With the vast number of books, movies, and songs written commiserating the consequences of bad choices (which would include most every Country and Western song written), one would think that young Americans would not need to be told to think carefully about their choices in life.  A popular British band sang, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” not that long ago, but America’s youth apparently never got the memo!  They are being led down the primrose lane to danger and destruction as lambs to slaughter, being told they can live however they wish and suffer no ill consequences. It is, I suppose, another example of human nature’s “it’ll never happen to me” mentality!

The ignorance of the young regarding important life matters is tragic.  It is a fundamental of science that “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”  This law is not confined to steel balls suspended in a Newton’s Cradle gadget.  It affects everything we do; from the food we eat to the words we use with each other.  And we are fools indeed if we believe that we can make major life decisions recklessly without suffering any consequences!  It is as certain as the sun rising every morning that the pain and suffering of America’s youth right now is largely the result of their being told they can do whatever they want and that they should not let anyone tell them what they can and cannot do.

Studying predators’ ability to camouflage themselves in their search for dinner is most instructive.  From tiny spiders blending in with their environment, to lions hiding in grass of the same color as their fur, to human hunters who create sophisticated ways to hide from their game, we all understand the purpose of camouflage.  It generally works to the detriment of the prey.  We may joke about the smooth salesman who talks you into buying a car you can’t afford, but the “sales job” being foisted upon America’s youth is not about their money.  It may well cost them their lives!  It has already cost the lives of millions of unborn babies; and those who are behind this sales pitch have no more regard for your 10-year-old than they do for the baby in your womb!

The words “con job” or ”scam” are too kind to be applied to what the Left is doing to America’s children and youth. If another country was destroying our children as the Left is, we would consider it an act of war; yet the prevailing message of cultural leaders and the Media is that the Left, and only the Left, really cares.  American children are plagued by depression, suicide, drug use, violence, and murder as never before in our history but are given no tools with which to deal with their suffering.  The Left has preached for 60 years that there is no God, no truth, no right or wrong, and that people can do as they want sexually without consequences.  So, young people do as one would expect them to do when given such a green light, only to find themselves overwhelmed with trouble and pain they cannot understand or resolve.  Then to add insult to injury the Left gets filthy rich off the misery they have created by legalizing more drugs and selling abortions to kill the babies the nation’s children have produced.

How has this deception been so successful?  How has the Left been able to become wealthy and powerful off the very lives they have been exploiting and destroying?  Tragically, they have employed tactics the Bible has been warning mankind about for thousands of years, and largely by disconnecting America’s youth from the Bible which, if known and followed, would have protected them from the tragedies they are now experiencing.

The Bible is Truth, and abundant research reveals that following its principles generally protects one from the dangers promulgated by the Left, similar to how a thorough knowledge of currency protects one against forgeries.  Christ said, “you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”  He is also personally called “Truth,” meaning that He is the source of all that is true and is in perfect harmony with truth.  To turn one’s back on truth leaves one with only lies to live by, and if the truth “sets you free,” what will lies do?  For starters, look at America’s youth and you will see.  They are slaves to destructive false narratives and addictive behaviors.  The fact that these lies are so hurtful and self-contradictory is lost on them as they have no standard by which to judge what is true, what is real, what is good or what is evil. They flounder along hoping that some new experience will make them happy, give them a reason to live, or fill the inexplicable void in their hearts.

They are told that there is no real meaning in life, and no purpose or consequences for their daily choices, yet they find they have pain, guilt, and confusion.  Told that their sexuality is nothing more than a “bodily function” to be experienced and experimented with for their own pleasure, they do not understand why they feel dirty, used, and disconnected.  Confusing young people by offering them freedom, but giving them license, Leftists place these naïve children, as it were, in the cockpit of a plane flying through dense clouds and tell them to fly like birds!  But, when they crash and burn, it is always  someone else’s fault.

Potentially sealing these young peoples’ doom is the fact that the ones who have abused them have convinced them that Leftism, alone, is virtuous, and through lies and deception have isolated them from the Truth that would bring them life and peace.  Christianity is rarely considered by young people today because Leftists and scorners have maligned Christ and believers and have created inaccurate and damaging caricatures of the faith thus transforming the public perception of Christianity into a parody.  The majority of what the public now sees as Christianity has virtually no relationship whatever to genuine Christianity; but due to most true Christians’ unwillingness to fight back, and the Left’s near monopoly on messaging, millions have been fooled.

Thus, the nation which was founded by “. . . the People, of the United States,” with a clear vision of self- sacrifice for the benefit of “(themselves and their) posterity,” has become a nation of vultures, quite literally sacrificing children for adults’ pleasures and prosperity.  On every hand innocent, vulnerable, and powerless children are victims of Leftist schemes.  Millions have died in the womb, and multitudes more are being groomed and exploited for adults’ deviant pleasures through explicitly sexualized school curricula, and prurient events such as “drag queen story hours.”  In the cases where state governments are awakening to the threats against women and children and institute protections, the predators lurk at the state borders, seeking to lure panicked women into their grasp with death-mobiles, specially equipped vans where young women facing a crisis pregnancy are offered the faux fix of a quick abortion.

It has been said that good people plant trees the shade of which they will not live long enough to enjoy. They simply live for others.  We now live in a day when the Left has managed to convince a large number of people, young and old, that selfishness and leeching off others is somehow virtuous!  The Bible warns, “Woe to those who call good, evil and evil, good.”  We all know better but many are intimidated by the Leftists who sit so powerfully, calling “good” those who yield to their corrupt demands and “evil” all who resist.

And so, we are in what some are calling a “cold” civil war!  We are not competing against well-meaning but misinformed people, but against powerful, well-connected, and formidable adversaries who see children and the weak as prey to be devoured and the population in general as sheep to be shorn.   They display a disgusting elitism that has no place in America.  In their arrogance they consider themselves our superiors, while we exist for their pleasure.  This phenomenon is new to most Americans, but it was very familiar to America’s Founders; and it is understood by those who have lived under Leftism across the globe.   We have no delusions about convincing the Leftists to abandon their wickedness, but we do hope, by God’s grace, to warn the vulnerable so that they might escape.

The great hope of the elites is that through subterfuge and deceit they can gain the power necessary to wield the same control over Americans that President Xi has over the Chinese people, and Putin has over the Russians.  When we consider the incalculable harm they have already done to Americans, especially children, one can only imagine the destruction they would unleash if they were to gain absolute power.  They are not benefactors of America’s youth, they are predators!

