PragerU, Christopher Rufo, and Blaze TV publicly congratulated Dave Rubin and the man to whom he is legally married on the impending births of two babies via two surrogates. With friends like that, conservatives don’t need enemies.

They’re not alone. Matt Whitlock, senior advisor for communications and digital at the National Republican Senatorial Committee and volunteer faculty member at the Leadership Institute, which “teaches conservatives of all ages how to succeed in politics, government, and the media,” also congratulated Rubin.

And both Meghan McCain and Megyn Kelly enthusiastically congratulated Rubin and his faux-husband. That’s not surprising in that both women are long-time enthusiastic activists for the cause of normalizing homosexuality. While no one will be surprised by their “LGBTQ” “progressivism,” we should be troubled because McCain identifies as a Republican and “lifelong conservative,” and Kelly identifies as a Catholic. Conservatives ought not be indifferent to the presence of “LGBTQ” collaborators within the GOP or the church. They are corrupting both the Republican Party and the church from within.

How many leaders in the GOP, Republican members of Congress, or members of the pundit class who identify as conservative are willing to say that no one is entitled to a baby?

How many will say babies are not commodities? How many will say genetic material ought not be bought and sold?

How many will say babies deserve and have a right to both a mother and a father, preferably the man and woman who produced them?

Who will say publicly that it’s wrong for women to rent out their bodies, and it’s wrong for anyone to pay women for the use of their bodies for the illicit project of gestating a baby?

Who in the GOP will say that if two men (or women) reject true marriage in favor of a naturally—that is, by design—non-reproductive relationship, they should live with the consequences? Sodomy is not equivalent to sexually complementary intercourse. And by design, sodomitic mimicry of intercourse is non-reproductive. All efforts to mimic intercourse and to obtain the fruit of such unions–including shopping for eggs as Rubin shared he did–by homosexuals are morally repugnant and selfish.

While the desire to procreate is natural and good, it is unnatural and evil to reject the procreative act as ordained by God for marriage and then demand its fruits.

In describing his exit from the Democrat Party, Dave Rubin has in the past cited the intolerance of the left as his reason. With some true conservative Twitter commenters criticizing Rubin’s selfish pursuit of his own desires at the expense of the needs of the children he is acquiring, some leftists are suggesting that such criticism reveals the intolerance of conservatives. Evidently, they don’t understand the meaning of “tolerance” or the claims of conservatives.

First, tolerance refers to enduring or putting up with something one finds objectionable. Tolerance does not mean affirmation, approval, or celebration.

Second, membership in the GOP or in the kingdom of God necessarily entails holding principled convictions. Both groups hold principled views on what constitutes the good. They hold views on which acts should be prescribed or proscribed, tolerated or not tolerated, celebrated or denounced. While Christians and conservatives must forbear the expression of the view that homosexuals make “good parents,” we are entitled to say—and should say—that children need, want, and deserve a mother and father.

While all children are blessings to those who raise them, not all family structures are blessings to children. Being a kind, loving person is necessary but not alone sufficient to be a good parent. Being able to provide materially for a child is necessary but not alone sufficient to be a good parent. Choosing to embrace a homosexual identity, choosing a person of the same sex as an erotic/romantic partner makes one a poor parent notwithstanding any admirable qualities.

If all that were necessary and sufficient to make a good parent were the ability to love and provide materially for a child, then society should affirm sibling unions. And to be logically and morally consistent, anyone who celebrates the purchase of two babies by not-in-reality-married Dave Rubin should celebrate the purchase of babies by close-kin lovers.

Those who claim to be Republican or conservative and either celebrate Dave Rubin’s baby acquisitions or refuse to criticize his actions are harming the GOP, the conservative movement, the church, children, and America.

Cultural commentator Allie Beth Stuckey once said, “if conservatives aren’t willing to conserve the most fundamental fact of life—the reality of male and female—then we’re not conserving anything.” The same goes for the most fundamental natural institution: the nuclear family, central to which is a mother and father.

If conservatives don’t stand boldly and perseveringly for true marriage and the rights of children, choosing instead cowardly or foolish genuflection to Log Cabin Republicans and Republicans obsessed with fiscal matters, the GOP will become unworthy of support.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Celebrate-Gay-Libertarian-Dave-Rubins-Purchase-of-Two-Babies.mp3

Those with ears to hear fear it’s coming. They fear the impending death of FOX News as a voice for conservatism. They see FOX gasping for air in its miasmic studio spaces, but they fear too little life-sustaining air remains. Retaining conservative views on defense and fiscal policy cannot sustain either the health of a political party or the soundness of political punditry.

Although there have long been troubling signs, it was first Bret Baier’s and then Tucker Carlson’s references to objectively, immutably male persons by female pronouns that signaled that perhaps FOX News is too far gone. What some argue is a triviality—that is, grammatically incorrect pronoun use—is in reality momentous. If FOX News show anchors and commentators start using politically correct, grammatically incorrect pronouns it will signal that they have lost either their moral compasses or their countercultural courage or both. And it has been these values that enabled FOX News to thrive in the midst of cultural collapse.

For quite some time, FOX political commentators have either studiously avoided addressing matters related to homosexuality or “trans”-cultism or have addressed them in a pallid, opinion-free way that thinly cloaks itself in the pseudo-nobility of “neutrality.” But using female pronouns to refer to objectively male persons is a leap down from impartiality into the pit of “progressive” partisanship. It signals a cowardly capitulation to the dogmatic rhetorical diktats of sexuality anarchists.

