The radical “Equality” Act—the pet project of sex-eradicationists (also known as “trans”-cultists)—is now in the U.S. Senate. The act would force the federal government to treat the nonsensical notion that spirit humans can be “trapped” in the wrong material bodies as if those disordered feelings constitute a reality equivalent to biological sex and one about which no one may make judgments. In other words, the Equality Act would enshrine in federal law a Gnostic superstition.

In addition, when the purported rights of cross-sex impersonators clash with First Amendment protection of the free exercise of religion, the Equality Act says cross-sex impersonation wins. Buh-bye Christian colleges whose students get federal aid. Buh-bye Christian adoption agencies that partner with the government. Buh-bye religious liberty. It was nice knowing you these past glorious 230 years.

If passed, “trans”-cultists will be well over halfway to their goal of eradicating all public recognition of biological sex. There are many reasons we have arrived at this insane, reality-denying, wrong-side-of-history moment, including the fact that citizens are not demanding their elected leaders dialogue on and debate the sandy foundation on which the “trans” cult is built. In the hope that sane people on the political right and left will start demanding such conversations, here is a list of questions that every lawmaker, school administrator, and school board member should have to answer:

1.) If sex and “gender” are two wholly different and unrelated things, with sex being an immutable objective phenomenon and “gender” being a subjective, internal, and sometimes fluid phenomenon, why should restrooms, locker rooms, shelters, prisons, nursing home rooms, and semi-private hospital rooms correspond to “gender identity” as opposed to biological sex which is both objective and stable?

2.) Why is it legitimate for girls to oppose sharing restrooms and locker rooms with objectively male peers who accept their sex (what the left calls “cisgender” boys) but not legitimate for girls to oppose sharing restrooms and locker rooms with objectively male peers who reject their sex? Why should a boy’s subjective feelings about his objective sex affect girls’ feelings or beliefs about undressing or going to the bathroom in front of or near him?

3.) Either biological sex has meaning relative to feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy when undressing or engaging in intimate personal acts, or it has no meaning relative to modesty and privacy. If biological sex has no meaning relative to modesty and privacy, why do we have any sex-segregated restrooms or locker rooms anywhere? Why not make all of them co-ed for everyone? If, however, the desire of humans to be segregated from unrelated persons of the opposite sex when undressing, showering, or going to the bathroom is natural, understandable, reasonable, and good, why should some opposite-sex persons be allowed to violate those spaces just because they don’t like their sex?

4.) If cross-sex identifying students should not be required to use restrooms and locker rooms with those whose “gender identity” they don’t share, why should other students be required to use facilities with those whose sex they don’t share? Why should gender-dysphoric boys (or men) be able to use restrooms with only women, but actual biological females are prohibited from being able to use restrooms with only women?

5,) If anatomy is irrelevant to both “gender identity” and privacy, should boys who identify as girls be allowed to shower with objectively female peers or undress in open areas of girls’ locker rooms? If not, why not? If it’s unjustly discriminatory to prohibit gender-dysphoric boys from using girls’ locker rooms—as leftists claim it is–then is it unjustly discriminatory to prohibit gender-dysphoric boys from showering with girls or changing out in the open in girls’ locker rooms as some schools do?

6.) Female teachers and coaches are allowed in girls’ restrooms and locker rooms. Should objectively male teachers and coaches who “identify” as female be allowed in girls’ restrooms and locker rooms as well? If not, why not?

7.) Will school administrations allow those who identify as gender-fluid to choose daily which restrooms and locker rooms they will use? If not, why not?

8.) Should other subjective, internal feelings be reflected in policy and practice? For example, should those who identify as amputees (i.e., those with Body Integrity Identity Disorder) be allowed to use wheelchairs and handicapped parking spots at school? Should they be allowed to leave class early to have more time to get from one class to another?

9.) Is it unnatural or pathological for girls or boys to object to engaging in excretory functions in a stall next to an unrelated person of the opposite sex doing likewise? If not, should schools respect and honor those feelings through policy that prohibits co-ed restrooms?

10.) Those who identify as “trans” claim their biological sex as revealed in anatomy is unrelated and irrelevant to their “gender identity” (which is a subjective, internal feeling) and that anatomy doesn’t matter when it comes to restrooms, changing areas, and showers. They further claim they want to use restrooms with only those whose “gender identity” they share. So, why do boys who identify as girls demand to use girls’ restrooms and locker rooms? How do they know the males using the boys’ restrooms do not “identify” as girls, and how can they be sure that the females using the girls’ restrooms do “identify” as girls? Is it possible that boys who identify as girls are basing their restroom/locker room choices on biological sex (i.e., the female sex) as revealed in anatomy? If so, why are they permitted to do so but objectively female students are not?

11.) If it’s not hateful for gender-dysphoric biological boys to say they want to share private facilities with only biological females, why is it hateful for biological females to say they want to share restrooms and locker rooms with only biological females?

12.) Why is it hateful to believe that locker rooms and restrooms should correspond to one’s objective sex but loving to believe they should correspond to subjective feelings about one’s sex?

13.) Do children and adults have an inalienable and intrinsic right not to share restrooms and locker rooms with persons of the opposite sex?

14.) If restroom stalls and separate changing areas provide sufficient privacy to allow students to use facilities with those whose sex they don’t share, then why don’t restroom stalls and separate changing areas provide sufficient privacy for a gender-dysphoric student to share facilities with those whose “gender identity” they (presumably) don’t share but whose sex they do share?

15.) Leftists argue that the word “sex” in Title VII of the Civil Rights of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 actually includes “gender identity,” thereby prohibiting discrimination based on “gender identity” in restrooms and locker rooms. If gender-dysphoric boys or men are permitted in girls’ or women’s restrooms and locker rooms based on this reinterpretation, on what basis could other boys or men be prohibited from using women’s restrooms? “Cisgender” boys or men couldn’t be prohibited from using girls’ or women’s restrooms based on their male sex because other objectively male persons (i.e., those who are male but “identify” as women) would already have been allowed in. And wouldn’t prohibiting “cisgender” boys or men from using women’s restrooms based on their “identification” as males constitute discrimination based on “gender identity”?

16.) Leftists argue that separate restrooms and locker rooms for boys and girls are equivalent to separate drinking fountains for blacks and whites. Others would counter that while there are no substantive ontological differences between whites and blacks and that there are no differences that bear on drinking water at fountains, there are substantive differences between men and women. In fact, even homosexuals acknowledge that men and women are fundamentally and significantly different when they say they are romantically and erotically attracted to only persons of their same sex. Further, conservatives argue that the differences between men and women bear directly on the use of spaces in which private activities related to physical embodiment are engaged in. It is these important differences related to physical embodiment as male or female that account for the very existence of separate restrooms, locker rooms, shelters, and semi-private hospital rooms for men and women everywhere. If, however, separate restrooms and locker rooms for men and women are akin to separate drinking fountains for blacks and white as Leftists claim they are, are Leftists in favor of banning them everywhere?

17.) If separate restrooms and locker rooms for gender-dysphoric boys and girls are equivalent to separate restrooms and locker rooms for blacks and whites—as former Attorney General Loretta Lynch once claimed—then why aren’t separate restrooms and locker rooms for “cisgender” boys and girls equivalent to racism? Why aren’t separate restrooms and locker rooms for gender-dysphoric boys and “cisboys” equivalent to racism?

18.) When sex-segregation abolitionists accuse parents who oppose co-ed restrooms and locker rooms of being hateful, intolerant, bigoted, ignorant, heartless bullies, do they also smear children who object to sharing restrooms and locker rooms with peers of the opposite sex?

19.) Do school administrators, teachers, and community members think that Muslims and Orthodox Jews who don’t want their daughters sharing restrooms and locker rooms with objectively male students (or vice versa) are ignorant, bigoted, hateful, and unjustly discriminatory?

20.) Pronouns denote and correspond to objective biological sex—not subjective, internal feelings about one’s sex. So, if staff members, teachers, administrators, or students view the use of opposite-sex pronouns to refer to gender-dysphoric students as lying and for ethical, and/or religious reasons they object to lying, should schools accommodate their objections? Or, should schools—which are arms of the government—compel employees to lie?

21.) Liberal sex and gender researchers Michael Bailey at Northwestern University and Dr. Eric Vilain at UCLA write that 80% of gender-dysphoric boys—and most gender-dysphoric persons are male—will accept their real sex by adulthood. They claim that “it looks like parental acquiescence leads to persistence.” In other words, if parents accommodate their children’s efforts to pretend to be the opposite sex, their children are more likely to persist in their rejection of their sex. Are schools that allow gender-dysphoric minors to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms complicit in helping students persist in their rejection of their sex?

22.) If there is a mismatch between a person’s sex and his feelings about his sex, how can “progressives” be certain that the error resides in the healthy body rather than the mind? If a person has normal, unambiguous, healthy, fully functioning male anatomy but desires to be—or believes he is—female, might this not be an error or disorder of his mind?

