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Womaniacal House Speaker Nancy Pelosi—another Democrat leader with compromised cognitive abilities and no moral principles—has womanaged to womangle her first day of the new congressional session.

She womandated that in order to make the U.S. House of Representatives Code of Official Conduct more inclusive, it will henceforth exclude references to the following: fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, nephews, nieces, husbands, wives, fathers-in-law, mothers-in-law, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, stepfathers, stepmothers, stepsons, stepdaughters, stepbrothers, stepsisters, half -brothers, half-sisters, grandsons, or granddaughters, as well as all pronouns that correspond to immutable biological sex, like he, she, his, hers, him, her, himself, and herself.

Pelosi calls these changes “visionary.” Methinks she is a visionary womanqué.

No matter if all the persons affected by the banning of these words identify as husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sons, or daughters. No matter if central to their authentic lives and happiness are their identities as constituted by and inseparable from their immutable biological sex. To Big Brother Sibling and his small-minded, power-ravenous Sister Sibling, Nancy Pelosi, using Big Government to eradicate public recognition of sexual dimorphism is all that matters.

Democrat science-deniers thrive on cancelling words, ideas, speech, and religious liberty (not to mention powerless humans in their mothers’ wombs). If satiating the lunatic “trans” cult, homosexual activists, and radical feminists gains science- and morality-denying Dems more power, who cares about language, ideas, liberty, or truth.

In my mind’s ear, I hear some Christians tsk-tsking my description of the “trans” cult as lunatic.  Those Christians have yet to explain how Christians can heed C.S. Lewis’ admonition to train up our children to feel hatred for ideas and actions that are worthy of hatred without using harsh language to describe evil. To use scriptural language, Nancy Pelosi and everyone else who accommodates the diktats of “trans” cultists, homosexual activists, and radical feminists are vipers.

I can hear some other conservatives—also known as living, marinating frogs—dismissing concerns and warnings about the scorched earth devastation of feminism, homonormativity, and “trans”-cultism, all of which conspire to undermine public recognition and respect for God’s created order.

These are the same conservatives who now use the word “gay” instead of homosexual.

These are the same conservatives who failed to object when pro-homosexual resources were introduced to their children in government schools through sex ed, health classes, theater classes, English classes, and social studies classes.

These are the same conservatives who attend same-sex faux weddings and call their actions “loving.”

These are the same conservatives who welcome homosexual activists into the Big Circus Tent of the Republican Party—homosexual activists who are committed to killing the party from within like a coronavirus.

These are the same conservatives who do nothing when their local public libraries invite drag queens—that is, perverted adult men—to read stories to toddlers.

These are the same conservatives who know and care little that there is a public health crisis among adolescent girls and young women whose hearts and minds are being poisoned by the social contagion of “trans”-cultism.

And these are the same conservatives who have little understanding of the enormity of the threat posed to our essential First Amendment rights by the Equality Act.

Just after Pelosi announced the exclusion of “gendered” language from the House Code of Official Conduct, U.S. womentally unhinged Representative Emmanuel Cleaver opened the 117^th Session of Congress with a prayer that ended with these words:

We ask it in the name of the monotheistic God, Brahma, and ‘God’ known by many names by many different faiths. Amen and awoman.

Yes, a former pastor with a Master of Divinity degree actually said those embarrassing words.

Cleaver is apparently so steeped in intersectional identity politics and beholden to the culturally powerful groups that seek to blur the lines between sexes, he ignored that “amen” is not a gendered word. He’s willing to trade the Word of God–whom he claims to serve–for a mess of rancid political pottage.

If we’re going to invent neologisms in a futile attempt to recreate a world in the image of intersectionalist ideologues, I’ve got some:

• Womendicants: women who live off the government
• Womendacious: women who lie
• Womengelian: women who order the deaths of or experimentation on their children

Pastor and theologian Douglas Wilson tweeted a response to Cleaver’s peculiar prayer closing that aptly describes how many feel on the first week of the new congressional session:

The opening prayer for the 117^th Congress concluded with “amen” and “awomen,” and I regret to inform you that all my patience with the 117^th Congress, at the conclusion of their opening prayer, was exhausted.

I suspect many right-thinking Americans are also feeling something more intense than exhaustion.

There’s another possibility: Maybe Cleaver wasn’t saying “amen” as in “so be it.” Maybe he was using the prefix “a” attached to men and women, meaning “not men” and “not women.” Yeah, that makes more sense.

Unless there’s a revival, America is doomed by the rebellion, cowardice, and ignorance of leaders elected by rebellious, cowardly, and ignorant people.

“It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all… a heretical thought… should be literally unthinkable. … 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. … [T]he special function of certain Newspeak words. … was not so much to express meanings as to destroy them.” George Orwell, 1984

“For whatever other reasons the language rules may have been devised, they proved of enormous help in the maintenance of order and sanity in the various widely diversified services whose cooperation was essential in this matter.” Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil

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Written by Ryan P. Burge, Eastern Illinois University

It’s become almost a trope at this point among people who study and write about American religion and politics – evangelicals punch way above their weight. Their voter turnout has stayed relatively steady despite their drop in population share. But, I was working through some data today and noticed something that I don’t think that I’ve seen reported on much – atheists are incredibly politically active – more so than any other religious group.