It is said that John Wycliffe wrote in his 1382 English translation of the Bible that the “Bible is for a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”  It is not an accident, then, that the first country in history to use biblical principles in formulating its constitution and laws, has provided the greatest individual liberties of any government ever created.   It is also not surprising that as the Bible has been gradually rejected over the last fifty years that the body politic has been flipped upside down.  Government officials now have the power and Individuals have become their prey.  What is evident is that the God of the Bible has a personal interest in individuals, and a critical view of mankind’s governments.  In fact, He promises to one day destroy all human governments to establish His own!  (Know this, generally speaking, any human who seeks to overthrow his government is violating God’s word (Rom. 13:1,2).  Genuine Christians will not be involved in destroying America’s government.  God alone has the authority to do such).

In Ezekiel 34, God address the “Shepherds,” the political and cultural leaders of Israel.   He says, “’Woe to the shepherds of Israel who feed themselves!  Should not the shepherds feed the flocks?  You eat the fat and cloth yourselves with the wool; you slaughter the fatlings, but you do not feed the flock.  The weak you have not strengthened, nor have you healed those who were sick, nor bound up the broken, nor brought back what was driven away, nor sought what was lost; but with force and cruelty you have ruled them. . . .” (34:2-4 NKJV).   Thus, we see the heart of God for children, and we see that godless political leaders haven’t changed in three thousand years!  God declares Himself the Protector of the powerless, and He will avenge their abuse at the hands of the political and cultural elite.

Parents,  wake up and protect your children!  And you who abuse these young ones, understand this!  You will not escape the judgment of God!

Here’s a statistic that may surprise many: It is estimated that less than 17% of U.S. doctors belong to the powerful leftist lobbying group, the American Medical Association (AMA). Remember that figure as you read on about the AMA’s role in promoting critical race theory and sexual anarchy.

In May 2021, the AMA issued a press release announcing its 86-page critical race theory-infused “ambitious strategic plan to dismantle structural racism” which acknowledges “that equity work requires recognition of past harms and critical examination of institutional roles upholding these structures.”

In the press release, the AMA makes clear its leftist leanings:

[T]he plan … is driven by the immense need for equity-centered solutions to confront harms produced by systemic racism and other forms of oppression for Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, and other people of color, as well as people who identify as LGBTQ+. 

The AMA’s ambitious plan seeks to eradicate “malignant narratives” like “a narrow focus on individuals,” the “myth of meritocracy,” and the “myth of American exceptionalism.” The AMA is committed to “rooting out racism and white supremacy in our workplace. … We must ‘get our house in order’ and direct significant focus on embedding equity within the management team.”

The 86-page plan makes even clearer that the AMA has abandoned commitments to equality in favor of collectivist notions of equity based on group membership. The plan is littered with quotes from far-left poets and activists like Ta-Nehesi Coates as well far-left jargon like this:

• “We must … ensure that we use the theories (intersectionality, critical race theory*, etc.).”

• “Equity solutions include … [e]liminating all forms of discrimination, exclusion and oppression in medical and physician education, training, hiring, [and] matriculation … by [m]andatory anti-racism … equity-explicit training … for all … staff [and] Publicly reported equity assessments for medical schools and hospitals … ensuring just representation of Black, Indigenous and Latinx people in medical school admissions as well as medical school and hospital leadership ranks.”

• “We operate in a carefully designed and maintained system that normalizes and legitimizes an array of dynamics … that routinely advantage white (also wealthy, hetero-, able-bodied, male, Christian, U.S.- born) people at the expense of Black, Latinx, Indigenous and people of color (also low wealth, women, people with disabilities, non-Christians, and those foreign-born).”

• “Where equality is a blunt instrument of ‘sameness,’ equity is a precise scalpel that requires a deep understanding of complex dynamics and systems with skill and practice in application. … Equity can be understood as both a process and an outcome. It involves sharing power with people … and redistributing resources to the greatest need.”

The AMA’s document includes this quote from “Sylvia” Rivera,” a deeply troubled drag queen who was homeless and working as a prostitute by age 11:

We have to be visible. We should not be ashamed of who we are. We have to show the world that we’re numerous.

The idea that no one should be ashamed of cross-dressing behaviors is a moral claim that falls far outside the purview of the American Medical Association, but grandiose moral and social engineering schemes is now apparently the business of the AMA.

At the end of June 2021, the AMA released a “resolution” created by a committee of homosexual activists and their collaborators calling for “Removing Sex Designation from the Public Portion of the Birth Certificate.” In a tortured effort to rationalize the AMA’s involvement in redesigning birth certificates to serve the desires of cross-sex impersonators, the activists wrote,

Gender is a social construct that describes the way persons self-identify or express themselves. A person’s gender identity may not always be exclusively male or female and may not always correspond with their sex assigned at birth.

To be clear, these medical doctors are just pretending that sex is “assigned” at birth. They know full well that obstetricians do not assign sexes—of which there are two—to newborns. Physicians identify the sex of newborns—an objective, immutable trait that never changes. There are a small percentage of babies born with disorders of sexual development whose genitalia at birth may be ambiguous, but those babies are not “transgender.”

While some persons may choose not to “identify” with their sex, they do have one and it never changes. The spanking new term “gender identity” was invented to disguise disordered feelings as something more substantive—something with a bit more ontological heft. While a “trans” identity—and every fanciful idea associated with it—is a social construct, biological sex is a material reality that cannot be erased by redesigning birth certificates, grammar, or bodies.

And while “trans”-cultists and their collaborators may believe that subjective feelings about maleness or femaleness (i.e., “gender identity”) are more important than objective biological sex, neither compassion, respect, nor justice obligates others to act as if such feelings are.

The committee cites a prior politically driven AMA policy that says,

“the AMA supports every individual’s right to determine their … sex designation on government documents and other forms of government identification.” The AMA supports policies that allow for a sex designation or change of designation on all government IDs to reflect an individual’s gender identity.

In other words, the AMA supports the bizarre notion that government documents should be falsified in order to conform to the socially constructed, science-denying belief that humans can be what they’re not.

Moreover, after the “trans”-cult has spent years establishing sex and “gender identity” as wholly severable and separate phenomena, they are now attempting to empty “sex designation” filling it with the socially constructed amorphous “gender identity.” George Orwell predicted this:

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. … 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.

The committee, a political interest group composed of self-identifying health providers, offers this pseudo-medical justification for their political effort:

For these individuals, having a gender identity that does not match the sex designation on their birth certificate can result in confusion, possible discrimination, harassment and violence whenever their birth certificate is requested.

Who may be confused? It seems unlikely that cross-sex impersonators would be confused, so how would the confusion of someone else be a health concern for cross-sex impersonators? What form of “possible discrimination”? Is harassment an issue that the AMA should address or the police?

And what about “trans”-agists, that is, people who identify as younger than their assigned birth date would suggest? If a 47-year-old man identifies as a 17-year-old, should he be able to change his birth date designation to reflect his age identity in order to avoid confusion, possible discrimination, harassment, or violence?

Come to think of it, if insurance companies are forced to pay for chemical and surgical procedures to make men look like women, shouldn’t they be forced to pay for chemical and surgical procedures to make old men look like the young men they identify as?