Do Carlson and Baier rationalize their emasculated acquiescence by telling themselves that pronouns are only insignificant parts of speech or that referring to men who pretend to be women by opposite-sex pronouns is a matter of compassion or civility? Or in the privacy of their homes, do they confess to their wives that the motive for their complicity in rhetorical fraud is their all too human but still indefensible desire to keep their well-paying jobs? Is it cravenness, foolishness, or venality that impels their capitulation?

While florists, bakers, photographers, and calligraphers with far less resources risk everything in the service of truth, will Baier and Carlson sell their souls for a mess of pottage? Okay, maybe not their souls, but surely their integrity.

When will conservatives understand what Leftists understand, which is that language matters? Have conservatives not read George Orwell? Orwell warned against what he deemed Newspeak, which is exactly what politically-correct pronouns for biological sex-rejecting persons constitute:

Newspeak was the official language of Oceania, and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of IngSoc, or English Socialism….

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all…a heretical thought…should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever….

[T]he special function of certain Newspeak words… was not so much to express meanings as to destroy them….

[W]ords which had once borne a heretical meaning were sometimes retained for the sake of convenience, but only with the undesirable meanings purged out of them.

Integrity and wisdom are precious commodities these days, certainly not found often on television—not even on FOX News. The situation is going to get only worse now that Rupert Murdoch’s sons Lachlan and James have taken over the reins. Sure, they’re mopping out the lecherous serial harassers of women, but they’re cleaning house with dirty water. Swish, out goes boorishness. Back-swish, in comes Newspeak.

In a profile of the Murdoch men, the New York Times reported that last fall at FOX broadcast network, “James and Lachlan introduced additional benefits, including…vastly enhanced reproductive coverage for women and ‘expanded coverage for our transgender colleagues.’” Do the Murdoch brothers’ efforts to facilitate their colleagues’ quest to conceal their actual sex end with medical insurance or do their efforts include requiring Newspeak at FOX News?

The New York Times piece explains that “James and his progressive-minded wife, Kathryn, have long been embarrassed by certain elements of Fox News.” Maybe their embarrassment, informed by “progressivism” as it appears it to be, will accelerate the pace of Leftward-leaning changes already taking root at FOX:

“The brothers have even shaken up 21st Century Fox’s profile in Washington, replacing their father’s Republican lobbying chief with a Democratic one. One Hollywood friend equated their mind-set to moving into an outdated house and looking for wood rot.”

I’m all for getting rid of wood rot, but I suspect the Murdoch boys have redefined “rot.” Good things like recognizing the human species as sexually binary and marriage as an intrinsically sexually complementary institution are likely now considered wood rot.

In addition to Baier’s and Carlson’s troubling  use of Newspeak, there are the gaseous exhalations of homosexual FOX host Shepard Smith who never misses an opportunity to make snide remarks about conservative beliefs on homosexuality, thereby poisoning his reporting. While not as overtly and relentlessly in the tank for homoeroticism as Smith, other former and current FOX stars, including Megyn Kelly, Bill O’Reilly, Eric Bolling, Dana Perino, Greg Gutfeld, and Kimberley Guilfoyle, have expressed their support for the legal recognition of homoerotic unions as “marriages.” And those whom the public suspects still hold conservative views on matters related to homosexuality or gender dysphoria, like Sean Hannity, rarely address the issues and almost never offer substantive and hearty defenses of conservative positions as they do on fiscal or defense issues.

All is not yet lost, however. On Monday night, Carlson managed to avoid using female pronouns when talking about his guest “Caitlyn” Jenner. And Carlson did press Jenner—albeit just a little with his pinky finger—asking him, “Do you think it’s possible for people of good will, people of faith, people of generous spirits to be confused at least, or baffled and say ‘I’m not exactly sure I understand this’ and still be good people?”

But Carlson’s question is problematic in that it implies that opposition to “trans”-cultic assumptions is driven by confusion or bafflement rather than truth. And Carlson never confronted “trans”-activist Jenner the way he confronts other guests who hold inane views. For example, why didn’t he ask Jenner, who now has a spanking new birth certificate that identifies his gender at birth as female, if he should relinquish his Olympic decathlon gold medal since he claims he has always been female. Either his birth certificate is fraudulent or his Olympic participation as a male was. Both cannot be true.

Hope springs eternal that FOX will one day soon hire some true conservative commentators who are smart, wise, and courageous enough to offer full-bodied, unashamed, articulate, intelligent defenses of conservative positions on issues related to homosexuality and who will invite guests with more to offer than Jenner–people like Ryan Anderson, Michael L. Brown, Anthony Esolen, Robert George, Jennifer Roback  Morse, and Doug Wilson.  Boy oh boy would I like to see those interviews. They would provide the fresh air FOX needs and its viewers deserve.

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What the tragic events of last week did not need was the distraction posed by one of the organizers of the Dallas protest, Dr. Jeff Hood, the 32-year-old bearded, bespectacled white man who is effective at one thing: self-promotion. While Selma had Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., an eloquent, dignified, and committed follower of Christ, Dallas had Dr. Hood, a narcissist committed to self-aggrandizement, sexual deviance, and syncretism.

After the shocking shootings of Dallas police officers, Hood—an admirer of Jeremiah Wright—could be found all over the airwaves, including on The Kelly File with Megyn Kelly.