The Cooperative Congressional Election Survey asks a series of questions about political activity in the last 12 months. Respondents simply answer yes or no to each of the six. Here are the results from the 2018 data.

In all six scenarios, atheists are right near the top in likelihood to participate. A quarter attended a march or protest compared to just 4.4% of white evangelicals. Four in ten atheists have contacted a public official or donated money to a candidate. That’s tied with Jews, but is much higher than most Christian groups in the sample. Agnostics are not far behind, either. They usually trail atheists but just a few percentage points for each of the political actions.

I know that atheists have high levels of income and about 45% have a four-year college degree, so SES might explain one of the reasons that they are so politically active. So I put together a simple model with a few controls for race, gender, and age.

At every level on the education spectrum, atheists and agnostics are more politically active than Protestants or Catholics. More education leads to higher levels of political activity among all religious groups, but the relationship is even stronger for atheists than other groups. An atheist with a graduate degree participated in 2.1 political activities in the last year. It was 1.8 activities for agnostics. For Catholics and Protestants it’s between 1.3 and 1.4 activities. That’s not a small difference.

But, are atheists just generally more politically engaged – or is it a function of the fact that many of them align with the Democratic Party? To test that I ran another model that divided each of the four religious groups up into Democrats and Republicans. Clearly partisanship accelerates political activity much more for Democrats than those who affiliate with the GOP. This conjures a bevy of questions: has the Republican Party become anathema to educated voters? Have the GOP failed to target educated voters in a meaningful way? Is this a function of the geographic polarization that is happening across the country? These questions are of tremendous importance to electoral politics.

If you look at just those with high school diplomas in each of the four traditions, Democrats are more likely to engage in political acts than Republicans. Sometimes, much more so. For instance, an atheist with a graduate degree who is a Democrat engages in twice as many political activities in a year compared to a Republican atheist. For Protestants, it’s just half a political activity. However, an atheist who affiliates with the Republican Party is no more likely to engage in politicking than any other religious tradition. So, while being a Democrat does prove as a spur for political activity, having high levels of education has a multiplicative effect.

So, why did Democrats engage in politics at much higher rates than Republicans in 2018? Well, when your party is in the minority in both the House and the Senate and does not hold the White House, that can serve as good motivation to get out there and try to win one chamber back. And, you can see that in the data, too. I calculated the total number of political activities for the four religious groups going back to 2010 – and something fascinating happened in 2018.

In 2016, an atheist engaged in 1.45 activities compared to 1.4 for an agnostic. Christians were slightly lower at 1.28. But, by 2018 the landscape had changed. Both Protestants and Catholics saw a tremendous decline down to .90 or .95 actions. For agnostics, there was no statistically significant change. But for atheists, there was a noticeable uptick to 1.58. The gap between Christians and atheists is huge now, with atheists about ten percent more politically engaged in 2018.

This could be one of the reasons that the Blue Wave happened in 2018 – a very agitated base of atheists who got politically involved. But, here’s a bit of caution I would urge – while atheists are often identified with the Democratic party, they have a fair amount of political homogeneity. In 2018, 77.3% identified as Democrats, 11.7% were independents, and 10.9% were Republicans. That’s a solid core, but there is some diversity there. For comparison, 73% of white evangelicals are Republicans. White evangelicals make up 15.6% of the population, atheists and agnostics combined are 11.4%. With that level of political activity, it’s fair to say that these nones might be a bigger political force in the next presidential election than we give them credit for – they just have to stay angry and stay engaged.

Ryan P. Burge teaches at Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, Illinois. He can be contacted via Twitter or his personal website. The syntax for this post can be found here.

This article originally posted at ReligionInPublic.blog

Some, perhaps many, within the Republican Party have of late been fawning over allegedly conservative activist Milo Yiannopoulis. For those who remain blessedly unaware of him, he is the foulmouthed, British, homosexual Breitbart News technology editor who was recently unjustifiably banned for life from Twitter following a Twitter twaddle battle with the foulmouthed actress Leslie Jones, who is a Saturday Night Live cast member and one of the stars of  the Ghostbusters remake.

To better understand who Yiannopoulis is, conservatives should watch this short video of Yiannopoulis speaking at a recent party of homosexual Republicans:

**Caution: Vulgar Language**

Perhaps Yiannopoulis had no control over the troubling photos of adolescent-looking hairless, shirtless boys adorning the walls behind him at this party, but he did have control over his continual sexual asides to men off-camera, which expose precisely why he should be rejected as any kind of hero for conservatism.

Anyone who understands that properly ordered sexuality, marriage, and the needs and rights of children are issues as vital to the flourishing of America as a good economy, lower tax rates, secure borders, and military strength should reject the anti-hero Yiannopoulis. He will not attract people committed to all the positions requisite to strengthen this country. He will bring in homosexuals and those who support their cultural agenda. He will bring in people who will corrupt the GOP from within.

Those within the GOP who understandably seek a bigger tent should stop fawning over the indecent Yiannopoulis simply because he holds some conservative positions and attacks liberals and liberalism. A person who delights in sodomy cannot possibly strengthen a party committed to conservatism. Republicans need to stop being so desperate for the cool kids to like them. The enemy of our enemy is sometimes our enemy.

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