For some perspective on whose interest this resolution represents, a cursory look at the resolution process is in order. Resolutions are created by AMA Medical Student Sections (MSS), in this case the AMA MSS “Committee on LGBTQ+ Affairs,” which, to be clear, is an interest group.

The current Advisory Committee on LGBTQ+ Affairs has seven members, five of whom are homosexual. The remaining two are “LGBTQ+” collaborators. A committee’s resolution is voted on by the House of Delegates, which is the legislative and policy-making body of the AMA. The House of Delegates is composed of about 600 of the 240,000 AMA members. A two-thirds vote of the delegates present is required for adoption. So, the birth certificate redesign policy was conceivably created and passed by 400 of the 240,000 members of the AMA, and the AMA constitutes only 17% of all physicians in the U.S.

No further evidence is needed to prove that “progressivism” is an ideology of deceit than the spread of “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices throughout a society that purports to revere science and rationality. No sane person really believes men can be or become women. No sane person believes men can “chestfeed” or menstruate, become pregnant, or give birth. No sane person really believes that some women have penises and impregnate women—or men. Those who pretend they do are liars or cowards or both.

No further evidence is needed to prove that the ultimate goal of “progressives” is totalitarian political and social control than their tyrannical efforts to coerce Orwellian Newspeak. And no further evidence is needed to prove that America has become the land of cowards than the silence of many physicians on the chemical and surgical abuse of children by the medical community.

There are things that Americans can do to resist Big Brother and his apparatchiks and cowardly minions. Ask your pediatrician, obstetrician, gynecologist, and primary care physician if they support pseudo-scientific “trans”-cultic practices for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors. If they do, find new doctors. And if you’re a doctor who belongs to the AMA, cancel your membership and tell the AMA why.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/amaIsWoke_Audio.mp3

If anyone wonders why the calls for cameras in government school classrooms are increasing, read on, and as you read, imagine what would have happened if a teacher had delivered a comparable lecture expressing conservative instead of “progressive” opinions in a public school.

Just prior to the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary, Vanessa Connor, a biology teacher at Alan B. Shepard High School in Palos Heights, Illinois, used her taxpayer-subsidized position to spout her “progressive” views on, among other topics, homosexuality, cross-sex impersonation, co-ed restrooms and locker rooms, the Bible—on which she has views that many biblical scholars would dispute—former President Donald Trump, illegal immigration, and the climate.

Connor reserved her most intense condemnation for parents and teachers—including colleagues—who don’t affirm leftist views of homosexuality and cross-sex identification. She clearly had no compunction about secretly undermining even the deepest beliefs of parents who pay her salary.

You can listen to 18 minutes of her presumptuous, unprofessional, unethical diatribe here.

Connor’s views on homosexuality, cross-sex impersonation, the Bible, and family

Connor—who self-identifies as Catholic—took pot shots at theologically orthodox Christians for their beliefs on sexuality without providing anything more than anecdotes as evidence for her controversial claims:

One of my students earlier has a sister who identifies as lesbian and at the recent family party, her aunt took her aside and said, “I’m going to take you to church this weekend and we are going to fix you.” … And she has other brothers and sisters who support their sister. So, [the aunt] is not a safe aunt to any of her nieces and nephews anymore. … [Y]ou live in a world where people are like, “This is a choice.” I’m sorry. Did any of you ever fill out a survey that says, “Please check heterosexual”?

No acknowledgment from Connor that the Bible condemns homosexuality; that the Catholic Church condemns homosexuality; or that for the entire history of the church until the latter part of the 20^th Century, all biblical scholars condemned homosexuality.

Connor is correct in suggesting that people don’t choose to experience homoerotic attraction. What she omits is the important part: They do choose how to respond to those feelings. Is it Connor’s belief—as a Catholic—that any and all powerful, persistent, unchosen feelings are morally legitimate to act upon?

In discussing which issues animate her voting decisions, Connor shared bizarre QAnon-esque stories and bad theology with students:

When billions of dollars are being donated to a Christian Church who gives the money to hate groups, there’s a problem. They believe that teens should go to camp over the summer and get talked out of being gay. Again, no one talked you into being straight, so, you can’t talk somebody out of being gay. And this same group donated billions to another place that believes all transgender people should be sterilized. … Billions, not millions, billions of dollars … to this church so that they can shovel it to these [hate] groups. …

Remember, this is in the name of being Christian. I don’t know about any of you. I’m Catholic … Jesus sat with the people and accepted everybody. I find it very difficult to believe that if there was a gay person, and I’m sure there was at that time, that Jesus would have been like, “Everybody but you. Leper, come on. Gay person, sorry.” … And the auntie who was going to take a girl to church, she goes, “There was Adam and Eve for a reason.” And I’m like, “Well, you need to go home and tell auntie that the story of Adam and Eve isn’t even real.” There is no Adam and Eve. The first five books of the Bible aren’t real. They are stories. They’re made-up stories. You can go ask a religious person, whoever it is. They’re just made-up stories. … Noah and the Ark never flowed anywhere. …

[W]hen you learn and you know better, you can do better. But when we have groups that don’t even want to learn and just continue to spew stuff, it’s bad. It’s really bad.

So many questions raised by Connor’s controversial statements. Enquiring minds want to know the name of the group that is donating “billions of dollars” to a Christian church and “to a place that believes all transgender people should be sterilized”? What is the name of the Christian church? What is the name of the group that allegedly wants all “transgender people” sterilized? What are the names of the “hate groups”? What are the names of the camps that are talking teens out of being gay?

What is Connor’s evidence that some “groups don’t even want to learn”? Is her evidence for an unwillingness to learn the fact that some groups reject leftist beliefs on sexuality? Those groups, of course, would include all theologically orthodox Protestant and Catholic churches. Does it go both ways? Is Connor unwilling to learn because she rejects conservative beliefs?

Connor compared homosexuality—a condition defined by subjective erotic feelings and volitional erotic acts—to leprosy, a disease that has no behavioral implications. Jesus accepts everyone, but his acceptance of sinners into his kingdom is conditional on our repenting of behaviors God tells us are sinful. Leprosy is not one of those conditions. Homosexuality is.

One wonders how many and which Catholic scholars Connor consulted that led to her conclusion that the “first five books of the Bible aren’t real”? My guess is very few. The hubris of a government employee presenting her highly arguable religious beliefs as facts to a captive audience of other people’s minor children makes her unfit for teaching.

Connor explicitly condemned parents, aunts, and uncles who believe homosexual acts are immoral:

[H]ow many of you have some person in your family—your parents … aunts and uncles …  distant relatives— … that … are not supportive of LBGTQ+ … members [of] society? … So, if … a [gay] friend wants to come to your house, then it becomes like an issue for you. And guess what? Lots of us have grown up with people that were either racist or sexist or whatever.