Hood, a father of five young children, offers this description of himself on his website:

The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood is a Baptist pastor, theologian and activist living and working in Texas. A graduate of Auburn University, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, University of Alabama and Creighton University, Dr. Hood also concluded a Doctorate of Ministry in Queer Theology at Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University. Dr. Hood was ordained at a church within the Southern Baptist Convention in 2006 and received standing in the United Church of Christ in 2015.

The author of ten books (The Queer: An Interaction with The Gospel of John, The Queering of an American Evangelical, The Sociopathic Jesus, The Year of the Queer, Jesus on Death Row, Frances, Last Words from Texas: Meditations from the Execution Chamber, The Rearing of an American Evangelical, The Courage to Be Queer and The Basilica of the Swinging D*cks)…In 2013, Dr. Hood was awarded PFLAG Fort Worth’s Equality Award for Activism….With deep soul and a belief that God is “calling us to something queerer,” Dr. Hood is a radical mystic and prophetic voice to a closed society.

Just two months ago, the Dallas Observer profiled Hood:

Hood says he’s anointed “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” “Jesus wasn’t a Christian” is one of his sayings. He thinks “Jesus has a vagina,” [and] “Jesus is queer” is one [of his sayings] that spurred hundreds of rebukes from Christians across Facebook, calling him a “false prophet,” a “charlatan,” and “nothing more than a left-wing activist.” Some of his former congregation put him in the ranks of scandalous TV evangelists like Jim Bakker.

…

He also suffers from bipolar disorder, which sometimes means hallucinations and bouts of paranoia.

After leaving the Southern Baptist denomination and purportedly seeking treatment for his mental illness, Hood started a church for homosexuals in a Denton, Texas homosexual bar that lasted a year. Former church members’ descriptions of Hood some remarkably like descriptions of cult leaders:

“After working within the church for several months as an ‘elder,’ it became apparent that a lot of the leader’s misogynistic white male privilege kept showing, regardless of how much he would hide it under a thin veil of faux hipster economic struggling.”…When various issues or statements regarding upsetting comments that could be perceived as misogynistic or offensive were brought to the leader’s attention, they were usually met with a defensive, self-pitying martyrdom which was served to give him immunity from any and all criticism.”

Another wrote, “No criticism of the pastor was allowed. If someone challenged his behavior, he told lies about them to the congregation. If someone brought up problematic elements of the church, they were immediately silenced. It wasn’t until I spoke with other people who had left that we began to realize the amount of lies that we had been told about [one another]. I left the church because I experienced firsthand the pastor’s lies, manipulation and lack of boundaries.

For a time, Hood was involved with the largest homosexual church in America, Cathedral of Hope United Church of Christ (UCC) in Dallas, but like so many of his endeavors, this relationship was short-lived. After Hood was arrested and briefly jailed in Ferguson, Missouri, where, according to Hood, he was one of the protest leaders, Hood hurled epithets at his former church leaders at the Cathedral of Hope, complaining that “ those chicken sh*t a**holes…didn’t even announce that I had been arrested at church.”

Hood and his wife Emily support their five children under five (including two sets of twins) by “being creative, she as an artist and he as a writer, but they also receive help from friends and Hood’s 88-year-old grandfather, who still doesn’t quite understand his grandson’s ministry.”

On his blog, a picture of a deeply troubled  man and heretic emerges.

Hood expresses his appreciation for the “public witness” of Reverend Charles Moore who lit himself on fire to express “his frustration with the United Methodist Church’s position on human sexuality, opposition to the death penalty, disdain for racism (especially in his hometown of Grand Saline) and his deep anger at Southern Methodist University’s decision to house the George W. Bush Presidential Center.”

Hood asserts that  “Jesus sinned. Jesus was a racist y’all.” He finds everything “[f]rom the historical personhood of Adam and Eve to ideas of substitutionary atonement to a literal hell to the impending return of Jesus” to be “really problematic doctrines.”

And here is how he concluded one of his sermons:

Love your neighbor…put down your gun.

Love your neighbor…open your borders.

Love your neighbor…embrace the revolutionary spirit of our age.

Love your neighbor…be queer.

Last December, Hood posted an obscene novella he’s penned, a perverse, poorly written tale that, like John Bunyan’s A Pilgrim’s Progress, has a main character  named “Christian” whose story begins with a sojourn in jail. Reading The Basilica of Swinging D*cks offers a glimpse into Hood’s spiritually darkened mind. The rambling story is replete with references to homoerotic sex and masturbation. The first-person narrator Christian describes even the church building in sacrilegious terms: “At the top of the Cathedral, we placed a phallic steeple shooting up to heaven with a cross coming out of the domed tip.”

With the first black president fomenting social and political division, with public school teachers indoctrinating children with an imbalanced picture of American history, and with rebellious syncretists preaching heresies in our churches, it’s no wonder that racial tensions are escalating. Hood, a mentally ill, narcissistic heretic deserves neither pulpits nor press conferences.

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Written by Ravi Zacharias

Years ago, Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop penned their book, Whatever Happened to the Human Race? It was a book that warned of the decisions that were being made within a culture stepping into new and terrifying terrain. They saw clearly where we were headed. We are now there.

I narrow that title down to what is happening on the home front here in America.