23.) If a man “identifies” as “bi-gender” and has appended faux-breasts to his chest while retaining his penis and testes, as many cross-sex identifiers do, should he be to walk about unclothed in women’s locker rooms?

24.) Progressives routinely ask opponents of co-ed restrooms and locker rooms whether single-sex restrooms and locker rooms will require “genitalia police” to determine whether those seeking ingress are in reality the sex that corresponds to the spaces they seek to use. Well, will co-ed restrooms and locker rooms require “gender-identity” police to determine whether those seeking ingress are either the sex that corresponds to the spaces they seek to use or have proof that they have been diagnosed as gender-dysphoric? If not, how will we know if the persons seeking access to women’s restrooms are gender-dysphoric men masquerading as women or are male predators masquerading as gender-dysphoric men?

25.) Some argue that men masquerading as women have been successfully using women’s private spaces for years without women knowing and hence no harm, no foul. This suggests that if women’s privacy is invaded by men but they—the women—are unaware of the invasion, no harm has been done. By that logic, if voyeurs (not to be confused with men who “identify” as women) are able to secretly view women without women’s knowledge, have women been harmed or not?

26.) What is “gender identity”? If it’s defined as subjective, internal feelings about one’s sex, or one’s maleness or femaleness, on what basis do “trans”-identifying children determine their “gender identity”? Do they base their belief that they are the sex they aren’t or their desire to be the sex they aren’t on sex stereotypes, like which toys they play with? If so, is it “arbitrary, socially imposed” sex stereotypes that determine maleness or femaleness, or do biology and anatomy determine maleness or femaleness?

27.) When law enforcement agencies collect and disseminate information on crime, should crimes committed by biological men who pretend to be women be recorded as acts committed by men or by women?

28.) Should government contracts allocated for women business-owners be awarded to biological women only or also to biological men who “identify” as women?

29.) How will biomedical research into health issues that affect primarily women or primarily men be affected when the recognition of sexual differentiation is prohibited?

My hope is that these questions might help jumpstart a spirited conversation and perhaps help eradicate the pernicious and absurd “trans” ideology.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to our U.S. Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth to urge them to oppose the federal Equality Act (H.R. 5) which seeks to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include protections for an individual’s perceived sex, “sexual orientation,” or “gender identity.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Questions-for-Sex-Eradicationists.mp3

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On Friday night, Stephanie Wilkinson, owner of the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, kicked out Sarah Huckabee Sanders and seven members of her family because Sanders works for the president. “Progressives”–once again demonstrating their inability to think analogically–believe this ill-treatment of Sanders and her family is analogous to the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.

Once more for the obtuse among us, Jack Phillips didn’t refuse to serve homosexuals or kick them out of his bakery. He refused to create and sell a product for a type of event that violates his deeply held religious convictions. He served homosexuals regularly. The Red Hen restaurant refused to serve any product to a particular person and her family.

Written by Dustin Siggins

Last week, the Obama administration enacted a rule that prohibits the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from contracting with groups that engage in “discrimination” against people who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. According to National Security Advisor Susan Rice in a speech on Wednesday:

This rule means that any organization that contracts with USAID must ensure that all people can benefit from its federally-funded programs, regardless of race, religion, disability — or sexual orientation and gender identity.  It’s a major step towards ensuring that American assistance is provided in a fair and equitable manner.

But “fair and equitable” have a specific meaning for the Obama administration. It doesn’t include the unborn. “Discrimination” is still permitted against the unborn — USAID has given tens of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups, and engaged in other anti-life policies.

It does include LGBT people. As Rice notes elsewhere in the talk, some countries punish homosexual acts with death, and a death penalty law was narrowly defeated in Uganda a few years ago. Her speech suggested that supporting the LGBT agenda is more important to the Obama administration than stopping the Syrian slaughter, preventing Russia’s advance internationally and protecting Christian refugees.

The Administration’s LBGT Pressure

Rice’s speech reflects how the administration has spent years blackmailing African nations over the LGBT agenda, demanding acquiescence in exchange for basic humanitarian aid. Many Christian leaders have refused to bow to the administration, but the pressure has continued. While some nations certainly have deplorable and inhuman policies, many times the administration has prioritized the LGBT agenda over fighting terrorism and stopping starvation.

She thanked the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and another group “who fight so admirably to promote equal rights and dignity for all.” Co-founded by Terrence Bean — who squirreled out of being found guilty in the alleged sexual abuse of a minor — HRC has targeted pro-marriage advocates to such a degree that a college professor told me he’s never sure if his family is safe.

HRC has also attempted to bully Johns Hopkins University into denouncing a much-cited study that debunks LGBT talking points about sexuality, and has led the dishonest-yet-successful effort to tar North Carolina’s HB2 “bathroom” law as bigoted and hateful. (The Obama administration has also contributed to this misleading state of affairs, with Attorney General Loretta Lynch comparing the very modest bathroom law to racist Jim Crow laws.)

Finally, after referencing the Pulse nightclub shooting this summer, Rice compared HB2 and state-based religious liberty laws to unfair and sometimes inhumane treatment of people who identify as LGBT in other nations. She briefly mentioned the cultural and legal LGBT fight in Indonesia, “governments in Central Asia and Eastern Europe” that are passing anti-homosexual laws and how that “in as many as ten countries, same-sex acts are punishable by death.” She then said:

And, in Syria and Iraq, ISIL has unleashed a unique brutality on LGBT people — dragging gay men behind trucks, stoning them, and burning them alive. ISIL works with chilling efficiency, often going through the cell phones and social media accounts of their victims to identify more LGBT individuals for slaughter. As we speak, the United States is supporting Iraqi and Kurdish forces as they push to liberate Mosul, where ISIL fighters were taped hurling gay men off of buildings.  As one Iraqi man testified before the UN: “In my society, being gay means death.”

Again, some of these laws are downright horrifying, and ISIS’ actions are the same. The Obama administration is right to condemn them, and put pressure on nations to change those practices and laws. But Rice’s speech shows that the Obama administration’s ideology on LGBT “rights” continues to go above and beyond what is right and just, instead giving state-sanctioned preference to the LGBT agenda over the rights of business owners, women and children.

This article was originally posted at the Stream.org

I just saw a commercial during a football game that inspired me, and then irked me. A young black girl is shown growing up in the Civil Rights era, watching the achievements of African American athletes, political activists, and religious leaders. Believing she can become anything if she sets her mind to it, she fights for acceptance in financial firms, eventually graduates with an MBA, and becomes a Wall Street executive. “You may trod me in the very dirt,” she says, “but still, like dust, I rise.”

It’s a great message. But halfway through this ad for the University of Phoenix, alumna Gail Marquis is shown marching hand-in-hand with LGBT activists and waving a rainbow flag. The implication is crystal clear: The fight of African-Americans for equal rights is the same one LGBT Americans are fighting today.

Unbelievably, this conflation between skin color and sexual orientation surfaced during the recent unrest in Charlotte, North Carolina. In an interview with historian Brenda Tindal, Public Radio International’s John Hockenberry suggested that protesters and rioters who took to the street following the police shooting of Lamont Scott were actually angry about—get this—the new transgender bathroom law!

Are you kidding me?

This kind of race-exploitation has infected even the highest levels of government. Back in May, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch filed a lawsuit against North Carolina to force accommodation on the transgender bathroom issue. “It was not so very long ago,” she then lectured the nation, “that states, including North Carolina, had other signs above restrooms, water fountains and public accommodations, keeping people out based on a distinction without a difference.”

It’s a line that has won the LGBT movement virtually endless mileage. 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.”

Other African American leaders upset with the attorney general have pointed out something I told you here on BreakPoint recently: Research shows the vast majority of gender dysphoric children will later abandon those feelings, and transgender individuals who “transition” from one sex to the other frequently have second thoughts.

One of those folks is Walter Heyer. Writing at Public Discourse last Tuesday, Heyer insists based on his own experience that in contrast to race, “people are not born transgender. And those who “wholeheartedly believe that they need a sex change…often…change their mind and go back.” He adds that the emotional devastation of buying the transgender lie can take a lifetime to heal.

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.

LGBT Is not a Color: Stop Hijacking Civil Rights

As John affirms, these two issues are not comparable. One is based on biological reality, the other is based on the shifting sand of personal choice. For more discussion, check out the resources linked below.

I fought for civil rights. It is offensive to compare it with the transgender fight.
Clarence Henderson | Charlotte Observer | May 19, 2016

Comparing HB2 with Civil Rights Movement ‘offensive’
Elaina Athans | ABC11.com | May 24, 2016

Born This Way is Shaky Science: The Truth Comes out of the Closet
John Stonestreet | BreakPoint.org | August 31, 2016

Transgender Identities Are Not Always Permanent
Walt Heyer | Public Discourse | September 27, 2016

This article was originally posted at BreakPoint.org

“Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe topful
Of direst cruelty!”
—Lady Macbeth

By the fall of 2017, kindergartners in Washington State will be taught to “understand the range of gender roles, identity, and expression across cultures.”1 For those unclear about what precisely will be taught, the kindergarten curriculum developers provide a helpful glossary that includes a definition of “gender”:

Gender: A social construct based on emotional, behavioral, and cultural characteristics attached to a person’s assigned biological sex. A person’s social and/or legal status as male or female.