“Supportive” is a euphemism for affirming, and it doesn’t refer to affirming persons as humans created in the image and likeness of God. It means affirming as good ungodly sexual acts and relationships. To leftists like Connor, “supportive” people must love the sin as well as the sinner.

Connor taught other people’s children that being “safe” requires teachers to facilitate cross-sex metaphysical delusions, and that students whose parents oppose name changes can legally change their names without their parents’ consent when they turn 18:

[W]e just had a panel discussion just for teachers that was given by students that go here. One of the students does use the “they/them” pronouns. … And it’s been suggested to us that … a safe teacher … would … try these different pronouns. …[C]ertain teachers will be okay with that. …

We do have students here who have amazing support from their families, who have already gone and legally changed their name. …  But when you’re 18, I think legally you could change your name to whatever you want, and you wouldn’t need your parents’ consent.

So, our [Gay Straight Alliance] is … making like a poster or a picture … to encourage teachers to put [it] in their classrooms so students know it is a safe classroom. We had that for years at Eisenhower. And I brought it up to Mr. Nisavic who runs the GSA, because at Eisenhower …  not every teacher [was] putting them up outside their classroom door.

So, imagine, whether it’s about sexuality or it’s about race or it’s about gender, if there was something that you could identify with and feel like, “Oh, this teacher cares.” And then you walk into your next classroom, and that’s not there. How do you feel about that teacher? How do you feel about being in that room? Okay. So, we have students here who … have … been more open, like, “This is me. Call me this.” And we also have students here who go by names, but teachers are not allowed to refer … by that when they call their parents.

So again, how sad and horrible is that, if you don’t have that great support at home and then you come to school and there isn’t that support … here? We should not be okay with that. And that’s what I brought up. I wasn’t okay with it. That’s horrible.

In Connor’s personal worldview, which she used the classroom to promote, parents who oppose “trans” name changes are unsupportive. And teachers who don’t put up posters affirming homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation are unsafe, uncaring, and “horrible.”

Not only does Connor believe that student “safety” requires teacher-collusion with science-denying “trans”-cultic superstitions, but she also believes safety requires secrecy:

And if someone finds that you are a safe person, please know you don’t have a right to tell anybody else.

The student-recorded portion of Connor’s shocking lecture begins with this announcement;

[T]his idea of gender being fluid is not anything new. Gay people—I’m just encompassing LGBTQ+ community—they’ve been around since humans have been around.

What’s missing from her statement is that all manner of sinful inclinations and acts have been around since humans have been around, something the purportedly Catholic Connor should know.

Connor suggested without stating that the presence of homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation throughout history indicates those conditions are morally neutral or good. Would she be willing to apply that principle consistently to all inclinations and behaviors found among man throughout history?

On sexually integrated restrooms and locker rooms

Connor implied she cares a lot about students’ feelings, but she really seems to care only about the feelings of some students. She condemned the feelings of students who don’t want to undress in the presence of opposite-sex peers:

[I]n second period, I heard someone go, “No. … I couldn’t change in the locker room [with an opposite-sex peer].” And I said, “Well, it’s funny that you brought that up because the biggest places where these people feel the least safe are in locker rooms and in gym classes, because there are so many of you and so few teachers. And in the bathrooms. And we have students here that don’t go to the bathroom during the day, ever.

What about girls who don’t want to use bathrooms with opposite-sex peers? What about the girls and boys in an expensive New York City private school who “started arriving home desperate to get to the bathroom after holding it in all day” because they didn’t want to share restrooms with opposite-sex peers.

Connor manipulated students emotionally by suggesting that opposition to undressing in the presence of opposite-sex peers is equivalent to bullying and will lead to suicide:

[W]e still live in a world where people get beat up, people get killed, and people are committing suicide at a high rate, thinking, “Apparently it’s just better for the world if I’m not here.” There was the 16-year-old young man who was on the autism spectrum, who came out as being gay when he was 12. And due to the bullying, he took his life this week.

It would have been helpful and illuminating for students if Connor had discussed the high post-“transition” suicide rate. She should have discussed the possibility that gender dysphoria, like depression and suicidal ideation, may be a symptom caused by, for example, trauma, abuse, or autism. She should have mentioned detransitioners who experience “sex-change regret.” She should have discussed the astonishing increase in the number of adolescent girls identifying as “trans”—a number that suggests “trans” identification may be a social contagion like cutting and eating disorders. Connor should have mentioned that there is no long-term research on the safety and efficacy of puberty-blockers for the treatment of gender dysphoria.

Illegal Immigration, border security, Wuhan flu

Instead of offering a complete picture of complex and controversial topics, Connor chose to indoctrinate other people’s children by condemning and censoring ideas she abhors. Her goal was not only to change students’ beliefs. Her goal was also to turn her students into activists:

Do you think Shepherd is inclusive or not so much? … Here’s the thing. You guys, young people change the world. You don’t need to wait for adults. And the quickest way you can change the world is coming up really soon when you all get the right to vote. … You’re never going to find a presidential candidate who believes in everything you do, but you have to decide “what are those big sticking points for me?”

One is the world. People are upset about coronavirus. People are buying soap and hand sanitizer as if it’s gold? … But no one cares that we’re killing the earth.

And in an election year, she essentially told students in her biology class who they should vote for:

[W]ith this president [Trump], you keep having this issue with minorities. I mean, do you know how many people are so severely traumatized? Like kids being taken away from their parents.

… [Trump] doesn’t even know that the Corona flu isn’t a thing. He needs to get out of that office. Young people have to help stand up. I mean, at this point in time, if somebody else walks and talks they can do better than he is.

Leftist “educators” who are not experts in even the fields they were hired to teach now believe they’re experts in Critical Race Theory, gender theory, sexuality, morality, and theology. Worse still, while claiming they honor all voices, value diversity, and foster critical thinking, these inexpert, dogmatists call ideas they detest “racist,” “transphobic,” “homophobic,” and “sexist.” Like all propagandists, demagogues, and authoritarians, these “educators” hurl epithets and censor rather than openly debate ideas, which would require logic, reason, and evidence. “Progressive” public school propagandists demand absolute autonomy to impose their moral and political views on their captive audiences because their goal is control—not education.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Bio-Teacher.mp3

Democrats have long pretended to be the party that fights to protect the little guy, all the while privately cozying up with Big Business, Big Tech, and Big Brother’s Press to oppress the little guys and gals.

Democrat policies decimated the black family and our big cities. Democrats wasted millions of Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars and countless work hours on Russian collusion disinformation and impeachment ruses. And then in de facto collusion with social media mega-millionaires and the corrupt leftist press, the “progressive” Hive threw the election to befuddled Biden and his henchwoman.

But the worker bees shaped by the “progressive” Hive mind are not done yet.