Listening to the blistering political rhetoric, I am asked all over the world, “What has happened in America?” The question should go deeper. Whatever happened to the American soul? We are truly at the cliff’s precipitous edge and the fall could be long and deadly. Why? We have a deep crisis of the soul that is killing us morally and we have no recourse. We have no recourse because the only cure has been disparaged and mocked by the elite and the powerful. And those very ideologies are now presiding over the slaughter of our citizens while the abundance of speeches is inversely proportional to the wisdom they contain and Reason bleeds to death before our eyes.

These may be strong words but I am staggered by all that is happening around us while the powerful fiddle and bodies litter the floors of offices, airports, and even restaurants. How many families will be shattered and offered up at the altar of our foolishness?

Let me connect some dots to trace where the real killing is happening. Dare I say a kind of genocide stares us in the face? Genocide is defined as the mass killing of a particular group of people. I have started to ask myself whether genocide is the first step towards mass murder or has a kind of mass murder already taken place before we experience genocide and the mangled bodies? I propose to you that multiple killings have preceded the horrors with which we now live. Those killings prepared the ground for the literal burial of our own people.

Three killings in particular are as real as the carnage we see when suicide vests are detonated: the death of morality, the death of truth, and the death of reason. With such tragic exterminations, we now find ourselves in ever-present danger, constantly lectured to by those who have all the bodyguards they and their families need while the rest of us are sitting ducks for evil people whose rights are protected more than those of their slaughtered victims. Why is this happening? We are at war but not only with an enemy. We are at war within our own culture, and whether we will ever win over the enemy depends on whether we win this war within our own souls.

At first, how I connect these dots may seem far-fetched, but they are indeed connected. Some time ago Robert Shapiro, the well-known lawyer of the famed O.J. Simpson trial, was being interviewed by Megyn Kelly of Fox News. She asked if justice had been served in that case. In a mind-stupefying, pathetic answer, he said, “There is legal justice and moral justice. Legal justice was served.” Maybe it was rightly called the trial of the century: We have entered the twenty-first century having amputated law from morality. Welcome to the uncivil civilization legalizing murder. That an intelligent, educated, supposedly legal scholar can make a statement like that and think he has defended a noble cause is fatal to our culture. Maybe that’s why Shakespeare described Satan as “the prince of lawyers.” If that’s what legal theory espouses we are in great peril. I have no doubt many an honorable lawyer cringed at that response but probably none was shocked. This is where law has drifted and come unhinged from any moral moorings. When justice is decapitated and something can be legal but immoral, we know we have already killed the heart of what it means to be human. The morality of the beast is now normal. Is it any wonder that Nazi judges felt they were doing the “right thing” by upholding their legal prerogative that resulted in the death of millions? Our society is being dragged towards the morgue because the law has held the gun to the heart of morality.

Ironically, there was something in his response to be applauded. At least he granted there was such a thing as moral justice. So that leads to a deeper question: Should not Morality and Truth be inextricably bound together? That is at the heart of all judgments. What is the truth when a person is killed? But now, I dare say, not only does morality not matter, the truth doesn’t matter either. That has also been buried. If you want a snapshot of our times, here it is: Four brave Americans serving their country murdered by a bunch of hate-filled thugs, whose ideology we are not allowed to identify, received and presided over by a litany of lies, their bodies draped in the national flag, while assurance is given to the bereaved that the culprits will be hunted down, including the one because of whom they were killed. If that scenario doesn’t drive us to our knees, Lord have mercy!

We are in the graveyard of a culture when a most somber moment cannot compel the conscience to tell the truth. Oh, that the victims could have sat up for just a moment and stared down that heinous lie! But it was not to be.  One day it will be so as their blood cries out from the ground. As Muggeridge said, “The lie is stuck like a fish bone in the throat of the handheld microphone…. Truth has died, not God.” The noble thing to have done when that blunder was made was to admit a failure for whatever reason and ask for pardon, but not to bury the dead with a lie! As if it is not dark enough for a handful to tell a lie, even worse, in our culture today the lie is no longer a posture to be shunned. We celebrate power over truth, enshrouding the lie with our flag. That is a form of national murder. You see, a blunder is a momentary reality. Upholding a lie is a character flaw, sending that lie into eternity.

The death of morality, the death of truth; then we come to the last, the death of reason. Aristotle reminded us that the first law of logic is identity. We must identify what we are talking about. A particular identifiable characteristic is indispensable to the referent. We must identify the characteristics of the thing we define. That is necessary to understanding the thing and to resisting contradiction. But as destroyers enter our lands and desire to pillage and kill, we are led by rhetoric that kills the first law of logic, the law of identity. We are told that identifying the enemy is not that important; strange that the same logic is not employed to all other local inimical ideologies but only seems to apply to Islam. Honest Muslims themselves wish to call it for what it is but our clever linguistic sleight of hand seems to restrict us from such identity—and so we bury our dead without identifying why the killer killed them. First, we try to mitigate our peril by this incredible new coinage, “radicalized,” that conveniently shifts the blame from the active shooter to the remote controller. Now we don’t even wish to identify what controls the remote controller. Propaganda that kills identity is deadly to the soul of a culture.

We are sliding into the future with evil stalking us but no morality, no truth, and no reason to guide us. America may be flirting with a self-inflicted mortal wound. Or it could well be a killing that is designed by a postmodern ideology masquerading as political correctness. When liberalism, whose legitimate child is relativism, has played itself out it will be a Pyrrhic victory to find ourselves in the hands of those whose identity is no longer in doubt. And when they are in control, the very means they used to hide their identity will be silenced as well. They will preside over the last rites of politically correct enforcers and a “free press” that abused freedom and celebrated the lie ‘til they themselves were silenced, buried by the truth they never wanted to expose.