• Gender expression. The way someone outwardly expresses their gender, whether consciously or unconsciously.

• Gender identity. Someone’s inner sense of their gender (see Transgender).

• Gender roles. Social expectations about how people should act, think, or feel based on their assigned biological sex.

Kindergarten now marks the starting point for government indoctrination of children into the brave, new, sexless, science-denying orthodoxy of the “transgender” movement, the end result of which is not a more compassionate society, but a society in which there is no public recognition of, or respect for, sexual differentiation.

In early May 2016, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) joined the ranks of the foolish by issuing guidelines pertaining to gender-dysphoric students in K–12 schools. Students who wish they were the opposite sex may now use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms, and on school-sponsored overnight trips, they may room with opposite-sex students.

These guidelines also apply to “gender non-binary” students who don’t “identify” as either male or female and to “questioning” students who aren’t yet sure which sex they would like to be. In other words, these students may make their restroom, locker room, and hotel room selections in accordance with their unstable sexual confusion.

In an effort to facilitate student confusion, the CPS “guidelines” mandate the use of Newspeak by faculty and staff, requiring them to lie by using opposite-sex pronouns when referring to gender-dysphoric students.

Exploitation of Title IX

One week later, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Education (ED) issued an almost identical edict, except theirs came with a threat of the loss of federal funds for non-compliance with what they euphemistically describe as “significant guidance.”

Elementary, middle, and high schools all around the country have been accommodating requests (or demands) from parents to have their gender-dysphoric children granted access to restrooms, locker rooms, and athletic teams that correspond to the sex these children wish they were rather than the sex they actually are. In a case in Illinois, a male student sued his district for the right to unrestricted access even to the girls’ locker room, which includes showers. Often school administrations are accommodating these requests without informing the parents of students whose privacy is being invaded.

The DOJ and the ED, through the intrusive Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which is an unelected collective of bureaucrats, have proclaimed that henceforth, in the section of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 that prohibits discrimination based on “sex,” the word “sex” includes “gender identity” and “gender expression.” Further, sex-segregated restrooms constitute discrimination based on “sex,” meaning that schools have no legal right to maintain separate restrooms for boys and girls.

There are multiple problems with this creative argument, the first of which is that the word “sex” in Title IX means sex.

Second, progressives themselves relentlessly assert that sex and “gender identity” are wholly distinct.

Third, Title IX specifically states the following: “A recipient [of federal funds] may provide separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex, but such facilities provided for students of one sex shall be comparable to such facilities provided for students of the other sex.“2

Fourth, neither the DOJ nor the ED has lawmaking authority, so neither can change the definition of the word “sex” in Title IX.

Exploitation of Title VII

But the Barack Obama administration had still more government power to wield illicitly in its quest to eradicate sex-segregation. Like the ED, the DOJ under Attorney General Loretta Lynch has declared that the word “sex” in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 includes “gender identity” and “gender expression.” The abuse of Title VII is far more dangerous than that of Title IX because it has broader applicability.

Whereas Title IX applies only to schools, Title VII applies to every business in the private sector with over 14 employees, to every government entity, and to every religious organization, including religious schools of every grade level from elementary through college.It even applies to churches, which are exempt only from the prohibition of religious discrimination. Churches and other religious institutions are not exempt from the ban on “sex” discrimination.

So if the Obama administration’s redefinition of the word “sex” to include “gender identity” prevails, even churches couldn’t prohibit gender-dysphoric persons from using opposite-sex restrooms. The decree—it can’t veraciously be called a law—would mandate that gender-dysphoric guests at church weddings or attendees of concerts and athletic events at Christian colleges be allowed in opposite-sex restrooms.

Since men are permitted to go shirtless on beaches, at pools, in public parks, in high-school swim classes, and on swim teams, there would be no legal warrant for prohibiting women who “identify” as men but forgo bilateral mastectomies from going shirtless as well.

Sex Segregation versus Racial Segregation

Progressives, who never tire of exploiting race as an analogue for sexual deviance, compare racially segregated restrooms to sex-segregated restrooms, again misconstruing the issues. Racially segregated restrooms were unjustifiable because they were based on the false belief that people of different races are ontologically different. Sex-segregated restrooms are justifiable because they are based on the true belief that men and women are different—a true belief that even homosexuals implicitly acknowledge when they say they are attracted only to persons of their own sex.

When announcing the DOJ’s lawsuit against North Carolina following that state’s passage of a law prohibiting de-sexed, co-ed restrooms, Attorney General Lynch said, “It was not so very long ago that states, including North Carolina, had signs above restrooms, water fountains and on public accommodations keeping people out based upon a distinction without a difference.”

If there is no more difference between men and women than there is between blacks and whites—as Lynch clearly implies—then how is it justifiable to maintain single-sex restrooms or showers anywhere? Why not allow men and women and boys and girls to share the same restrooms, locker rooms, showers, shelters, and hospital rooms just as blacks and whites do?

Lynch also suggested that the unwillingness of women to share restrooms with gender-dysphoric men is evidence of fear, disrespect, misunderstanding, closed-mindedness, unfairness, lack of compassion, unjust regressive discrimination, and the denial of equality. If that’s the case, then how would she characterize the unwillingness of gender-dysphoric men to share restrooms with non-gender-dysphoric men? If separate restrooms for men and women are analogous to separate restrooms for blacks and whites, then aren’t separate restrooms for gender-dysphoric men and normal men also analogous to separate restrooms for blacks and whites?

Justifying Deception

The left uses the little-known history of some cross-dressing men successfully deceiving women in restrooms as a perverse ethical justification for allowing men in women’s restrooms. The argument goes something like this: Since gender-dysphoric men in especially convincing disguises have successfully deceived and violated the privacy of women who don’t want to share restrooms with men, let’s just openly allow gender-dysphoric men to continue to invade women’s privacy.

That’s analogous to arguing that since some peeping Toms successfully spy on women through windows without being found out, there’s no harm done, so no foul. Or, since some husbands commit adultery without their wives ever finding out—again, no harm, no foul.

Others believe, however, that the deception per se is harmful. The use of ever-more-elaborate disguises—including chemically and surgically facilitated ones—by gender-dysphoric men to conceal their sex from women who don’t want to use restrooms with objectively male persons is comparable to peepers using ever-more-sophisticated technology to peep.

Questions for Progressives

There are still more critical questions that should be posed to anyone who supports de facto co-ed everything, questions that will expose the incoherence of the subversive un-sexing of America:

1. Why should gender-dysphoric men and women be allowed to dictate that restrooms, showers, locker rooms, shelters, and hospital rooms no longer correspond to objective, immutable sex?

2. Why should gender-dysphoric men be able to dictate that they get to use restrooms with only women, but actual women are prohibited from saying they should get to use restrooms with only women?

3. If stalls provide sufficient privacy to separate gender-dysphoric men from women in restrooms, and curtains provide sufficient privacy to separate gender-dysphoric men from women in changing areas, why don’t stalls and curtains provide sufficient privacy to separate gender-dysphoric men from other men in men’s restrooms and changing areas?

4. If there is a mismatch between a person’s sex and his feelings about his sex, how can progressives be certain that the error resides in the body rather than the mind? If a person has XY chromosomes that have commanded his brain to produce and release male hormones to which his body is able to respond, thereby developing normal, unambiguous, healthy, fully functioning male anatomy, he is clearly male. If he nevertheless desires to be—or insists that he is—female, might this not be an error of his mind?

5. If a man “identifies” as “bi-gender” and has appended faux-breasts to his torso while retaining his penis, should he be permitted to decide at will which locker room he uses in the altogether?

6. Those who suffer from gender dysphoria claim that their DNA and the genitalia it shapes are wholly unrelated and irrelevant to “gender” and “gender identity,” and that genitalia shouldn’t matter when it comes to restrooms, changing areas, and showers. They further claim they want to use restrooms with only those whose “gender identity” they share. So, why do gender-dysphoric men demand to use women’s restrooms? How do they know that the males using the men’s restrooms do not “identify” as women, and how can they be sure that the females using the women’s restrooms do “identify” as women? Is it possible that gender-dysphoric men are basing their restroom choices on genitalia? If so, why are they permitted to do so, but actual women are not?

7. Leftists claim that people who don’t want to share restrooms, changing areas, showers, shelters, and hospital rooms with persons of the opposite sex are hateful. If it’s hateful for women to say they want to share these facilities only with other women, why isn’t it hateful for gender-dysphoric men to say they want to share them only with women?

8. Progressives routinely mock opponents of co-ed restrooms, asking whether historical restroom practices that require restroom-usage to correspond to sex will also require “genitalia police” to determine whether restroom-users are in reality the sex that corresponds to the restrooms they seek to use. Well, in the mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up progressive world, will there be “gender-identity” police demanding proof that all restroom-users are either the sex that corresponds to the restrooms they seek to use or have proof that they have been diagnosed as gender-dysphoric? If not, how will women know if their fellow restroom-users are actual women, or gender-dysphoric men masquerading as women, or male predators masquerading as gender-dysphoric men?

