Extreme sexualization and LGBTQ+ indoctrination of children at younger and younger ages in public schools is now ubiquitous nationwide—and it’s part of a much broader agenda that goes well beyond just encouraging confusion and promiscuity for its own sake.

The real goal is ultimately to destroy the nuclear family as the foundation of civilization, experts say. As Karl Marx and countless other totalitarians understood, the state will step in to fill the void left by the family unit. In short, sex-ed is aimed at undermining the very building blocks of society.

In the not-too-distant past, so-called sex-education for young children and normalizing gender confusion in tax-funded schools would have been unthinkable and even criminal.

Today, the most extreme forms of sex education imaginable—including encouraging young children to engage in fornication, sodomy, group sex, abortions, and even “sex-change” surgeries—is a reality in the United States and beyond.

If it were not for exceptions offered to school employees in state obscenity laws, it would still literally be a crime to give children much of the material being used in classrooms nationwide under the guise of “sex education.”

But the worst is yet to come. If the well-funded sex-education behemoth gets its way, sexualization of children in schools masquerading as “health” and “Comprehensive Sexuality Education” (CSE) will undermine the final restraints on unchecked government control over the individual.

Liberty, family, and civilization are all in the cross-hairs now. The stakes could not be higher.

What It Looks Like in School

Virtually all of the curricula being used to teach sex to children are deeply problematic to anyone with a shred of decency, modesty, or common sense.

In many states and districts, the sexualization starts as early as kindergarten, with children being introduced to homosexuality, gender fluidity, homosexual parenting, “anatomy” that includes graphic images of genitalia, and more. Oftentimes, the sexualization and LGBT material is mandated under state law.

One of the most frequently used resources in public schools across America that has been endorsed by state and local officials nationwide as “compliant” with state mandates is known as “Rights, Respect, Responsibility” (3Rs).

Created by sexual revolutionaries at Advocates for Youth, a partner of tax-funded abortion giant Planned Parenthood, the program has shocked parents from across the political spectrum—for good reason.

Starting as young as kindergarten or first and second grade, children learn (pdf) that girls can supposedly have male genitalia and vice-versa. This self-evidently fraudulent claim is emphasized over and over again throughout the child’s younger years, causing widespread confusion among impressionable youngsters.

When they become teens, the program teaches them about “pansexuality,” among other absurdities and perversions.

Throughout elementary school, children are exposed to obscene images that have been widely condemned as pornographic, including “cartoons” in books such as “It’s Perfectly Normal.” The book features cartoon images of naked children, sexual intercourse, children masturbating, and more.

Under 3Rs, by the time the children are around 11, they are taught how to seek out information about sex on the internet. The children are constantly taught to rely on Planned Parenthood for information and “services,” too.

Before becoming teens, they learn about “making changes in the world” through “LGBT advocacy.”

At around age 12, abortion is introduced as an “option” to deal with unwanted pregnancies. And by age 13, years before they reach the legal age of consent, the children are taught how to obtain various forms of contraception and birth control.

Gender Confusion

Throughout the curriculum, which is aligned with the National Sex Education Standards (pdf) developed by Advocates for Youth and other advocates of sexualizing children, young people are led to believe that they can choose their gender and that they may have been born in the wrong body.

Worse, they are taught how to act on it, putting them at risk of seeking out dangerous hormonal and surgical “treatments” with lifelong consequences. Studies show most children confused about their gender end up growing out of it by adulthood.

This indoctrination is despite the fact that the American College of Pediatricians (pdf) argues it’s “child abuse” for adults to try to convince children that a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal or healthy.

Another frequently used resource is “Teaching Tolerance” (now known as “Learning for Justice”) created by the far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

As part of promoting “tolerance” to children, the SPLC recommends the highly controversial book “10,000 Dresses” by Marcus Ewert for students in kindergarten through second grade.

Among other lessons, the book teaches the children, typically aged 5 through 8, to ignore their parents and impersonate the opposite sex if they feel they were born in the “wrong” body.