There always has been, and is now more than ever, only one hope for rescue. If we abide in God’s truth revealed in his Son, then we shall know the truth and the truth will set us free. That is why I say again and again that we must dispense with our verbal arsenal that speaks only in terms of right and left. We have forgotten there is an up and a down. May God help us! We need His transforming power to change our thinking and to give us a hunger for what is true. True freedom is not in doing whatever we wish but in doing what we ought. That has been buried in America. And only one who knows the way out of the grave can give us a second chance to live: Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life that sets us free from within first, before we learn to deal with the lies around us.

As my prayer for this July 4th, I think of the great hymn by Isaac Watts prayed often in moments of drastic transition. I have added a fourth verse for our times:

Our God, our Help in ages past,
Our Hope for years to come,
Our Shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal Home!

Under the shadow of Thy throne
Thy saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is Thine arm alone,
And our defense is sure.

Before the hills in order stood
Or earth received her frame,
From everlasting Thou art God,
To endless years the same.

We need thee now as ne’er before,
We mourn the wisdom gone;
Transform our land forevermore—
Redemption through your Son.

This article was originally posted at RZIM.org

The controversy over locker room policy for gender-confused students in Township High School District 211 here in Illinois has erupted nationally. The Office for Civil Rights, a division of the intrusive Department of Education, has decided that the district violates federal legislation by not allowing a gender-dysphoric high school boy unrestricted access to all areas of the girls’ locker room. Since the highly politicized Office for Civil Rights is publicly lying pretending that District 211 in Illinois is violating Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, it might be helpful to read the relevant parts of Title IX:

[T]itle IX of the Education Amendments of 1972…is designed to eliminate (with certain exceptions) discrimination on the basis of sex in any education program….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.

In 2014, unelected employees with no legislative authority in the Office for Civil Rights (OCR) unilaterally proclaimed that the term “sex” in Title IX includes “gender identity” and “gender expression.” They sent their astonishingly arrogant proclamation—referred to as “Dear Colleague” letter—to all public schools.

Even though the OCR is lying through its rainbow-tinted teeth, let’s conduct a thought experiment, which is another way of saying let’s explore the logical outworking of another flaky and destructive Leftist assumption.

Since “LBTQQIAP” activists are nothing if not dogged in their pursuit of unfettered sexual anarchy, and since far too many conservatives, especially political leaders, are largely ill-informed cowards, let’s imagine that Lefties win the day and are permitted to determine what the meaning of “sex” is. “Sex” in our thought experiment now means objective biological sex, and “gender identity,” and “gender expression.”

In a disturbing segment on the FOX News show The Kelly File last night, host Megyn Kelly interviewed Dr. Daniel Cates, superintendent of District 211. In her interview Kelly stated that District 211 has not only set up a private changing area in the locker room for the gender-dysphoric boy but also agreed to allow his friends—that is to say, girls—to change with him. This decision, along with allowing the boy to use the girls’ restrooms, necessarily means that the district no longer has an absolute prohibition against boys and girls sharing restrooms or changing areas. If, as the superintendent said in a recent statement, “boys and girls are in separate locker rooms for a reason” related to anatomical differences, why allow this boy in the girls’ locker room or restrooms at all? And why allow girls to voluntarily change with him?

Moreover, if objectively male students are permitted to use girls’ restrooms and enter girls’ locker rooms, and if girls may voluntarily choose to change clothes with an objectively male student, why is such mixing of sexes permitted only for those students who wish they were the opposite sex? Wouldn’t allowing only gender-dysphoric students to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms constitute discrimination based on “gender identity”?

Presto change-o, the Left will effectively efface another essential boundary. In the twinkling of a winking eye, all boys will be able to use girls’ restrooms and locker rooms, and vice versa. The ancient heresy of Gnosticism that devalues physical embodiment and the pagan worldview of “oneism” that seeks to merge opposing binaries rear their ugly heads again, obliterating any cultural recognition of the meaning of sexual differentiation. As theologian and pastor Doug Wilson said in a recent (and soon to be released) IFI interview, “All idolatries have contradictions built into them.”

Let me be clear: The logical and inevitable conclusion of these restroom/locker room policies, which are embedded with non-factual assumptions about the nature of physical embodiment, is to eradicate all distinctions in language, law, and social institutions between male and female.

Chew on that for a moment, then gather those dust-collecting spines from the attic, and do something courageous with the doggedness of the Left.

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The Duggar controversy illuminates the truth that the cultural battle in which Christians are engaged is first and foremost a battle with principalities and powers:  “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12).

There is no other sensible explanation for the unseemly glee and unwarranted rage directed at this family by “progressives” who believe sodomy should be embraced as an identity. What, other than the influence of principalities and powers, can account for liberals taking aim at the Duggars—who  consistently demonstrate an otherworldly grace and gentleness—while rejoicing in Bruce Jenner’s tragic mental disorder and bodily mutilation and celebrating annual parades of perversion?

“Progressives” have provided the entire world with a graphic display (Warning: some obscene language) of ignorance and sickening schadenfreude.

Let’s take a little look-see at the mind-boggling claims that “progressives” make about the Duggars, claims which fuel their venomous assaults and expose their intellectual shallowness, moral vacuity, and unadulterated hypocrisy.

Claim 1. The Duggars are freaks because they reject the contraceptive culture that severs sex from marriage, sex from procreation, and procreation from marriage, and because they’re irresponsible, environmentally-unfriendly “breeders.”