9. If the views of Obama and Lynch prevail and gender-dysphoric men are permitted in women’s restrooms, on what basis could all other men be prohibited from using women’s restrooms? Normal men couldn’t be prohibited from using women’s restrooms based on their male sex because men would already have been allowed in. And normal men couldn’t be prohibited from using women’s restrooms based on their “identification” as males because that would constitute discrimination based on “gender identity,” which Obama and Lynch argue violates Title IX and Title VII.

The Final Chapter

The editorial board of the Charlotte Observer opined that “the thought of male genitalia in girls’ locker rooms—and vice versa—might be distressing to some. But the battle for equality has always been in part about overcoming discomfort.”3 This comment reveals what many Americans don’t realize: identifying as the opposite sex does not require or necessarily include any surgery, cross-sex hormone-doping, or even cross-dressing; the mere assertion of one’s “gender identity” is sufficient.

Of course, none of those actions can efface the truth of sex; all they can do is mask it. But Americans should disabuse themselves of the rationalization that sharing a shower with Caitlyn Jenner might not be so bad as long as his testicles have been given the heave-ho and his pesky penis has been tucked inside.

And this brings us to the final chapter in the dystopian cultural narrative the left is writing: the end of sex-segregation everywhere. The elimination of the binary. No more public recognition of or respect for objective maleness and femaleness. “LGBTQQAP” activists and their ideological allies seek to create a solipsistic, make-believe world in which nothing outside the self is recognized as real or meaningful. Objective, immutable, biological sex, which is the source of feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy, will become a hoary relic of the past. Even language will be co-opted to serve an ontological and epistemic lie.

A compassionate society helps those who suffer from disordered thoughts and emotions. It does not affirm confusion or facilitate fiction. This most profound distortion of reality and morality must be resisted. •

1. Washington State Health and Physical Education Standards (March 2016), 32
2. 34 C.F.R. Part 106, Subpart D, §106.33: www2.ed.gov/policy/rights/reg/ocr/edlite-34cfr106.html.
3. “Taking the fear out of bathrooms,” The Charlotte Observer (May 13, 2016): charlotteobserver.com/opinion/editorials/article77475147.html.

(Caution: Not for younger readers.)

According to a lawsuit filed yesterday by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a high school boy in the city of Virginia, Minnesota (near Duluth) who is pretending to be a girl and whom school administrators allow to invade the privacy of girls has been accused of engaging in vulgar sexual gestures in a girls’ locker room.

A group of girls uncomfortable changing with this boy present had sought from the administration the privacy to which they are entitled. Rather than require the biological-sex-rejecting boy to move to a single-occupancy restroom to change, the school suggested the girls move to an unused boys’ basketball locker room in an elementary school basement—which they did. The biological-sex-rejecting boy soon followed them, and on one occasion lifted up his dress and “twerked” in front of girls who were wearing only their underwear.

Todd Starnes reports that the suit alleges the following:

• Student X commented on girls’ bodies while in the girls’ locker room, including asking Girl Plaintiff F about her bra size and asking her to “trade body parts” with him;

• Student X danced to loud music with sexually explicit lyrics while twerking, grinding and lifting up his skirt to reveal his underwear;

• Student X would dance in a sexually explicit manner “dancing like he was on a stripper pole” to songs with suggestive lyrics….

The lawsuit also alleges that “Student X walked into the…locker room while Girl Plaintiff A was in her underwear and removed his pants while he was near her and other girls who were also changing.”

So, while a troubled boy is allowed to use restrooms and locker rooms with only girls and designated for girls, actual girls are denied the right to use restrooms and locker rooms with only girls and designated for girls despite complaints from both the girls and their parents.

The lawsuit names as defendants “Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Independent School District Number 706 (the Virginia School District) and Secretary of Education John King, Jr.”

Psychiatrist Dr. Boris Vatel writing for Salvo Magazine makes clear some inconvenient truths about the “transgender” phenomenon of which school administrators seem ignorant:

The NYC Commission on Human Rights maintains that gender identity is “one’s internal deeply held sense of one’s gender, which may be the same or different from one’s sex assigned at birth.” This statement intentionally uses language to distort reality. Except in cases of rare medical conditions resulting in ambiguous genitalia, no one’s sex is “assigned” at birth any more than the fact of belonging to the human species is assigned at birth.

More significantly, this statement erroneously implies that a person’s beliefs about himself carry more legitimacy than the physical facts that contradict such beliefs. Using the Commission’s reasoning, can we declare an alternate “age identity” to be legitimately different from one’s true age? What about “race identity” or even “species identity”? If one accepts as legitimate the logic by which men may identify themselves as women and insist on being considered as such by others, there is no reason to reject as invalid any number of other idiosyncratic identities that have no basis in reality.

…To suggest that there is no such thing as objective reality, or that reality is less important than what one wishes it were, renders the entire concept of psychiatric disorder invalid. In fact, the only way to accept the transgender phenomenon as psychiatrically normal is to say that, as a measure of reality, physical evidence is subordinate to what a person believes about or wishes for himself. And on that logic, we have no basis for calling anyone delusional….

Reading through the APA’s position on the transgender phenomenon, one gets the impression that the only suffering and disability experienced by “gender nonconforming” individuals stem from prejudice and discrimination on the part of those who disapprove of them. In reality—that is, any reality apart from the current attempt to reframe this phenomenon as a civil rights issue—these individuals do experience a great deal of disability associated with being unable to function adequately in society, as do other patients whose delusions influence their appearance and behavior.

Although the public’s reaction to the appearance and behaviors of people who consider themselves transgender may, indeed, be negative, to say that the disability of transgender individuals consists of being the recipients of a negative public reaction means confusing the cause with the effect. The fact is that the disability originates in the abnormal mental experience of “transgender” individuals and not in having been born in the “wrong” body or of living in the “wrong” society. However, according to the inverted logic of those who support the LGBT agenda, when an external reality contradicts the internal experience, the solution lies in altering reality in such a way that it conforms to the internal experience. Hence, the advocated approach to addressing an idiosyncratic internal experience is to give the person a new external reality by means of a surgically altered body and a re-educated society.

Identifying the problem as ultimately external naturally leads to the kind of solutions proposed by the New York Commission on Human Rights: fines and sanctions against individuals and institutions that refuse to recognize the legitimacy of being transgender. Ironically, the fact that the Commission would force others to conform to the beliefs of transgender individuals speaks to just how much functional impairment the latter experience in their everyday lives as a result of their beliefs.

The response of organized medicine, and psychiatry in particular, to the transgender phenomenon has been intellectually dishonest and dangerous to the mental and physical health of affected individuals. The acceptance of transgender beliefs as psychiatrically normal has in many cases led to harmful medical interventions in which individuals undergo so-called “sex-reassignment” surgery. These operations cannot “reassign” sex; they can only disfigure normal anatomy.

And now schools are facilitating an intellectually dishonest and dangerous response to a psychiatric disorder—a response that harms both those students who suffer from gender dysphoria and all others.

Here’s an idea: How about parents of students in this district and all other Virginia, Minnesota community members organize a sit-in to protest this science-denying nonsense and moral outrage. They should sit in the superintendent’s office until the administration restores school policies and practices that prohibit students from accessing opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms, thereby fulfilling their obligation to protect the modesty and  privacy of girls and boys.

Oh, and maybe someone should send this story to School District U-46 CEO Tony Sanders.

“Laurie’s Chinwags”

Have you had a chance to checkout the latest special feature we are calling “Laurie’s Chinwags?” For the past few weeks, we’ve been adding audio recordings (aka podcasts) to articles written by Laurie. We hope this new feature will serve the needs and desires of IFI subscribers. We would appreciate any constructive feedback.

Tony Sanders, the chief executive officer of School District U-46 which serves 40,000 students in Cook, DuPage, and Kane Counties in Illinois, has declared that a middle school locker room is henceforth co-ed. He has declared from on high that a student who wishes to be the opposite sex may use whichever locker room his or her heart desires. Even more troubling, Sanders has further declared that no parents in the district may be apprised of the fact that their children may be sharing a locker room with an opposite-sex student. If it weren’t for one courageous school board member, Jeanette Ward, who alerted the community to this presumptuous decision on the part of the administration, parents would still be unaware of the practice that took effect on September, 6, 2016.

Opposition to co-ed restrooms and locker rooms does not constitute hatred of those students who suffer from gender dysphoria. And opposition to co-ed restrooms and locker rooms is not solely or centrally about the physical safety of students posed by close encounters of the undressed kind, although by high school such risks are not nil.

Rather, opposition to co-ed restrooms and locker rooms is driven by a recognition of the arguable assumptions embedded in and promoted by such practices. In other words, allowing co-ed restrooms and locker rooms depends on first accepting a number of controversial ideas about biological sex. Further, allowing co-ed restrooms and locker rooms necessarily means teaching those underlying ideas to all students. Practices and policies teach.

