. Religious folks with traditional convictions about such matters have been largely silent, or else many newswriters haven’t yet figured how to locate them in order to report the other side of this crucial debate.

Thus, there’s useful sourcing in the strongly-worded “Transgender Identification Ethics Statement” issued by the Christian Medical and Dental Associations.

This group is made up of 16,000-plus professionals who affirm “the divine inspiration and final authority of the Bible as the Word of God.” CMDA had Big 10 origins at the University of Illinois and Northwestern and went national in 1941. It’s one of many such U.S. fellowships for vocational and academic specialists. Most of these were launched by Evangelical-type Protestants but have long since welcomed Catholic and Orthodox participants.

The transgender statement, approved at a CMDA conference April 21 but publicized only recently, urges doctors to treat these patients with understanding and grace. On the other hand, CMDA champions professionals’ right to freedom of conscience, asserting that it is not “unjust discrimination” if a physician in conscience declines treatment that is considered “harmful or is not medically indicated.”

On the religious aspect, CMDA contrasts the Old and New Testament belief that “God created humanity as male and female” with current “confusion of gender identity.” “Gender complementarity and fixity are both good and a part of the natural order,” it says. The “objective biological fact” is that sex “is determined genetically at conception” and is “not a social construct arbitrarily assigned at birth or changed at will.”

The statement focuses on transgender persons whose psychological “gender identity” is the opposite of biology and genetic makeup – the current public issue – and distinguishes this syndrome from medical treatment of rare abnormalities in which the sexual phenotype and chromosomes conflict (e.g. ambiguous genitalia, androgen insensitivity syndrome, congenital adrenal hyperplasia).

That is, “the purpose of medicine is to heal the sick, not to collaborate with psychosocial disorders. Whereas treatment of anatomically anomalous sexual phenotypes is restorative, interventions to alter normal sexual anatomy to conform to transgender desires are disruptive to health.”

CMDA leaders think physicians should be aware of evidence that persons who identify as transgender, use cross-sex hormones, or undergo sex reassignment surgery, generally suffer more depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, substance abuse, and risky sexual behaviors. The organization is especially critical of doctors who prescribe hormones for a biologically healthy child in order to block normal growth and fertility. On sex-change surgery, CMDA says the medical evidence on outcomes is incomplete but there are potential dangers there as well. In addition, “transgender designations may conceal biological sex differences relevant to medical risk factors.”

Such professional concerns, which have received little media notice thus far, provide good fodder for interviews with transgender advocates, physicians included.

Meanwhile, CMDA is involved in another developing story, the federal lawsuit filed July 19 by the Alliance Defending Freedom against Vermont’s Board of Medical Practice and its Office of Professional Regulation. The suit charges that these agencies interpret “Act 39,” the state’s 2013 suicide law, to require death-by-doctor counseling, in violation of medical ethics and conscience rights.

Resources:

– CMDA media office in Bristol, Tenn.: 423-844-1000.

– Transgender affirmation from the Human Rights Campaign.

– The former chief of psychiatry (and a Catholic) explains why the Johns Hopkins University hospital halted sex-change surgery.

This article was originally posted at GetReligion.org

World Vision, a well-known, well-regarded, and well-funded Christian charity has decided to abandon its policy that prohibits the hiring of those who engage in homosexual activity. World Vision U.S. will now hire homosexuals as long as they are in a legal (but false) “marriage.” While allowing employees who affirm homosexuality to work for World Vision, they will continue to prohibit the hiring of those who engage in fornication or adultery despite the fact that adultery is no more serious a sin than is homosexuality.

World Vision president, Richard Stearns, describes this stunning abandonment of biblical truth as “a very narrow policy change…symbolic of… [Christian] unity” and analogous to doctrinal differences over modes of baptism and beliefs on evolution.

The liberal shibboleth of “unity” rears its ugly head again. Unity, however, never trumps truth, and on the issue of homosexual relations, the Bible is unequivocal in its condemnation.

Are different views of homosexual “marriage” analogous to other doctrinal differences?

Both Theologian Russell Moore and Pastor Kevin DeYoung argue against the view that Steans appears to defend. Both argue that homosexual “marriage” is a concept which no church can biblically defend.

Moore illuminates  the gravity of the theological issue that Steans attempts to trivialize by comparing it to other denominational and doctrinal differences:

At stake is the gospel of Jesus Christ. If sexual activity outside of a biblical definition of marriage is morally neutral, then, yes, we should avoid making an issue of it. If, though, what the Bible clearly teaches and what the church has held for 2000 years is true, then refusing to call for repentance is unspeakably cruel and, in fact, devilish.