Why is it weirder to oppose the contraceptive culture than it is to endorse intrinsically sterile erotic activity involving the excremental orifice?

Why is it weirder to deeply value the procreative function of sex—which is what accounts for the critical importance of marital permanence and exclusivity—than it is to value porn, erotic “literature,” sadomasochism, or homoerotic profligacy?

I understand why so many homosexuals enjoy the au courant sport of Duggar-hating. Homosexual activists have a vested personal interest in arguing that though the  biological implications of sexually complementary intercourse may be meaningful to individual couples, such implications have no inherent meaning or value relative to embodiment or human flourishing.

As to the environmental concerns of “progressives”—including Hollywood liberals, many of whom own huge swaths of property around the world and consume enormous amounts of natural resources to power their homes, planes, pools, and other accouterments of the lifestyles of the rich and famous: The world is not over-populated. There exists a problem with distribution of resources.

There is, however, a dearth of sexual sanity, grace, and wisdom, all of which the Duggars seem to amply possess. Who contributes more to a life-sustaining environment: The Jenner-Kardashian clan or the Duggars?

Claim 2. The Duggars are weird and cultish because they homeschool their kids, and the girls wear “prairie outfits.”

So, in our sordid carnival world, “prairie outfits” signify freakish repression, but a 65-year-old man in a lady’s satin corset represents female beauty and liberation? The Duggar girls in long skirts are weirder than Rihanna wearing completely—and I mean completely–transparent gowns to very public events?

If that’s the case, I’m all in for freakish prairie outfits. I would rather see my daughters in prairie outfits than have the whole world see them in the Empress’s new clothes. And I’d rather see my father lumber about in a suit of armor than sashay about in a chiffon peignoir. Yes, I’m just that transgressive—utterly liberated from the dictates of our socially disintegrated culture.

With regard to the homeschooling charge: it’s relevant to note that there are hundreds of liberal parents who homeschool their kids. The motivation for some is their view that public education fosters conformity over individualism. Some believe that public schools value uniformity over creativity. And some believe curricula are too test-driven. Those parents rarely if ever are criticized for weird cultishness.

No, it’s not the fact of homeschooling that generates all the foaming at the mouth we’ve seen in the past few weeks. It’s the Duggars’ reasons for homeschooling that drive homosexuals and their uber-cool allies to wax berserk and self-righteous.

The non-judgmental, tolerant disciples of diversity have judged that the desire to train up children to love God and theological orthodoxy is not merely counter-cultural and not merely weird, but twisted and evil.

Homosexual activists have all Christian institutions—including private schools, colleges, and universities—in their sights. And then they’ll come gunning for homeschools and airwaves. Before long, we will be Canada, or Germany where it is illegal to homeschool.

Deuteronomy 11:19 tells parents, “You shall teach [the words of the Lord] to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.” Increasing numbers of Christian parents believe they cannot fulfill this instruction if their children are in public schools that are often hostile to Christian beliefs  7 hours a day, 5 days a week, 186 days a year, for 13-22 formative years.

Interestingly, anti-Christian bigots and sexual pagans seek the same thing Christian parents like the Duggars seek. They seek to shape the minds and hearts of children. The difference is anti-Christian bigots and sexual pagans want to train up other people’s children in the way they believe they should go, which is why they are so desperate to mock, condemn, and ultimately eradicate the homeschool movement.

Claim 3. (This one is a real howler and reveals just how bereft of moral reasoning many “progressives” are.) The Duggars are hypocrites because they espouse family values while both experiencing sin in their own family and concealing a serious sin committed by a minor child from the prying eyes and vengeful, darkened, judgmental hearts of strangers.

Seriously, that’s what they say—well, I may have tinkered with that last part a bit.

Does the Left understand what hypocrisy means? Hypocrisy is “The practice of professing beliefs, feelings, or virtues that one does not hold or possess; insincerity.”

Let’s look at some real life incidents to try to achieve some clarity on hypocrisy:

• When someone says to me, “Who are you to judge,” while hurling obscenities at me for saying that homoerotic activity is immoral, they may be hypocrites.
• When Leftist public “educators” claim to value diversity and oppose censorship while selecting multiple homosexuality-affirming resources to teach to students and then “not selecting” (otherwise known as censoring) dissenting resources,  they may be hypocrites.
• When Dan Savage condemns name-calling and then calls conservative high school students “pansies” and calls theologically orthodox Christians “b*tsh*t,” “a**h*le,” “d**cheb*gs,” he may be a hypocrite.

Of course, we don’t know if these individuals are hypocrites or if they simply failed to live up to their true beliefs.

The fact that a Duggar child, while a minor, committed a serious sexual sin and the Duggars express the belief that homoerotic activity is immoral does not even come close to hypocrisy.

The Left isn’t angry because the Duggars expressed a moral proposition that they—the Duggars—don’t truly believe. The Left is angry because the Duggars truly believe the moral proposition they expressed.

I wonder, does every homosexual whose minor child commits a moral offense or breaks the law lose the ethical right to express moral propositions? If a homosexual’s minor child steals something, is the homosexual parent engaging in hypocrisy if he expresses his sincerely-held belief that theft is immoral?

If the young teenage son of homosexuals were to view child pornography several times, are his parents forever precluded from publicly expressing their sincerely-held belief that “swinging” is wrong? Are his parents forever prohibited from condemning plural marriage and consensual adult incest?