In their official congressional roles, Representatives Anna G. Eshoo and Jerry McNerney, two hubristic California Democrats, sent jaw-dropping letters on February 22, 2021 to the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Hulu, Roku, Charter Communications (Spectrum), Dish Network, Cox Communications, and Altice USA to pressure them to stop carrying Newsmax, One America News Network (OANN), and Fox News.

In other words, tolerant, diversity-loving, free speech-devoted leftists seek to ban every outlet and platform for the dissemination of ideas they hate.

Here are the jaw-dropping questions, Eshoo and McNerney are “asking” every company to answer:

1. What moral or ethical principles (including those related to journalistic integrity, violence, medical information, and public health) do you apply in deciding which channels to carry or when to take adverse actions against a channel?

2. Do you require, through contracts or otherwise, that the channels you carry abide by any content guidelines? If so, please provide a copy of the guidelines.

3. How many of your subscribers viewed Fox News on YouTube TV for each of the four weeks preceding the November 3, 2020 elections and the January 6, 2021 attacks on the Capitol? Please specify the number of subscribers that tuned in to each channel.

4. What steps did you take prior to, on, and following the November 3, 2020 elections and the January 6, 2021 attacks to monitor, respond to, and reduce the spread of disinformation, including encouragement or incitement of violence by channels your company disseminates to millions of Americans? Please describe each step that you took and when it was taken.

5. Have you taken any adverse actions against a channel, including Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN, for using your platform to disseminate disinformation related directly or indirectly to the November 3, 2020 elections, the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection, or COVID-19 misinformation? If yes, please describe each action, when it was taken, and the parties involved.

6. Have you ever taken any actions against a channel for using your platform to disseminate any disinformation? If yes, please describe each action and when it was taken.

7. Are you planning to continue carrying Fox News on YouTube TV both now and beyond any contract renewal date? Are you planning to continue carrying Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN … both now and beyond any contract renewal date? If so, why?

Without a hint of irony, Eshoo and McNerney, card-carrying members of the Ministry of Truthiness, call conservative news sites sources of “disinformation.” No word about the misinformation and disinformation promulgated by Democrats in Congress and their propagandist minions in the press.

In this brave new dystopia being created by leftists, they have arrogated to themselves the “right” to decide what constitutes “misinformation” and “disinformation.” They have arrogated to themselves the “right” to decide what information, ideas, and beliefs make people “safe.” They have arrogated to themselves the “right” to define “safety.”

And, amazingly, from the crowd that rebukes “judgmentalism” and the notion of objective truth, leftists have arrogated to themselves the right to judge beliefs and then declare for the entire country which ones are true.

Once having declared which moral, ontological, and epistemological beliefs are true for all of America, the bees with their collective Hive mind buzzing, busy themselves with their stinging banning-business. And boy, does it hurt. I mean, girl sexually indeterminate human, does it hurt.

On no issue are the worker bees busier with their banning than on the “trans” issue. And since the minds of Big Business have been melded into the Hive mind, genuine “trans”-truth-tellers–i.e., people who tell the truth about “trans”-cultism–are being censored.

The work of two well-known “trans”- truth-tellers sparked controversial decisions among woke corporate behemoths recently. Those corporate decisions illuminate the dark cultural period the “trans” cult has ushered in, aided and abetted by the cowardice of those who know truth and the ignorance of those who should.

A few months ago, Target stopped selling an important book by Wall Street Journal reporter Abigail Shrier titled Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters.

The well-researched and positively reviewed book offers a damning critique of “trans”-cultic beliefs, specifically how the “offensive” and “insipid” redefinition of “female” by the “trans” cult is damaging adolescent girls.

Target’s de facto book-banning resulted in fierce blowback, which caused Target to reverse its decision within days.

Fast-forward to Feb. 2021 when the news broke that Amazon had quietly stopped selling another important book critical of “trans”-cultism, this one by Ryan T. Anderson and titled When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, which Amazon had been selling for three years.

Anderson, founding editor of Public Discourse and president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a political philosopher with degrees from Princeton and Notre Dame. Like Schrier, he is also faultlessly civil and winsome. No forewarning to Anderson and no justification from Amazon representatives when queried about Amazon’s book ban.

Amazon has some peculiar and opaque standards for determining which books won’t be sold on its platform. Customers can buy Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf, all sorts of homosexual porn, and the book Let Harry Become Sally: Responding to the Anti-Transgender Moment.

Within days of Amazon’s de facto book-banning, Target decided the time was ripe to once again remove Schrier’s book from their rainbow-hued shelves. The sanctimonious, judgmental Target execs refuse to profit from a critique of the “trans” cult that is profiting so handsomely from the confusion, sterilization, and mutilation of children and teens. No siree, those Target execs have standards to uphold—standards that look like a canary-yellow stripe running down their spineless backs. After all, men in dresses can be very scary.

In a December 2020 article titled “Leftists See Orwell’s Novel 1984 As a Blueprint for Progress,” I wrote this:

One of the many remarkable aspects of this time in America is that all the forces of oppression about which George Orwell warned in his novel 1984 are present and growing, and many of the oppressors can’t see it. Ironically, many of the oppressors view themselves as paragons of virtue when, in reality, they’re paragons of virtue-signaling, which constitutes a performative cloak of invisibility that conceals their totalitarianism.

Apparently, leftists read both 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 as blueprints for “progress.”

Some doctrinaire libertarians argue that private businesses should be absolutely free to make any business decision they choose, including choosing to ban tweets, posts, social media platforms, news programs, or books. But such thinking is flawed in an age when the public square is the Internet and gargantuan communication and sales monopolies are controlled by the Hive.

If conservatives cannot disseminate ideas and cannot earn a living if they express ideas the Hive hates, then our first freedoms to speak and exercise our religion freely do not, in reality, exist.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/audioLeftist-Hive-Mind-Banning-Ideas.mp3

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As I have long argued, the greatest threat posed to our First Amendment assembly, speech, and religious free exercise protections comes from the homosexual community and the “trans” cult. Already state laws and judicial decisions have been eroding those protections, and last Thursday, the most dangerous threat yet emerged in Congress when U.S. Representative David Cicilline (D-RI) re-introduced the deceitfully titled “Equality Act,” which explicitly neuters religious protections when religious beliefs conflict with disordered sexual desires.

The Equality Act (H.R. 5) would add “sexual orientation” (i.e., homosexuality) and “gender identity” (i.e., cross-sex impersonation) to the current list of bases on which discrimination is prohibited in the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Doing so is a means of abrogating 1. the right of free people to express moral judgments about volitional acts, 2. the right of people of faith to exercise their religion freely with regard to beliefs on sexuality, and 3. the right to recognize the scientific reality of sex differences in those places where sex differences matter most.