For example, such practices teach all students that feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy when engaged in intimate bodily activities have no necessary connection to biological sex. Co-ed restrooms and locker rooms teach all students that subjective feelings about one’s sex take precedence over biological sex in even the most private spaces. Such practices teach all students that in order to be compassionate and inclusive, they must share restrooms and locker rooms with persons of the opposite sex. Attorney General Loretta Lynch has, in effect, told girls the truly wicked lie that their desire not to share restrooms and locker rooms with boys is tantamount to the refusal of white racists to share restrooms with blacks. While many parents teach their sons and daughters that they should leave a restroom or locker room if an opposite-sex student enters, schools now teach them that leaving would be hateful and bigoted.

In a Facebook statement district CEO Tony Sanders explained his feckless decision:

While the vast majority of transgender students in our schools prefer to change in private, the needs of each student is addressed on a case by case basis.

State and federal statutes prohibit districts from releasing information about any student without parent permission. If we provide information regarding a student that would lead to the identification of the student without parental permission, we would be in violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and the Illinois Student Records Act. As such, administration will not share with a school community if a transgender student is utilizing the locker room of his or her choice.

Any student who does not feel safe in a locker room or a restroom should immediately contact the school principal. Schools can then work to address any concerns and, if appropriate, find an alternative location to address privacy or safety concerns.

Sanders must be kidding. He’s exploiting the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Illinois Student Records Act to rationalize not telling parents that their children’s privacy will be invaded by an opposite-sex student? If these laws, which were passed in part to give “parents the right to have some control over the disclosure of personally identifiable information from their education records,” are now used or abused to allow school administrators to prevent telling parents that their children will be sharing restrooms or locker rooms with opposite-sex students, then the laws need to change. School administrators can make parents aware of the decision to allow co-ed restrooms and locker rooms without giving student names. Withholding a general notification about the end of sex-segregated restrooms and locker rooms violates the rights of other students and their parents.

Here are a list of questions that should be posed to your favorite teachers, school board members, and administrators:

• Do you believe children who wish they were the opposite sex have the right to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms?

• Do you believe students have a right to use restrooms and locker rooms with only persons of their same-sex?

• Do you believe that parents have a right to know if their children may be sharing a restroom or locker room with opposite-sex students?

• Why should girls who are uncomfortable sharing girls’ restrooms or locker rooms with a biological boy (formerly known as a boy) be forced to use other facilities (as Tony Sanders suggested above)?

• Should “gender fluid” or “gender non-binary” students be permitted to choose on a daily basis which restrooms or locker rooms they want to use?

• If policies that prohibit “discrimination” based on both sex and “gender identity” are applied to bathrooms and locker rooms, on what basis could schools prohibit a non-gender-dysphoric boy (i.e., a normal boy) from using girls’ restrooms or locker rooms? If schools argue that he can’t use girls’ facilities, he could point out the inconsistency of allowing another boy—the gender-dysphoric boy—to use the girls’ facilities while prohibiting him. He could also claim that since allowing a boy who “identifies” as a “transgirl” to use the girls’ facilities, while prohibiting him—a “cisboy,” they’re discriminating against him based on his “gender identity.”

• Does physical embodiment as male or female per se have any meaning relative to modesty and privacy?

• Why is it acceptable to allow a boy who wishes he were a girl in the girls’ locker room but not the girls’ shower?

• Should objectively female students who “identify” as male be permitted to use urinals in boys’ bathrooms using “stand-to-pee” devices? If not, why not?

• Should an objectively female coach of a boys’ swim team who “identifies” as a man be allowed in the boys’ locker room while the boys are showering and changing? If not, why not?

• Should an objectively female swimmer who “identifies” as male but has chosen not to have “top surgery” be permitted to wear a boy’s Speedo for swim practices and meets? If not, why not?

• Should an objectively female swimmer who “identifies” as male and has had a double mastectomy be permitted to change and shower with the boys? If not, why not? If all the boys and their parents are okay with her changing and showering with the boys, would she be permitted to do so?

• Staff and faculty routinely use student restrooms. Should male teachers who pretend to be women be allowed to use girls’ restrooms? Should biologically male teachers who “identify” as women but choose not to take cross-sex hormones, cross-dress, or have any surgery be allowed to use girls’ restrooms?

If you can get your school leaders to respond, their answers will likely reveal several things. (And don’t let them get away with responding to any of the hypothetical scenarios posed above with the all too common responses of “That will never happen,” or “That’s different.”)

First, their answers will likely reveal that our public school leaders have not thought about the ramifications of the ideas embedded in the practices and policies they are already implementing.

Second, their answers will likely reveal the inherently contradictory nature of the leftist ideas they are implementing.

Third, these leaders will likely reveal that they do, in fact, believe that objective, immutable biological sex per se has meaning: Biological sex is the source of feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy.

Opposition to co-ed restrooms, locker rooms, and showers in public schools has little to do with the risk of sexual assault by boys who “identify” as girls (or claim to), though that risk increases in middle school and high school. Opposition to such subversive practices stems from the abandonment of any recognition of and respect for the deep meaning of objective biological sex. Leftists are persuading or coercing public schools to treat subjective, disordered feelings about biological sex as if they are of greater importance than objective, immutable sex.

One of the many troubling lessons I learned from working in a well-respected public high school (Deerfield High School) for a decade and sending four children through public school is that few public school teachers, administrators, and school board members are deep thinkers. That is not to say they’re not intelligent. Rather, they rarely think critically about their own assumptions or about the logical outworking of ideas. In fact, many become become downright angry if pressed to think deeply about ideas—particularly ideas that challenge their usually unchallenged dogma.

Another critical issue that I hope becomes evident by thinking through these questions is where the chuckleheaded ideas, practices, and policies—which are embraced by foolish administrators, teachers, school board members, and parents or tolerated by cowardly administrators, teachers, school board members, and parents—will lead. They will lead to unrestricted co-ed restrooms, locker rooms, and showers everywhere. Eventually, there will be no more privacy curtains in locker rooms, no more separate showers, no more accommodations of just a few gender-dysphoric students.

Those who prefer not to rock boats—including even the pirate ships that are carrying away their children—will assuage their prickly consciences by repeating the empty mantras “Oh well, it’s just a few confused children,” or “Oh well, they’re  taking cross-sex hormones and are going to have surgery, so they’ll look like the sex they’re pretending to be.” What these cowardly boat-steadiers don’t realize is that “transactivists” and their political enablers like Barack Obama don’t think “transgender” persons need to cross-dress, take cross-sex hormones, or have surgery (By the way, having “top” or “bottom” surgery does not transform women into men or vice versa). In the doctrinaire leftist cosmos, a “trans” person doesn’t have to feel distress about their biological sex. All that’s needed for a person to be “trans” is his or her claim that he or she feels like the opposite sex (or both sexes or neither sex)—today.

The logic of leftist arguments necessarily leads to the end of sex-segregation everywhere. Don’t dismiss these changes in practices or policies as trivial or as affecting only a few students. These changes affect all students, and they are profound. In fact, these changes are the portents of the most radical cultural revolution in modern history.

“Laurie’s Chinwags”

Have you had a chance to checkout the latest special feature we are calling “Laurie’s Chinwags?” For the past few weeks, we’ve been adding audio recordings (aka podcasts) to articles written by Laurie. We hope this new feature will serve the needs and desires of IFI subscribers. We would appreciate any constructive feedback.

Chloe Jennings-White, a 61-year-old research scientist in Utah who was a Fulbright scholar and has a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Cambridge University, has known since she was 4-years-old that she is different. She feels uncomfortable with her normal, healthy, fully functioning body. She experiences a mismatch between her physical body and her mental image of her body. In an effort to achieve consonance between her body and her “identity,” she has engaged in risky activities and self-harm, hoping that injuries would result in the type of body with which she identifies. For years in private, she used props to pretend she had the body she wanted, but now she engages in these behaviors publicly.

Chloe Jennings-White identifies as a paraplegic and is part of the “transabled” community. She suffers from Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID), and careens about in a wheelchair wearing leg braces. Jennings-White reported that in 2010, she found a doctor overseas who was “willing to help her become disabled by cutting her sciatic and femoral nerves, but she could not afford” the $25,000 cost.

Oh, I almost forgot. In addition to identifying as a paraplegic, Jennings-White identifies as a woman. Chloe Jennings-White is, in reality, a man, formerly known as Clive. (Interestingly, according to a 2011 study, 25% of those who suffer from BIID identify as homosexual, while homosexuals constitute only 1-3 % of the population.)

While most people who suffer from BIID identify as amputees and desire a limb amputated, some, like Jennings-White, identify as paraplegics. Still others identify as blind persons, as is the case of 32-year-old Jewel Shuping who ten years ago was able to persuade a psychologist “to pour drain cleaner into her eyes…an excruciating process that took six months to fully take her sight.”