Would these parents forever be prohibited from saying that disapproval of homosexuality is immoral, bigoted, and hateful, because those claims sound downright judgmental to me. And surely intellectual consistency would suggest that anyone who expresses those moral judgments must think themselves morally superior to others.

But the Duggars have never claimed the mantle of human behavioral perfection. It is homosexuals who claim that whenever theologically orthodox Christians express disapproval of homosexuality, said Christians are claiming to be morally superior.

Homosexuals also  ignorantly claim that any iteration of what the Bible teaches about homosexuality and the afterlife constitutes a desire on the part of Christians that homosexuals go to hell. If Christians actually desired that homosexuals go to hell, they would say nothing about what the Bible teaches. Of course, if anyone who claims to be a Christian desired that homosexuals go to hell, they wouldn’t, in reality, be Christians.

Following her respectful and compelling interview with the Duggars, it was troubling to hear Megyn Kelly state that the Duggars “pass judgment” on others. Since when did the expression of moral beliefs become passing judgment on others? And if expressing moral beliefs does, indeed, constitute passing judgment on others, then every human is guilty of passing judgment.

Oddly, when homosexuals express their innumerable moral propositions, they seem unfazed by any fear that they are claiming moral superiority or passing judgment on others. Nor do they keep their traps shut about what constitutes right or wrong behavior when a child of theirs commits a sin—which I can only assume happens on occasion.

Perhaps in between catapulting boulders at the Duggars, self-righteous, judgmental “progressives” could share whether they are absolutely certain they would take a minor child of theirs to the authorities—like the Duggars did—if they learned their child had inappropriately touched siblings in a non-penetrative way that the victims hadn’t noticed.

The ultimate reason these incidents came to light was not that some insider or journalist exposed them. Rather, it was that by age 14, Josh Duggar’s conscience was sufficiently formed to recognize that the feelings he harbored while engaging in inappropriate touching of which even his victims were unaware were very wrong.

Homosexuals and their allies in the war to enhance the moral status of sodomy fancy themselves free thinkers, liberated from the tyranny of “social construction” and the oppression of “THE MAN.” They rarely seem troubled by the fact that they are “THE MAN,” shaped by culturally regnant sexuality dogma. They now wield their entrenched power like a cudgel to impose their assumptions with a fearsome dictatorial power that makes the 1950’s look like the revolutionary summer of love and would color former Alabama governor George Wallace an enviable shade of green.

In a story about Bret Baier’s withdrawal from a Catholic conference, where he was going to speak about his Catholic faith, the website known as Mediaite noted that Republican Governor Bobby Jindal (LA) was going to go through with his appearance at the event. But the website warned him about the consequences of offending the homosexual lobby. “Given the controversy that follows U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) more than a decade after he allegedly spoke before a group connected to white supremacists, Jindal, who has presidential ambitions of his own, must be giving his appearance some serious thought right about now,” it said.

Hence, the philosophy of white supremacism associated with the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis is compared to Catholicism. That’s the message this so-called “respectable” source of news and information is sending. Jindal rejected that. The governor’s spokesman said, “Governor Jindal looks forward to addressing the summit and speaking about what faith means to him.”

The summit is sponsored by Legatus, a group that upholds the teachings of the Catholic Church on human sexuality and other matters.

If Baier was speaking at or attending a fundraiser for the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA), that would have been perfectly okay. After all, many Fox media stars, including Megyn Kelly, have done so in the past. In addition, Fox pours money directly into this important lobby in the homosexual movement, and it’s not even a controversy.

What’s fascinating in this case is that the attacks which forced Baier and actor Gary Sinise out of the Legatus conference do not involve opening fire on anybody’s editorial offices and murdering the offenders. These things are mostly done differently in America. I say “mostly” because of the terrorist attack on the Washington, D.C. offices of the Family Research Council (FRC) in 2012. That was inspired by a “hate map” posted by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) pinpointing the location of the FRC. A security guard was injured as he stopped a homosexual militant from trying to carry out a massacre in the FRC offices.

In most cases, however, the weapons of character assassination, distortion, and anti-Christian bigotry will suffice. The purpose is to intimidate and ostracize those who dare to associate with groups affirming traditional standards of morality. One of the new tactics, as used by Mediaite, is to associate Catholics with racial extremists. This is a smear that is beneath contempt, but the gay lobby and its fellow travelers will stop at nothing.

The message that the site was sending to Jindal is that he risks his political future by associating with a notorious hate group called the Catholic Church. It was a threat disguised as news.

The leftists have no quarrel with the views of the pope on economic matters. And they certainly won’t quibble with his encyclical on climate change when he issues that in March. But challenging the morality of the lifestyle of so many in Hollywood and the media is something else. Questioning the homosexual lifestyle simply cannot be tolerated.

Jindal, who is a Catholic, didn’t succumb to the pressure. He had the intestinal fortitude to remain true to his beliefs. He understood that the attacks on Legatus were an attack upon his own faith. He couldn’t back down and maintain his own principles. Jindal’s decision to stand up to the modern totalitarians in the gay rights movement has to be seen as courageous.

Backing out is especially troubling in the case of Bret Baier, since his speaking appearance at the Legatus summit was for the purpose of talking about his own Catholic faith expressed in his book, Special Heart: A Journey of Faith, Hope, Courage and Love. He wasn’t there to talk about gay rights. Neither was Sinise, for that matter.