When leftists say that the Equality Act will protect “LGBTQ” persons from discrimination, they mean the Equality Act will prohibit conservative people from making decisions in accordance with their beliefs—including religious beliefs—about marriage, volitional sexual acts, and cross-sex impersonation. In other words, if the Equality Act passes, a new protected class based on or constituted by disordered subjective sexual feelings will be created and our first freedom will be abrogated.

The Equality Act, which has 223 co-sponsors—all Democrats—is supposed to be voted on this week after which it will move to the U.S. Senate. President Biden is urging Congress to pass it with all due haste, so he—the self-identifying Catholic—can sign into law the bill that will undermine religious protections for Catholics and Protestants.

The Equality Act makes clear the sweeping nature of the cultural changes leftists seek to impose via federal legislation.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer … people commonly experience discrimination in securing access to public accommodations—including … senior centers … health care facilities, shelters …  youth service providers including adoption and foster care providers. … Forms of discrimination include the exclusion and denial of entry, unequal or unfair treatment. … (with respect to gender identity) an individual shall not be denied access to a shared facility, including a restroom, a locker room, and a dressing room, that is in accordance with the individual’s gender identity.

If this legislation passes, no senior center, health care facility, shelter, or adoption agency that partners with the federal government or receives federal money will be permitted to treat biological men who pretend to be women as men.

Shelters, senior centers, and hospitals with sex-segregated restrooms, showers, or sleeping quarters will be forced to sexually integrate those private spaces.

Catholic hospitals will be forced to perform surgical mutilations on men and women who seek to pass as the sex they are not.

Christian adoption and foster care providers will be forced to place infants, children, and teens in the homes of homosexuals and cross-sex impersonators.

Teachers in government schools will be forced to facilitate delusional “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices. Administrators, faculty, and staff will be required by law to use incorrect pronouns, which constitutes bearing false witness. And locker room supervisors will be forced to oversee students of the opposite sex undressing.

The Equality Act poses some as of yet unacknowledged ideological and pragmatic problems for Democrats. For example, on the same day Cicilline reintroduced the Equality Act, U.S. Representative Grace Meng (D-NY) reintroduced her bill that seeks to protect girls and women in refugee camp bathrooms. Meng explained,

Refugee camps should be safe havens for those who have been forced to flee their countries and that includes secure facilities for restrooms. … But unfortunately, many bathrooms in refugee camps do not provide appropriate safety protections. Many refugee camps lack adequate access to such facilities and often times the restrooms are mixed-sex, public, and without locks. … These conditions create a lack of privacy and dignity and make women and girls afraid to use the restrooms, fearing that they may be assaulted and subjected to violence while using the bathroom. These types of conditions are unacceptable. Nobody should have their safety jeopardized in order care for their most basic hygiene needs. My bill would finally combat this problem. (emphasis added)

David Cicilline is a co-sponsor of Meng’s bill, which means that Cicilline is the co-sponsor of a bill that prohibits mixed-sex bathrooms in federal refugee camps and the sponsor of a bill that mandates mixed-sex bathrooms in all federally funded facilities.

Oh, what tangled webs …

The Equality Act also includes the following:

A single instance of discrimination may have more than one basis. For example, discrimination against a married same-sex couple could be based on the sex stereotype that marriage should only be between heterosexual couples, the sexual orientation of the two individuals in the couple, or both.

Leftists define the belief that marriage is the union of two people of opposite sexes as a discriminatory “sex stereotype,” and they want to legally prohibit every American from acting in accordance with that belief. Of course, the leftist opinion that the cross-cultural and historical understanding of marriage is a discriminatory sex stereotype is neither an objective fact nor true. It is an ideological assumption.

As an end run around the First Amendment’s religious protection, the anti-constitutional, anti-liberty, anti-Christian, perversity-supremacy law—misnamed the Equality Act—states,

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 … shall not provide a claim concerning, or a defense to a claim under, a covered title, or provide a basis for challenging the application or enforcement of a covered title.

Anticipating appeals to equality for people of faith, who are currently protected by both the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, the tyrants behind the Religious Bigotry Act Equality Act made sure that people of faith lose.

As I wrote two years ago,

The Equality Act would require that federal law recognize disordered subjective feelings and deviant behaviors as protected characteristics. Federal law would absurdly recognize homoeroticism and cross-sex masquerading as conditions that must be treated like race and biological sex, which are objective, 100 percent heritable conditions that are in all cases immutable, and carry no behavioral implications.

Once the law is enjoined to protect two groups based on their subjective sexual feelings and volitional sexual behaviors, we open a Pandora’s Box of evils that will inevitably result in conflicts between the new legal rights of those who embrace sexual deviance as “identity” and 1. the First Amendment rights of those who reject sexual deviance, 2. the moral right of businesses to require restrooms, locker rooms, and showers to correspond to biological sex, 3. the right of businesses to fire or refuse to hire a person who chooses to masquerade as the opposite sex, and 4. the right of public schools to fire or to refuse to hire a person who chooses to impersonate the opposite sex.

If the Equality Act passes, all it will take for other groups to have their sexual peccadillos deemed “sexual orientations,” is to organize and wait for the culture to do its dirty work.

Academia will jump aboard first, squawking in newly invented jargon and intellectual-ese about identity, authenticity, equity, tolerance, diversity, bigotry, hatred, and phobias.

Then the “arts,” will join in writing plays, novels, Hollywood scripts, and heartstring-pulling songs affirming all sorts of perverse sexual fetishes as authentic “identities.”

Next our polluted and politicized professional mental health and medical communities will manufacture “social science” studies to show how much happier polyamorists are when they are free to live in poly-pods without shaming judgments; and that brothers in love should be permitted to marry (after all, love is love); and that adults who identify as babies should be free to wear onesies to work in order to be their authentic selves, after which all of society will be  forced to ask our friends, neighbors, co-workers, and students what their preferred age is.

Christians will be legally prohibited from acting on their moral judgments about sexual perversion, and dissenters will be “othered,” cancelled, and shamed. Soon Christian-shaming will be the only shaming permitted in this brave new world where shame is unmoored from morality.

Americans are a tolerant and patient people, but their capacity for tolerating unjust oppression and suppression of their most fundamental rights is not unlimited. I suspect Pelosi, Schumer et al. realize that. I suspect they know that the radical anti-American, anti-liberty, anti-Constitution, anti-Christianity, Big Brother-esque agenda they have planned for Americans in the next four years may spark a rebellion. Hence the razor-topped wall surrounding the “people’s” house.

But, razor-topped barbed wire cannot keep standing a house divided against itself.

Take ACTION: (UPDATED) Click HERE to send a message to your U.S. Representative our U.S. Senators to urge him/her 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.” If you know the name of your local official, you can also call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask the operator to connect you with his/her office to leave a message.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/audioThe-Equality-Act-Will-Lay-Waste-to-This-Already-Divided-House_01.mp3

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

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

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

• Even businesses and politicians are using these tactics.