Dr. Michael First, a Columbia University professor of psychiatry, sees gender dysphoria as an apt though imperfect analogue for BIID:

 “When the first sex reassignment was done in the 1950’s, it generated the same kind of horror that voluntary amputation does now….It’s one thing to say someone wants to go from male to female; they’re both normal states….To want to go from a four-limbed person to an amputee feels more problematic.” 

The medical community—though not all of its members—has decided that amputating healthy breasts and testes and providing sterility-inducing cross-sex hormones constitutes medicine, while amputating an arm is quackery. Isn’t that judgmental and “transabled-phobic”?

Yes, male and female are, indeed, both normal states, but being female is not a normal state for men, being male is not a normal state for women, and the desire to amputate healthy body parts in a futile quest to become the opposite sex is definitely not normal.

There are, however, differences between voluntary amputations of arms or legs and voluntary amputations of breasts or testes.

First, elective surgery for BIID—which doctors will not do—would actually succeed in transforming able-bodied persons into amputees, paraplegics, or blind persons, whereas elective surgery for gender dysphoria—which doctors will perform even on minors—creates only an elaborate disguise.

Second, with regard to gender dysphoria (and unlike BIID), the medical community has been politicized by the infiltration, badgering, and bullying of “trans”-activists who have compelled the medical establishment to at least publicly assert that the desire to be the opposite-sex is not a psychological disorder.

Don’t take my word about the political pressure effecting such a change. “Julia” Serano, a male “trans”-activist who pretends to be a woman, recently admitted as much. He said that our healthcare system is “gradually becoming our contemporary trans healthcare system” an “evolution” that was brought about in part by “trans activists ‘f***ing sh*t up’….[T]his change was facilitated by a more general trend within research and medicine — away from the paternalistic ‘Doctor Knows Best’ attitudes of the mid-twentieth century, towards today’s recognition that practitioners and researchers need to actually be concerned about, and seek feedback from, the communities that they serve.”

Translation: Science isn’t shaping “trans”-treatment. “Trans”-activists are.

The medical malpractice masquerading as “treatment” for those who suffer from gender dysphoria is actually fashioned out of the remnants left over from the Emperor’s new clothes, and the flimsy garment is unraveling before our eyes as research fails to support the claims of “trans”-activists and as more and more people experience “sex-change regret” and “de-transition.” Tragically, what is exposed is mutilated bodies (more on that in a coming article).

Even though BIID-sufferers report “depression, frustration, and ‘constant consuming agony,’” the medical community still opposes what I guess should be called “transabled-identity confirmation surgery.” Well. it’s opposed for now. Just wait till “transabled” activists learn some lessons from the “transgender” community and kick their badgering into high gear.

Maybe President Barack Obama could tell us whether public school students who “identify” as amputee-fluid should be allowed to park in handicap spots, use wheelchair-accessible facilities, and be provided with extra time during passing periods on the days they’re feeling limbless.

Presenting “Laurie’s Chinwags”

IFI is pleased to announce a new feature we are calling “Laurie’s Chinwags.” In light of changes in the way many Americans prefer to access information, we’re adding podcasts to our articles. Podcasts will accompany both our new articles as well as previous articles that are of particular importance and relevance. As we add podcasts to previous articles, we will republish them for our subscribers’ convenience.

We hope this new feature will serve the needs and desires of IFI subscribers, and we would appreciate any constructive feedback.

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Obamas-Radical-Revolution.mp3

The most radical cultural revolution in modern history is taking place, fomented and facilitated by Barack Obama’s egregious abuse of power. He is incrementally obliterating any public recognition of and respect for sexual differentiation. In Obama’s brave new world, immutable biological sex will be rendered meaningless.

Last week, reports surfaced that both the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the General Administrative Services (GSA) have issued “guidelines” or regulations essentially mandating that those government organizations and institutions that fall under the purview of these agencies must treat humans as if their intrinsic, objective, immutable biological sex has no meaning, not even in the most private and intimate contexts.

Department of Housing and Urban Development

In 2012, HUD published its “Equal Access to Housing in HUD Programs Regardless of Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity final rule,” which stated that “Inquiries as to sex are permitted…when determining eligibility for a temporary, emergency shelter that is limited to one sex because it has shared sleeping areas and/or bathrooms.”

But no more.

A new document was published in February 2015 which reverses that position:

Best practices suggest that where the provider is uncertain of the client’s sex or gender identity, the provider simply informs the client or potential client that the agency provides shelter based on the gender with which the individual identifies. There generally is no legitimate reason in this context for the provider to request documentation of a person’s sex in order to determine appropriate placement, nor should the provider have any basis to deny access to a single-sex emergency shelter or facility solely because the provider possesses identity documents indicating a sex different than the gender with which the client or potential client identifies. The provider may not ask questions or otherwise seek information or documentation concerning the person’s anatomy or medical history. Nor may the provider consider the client or potential client ineligible for an emergency shelter or other facility because his or her appearance or behavior does not conform to gender stereotypes. [emphasis added]

This policy change means that any shelter that receives government funding may no longer take into account the sex of persons when assigning them to single-sex accommodations. In order to receive government funds, shelters must house men and women in accordance with the sex they wish they were or claim to be rather than the sex they actually are.

Shelters—like the 200 shelters run by Catholic Charities—will be prohibited from asking anyone seeking emergency shelter in single-sex accommodations about their sex. All that’s required for men to access women’s shelters where abused and traumatized women are often housed is the claim by men that they “identify”—whatever that means—as women.

According to the Washington political newspaper The Hill, this new “guidance” will be finalized in September.

General Administration Services

Just days after the HUD news came out, news broke that the GSA will be requiring all restrooms in the 9,000 buildings and offices it oversees, including “federal courthouses…the Social Security Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs,” to be co-ed. This new regulation will apply to both federal employees who work in those government buildings as well as all visitors. According to GSA officials, this regulation “is based on a review of recent rulings and directives from the Departments of Education and Justice and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.”

And so, the ideological collusion comes to light.

The Departments of Justice and Education

Obama’s GSA is basing its decision on Obama’s Department of Justice (DOJ) and on Obama’s Department of Education (ED), both of which divined and declared that the word “sex” in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendment of 1972 respectively didn’t actually mean sex but instead meant sex and “gender identity.”

For those who may have forgotten, it was Obama’s radical attorney general Loretta Lynch who proclaimed that separate restrooms for men and women are analogous to separate restrooms for blacks and whites. (I assume, therefore, that Lynch refuses to use women’s restrooms as an act of civil disobedience against unjust discriminatory practices. Come to think of it, what a paltry act of defiance using the men’s restroom would constitute in the face of such a grave social evil. Lynch should be showering with men in the Capitol Hill health club to demonstrate her commitment to “inclusivity, diversity, compassion and open-mindedness” and her solidarity with oppressed men who wish they were women.)

The ED is similarly abusing its power by requiring all minor children and college students in government schools to share restrooms, locker rooms, dorm rooms, and hotel rooms for school-sponsored overnight trips with persons of the opposite sex.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) also plays a role in this toxic ideological potage. Lesbian Chai Feldblum, Obama’s recess appointment to the EEOC, was instrumental in redefining the word “sex” for the purposes of advancing sexual deviance in the EEOC case Macy v. Holder. In 2010, “Mia” Macy, a male police detective who pretends to be a woman, applied for a job with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. He was turned down and filed a complaint with the EEOC which found in his favor:

The EEOC stated that Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination prohibits discrimination on the basis of both biological sex and gender and that ‘gender’ encompasses not only a person’s biological sex but also the cultural and social aspects associated with masculinity and femininity. Thus, discrimination against a person because that person is transgender is discrimination based on sex. [emphasis added]

More recently, in a landmark case, the “EEOC as an agency of the federal government, sued a private business on behalf” of a man who pretends to be a woman. Fortunately, in a rare instance of judicial sanity, a judge ruled against “Aimee” Stephens who sued the private funeral home that fired him. The judge ruled that “Enforcement of Title VII ‘would impose a substantial burden on [the funeral home’s] ability to conduct business in accordance with its sincerely-held religious beliefs.’”

So, Obama has used the Department of Justice, the Department of Education, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the General Services Administration, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to advance his radical, anti-science social and political revolution. The expansion of the federal government into the behemoth it has become has made this revolution possible. This expansive, intrusive, coercive federal monster now demands that all Americans treat biological sex as if it has no meaning. Bureaucrats are forcing all Americans—including children—to treat gender-dysphoric, sex-rejecting persons as if they are, in reality, the sex they wish they were as opposed to the sex they actually are.

What next? Force us to pretend the world is flat?

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send a message to your U.S. Representative, urging him or her to rein in the un-elected, leftist federal bureaucrats who are putting our family members in uncomfortable and dangerous situations.

Demand that they take action to stop to the federal takeover of shelters, restrooms, and locker rooms.

You can also place a phone call to your federal lawmaker via the United States Capitol switchboard by calling (202) 224-3121.