Numerous state education bureaucracies and officials have endorsed the extreme SPLC program despite the objections of parents.

Making matters worse, those officials sometimes act on it, too. From California to Florida, school districts are using “Gender Transition Plans” to help students start “transitioning” to a new gender, even without the consent of parents.

Public-school efforts to confuse children have been so successful that a 2017 UCLA study found more than one in four California children ages 12 through 17 are now “gender non-conforming.”

Even in ultra-conservative Utah, state prescription data show that the number of minor girls undergoing “gender transition” processes increased by about 10,000 percent from 2015 to 2020.

Dangerous Lies and Propaganda

While the creators of the 3Rs program claim it is “medically accurate” to comply with state law, that is objectively false.

On a worksheet for 7th graders purporting to outline the risks of various sex acts, for example, children ages 11 and 12 are taught “anal sex using a condom correctly” is a “low risk” activity.

In reality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found that they are only 60 to 70 percent effective in preventing HIV even with perfect and consistent use. The Food and Drug Administration has never approved condoms for anal sex.

In other words, children who believe the sex-ed lies being taught in government schools are at serious risk of becoming infected with deadly venereal diseases.

Similarly, consider Planned Parenthood’s “Healthy, Happy and Hot“ booklet (pdf), which tells youth infected with HIV that they do not have to inform their partners about their infection. In fact, the document even claims that laws requiring disclosure “violate the rights of people living with HIV.”

Another Planned Parenthood sex-ed document (pdf) recommends teaching children 10 and under that “sexual activity” can be part of “commercial sex work,” and that they have a “right” to “decide when to have sex.”

The same toolkit encourages teaching children under 10 about homosexuality, masturbation, gender fluidity, and more. It also teaches them that they have a “right” to abort their unborn child.

Planned Parenthood, funded by the American taxpayer, is one of the world’s largest peddlers of sex-ed resources. Its materials are used and promoted in government schools worldwide.

Incredibly, despite the group’s rhetoric about “choice,” women’s rights advocate Reggie Littlejohn has repeatedly exposed Planned Parenthood’s cooperation with the Chinese Communist Party’s forced abortions and other brutal population-control schemes.

The Last Taboos

The pervasive sexualization of children in public schools is now pushing the boundaries against one of the last taboos: pedophilia, pederasty, and adult sex with children.

Under California’s LGBT mandate for schools, the Brea Olinda Unified School District (BOUSD) was caught including ancient Greek men’s proclivity to have sexual relations with boys—considered child rape in every state in the union—as part of teaching children LGBT history.

When confronted by outraged mother Stephanie Yates of Informed Parents of California, BOUSD Assistant Superintendent of Curricula Kerrie Torres said the children were being taught about it “because we are talking about historical perspectives of how gender relations and different types of sexual orientations have existed in history.”

Yates, the mom, sounded incredulous. “So sex between a man and a boy is a sexual orientation?” she asked.

The assistant superintendent held her ground. “It’s something that occurred in history, and so this is really important for us to include,” Torres said.

Despite there being a video of the exchange, frantic “fact checkers” tried unsuccessfully to quell the outrage, bizarrely defending the lessons.

But the truth is there for all to see. Increasingly, public schools are working to normalize sexual relationships between adults and children.

The message throughout 12 years of sexualization and indoctrination in school in essentially all the sex-ed major programs is simple: If there’s “consent,” nothing else matters, anything goes, and there are no rules when it comes to sex.

This view flies in the face of the teachings of all the world’s major religions and civilizations for thousands of years. In fact, it’s practically unprecedented in human history, with the possible exception of what the Bible records in Sodom and Gomorrah.

Outside ‘Sex Ed’ and Intersection With Critical Race Theory

Even outside of sex-ed classes, where in some states parents can technically opt their children out, the extreme sexualization and perversion has reached epidemic levels.

In English classes, for instance, children are told to read abominable “books” that feature extremely graphic descriptions of sexual acts and sexual violence.

There is also an intersection between the radical sexualization and the Critical Race Theory indoctrination exposed in part 19 of this series.