Baier, or his corporate bosses, have to take the blame for giving in to the pressure. We would have thought that the Fox News Channel would have stood firmly for freedom of expression and freedom of conscience. It sets a terrible precedent that a “conservative” news channel, which became successful by speaking for many without a traditional voice in the liberal media, should bow at the altar of political correctness. Why they buckled to the pressure is a story in itself.

As we have pointed out, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith is allowed to pontificate on the air, including on behalf of the gay rights cause. But a Bret Baier speech about his book at a Catholic event is supposed to be offensive. This is the state of our media today.

The tactics used by the homosexual lobby have been perfected by such groups as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Council on American-Islamic Relations against their enemies. What’s new is that the official Catholic Church teachings on human sexuality are now labeled as so offensive that people can’t even be associated with a group that promotes them. This is the kind of religious discrimination we have seen in countries like France against the Jews.

Some in the media called the summit “anti-gay,” which is a complete lie. As Legatus Executive Director John Hunt said in a statement, “Legatus embraces all that the Catholic Church teaches—nothing more, nothing less. Of course, at the core of all that the Church teaches is Christ’s unconditional love for every man and woman. While the Church has and always will teach about the morality of certain behaviors, these teachings are always to be understood in the context of the value of and respect for every human person.”

Turning Christian love into “hate” is an indication of how a situation can be twisted into something it’s not. This is how political correctness, a form of cultural Marxism, works in practice. The homosexual lobby has perfected this tactic of intimidation.

Hunt said the group’s members are only asking for the freedom to exercise their religious beliefs, “which includes the ability to gather together and discuss their faith.”

That such a meeting has become controversial, to the point where major figures in the media and Hollywood can be forced to back out, is a terrible reflection on the condition of the First Amendment right to free speech in America today. The news organizations that are involved in this silencing of freedom of expression have shown they have no understanding of what “I am Charlie” is all about.

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

As part of a national journalism conference on Tuesday, August 20, America’s Survival, Inc. (ASI), a public policy organization, is officially releasing a new report on radical changes at Fox News that should cause great concern to pro-family conservatives.

“Pushing Sean Hannity out of the 9:00 p.m. slot, to make way for pro-homosexual advocate Megyn Kelly, is another sign of the channel’s left-ward drift and decline,” said ASI President Cliff Kincaid, a veteran journalist and media critic. 

Mocking the Fox motto of “Fair, Balanced and Unafraid,” the new report is titled, “Unfair, Unbalanced and Afraid: Fox News’ Growing Pro-Homosexual Bias and the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association.” It is available in advance at the ASI website www.usasurvival.org. 

The 40,000-word report, written by former reporter and social activist Peter LaBarbara, examines how journalism today, even at Fox News, “has become pro-homosexual propaganda, with many media stories appearing as if they were written by LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) activists.” Like other major media, the report notes, Fox News through its parent company, News Corporation, is a long-time funder of the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA). LaBarbera runs the Americans for Truth about Homosexuality group. 

The cover of the report features a photo of Fox News star and afternoon host Megyn Kelly posing for a photo at the 2010 NLGJA fund-raiser in New York City. Every year, Fox News violates basic journalistic ethics by joining other major media as a corporate sponsor of the NLGJA. The report cites documentary evidence that the coverage of homosexuality by Fox News is tilted in a left-wing direction, and that the channel has failed its conservative viewers. When Kincaid and LaBarbara sent a letter to Fox chief Roger Ailes earlier this year asking for a meeting on the subject, they were rebuffed. 

At the August 20 conference, ASI President Kincaid will himself narrate a PowerPoint presentation on “The Rise and Fall of Fox News,” focusing on how the channel has gradually abandoned its viewer base and why conservatives should look elsewhere for news and information. Acknowledging that the channel began and succeeded as a platform for conservative voices ignored by the major media, Kincaid will nevertheless explain why he is troubled by a series of liberal hires at the channel and a new book that documents Ailes’ relationships with civil rights agitators Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. He will also discuss the real reason why Glenn Beck was fired from the channel. To cover or attend the conference, which is being held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., please contact Phil Kent at (404) 226-3549 and /or philkent@philkent.com. 

While examining how various Fox News personalities have approached the homosexual issue, the new ASI report looks closely at Kelly, a so-called “rising star” at the channel who has a history of trying to “marginalize and discredit religious conservatives.” Sean Hannity currently hosts the show during the 9:00 p.m. time period that Kelly is reportedly taking over. 

One of the examples cited is how Kelly emerged as a “Transgender Advocate” for “Chaz” Bono, after the former child actor switched genders from female to male. Kelly was “arrogant and belligerent” in a 2011 interview with Dr. Keith Ablow, in response to his excellent FoxNews.com article urging parents not to let their impressionable children watch “Chaz” Bono on “Dancing with the Stars.” Kelly’s hostile interview with Dr. Ablow reached a low point when she accused him of “adding to the hate” against transgenders. 

The report adds, “Viewers should remember that it was Kelly… who set up Bill O’Reilly’s ‘Thump the Bible’ hubbub by stating that in her prior interview with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, she did not hear any ‘compelling’ arguments against same-sex ‘marriage.’ This led O’Reilly to enthusiastically agree and make his famous remark (which many Christians and conservatives found pejorative).” 

“So-called ‘Bible thumpers’ and other Christians and conservatives who have been offended by Fox News should get the message,” says Kincaid. “This is a channel that has lost its way and that viewers should lose their way to on the remote control.”