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

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

No compromise is possible for attackers of America’s culture

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cancel culture is how they silence our objections

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

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

The definition has interesting suggestions for using it in conversations:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Businesses get into the cancel culture action

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Politicians use cancel culture against their cultural opponents

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Make our politicians respect our Constitutional rights

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

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

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

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

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

Beating censorship through diversity and anonymity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continue transforming the world for Christ

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

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On July 23, 2020, conservative University of North Carolina professor, Townhall writer, and Christian, Mike Adams, was driven to suicide by the vile and relentless bullying of devotees of diversity and teachers of tolerance who fancy themselves “progressive.” They were aided and abetted by spineless Christians who failed to come alongside a brother in Christ because of his “sins” of violating leftist language rules.

Leftists and some Christians were especially peeved by a metaphor Adams employed to criticize oppressive pandemic commandments issued by North Carolina’s Democrat governor Roy Cooper.

On May 29th, Adams tweeted, “This evening I ate pizza and drank beer with six guys at a six seat table top. I almost felt like a free man who was not living in the slave state of North Carolina. Massa Cooper, let my people go.”

Which of the following metaphors is more offensive: Comparing a political leader who oppresses citizens with unjust orders to a slave master or comparing those with wealth who ignore the starvation of the poor to cannibals?

Is one acceptable speech and the other unacceptable? Are both acceptable? Neither?

Of course, the cannibal metaphor was employed by Jonathan Swift in his satirical essay “A Modest Proposal,” which we teach in public schools.

When Reverend Jesse Jackson referred to President Trump as a slave master and knee-takers as slaves, I can’t recall anyone on the left or right batting their exquisitely sensitive eyes. Are only blacks allowed to use slave metaphors, or does it depend wholly on whose ox is being gored with condemnation that determines whether metaphors should send adults to the fainting couch?

While their sanctimonious and empty proclamations of fealty to inclusivity, love, equality, tolerance, subjectivism, autonomy, freedom, and diversity echo systemically throughout American institutions, Leftists reveal their inky underbellies rotted with hypocrisy and depravity when they screech hater and hurl death wishes at those who dare to disagree with Big Brother, Critical Race Theory, or their anarchical sexuality ideology.

But it’s not just leftists, secularists, and atheists who faux-tie their own panties in a twist about bold language from conservatives. Even conservatives get the heebie-jeebies if Christians use bold language.

In a mostly moving tribute to his “close friend” Mike Adams, political pundit David French made sure to include that, although protected by the First Amendment, some of Adams’ writing was “acerbic,” “intemperate,” “insensitive,” “excessively provocative,” and “outright infuriating.” French further said, he “cringed at some,” of Adams’ comments and that “my friend could frustrate me. He could say things I disagreed with. He could say things that outraged me. He could be wrong.”

With “close friends” like French to write a tribute, who needs enemies.

New Testament professor and friend of Mike Adams, Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon, wrote about Adams’ sadness at the socially distancing of David French:

[W]hen [Mike] reached out to David by phone for help in his hour of greatest crisis in June 2020, he viewed David’s brush-off as due to the negative change in David in the Trump era. While he couldn’t be entirely surprised by David’s failure to help, there’s no question that it was a body blow to his gut. He twice initiated mention of David to me in mid-June and on July 1. I didn’t bring David French up as a topic of conversation. Mike did, unsolicited from me. …

Mike felt that David had abandoned him precisely because he didn’t share David’s NeverTrump stance and because of David’s heightened desire to distance himself from Mike’s tweets in order to preserve his (David’s) reputation with people on the Left. …

I would never say that David French single-handedly killed Mike Adams. … David was simply the most painful among many acts of silence and detachment toward Mike by Christian “elites” and “friends” at his end. The primary blame belongs with the vicious Left.

Every Christian on the frontlines of the culture war has experienced the voluntary social distancing of brothers and sisters in Christ who don’t want to be tainted by friendship with cultural lepers. We all know the experience of having friends or colleagues either secretly whisper their thanks for our work, or avoid us entirely, or turn against us. There’s no skin in the game for many Christians when the game gets rough. Instead of marching into battle accoutered with the armor of God, they scuttle into their safe havens accoutered with protective platitudes acceptable to God’s enemies.

Oddly, I’ve seen very little criticism of Andrew Klavan—another Christian who uses satire brilliantly and effectively to mock stupid and evil ideas that deserve mockery. For example, assuming the voice of a presumptuous Hollywood celebrity, Klavan recently wrote,

I take responsibility for being a fatuous, virtue-signaling, useless, celebrity knucklehead. Which is a much better life than yours by the way. For which I take complete responsibility… and then run away before you realize I haven’t done a damn thing for you and your life still sucks.

Before reading Klavan’s satires, all those legions of PC Christians holed up in their bunkers hoping no unbelieving colleague learns they disapprove of homosexuality better stock up on smelling salts.

Not quite a year ago, I wrote an article about the superintendent of a large Illinois high school district who sexually integrated all locker rooms in the five-school district—a decision so wicked that all Christians should have felt enraged.

He was aided and abetted by wealthy Hollywood Matrix director “Lana” Wachowski—a man who pretends to be a woman—homosexuals from outside the district, and a school board member with a vile sexuality podcast for children. In strong language, I wrote about this evil action and the vipers who promoted it.

In response, I received an email from a conservative Christian who identified herself as the “dean of rhetoric” in a “Christian co-school.” She chastised my “language and tone,” saying that she found them “disturbing.” She criticized the “vitriol and loaded language … name calling and hyperbole” and “uncharitable language,” saying it “would never be tolerated” in her rhetoric classes, that she was “disappointed to read” such language, and that she found my “writing style offensive.”

So, a Christian is teaching children that the use of biblical language and tone are sinful even when describing egregious sin.

I asked if she had ever sent an email with as much passion and strong language as the one she sent to me to any of the many political leaders, public school teachers, administrators, or heretical “Christian” leaders who promote sexual deviance to children. No response.

“Progressives” use the phrase “my truth” a lot—a phrase that Boston College philosophy professor Dr. Peter Kreeft describes as both oxymoronic and moronic. Much of what “progressives” affirm as “their truth,” seems to be sexual desires that originate in their dark bellies—or what in The Abolition of Man, C.S. Lewis calls the seat of mere animal appetites.

Lewis argues that to protect against domination by our imperious appetites, human emotions must be properly trained:

Without the aid of trained emotions, the intellect is powerless against the animal organism…. The little human animal will not at first have the right responses. It must be trained to feel pleasure, liking, disgust, and hatred at those things which really are pleasant, likeable, disgusting and hateful.

Do tell, Christian brothers and sisters who favor warm milquetoasty language at all times, how do we train human animals of all sizes to feel disgust and hatred of those things which really are disgusting and hateful while using only warm milquetoasty language?