One exercise with endless variations that has been deployed in government schools nationwide has children “deconstruct” their identities and examine their “power and privilege” based on their race, gender, and sexual identity.

As part of the scheme, children are taught that being “cisgendered” (not transgender) or “heterosexual” gives them power and privilege, along with being white, while being transgender or homosexual makes them oppressed.

In such an exercise forced on 7- and 8-year-old government-school victims in Silicon Valley, the children were offered an example to drive the point home: “a white, cisgender man, who is able-bodied, heterosexual, considered handsome and speaks English has more privilege than a Black transgender woman.”

Just like Marxists have divided populations for over a century, children are classified into “oppressor” or “oppressed” categories based on whatever fault lines the subversives can concoct—with “sexuality” and “gender” now a key part of the mix.

Global Problem

This is not just happening in America. The United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), exposed in an earlier part of this series, is at the forefront of the effort to sexualize children worldwide, and especially in the West.

Indeed, many of the most outrageous elements of America’s most frequently used “sex-education” programs are perfectly consistent with UNESCO’s 2018 “International technical guidance on sexuality education.”

Citing Planned Parenthood’s ideologically driven “research” and “evidence” more than 20 times, the UN sex-ed standards call teaching children about “sexual pleasure” before they hit 10.

Incredibly, by age 5, children are supposed to describe how “gender and biological sex” are supposedly “different.”

By age 9, the UN guidelines teach children about masturbation and call for children to “describe male and female responses to sexual stimulation.” Children should also “demonstrate respect for diverse practices related to sexuality” and “explain how someone’s gender identity may not match their biological sex” by 9, the standards say.

By 12, children are expected to believe that “non-penetrative sexual behaviors” are “pleasurable” and less likely to result in infection than normal sex. The UN’s “learning objectives” demand that 12-year-olds “support the right for everyone” to “express their sexual feelings.”

Critics have blasted this as “grooming” children.

The UN document even includes helpful tips for educators on how to handle outraged parents and religious leaders concerned about the indoctrination.

Of course, there’s a reason the UN sex-ed document calls for sexualization of children “from the beginning of formal schooling.”

As UN LGBT czar Vitit Muntarbhorn put it in a 2017 interview with an Argentinian newspaper, to change the mentality of the population in favor of new sexual norms, “it is so important to start working with young people, the younger the better.” (Emphasis added).

Real Agenda

The focus on sex and perversion is clearly and literally ubiquitous in government schools across America and beyond. But why?

This was not seen as even acceptable until very recently—much less necessary. In fact, prior to the grotesque pseudo-science of pervert Alfred Kinsey, it would have been considered a criminal offense to subject children to these obscenities.

Advocates of sexualizing children as early as possible typically frame their arguments in terms of reducing STDs and unwanted or teen pregnancies while pursuing nebulous notions of “health” and “reproductive freedom” or “reproductive justice.”

Despite the fact that the explosion in teen pregnancies and venereal disease coincided with the sexualization of children in school by sexual revolutionaries, the tax-funded behemoths behind the push pump out endless junk studies purporting to support their fraudulent claims.

But obviously, if children were not having sex outside of marriage, the problems that “sex education” purports to solve would virtually cease to exist.

In short, there’s a much darker agenda at work. The sex “educators” themselves barely bother to hide it anymore.

Consider SIECUS, the group that grew out of Kinsey’s perverted pseudo-science. While it was once known as the Sexual Information and Education Council of the United States, now it is just SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change. And indeed, “social change” is the goal—radical, horrifying “social change.”

As far back as 1979, the CDC admitted there was an ulterior motive. In a report headlined “An Analysis of U.S. Sex Education Programs and Evaluation Methods,” researchers revealed that the “goals” of sex education in American schools had become “much more ambitious” than parents realized. Those goals included “the changing of … attitudes and behaviors.”

The government has long understood the consequences of this. Late psychoanalyst Dr. Melvin Anchell, who worked on President Lyndon Johnson’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, warned that these sexual indoctrination programs targeting children cause “irreparable harm” to their victims—damage that lasts their entire lives.