IFI Faith, Family & Freedom Banquet

We are excited to have as our keynote speaker this year, former Congresswoman and Tea Party Caucus Leader, Michele Bachmann!  She distinguished herself by not only forming and chairing the Tea Party Caucus in 2010 in the U.S. House but also through her courageous and outspoken pro-life leadership as attested to by her rating of zero from NARAL.

Please register today before the early bird special expires.

*UPDATE*

This post has been updated to reflect the Department of Justice’s reversal of  position on redacting the transcript of Orlando club shooter Omar Mateen’s phone calls with law enforcement. Four hours after the release of a partial transcript of Mateen’s phone calls and under intense public criticism, the Department of Justice released the unredacted transcript.

Yesterday on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced that the FBI would be releasing a “partial transcript”—no audio—of Omar Mateen’s phone calls “with law enforcement from inside the club. These are the calls with the Orland PD negotiating team who were trying to ascertain who he was, where he was, why he was doing this, all the while the rescue operations were continuing.

When Todd asked what information would be left out of the edited transcript, Lynch answered:

“Well, what we’re not going to do is to further proclaim this individual’s pledges of allegiance to terrorist groups and further his propaganda… We’re not gonna hear him make his assertions of allegiance.”

It’s much easier for “progressives” to perpetuate their pernicious lie that theologically orthodox Christians are the cause of the Orlando massacre if the government censors the words of the shooter in which he tells America exactly what ideology moved him to murder 49 people.

And since when does the publication of primary sources of historical information constitute furthering “propaganda”?

(Watch video from 3:10-4:20)

When Loretta Lynch succeeded Eric Holder as U.S. attorney general a year ago, some harbored the tiniest hope that she wouldn’t be quite as radical.

After all, Mr. Holder had done his best to gin up racial resentment, dismiss a clear case of voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party, attack voter photo ID laws, refuse to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, threaten a congressman trying to get to the truth of the Fast and Furious Mexican gun-running scandal, and ignore the Internal Revenue Service’s mob-like persecution of conservative groups.

Mr. Holder also managed to sidestep or slow down any action regarding former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server, or the massive irregularities of the $2 billion Clinton Foundation, the golden cash cow of open graft by the Clintons and their cronies. Meanwhile, Mr. Holder staffed the Justice Department civil rights division with hard-core leftists, as amply documented in J. Christian Adams’ book “Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department.”

The partisan corruption under Mr. Holder was so patently obvious that his departure made some folks cautiously optimistic that Ms. Lynch would put “justice” back into the Justice Department.

No such luck. She’s not only buried that hope but driven a monster truck over it.

In February, for example, Ms. Lynch’s Justice Department sided with radical groups that sued to overturn requirements for proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in Alabama, Arizona, Georgia and Kansas. The DOJ attorneys’ conduct was so outrageous that it drew a rebuke from a federal judge.

Last Tuesday, the Justice Department revealed that it won’t seek the death penalty for terrorist suspect Abu Khattala if he’s convicted of orchestrating the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012 that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens.

This past week, Ms. Lynch outdid herself, proclaiming that forcing schools and cities to grant transgender males access to girls and women’s restrooms and locker rooms is right up there with the noble claims of the black civil rights movement. Seriously.

So, Ms. Lynch filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against North Carolina and its Republican governor, Pat McCrory. Their offense? Enacting and enforcing a “bathroom” law that requires people to use facilities that match their sex at birth. The state law came in response to the city of Charlotte’s wacky statute opening up all facilities based on feelings rather than objectively defined sex.

Immediately, many corporate America titans like PayPal, General Electric, Pepsi and Dow Chemical joined Hollywood leftist bullies, the NCAA, and even the National Basketball Association in threatening to boycott the state.

Citing the nation’s “founding ideals,” which now apparently include protecting the “right” of certain males to enter women’s restrooms, Ms. Lynch compared their plight to Jim Crow laws and school racial segregation. Anyone opposing the transgender agenda is by her definition a hater and a bigot.

In a spectacular case of reverse logic, she said, “None of us can stand by when a state is in the business of legislating identity and insists that a person pretend to be something they are not.”

Say what? Isn’t it the men who are pretending to be women and vice versa who are forcing the issue?

“If there is no more difference between men and women than there is between blacks and whites — as Ms. Lynch seems to think — then why not eliminate all single-sex restrooms, locker rooms and dressing rooms everywhere?” asks Illinois Family Institute writer Laurie Higgins, an astute critic of cultural trends. “Why not allow all men and all women to use the same restrooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms, showers and shelters? After all, blacks and whites do.”

The answer, of course, is that unlike skin color, the differences between male and female, rooted firmly in biology, including DNA, brain and body structure, are profound and meaningful. The distinction between male and female is at the heart of marriage, family life, morality and social order.

For Ms. Lynch to suggest that anyone who recognizes these differences and understands the need for privacy and modesty based on sex is a hateful bigot reveals her own contempt for nature and nature’s God, upon which the legitimacy of our laws rest, as stated in the Declaration of Independence.

Fortunately, Gov. McCrory and the legislature are standing firm, with Mr. McCrory and Republican General Assembly leaders filing countersuits in federal court over Lynch’s “baseless and blatant overreach” and “radical reinterpretation” of the Civil Rights Act.

Pundits who dismiss all this as a silly distraction miss the point. This is about far more than bathroom access. Beneath the economic wars, the left is using this issue as a spear point to test how far the average American can be pushed by government into relinquishing not only our God-given rights but our grasp of reality.

As the nation’s chief law enforcer, Loretta Lynch is putting the weight of the federal government against millions of Americans who just want to maintain some level of decency — and normalcy. God help us.

This article originally published on WashingtonTimes.com.

The last two weeks have been, of all things, about bathrooms. First, the U.S. Department of Justice notified the state of the North Carolina that HB2, or the bathroom law, violated the Civil Rights Act. Now to be clear, HB2 requires people to use public bathrooms and locker rooms that correspond to the sex listed on their birth certificate. Note the word “public.” The law allows businesses to determine their own bathroom policies. And, individuals who have undergone sex reassignment surgery can have their birth certificate changed to reflect their transition.

But according to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, the common sense protections of HB2 is akin to Jim Crow laws. Sex specific restrooms are like segregated restrooms, water fountains, entrances, and lunch counters of the racially segregated south.

North Carolina responded to the DOJ’s threats to withhold federal funding by filing a lawsuit. And the DOJ responded by filing a lawsuit back of its own.

Then on Friday, lest we think North Carolina is an isolated case, Obama administration officials — specifically the assistant secretary of education for civil rights and the head of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department — directed schools, including “all public schools and most colleges and universities that receive federal funds,” to — as the Washington Post described it — “provide transgender students with access to suitable facilities — including bathrooms and locker rooms — that match their chosen gender identity.”

Schools that fail to comply with this edict from on high are, the officials announced, in violation of Title IX, the federal sexual anti-discrimination act, and would therefore — you guessed it — risk losing federal funding. Comply or you don’t get the money. It’s ideological extortion, not policy making. Please visit BreakPoint.org and we’ll link you to a legal analysis of this decree from our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom.

So how should Christians respond? We have to start by understanding the issues at stake. Did you catch all the references to civil rights in these stories? Transgender rights, like gay and lesbian rights before them, have been placed in the historical narrative of overcoming discrimination and bigotry. We aren’t dealing with just a policy issue; we’re dealing with a fundamental view of what it means to be human.

Also, many have long pushed to separate concepts of sex and gender. Sex is how you were born, they say, but gender was self-determined and therefore flexible. But in citing the Civil Rights Act, the administration is saying that the right of self-determination is sacred, akin to non-chosen traits such as ethnicity and race. And by citing Title IX the administration is going even a step further, saying that sex discrimination legislation now applies to gender. In other words, our biological sex should be considered as malleable as our conception of our genders.

Now if all of this sounds like a strange exercise in denying reality, well, it is. That’s the power of worldview. Like prescription glasses, worldviews will either clarify reality or distort reality. The ideas at work here are reality-denying.

Here’s an example of what I mean by reality-denying. Again quoting Attorney General Lynch, “None of us can stand by when a state enters the business of legislating identity and insists that a person pretend to be something or someone they are not.” Now in light of Friday’s edict, who exactly is legislating identity and insisting that persons — now school children across the nation — pretend to be something they’re not?!

You’ve heard us say on BreakPoint ideas have consequences, and they certainly do. But we must also say ideas have victims.

In this case, an edict advancing the sexual revolution will make victims by granting special rights to the few while trampling the rights of the rest. And those who resist will be victims of name-calling and public shaming. And precious, gender-confused children, taken deeper into their confusion, will be made victims of our illusions of moral progress.

This article was originally published on Breakpoint.org

Written by Dr. Calvin Beisner

Since human nature hasn’t changed, it should come as no surprise that, even in our supposedly enlightened age, some people still want to use force, masquerading as law, to end debate.

It started with people just voicing their opinions that “climate skeptics,” or “climate deniers” (both deceptive caricatures) should be punished somehow. A few examples?