Lewis continues, describing what education should do:

Until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it—believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive, but could merit, our approval or disapproval, our reverence or our contempt. … Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.

Yes, there are things—desires, ideas, images, words, and acts—for which we should properly feel hatred. The prophet Amos said, “Hate evil, and love good.” In Romans, Paul teaches us “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good.” For love to be genuine or true, we must abhor what is evil.

Children must be taught to feel love for the good and feel hatred for that which is evil, which is wholly different from hating people. True love requires first knowing what is true and good. Affirming in and to people that which God detests is not love; affirming in and to people that which God detests is detestable.

“Progressives” understand that the emotions must be trained, which is why they use the arts—especially our myth-making machine, Hollywood, and government schools to shape the hearts of America’s children. Tragically, since “progressives” don’t know truth, they’re training America’s children to love evil and hate good.

In our public schools, interactions with friends, and Facebook posts, we have at our disposal many tools for training emotions, among which are rhetorical tools. The Bible warns that the tongue “is a restless evil, full of deadly poison,” and that “Kind words are like honey—sweet to the soul and healthy for the body.” But such verses do not and cannot possibly mean Christians must never use strong language or sarcasm. We know that because the Bible includes numerous examples of the use of strong language and mockery.

Amos called women fat “cows” and warned that God would take them away by harpoons or fishhooks. Imagine how today’s evanjellyfishes would feel if a Christian were to use that biblical language.

Paul wrote this to Titus: “As one of their own prophets has said, ‘Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.’ This testimony is true.” In other words, Paul called Cretans liars, evil beasts, and lazy gluttons.

Jesus said,

“You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! … You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.”

“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?”

Paul said this about sinners,

There is none who does good, no, not one.”
“Their throat is an open tomb;
With their tongues they have practiced deceit”;
“The poison of asps is under their lips”

In Revelation, those who are not saved are called “dogs.”

Peter describes false teachers—of which we have many in the church today—as “irrational animals … born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matters of which they are ignorant. … They are blots and blemishes. … Accursed children!”

Paul calls the Galatians, “foolish Galatians.”

John the Baptist called the multitudes a “brood of vipers.”

If the dean of rhetoric of the Christian co-school thinks calling a top school leader who sexually integrates the locker rooms of 12,000 minor children “depraved” undermines our witness—as she claimed I did—then logically she must think John the Baptist undermined his witness by calling the multitudes a brood of vipers.

Theologian and pastor Doug Wilson makes clear that the Bible does not mandate the kind of saccharine language that corrupts evangelicalism or prohibit bold, bracing, condemnatory language from which many evangelicals flee:

Evangelical Christians are very sweet people and there’s an upside to that. … But they’re so sweet they can’t be friends with diabetics. And what happens is, if you respond to the prevailing ungodliness with a response that’s tart, or serrated, or pungent, or satiric, you will have more than a few Christians taking you aside saying, “Hey brother, you probably don’t want to talk to them that way. … Would Jesus have responded that way?” And when you reply, “Well, yes, he would have. And here’s how he did it in Matthew 23 where he disassembles the Pharisees.”

[Evangelical Christians] don’t have a category for that. They’re so used to having Christlikeness defined by their ecclesiastical culture instead of having Christlikeness defined by the Bible, it is astonishing for many Christians to discover that this kind of verbal polemical engagement is preeminently biblical. It’s a very common biblical way of expressing righteousness. … If you take the smarmy, sweetie, nice discourse that many Christians think is supposed to be the norm and drive it into the Bible, you can’t find examples of that anywhere.

American philosopher and Catholic, Dr. Edward Feser, shares Wilson’s disdain for the unbiblical and unhelpful contemporary perversion of the Christian obligation to love our neighbors:

Niceness. Well, it has its place. But the Christ who angrily overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, who taught a moral code more austere than that of the Pharisees, and who threatened unrepentant sinners with the fiery furnace, wailing, and gnashing of teeth, was not exactly “nice.”

Feser finds fault with the unbiblical notion that “even a great many churchmen seem to have bought into,” which is that “inoffensive ‘niceness’ is somehow the essence of the true Christian, or at least of any Christian worthy of the liberal’s respect.” He argues that in,

innumerable vapid sermons one hears about God’s love and acceptance and forgiveness, but never about divine judgment or the moral teachings to which modern people are most resistant—and which, precisely for that reason, they most need to hear expounded and defended.

Feser argues against church “teachings on sexual morality” that are delivered “half-apologetically, in vague and soft language, and in a manner hedged with endless qualifications”:

Such “niceness” is in no way a part of Christian morality. It is a distortion of the virtues of meekness (which is simply moderation in anger—as opposed to too much or too little anger), and friendliness (which is a matter of exhibiting the right degree of affability necessary for decent social order—as opposed to too little affability or too much).

Maybe, just maybe, if every theologically orthodox Christian spoke in biblical tones and language about the perversity and corruption that confront our children every day in their TV shows, picture books, and government schools, and defile our society there would be less of it, and maybe, just maybe Mike Adams would still be alive.

Listen to this article read by Laurie: 

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/How-May-Christians-Speak.mp3

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Twelve years ago when I was a member of the English Department at Deerfield High School on Chicago’s North Shore working full-time in the writing center, teachers Elliot Hurtig and Jeff Berger-White were teaching the repugnant play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, and Hurtig also taught the historically inaccurate Laramie Project, both plays of which espoused politically “progressive,” morally regressive views of homosexuality. Setting aside the egregious obscenity in Angels in America, I discussed with a purportedly Catholic writing center colleague the ethical problem of teachers presenting resources from only one side of the debate on this most controversial cultural issue. I made the case that in an educational environment, teachers have a pedagogical obligation to present resources from opposing voices as well. She responded that because she was absolutely sure opposing voices—that is, conservative voices—were wrong, they shouldn’t be allowed to be presented to students.

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Before the sexual revolution took root in America’s cultural institutions, there existed pervasive agreement—both explicit and tacit—about sexuality, marriage, children’s rights, and religious liberty. Sexual immorality of all forms existed but was appropriately stigmatized. Fornication; consensual adult incest; homosexuality (including pederasty and pedophilia); pornography; bestiality; stripping (i.e., exhibitionism) and its corollary, voyeurism; sadomasochism (now referred to positively as “kink”), and anything else the darkened minds of fallen humans can think of could be found but in the closet, on the fringes, and after dark. Now such forms of immorality are not merely out of the closet, in city and suburban centers, and in broad daylight but in our schools and even houses of worship.

We cannot trust our civic leaders, educators, and storytellers (novelists, essayists, playwrights, journalists etc.) to speak truth. And increasingly, pastors and priests who claim to be …

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With Hollywood, academia at all levels, the mainstream media, the arts community, professional medical and mental health organizations, and increasing numbers of heretical faith leaders in the tank for sexual deviance, the hubris of homosexual and “trans” activists grows.

Read more here…