DeYoung elaborates on this point arguing that there exists no justification for viewing differences on homosexual “marriage” as analogous to denominational disagreements on a host of other issues. In other words, all theological differences are not created equal:

To be sure, like many evangelical parachurch organizations, World Vision allows for diversity in millennial views, sacramental views, soteriological views, and any numbers of doctrinal issues which distinguish denomination from denomination. Stearns would have us believe that homosexuality is just another one of these issues, no different from determining whether the water in baptism can be measured by liters or milliliters. But the analogy does not work. Unlike the differences concerning the mode of baptism, there is no long historical record of the church debating whether men can marry men. In fact, there is no record of the church debating anything of the sort until the last forty or fifty years. And more to the point, there is nothing in the Bible to suggest that getting the mode of baptism wrong puts your eternal soul in jeopardy, when there are plenty of verses to suggest that living in unrepentant sexual sin will do just that (Rom. 1:26-27; 1 Cor. 6:9-10; Jude 5-7).

What is marriage?

In rationalizing this policy change, Steans digs an even deeper, darker, more tortuous theological hole:

Changing the employee conduct policy to allow someone in a same-sex marriage who is a professed believer in Jesus Christ to work for us makes our policy more consistent with our practice on other divisive issues….It also allows us to treat all of our employees the same way: abstinence outside of marriage, and fidelity within marriage…. This is simply a decision about whether or not you are eligible for employment at World Vision U.S. based on this single issue, and nothing more. (emphasis added)

Nothing more? What else is left once you’ve gutted biblical truth about marriage?  Marriage is not a creation of man to “solemnize” consensual romantic/erotic unions. Marriage is picture of the union between Christ and his bride, the church. Marriage is not a union of two identical partners. It is the union of God and man and reflects the ontological difference between the marriage partners. One would expect World Vision’s leaders to understand better the relationship between earthly marriage–central to which is sexual complementarity–and the gospel story of creation and redemption.

When Steans says this policy allows World Vision to treat legally “married” homosexual couples the same as married heterosexual couples, he is acceding to the proposition that two men or two women can in reality be married.  But our secular government’s legal recognition of same-sex unions as “marriages” does not marriages make.

Steans should know what John Piper makes clear in a sermon on marriage:

The point is not only that so-called same-sex marriage shouldn’t exist, but that it doesn’t and it can’t. Those who believe that God has spoken to us truthfully in the Bible should not concede that the committed, life-long partnership and sexual relations of two men or two women is marriage. It isn’t.

The Implications of World Vision’s Worldly Change

Kevin DeYoung warns what this “about face” by World Vision portends:

The about face in World Vision’s hiring policy deserves comment both because their reasons for the switch will become terribly common and because the reasons themselves are so terrifically thin. Serving in a mainline denomination, I’ve heard all the assurances and euphemisms before: “We still affirm traditional marriage. We aren’t taking sides. This is only a narrow change. We are trying to find common ground. This is about unity. It’s all about staying on mission.” But of course, there is nothing neutral about the policy at all. The new policy makes no sense if World Vision thinks homosexual behavior is a sin, which is, after all, how it views fornication and adultery. There are no allowances for their employees to solemnize other transgressions of the law of God.

DeYoung asks if the following assertions are true:

Jesus Christ is coming again to judge the living and the dead (Acts 17:31; Rev. 19:11-21). Those who repent of their sins and believe in Christ (Mark 1:15; Acts 2:38; 17:30) and those who overcome (Rev. 21:7) will live forever in eternal bliss with God in his holy heaven (Rev. 21:1-27) through the atoning work of Christ on the cross (Mark 10:45; Rom. 5:1-21; Cor. 5:21). Those who are not born again (John 3:5), do not believe in Christ (John 3:18), and continue to make practice of sinning (1 John 3:4-10) will face eternal punishment and the just wrath of God in hell (John 3:36; 5:29). Among those who will face the second death in the lake that burns with fire are the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, the murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars (Rev. 21:8), and among the sins included in the category of sexual immorality is unrepentant sexual intercourse between persons of the same sex (Rom. 1:26-27; 1 Cor. 6:9-10; Jude 5-7).

He then asserts that “If the Bible does not teach these things, or if we no longer have the courage to believe them, let us say so openly and make the case why the whole history of the Christian church has been so wrong for so long. But if the Bible does teach the paragraph above, how can we be casual about such a serious matter or think that Jesus would be so indifferent to the celebration of the same?”

Steans claims that World Vision leaders are “not caving to some kind of pressure. We’re not on some slippery slope. There is no lawsuit threatening us. There is no employee group lobbying us….This is not us compromising.” The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks.

What to do about current sponsorship

World Vision will lose donors, as it should. For many who are currently sponsoring a needy child, this decision is difficult. The ultimate cause for the suffering of children who lose sponsors rests not, however, with donors who cannot in good conscience support the efforts of an organization that abandons foundational biblical principles, the adherence to which was what led them to support the organization in the first place. The ultimate cause is the foolish decision of World Vision’s leaders.

For those sponsors who decide to cease donating immediately, there are other options, one of which is Compassion International. Compassion International works with impoverished children all around the world and currently, has over 4,500 children in need of support.

Other World Vision sponsors, however, may believe they should complete their sponsorship of a particular child, which ends when the child reaches age 21 or earlier for a variety of reasons. In such cases, IFI recommends informing World Vision that after sponsorship of their current child ends, they will no longer be supporting World Vision.

 Become a monthly supporter of IFI.

Click HERE for more information.