Among other dangers, Anchell identified severe damage to children’s future marriages, families, relationships, and lives. In some cases, it can even contribute to psychopathy, suicide, and mass murder, he warned.

Long before that, communist revolutionaries sought to demonize marriage and obliterate the family, too, producing unprecedented disaster. Consider, for example, the horrifying experience of Soviet Russia in the decade after the Bolshevik Revolution.

Sexual revolutionaries in the West have understood this for over a century, too. Atheist “psychiatrist” Dr. Wilhelm Reich, a self-styled “Freudo-Marxist” who was a Communist Party member and an associate of sex fanatic Sigmund Freud, saw what he first termed the “sexual revolution” not as an end in-and-of itself.

Instead, Reich saw it as a means to obliterate the family, and thereby facilitate the destruction of religious values. Ultimately, the hope was to achieve the breakdown of Western civilization by destroying the familial transmission belt by which values are passed on from one generation to the next.

The goal: allow Marxism to truly take root on the blank canvas created by the destruction of the old order.

To that end, Reich strongly encouraged “sex education” in school to “divest parents of their moral authority.”

As the family and the church are weakened through the unleashing of sexual anarchy via “sex education,” the government steps in and takes over in the roles formerly reserved for those two divinely ordained institutions.

The World in the Cross-hairs

Sharon Slater, president of Family Watch International and co-chair of the national Protect Child Health Coalition, told The Epoch Times that the goal is eventually to get the world onboard with this new value system.

“If they can raise up a generation indoctrinated in their harmful abortion rights, promiscuity rights, and radical transgender ideology, they will have indoctrinated the future leaders of the world,” she said.

“In fact, CSE is the number one tool of the abortion rights and LGBT rights lobby to promote their agendas worldwide by shaping the views of youth,” added Slater, who works to counter the agenda at the UN.

One of the most important tools created by her organization is a documentary called “The War on Children: The Comprehensive Sexuality Education Agenda.” It shines a light on the horrors being forced on children.

“CSE is a dangerous worldwide agenda intended to sexualize children at the youngest ages,” she explained. “I couldn’t sleep at night knowing what I knew and knowing most parents had no idea their children were being taught such harmful things.”

Sex Educators Sound the Alarm

Even former sex-ed teachers have blown the whistle on the subversive agenda behind sex ed. Monica Cline, for instance, spent a decade working as a comprehensive sex educator with Planned Parenthood before defecting and starting an organization dedicated to countering that.

“A big piece of this, which for some people, it’s something I think [is] hard for them to understand, is that there is a huge movement through socialism that really wants to do away with the nuclear family,” she explained to The Daily Signal, noting that abolishing private property is also part of the agenda.

“Sex education is a big piece of that, because when you teach children to dehumanize themselves, to take intimacy and family and marriage out of sex, even to the point of killing your own children through abortion, you are essentially killing the family,” Cline continued. “You’re destroying the family.”

Encouraging people to “read any curriculum” being used in sex-ed programs to see the tactics and graphic nature of the material, Cline noted that parents are always cut out of the picture when it comes to sex education.

“They want the children dependent on the government, or on public health, whatever it may be, but they do not want the children to be depending on the parent anymore,” she said. “And so, all of this really is to break down the family. And they’re essentially … we’re watching it happen.”

Disintegration of Family, Sterility, Slavery

In extended comments to The Epoch Times, Kimberly Ells, author of “The Invincible Family” and a longtime researcher and activist against the global sexualization of children, warned that the radical CSE programs have dangerous objectives that must be resisted.

“He who wins the youth wins the future,” she explained, echoing a common axiom. “So if government schools shape children’s views on sex, gender and family formation—and if those views reject the family as the core of civilization—then the core of civilization is up for grabs, and the government intends to grab it.”

Among other concerns, Ells warned that these programs are undermining parental authority, family values, and even family formation by encouraging children to reject their parents’ teachings and view sex as merely a pleasurable “right,” rather than part of a stable marriage.

