Written by L. Brent Bozell III

The “gender reveal” has become a growing phenomenon in the world of social media. When expectant parents discover the gender of their unborn baby, they make a big announcement revealing the baby’s sex, with cakes and balloons and even pyrotechnics.

It’s a celebration of life, a desire to share the joyous news of the little boy or girl. Ah, but there’s the rub. A boy or a girl. In today’s perverted culture, this is wrong — very wrong.

It’s not surprising that in today’s war on the “gender binary,” major newspaper columnists appointed to write on “gender issues” (can you believe it) have written jeremiads attacking the very idea. Enter Monica Hesse of The Washington Post, whose July 31 article was headlined “Let’s have a gender-reveal party that reveals gender is a construct.”

In other words, stop doing “gender reveals,” because gender isn’t “assigned at birth.” It’s something for the child to decide later.

Hesse began by telling the tale of a mother named Jenna Karvunidis, who first made this trend viral by having a gender-reveal party with a pink cake. Now she regrets the whole thing. Karvunidis recently composed a follow-up post about her daughter Bianca — now just “Bee” — whose female gender she’d celebrated. “PLOT TWIST,” she wrote on Facebook. “The world’s first gender-reveal party baby is a girl who wears suits!”

Karvunidis included a family photo of “Bee,” now wearing a white suit and an androgynous haircut. This regretful mother declared her fealty to the gender-crushing revolution: “Who cares what gender the baby is? I did at the time because we didn’t live in 2019 and didn’t know what we know now — that assigning focus on gender at birth leaves out so much of their potential and talents that have nothing to do with what’s between their legs.”

Hesse was delighted by this confession, since she “was already buried in gender-reveal footage, planning to write a column about the perverse pleasure of watching the ones that fail.”

She hates the gender-reveal people.

Hesse began the article by admitting she gleefully watched four times the video of a couple in Australia celebrating with blue exhaust fumes, but then the car burst into flames and was destroyed. She also enjoyed another video “in which a man attempts to hit a pink-powder-filled balloon off a golf tee, and instead thwacks his buddy in the groin. Or another, of a guy accidentally hitting a softball into his wife’s face.”

At The Washington Post, civility dies in schadenfreude.

Hesse hates how these parties are often “hypermasculine” events, with axes and chainsaws and footballs. Or there was the off-duty Border Patrol agent who caused a 47,000-acre forest fire after he “shot a blue-dust-filled target that exploded more thoroughly than planned.”

The Post columnist angrily claimed that “the entire event is based on remarkable hubris: Parents try to concoct a memorable moment out of exhaust pipes, only to have nature inform them that there are no carefully concocted moments when it comes to raising children.” Parents must learn today’s lesson on “the limits of binary color choices.” Your child may “choose” their gender as they grow, and parents must be expected to promote that choice, and whatever mind-numbing terminology follows.

The cultural deconstructionist left is always reminding us that yesterday’s religiously informed “patriarchy” isn’t the only orthodoxy that pushes a set of manners and expectations on the culture. They have toppled God, and put the solipsistic anarchy of gender politics in His place.

L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat says the culture war in America may not be so much about secularism or atheism replacing Christianity but the rise of an old Christian foe – paganism.

This ancient religion differs from atheism in that it allows for a spiritual dimension to life and creation, but not an omnipotent, benevolent God.  The power is in the creation itself, which is why so many New Age adherents find divinity when they look at a sunset, a flower, or in some cases, their own mirror image.

Mr. Douthat explains the clash of worldviews presented in a new book by Steven D. Smith, “Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac”:

“What is that conception? Simply this: that divinity is fundamentally inside the world rather than outside it, that God or the gods or Being are ultimately part of nature rather than an external creator, and that meaning and morality and metaphysical experience are to be sought in a fuller communion with the immanent world rather than a leap toward the transcendent.”

This is quite different from, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1) and “All things were made through Him” (John 1:3).

Increasingly, “the universe” is replacing references to God in current TV shows and movies.  On the flip side, some of this year’s new Hallmark holiday flicks lean the other way, featuring sacred carols such as “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”

The pagan worldview is promoted by leading figures such as Oprah Winfrey, with her New Age version of “can’t we all just get along?” and the prolific writer Sally Quinn, widow of longtime Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee.

Ms. Quinn writes on religious topics for the Post, and used to edit the Post’s religion page, which is a smorgasbord of modern heresies, the wilder the better.   The Left favors almost any religious expression other than orthodox Christianity, which is why it’s soft on paganism and even Islam.

The latter’s militants are inflicting terror all over the world, most recently when a gunman yelled “Allahu Akbar” before gunning down 16 people, killing at least two, at a Christmas market in Strasbourg, France on Dec. 11.  The Post, like the rest of the media, downplayed it, ignoring the religious motivation and playing up the shooter’s criminal past.

Ms. Quinn chronicles her own plunge into witchly pursuits in her 2017 memoir “Finding Magic” in which she describes dabbling with the paranormal and hexing people she didn’t like.

She says she left behind the dark arts following three deaths that occurred shockingly soon after her hexing.  But she’s not done with the occult.  In a Washingtonian magazine profile in August 2017, Michelle Cottle wrote, “Ouija boards, astrological charts, palm reading, talismans—Quinn embraces it all. And yes, she has been in contact with her husband since his passing. Through a medium. Repeatedly.”

A week ago Monday, Ms. Quinn moderated a bookstore appearance by porn star and Trump accuser Stormy Daniels.  She said, with her son looking on, that she planned to attend Daniels’ strip show that evening, and that “I’ve watched Stormy’s porn, and it’s good. She knows what she’s doing.”

If you wonder why the Post gives short shrift to the biblical view that sex is a God-given gift to be enjoyed only in marriage, well, it shouldn’t be a mystery.

Elsewhere in the Post’s Style section, columnist Monica Hesse admits an addiction to the classic movie “White Christmas,” but makes sure to point out its politically incorrect flaws, such as a song about minstrel shows.  The movie is redeemed when Danny Kaye rebuffs a kiss from the beautiful Vera Ellen.  Mr. Kaye “demures so vehemently that the ‘White Christmas’ message boards have speculated that the character might be gay. Well, if so, kudos to that subversive choice, too.”

Kudos for subversion of romance between a man and a woman?  This is liberal virtue-signaling at its purest.   In the progressive worldview, everything is political, including sex.

Ms. Quinn says that friends have repeatedly asked her to place a hex on President Trump, an idea which, to her credit, she’s rejected. But think about that. Sally’s lefty pals hate Mr. Trump so much they want him magically killed, not just removed from office.

Pre-and-Post Christian pagan societies are not known for their qualities of mercy.

Robert Knight is a Townhall contributor. His latest book is “A Nation Worth Saving:   10 Steps to Restore Freedom” (djkm.org/nation, 2018).

This article was originally published at Townhall.com