In 2006, the eco-magazine Grist called for Nuremberg-style trials for skeptics. In 2008, NASA scientist James Hansen called for trials of skeptics for “high crimes against humanity,” and Obama advisor Joe Romm warned that climate skeptics would be strangled in bed.

In 2009,  the left-wing website Talking Points Memo provocatively asked, “At what point do we jail or execute global warming deniers?” and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. called coal companies “criminal enterprises” whose CEOs “should be in jail … for all of eternity.”

Since then similar calls have surfaced repeatedly, but those who made them had no means to carry out their wishes.

More recently, things have become more serious. Fundamental liberties of free speech and free press, guaranteed by the First Amendment, are in jeopardy.

Last May, U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), on the Senate floor, compared what he called “the misinformation campaign by the fossil fuel industry about the dangers of carbon pollution” to “the tobacco industry’s misinformation campaign about the dangers of its product.”

Writing in The Washington Post he said corporations that support “the climate denial network” should face prosecution under RICO— the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (which Congress designed to target organized crime!).

In September, a group of 20 warmist scientists, apparently prompted by Whitehouse, wrote to President Barack Obama, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and Obama’s chief science advisor, John Holdren, calling for “a RICO … investigation of corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change.”

(Ironically, the group’s leader, Jagadish Shukla, then came under investigation for abuse of millions of dollars in government grants to his non-profit organization!) When World magazine quoted me calling the Shukla 20’s letter a “direct attack on the rights to freedom of speech and the press guaranteed by the First Amendment” and “horrifically bad for science,” Whitehouse responded angrily, naming me personally, on the Senate floor.

Free Speech, or Fraud?

Whitehouse claimed that the First Amendment didn’t apply because he was targeting only fraud, and the First Amendment doesn’t protect fraud.

True, but the legal definition of fraud is “intentional misrepresentation of material existing fact made by one person to another with knowledge of its falsity and for the purpose of inducing the other person to act, and upon which the other person relies with resulting injury or damage.”

The problem with Whitehouse’s call is that with the enormous range of opinions among scholars about:

•  how each of the thousands of subsystems of the climate system will respond to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration.
•  how much warming will come from the added CO2.
•  how much harm and benefit will come from that warming.
•  how much benefit will come from the fertilizing effect of rising CO2 on almost all plants.
•  how to balance those harms and benefits against the benefits of the energy derived from fossil fuels; and
•  what would be the costs and benefits of efforts to reduce CO2 emissions by substituting other energy sources for fossil fuels

With all the legitimate scientific controversy over all those questions, proving that anyone who holds any particular position …

•  intentionally misrepresented material existing fact,
• with knowledge of its falsity,
•  to induce others to act,
• with the result that others actually did act,
• with resulting damage

… would be next to impossible, and at the rate at which climate is changing would take decades or centuries to determine because damage specifically traceable to human action, if it did occur, rather than natural factors won’t be clear for that long, if ever.

Comparing “climate skeptics” with defenders of the tobacco industry is patently absurd. The connection between tobacco smoking and cancer is infinitely simpler and more straightforward than that between CO2 emissions and (not simply global warming but) dangerous, man-made global warming.

Earth’s climate system is one of the most complex natural systems ever studied. It consists of thousands of subsystems — feedback mechanisms — most of which we still don’t understand. We don’t know how strong they are or in some cases even whether they increase or decrease warming or the balance of benefits and harms from it.

Providing energy to everyone is one of the most complex activities ever undertaken. The cost of reducing fossil fuel use — which now delivers about 85% of all energy in the world — is scores of trillions of dollars that could be used otherwise with far more benefit.

In the face of all the scientific and economic uncertainties, to prove that someone has (1) intentionally misrepresented an established fact, (2) knowing its falsity, (3) to induce others to act, (3) with the result that others do act and (4) are injured because of their acts, would, as I said, be almost impossible.

The only path to conviction would be for governments to judge which of the thousands of scholars were right, and which wrong, on hundreds of contested points.

In other words, our government would need a “Ministry of Truth” like that warned of in George Orwell’s 1984.

That is why I stand by my opinion that what Whitehouse and the Shukla 20 demand is a direct threat to First Amendment freedoms.

Nonetheless, on March 29 eighteen attorneys general calling themselves “AGs United for Clean Power” announced their intention to launch RICO investigations of organizations that challenge belief in catastrophic, anthropogenic global warming (CAGW).

One, the AG for the U.S. Virgin Islands, has subpoenaed ExxonMobil and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a CAGW-skeptic think tank, for over a decade’s worth of records.

Law or Politics?

The evidence is overwhelming that “AGs United for Clean Power” are clearly motivated not by concern for law but by partisan politics.

Their name incorporates part of the name of Obama’s legacy environmental regulation, the EPA’s “Clean Power Plan.” Al Gore, one of the world’s most outspoken climate alarmists, stood with them at their initial press conference. There’s not a single Republican among them.

And while they threaten fossil fuel corporations and organizations that question CAGW, they ignore renewable power companies that, despite federal subsidies of billions of dollars, have, like Solyndra, gone bankrupt, or, like SunEdison, are on the verge.

In short, the “AGs United for Clean Power” are abusing their legal powers to pursue a political agenda.

A Conspiracy to Deprive Citizens of their Rights?

And they might be committing a felony. Federal law—18 U.S.C. Sec. 241—says:

If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person … in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; … They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both ….

University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds wrote of that in USA Today shortly after “AGs United for Clean Power” announced their intentions. But since U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, an Obama appointee, has announced her desire to investigate and prosecute climate skeptics, they aren’t likely to be held to account.

If they aren’t, they can wreak havoc on any person or organization that has voiced skepticism about CAGW. Even if they could never get a conviction, they could ruin their targets financially with legal and court costs.

Even if they never file indictments, the very threat has a chilling effect, and that’s dangerous — dangerous most importantly to our God-given rights to freedom of speech and press, yes, but also to the integrity of science.

That’s because science absolutely depends on free, wide-open, robust debate to progressively reduce error and replace it with truth. The appeal to “scientific consensus” to justify claims of CAGW and silencing skeptics is anti-scientific, because consensus is a political value, not a scientific one.

Want to know who won an election? Count votes. That’s politics.

Want to know how much an added amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will raise global average temperature? Study the climate system, try to understand how it works, make predictions based on your understanding, and compare your predictions with real-world observations. If the observations agree with your predictions, you might be right. And if the observations disagree with your predictions, you certainly are wrong. That’s science.

In short, science is the systematic process of testing all things and holding fast what is good — exactly what God commands us to do in 1 Thessalonians 5:21 — and you can’t do that if “all things” can’t be voiced.

So free inquiry and free speech are indispensable to good science.

Christian Faith and Freedom of Speech, Press, and Scientific Debate

They’re also implicit in the Christian faith because they are implied by the image of God in man. That image makes reason possible, and reason makes free choice possible.

When two billiard balls meet on a table, they don’t stop and discuss which will go where at what speed. They exchange energy and, by sheer force without reasoning, ricochet in their respective directions. But people, because we’re made in God’s image, have the capacity of rational choice.

That’s why, over the centuries, as Christians came to understand better and better the implications of their Biblical worldview and its doctrines of God, humanity, and sin, they became advocates of liberty — including freedom of speech, press and inquiry.

That’s why one of the earliest and most important defenses of intellectual freedom was by the Puritan poet John Milton (better known for Paradise Lost). His book Areopagitica, named for the Areopagus, the hill in Athens on which Paul debated over Christ’s resurrection.

The appeal to force to silence opponents in debates is consistent with an atheistic, materialist worldview, the one increasingly dominant among American progressives/liberals, but it’s utterly contrary to the Biblical worldview.

And indeed, because some people never tire of using force to silence truth, prison is a familiar place to God’s servants. Indeed, our word “martyr” comes from the Greek for “witness”: martus. And it’s not only for testifying of Christ that people suffer — they suffer for standing for many truths.

Joseph (Genesis 39), the prophet Hanani (2 Chronicles 16), Jeremiah (Jeremiah 37), John the Baptist (Matthew 14) and Peter and John (Acts 5 and 12) all went to prison because they stood for truth.

And before his conversion Paul imprisoned many Christians for their faith (Acts 8). Later, as an apostle, he spent years imprisoned in Philippi (Acts 16), Jerusalem (Acts 22), Caesarea (Acts 24), and throughout a long land and sea journey ending in Rome (Acts 27–28).

As Hebrews 11 says of heroes of the faith:

Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated — of whom the world was not worthy …. (Hebrews 11:35–38)

So Christians must not roll over and play dead in the face of bullies like “AGs United for Clean Power.” Instead, we must stand up to them, insist on our God-given and Constitution-guaranteed rights, and avail ourselves — as the Apostle Paul did (Acts 25:11) — when those rights are threatened.

Calvin Beisner, Ph.D., is Founder and National Spokesman of The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, and a former Associate Professor of Historical Theology and Social Ethics at Knox Theological Seminary (2000–2008) and of Interdisciplinary Studies at Covenant College (1992–2000).

This article was originally posted at the Stream.org website.