The results of undermining family and marriage were predictable: over 40 percent of American children are now born out of wedlock (pdf), with almost one in four American children now living in a single-parent household.

The consequences of this family disintegration are horrific—and the problem is getting worse. But even beyond the crime, dependence, and poverty is the danger of tyranny stepping in to fill the void left by parents and families.

“Children who become slaves to the sexual appetites of their bodies early are more likely to become slaves in other areas of their lives,” added Ells, who has spoken at the UN.

Teaching children to reject biological sex as a relevant characteristic of one’s identity is even more nefarious. “At its core, this two-pronged ideology rejects the biological family—based on physiologically oppositional sex—as the fundamental unit of society,” she said.

“The T in LGBT is by far the most problematic,” Ells warned. “Same-sex marriage annihilates the idea that men and women are complementary. But transgenderism annihilates the idea that men and women inherently exist at all.”

Already, she said, legal movements around transgenderism are setting the stage for the “marginalization” of mothers, fathers, and families by law.

“When parents’ ties to their children are obscured or weakened it creates an environment hospitable to government intervention and socialist-communist revolution,” Ells continued. “That is why Marx’s Communist Manifesto openly called for the ‘abolition of the family.’”

“Dethroning the family creates a void that can and must be filled—though it is impossible to adequately fill it,” she said. “If we are to avoid the disembowelment of the family and the domination of the state that follows its disembowelment, we must resist efforts to cancel biological sex.”

Ells called on parents and policymakers to resist the erasing of male and female and end funding for UN agencies peddling the dangerous agenda. She also urged the removal of “sexual rights” advocates such as Planned Parenthood from schools and an end to CSE programming at all levels.

Protecting Children

Governments and school boards all across America have failed in their duty to protect children from the ubiquitous evils that now pervade the so-called “public education” system masquerading as “health” and “tolerance.”

In an earlier part of this series, the gut-wrenching history of this abusive sexualization of children in school was exposed featuring extensive interviews with Dr. Judith Reisman, who recently passed away. It literally goes back to perverts who sexually molested large numbers of children under the guise of “science.”

Americans are now confronted with a tax-funded monster that threatens not just the innocence of their children, but their liberties, families, and even the very future of their civilization.

Obviously, government at all levels has failed to protect children from the dangerous agenda they themselves unleashed. That leaves parents as the last barrier.

If the grotesque sex-ed extremism destroying America and her youth is going to be stopped, it will be up to loving moms and dads to lead the fight.

This article as originally published by The Epoch Times, and is one report in a series of articles examining the origins of government education in the United States.

More information:

Reasons to Exit Illinois Government Schools

Illinois School Proficiency FAILURE

Did You Know?

How to Rescue Our Children

“Comprehensive” Sex Education

For Parents, Grandparents and Church Leaders

Overcoming Objections

Schools across America are “weaponizing whiteness,” according to the scandal-plagued Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). To combat this alleged problem, teachers must let children run classrooms while indoctrinating them into hating the very foundations of the United States and viewing everything through the lens of “race,”  explained the far-left hate group.

Infamous for its grotesque bigotry against people of faith and even for inspiring a Christian-hating terrorist to attempt mass murder, the SPLC offers a range of materials to “educators” through its “Teaching Tolerance” program — a program that praised communist terrorist Bill Ayers as a role model for educators. Its latest initiative to further weaponize government schools by promoting “Critical Race Theory” is now drawing nationwide scrutiny.

It begins with a lie. “Weaponizing whiteness happens in schools every day,” reads a report about the supposed problem in the latest issue of the SPLC’s “Teaching Tolerance” magazine, which also works to promote homosexuality, transgenderism, hatred against Christians, and other controversial ideas in government schools. It is a bold claim from the SPLC. However, it is supported by zero credible evidence, as the piece itself shows.

The first actual example provided of this alleged “weaponization” of “whiteness” supposedly happening in schools is offered by “humanities” teacher Charles McGeehan, a guilt-ridden white man who founded an outfit (that seems to be mostly a Facebook page with 678 likes) called “Building Anti-Racist White Educators” (BARWE). Yes, seriously.

His oh-so-horrifying example of this alleged scourge is that “minor issues — like a student coming to class late or cutting class—end up spiraling into more serious disciplinary issues that can have dire consequences for students.” Yes, seriously: Consequences for tardiness or cutting class is the very first example of this ubiquitous plague said to be afflicting children all across America.

Simply being a teacher and doing what teachers are hired to do — exercise authority in the classroom while teaching children — makes McGeehan feel guilty over his racism. “I have to actively resist the urge to maintain power or control in my classroom, and especially to resist the anger that can bubble up in me when that control is called into question,” he told the SPLC.

The second example of this alleged “weaponization” of “whiteness,” even more ludicrous than the first, comes from a 2016 “study” using “eye-tracking technology.” According to the “study,” teachers — especially black teachers — were supposedly 8 percent more likely to look at black boys than white boys when looking for indications of “challenging behavior” in the classroom. Ironically, the same study found teachers were also more likely to look at white girls than black girls.

And yet, despite the almost comical nature of the easily discredited “findings” and conclusions, the fake media and the SPLC trumpeted this “study” as proof that teachers are somehow systemically racist against black children. Apparently, black educators supposedly being harsher on black children is also evidence of white supremacy and weaponizing whiteness.

Of course, there is a far simpler explanation than systemic racism and “implicit bias” for the findings. The number of black boys coming from single-parent homes is significantly higher than the number of white children, and every study that has looked at the issue shows children without fathers at home are far more likely to get in trouble. The same argument applies to the SPLC’s claim that black children are more likely to be referred to law-enforcement.

Incredibly, disciplining children without regard to race and even exasperated teachers crying in the classroom are offered as additional examples of the supposed weaponization of whiteness. Yes, seriously. Indeed, when a female teacher requests support from law-enforcement to deal with an out-of-control child, this is tantamount to “recreating the dynamics that were used as excuses for racial terror,” SPLC propagandist Coshandra Dillard claims in the fall 2020 issue of Teaching Tolerance.

Even teachers denying their racism and “weaponization of whiteness,” or insisting that they did not mean any harm, is inflicting “further damage” on children, according to the SPLC. Yes, seriously: If teachers refuse to confess their alleged guilt and collective sin stemming from their lack of sufficient melanin in their skin, they are somehow hurting children. Welcome to the absurd world of the SPLC and its allies in government “education.”

Ironically, studies show the sort of “diversity” indoctrination being advocated by the SPLC and other race-mongers actually makes people more racist. As the Harvard Business Review put it, “a number of studies suggest that it can activate bias or spark a backlash.” Of course, the SPLC and the race-mongers know this. But since they thrive on fomenting racism and hate to bring in money, it is no surprise to see them peddle quackery that encourages racism and hate.

The SPLC has a long and almost unbelievable history of absurdity. For instance, it was forced to pay millions of dollars after libeling a practicing Muslim as one of the world’s top “anti-Muslim extremists.” The group also smeared a top black law professor for supposedly enabling “white supremacy” by supporting border security. The SPLC even claimed a Cherokee Indian married to a direct descendant of Sacajawea as the “matriarch” of the “anti-Indian movement.”

Perhaps more alarming, the SPLC’s vicious hate-mongering even inspired homosexual terrorist Floyd Corkins to try to massacre employees of the Family Research Council for speaking against the LGBT agenda. Using the SPLC “hate map” as a guide, Corkins admitted to the FBI he was inspired by the SPLC and planned to rub Chik-Fil-A sandwiches in the faces of his victims after slaughtering them.

To normal people, the SPLC’s unhinged whining about the supposed “weaponization of whiteness” by school teachers probably sounds more like the rantings of a madman than a legitimate concern about a legitimate issue. However, despite the outlandishness of it all, the implications are deadly serious. The far-left group claims to reach over half a million educators, many of whom have also been conditioned by propaganda and substandard “education” into believing the absurdities of the Marxist ideology known as “Critical Race Theory.”

In addition to its widespread influence, the lies being peddled by the SPLC would lead to the collapse of the United States as a constitutional Republic guaranteeing God-given rights for all. For instance, in the SPLC rant on the “Weaponization of Whiteness in Schools,” the writer peddles the false notion that “anti-Blackness and white supremacy are baked into our country’s foundation.”

In reality, America’s Founders made a revolutionary claim that remains at the foundation of America: That all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. The argued that this was a self-evident truth. But if the false narrative pushed by the SPLC about the nation’s biblical foundations in liberty were to become widely accepted, it would literally lead to the crumbling of the America that sits on those foundations.

More importantly, the racist arguments made by the SPLC are preposterous from a Christian perspective — and the overwhelming majority of Americans (whose taxes pay for public schools) continue to describe themselves as Christian. While the Bible speaks of tribes, nations, and tongues, the God of the Bible never divides people by “race.” In fact, the Scriptures never even mention “race” in the same sense as modern-day race-mongers such as the SPLC.

We are committed to upholding truth while resisting and opposing the rising wave of delusional thinking and tyrannical laws/mandates that have afflicted our state and nation. IFI will continue to provide our supporters with timely alerts, video reports, podcasts, pastors’ breakfasts, special forums, worldview conferences, and thought-provoking commentaries—content that is increasingly hard to find.

We encourage you to join us in our efforts. Your support will help us to continue our vital work in 2021. A vigorous defense of biblical truth is needed more than ever in Illinois. #GivingTuesday

From the president on down, we’re seeing a welcome pushback against Marxist indoctrination in our colleges, government agencies, and even the military.

It had better happen soon, too, because in K-12 schools, hapless children are being subjected to the awful, anti-American 1619 Project and Black Lives Matter curricula. But at least there is movement at the top of the academic and government food chains.

In Maine, Republican state State Senator Lisa Keim has written a forceful letter to the University of Maine System board, objecting to University of Southern Maine President Glenn Cummings’ order for everyone on campus to “align” with Black Lives Matter.

After explaining that “racism, in any form, has no place in our state,” she lays out BLM’s radical agenda, which is “antithetical to many Americans’ political and religious views.” She quotes anti-police statements from BLM’s website such as: “law enforcement doesn’t protect or save our lives. They often threaten and take them.”

She adds, “These slurs are fueling hate and violence all over our country.”

BLM, which is openly Marxist and demonizes white people and America, calls for defunding the police and “disrupting the Western prescribed nuclear family structure.”

In Washington, U.S. Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos recently shocked the academic community by outing Princeton University’s embrace of BLM’s agenda.  She cited Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber’s open letter declaring Princeton full of “systemic racism.”

On Sept. 22, President Donald J. Trump let the other shoe drop by signing an executive order barring federal funds from contractors who employ Critical Race Theory in diversity training, including in the military, where unity and trust are paramount.

“It is difficult to imagine a more demoralizing course of instruction for officers who will soon lead soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines into combat,” writes Center for Military Readiness President Elaine Donnelley in The Federalist. “Unresolved accusations and suspicions of racism eviscerate mutual trust and team cohesion, two things essential for survival and mission accomplishment.”

Since 1971, the Defense Race Relations Institute has conducted racial sensitivity training. Among the materials were Robert Terry’s 1970 book “For Whites Only,” which “taught militant black separatist ideas to white audiences,” according to Capital Research Center filmmaker Joseph (Jake) Klein.

Other federal entities such as the FBI used the Southern Poverty Law Center as a source for materials and identification of “hate groups” until their far-Left agenda was exposed.  It took an SPLC-inspired gunman attempting mass murder at the Family Research Council in 2012 to alert people to the SPLC’s smear campaign against Christian groups that continues to this day.

Contempt for religion and family is a major part of BLM and the Left’s culture war on America, as explained by Maine State Senator Keim in her letter opposing BLM’s inroads.

“A family unit of one man married to one woman is not only a Western prescription for family; it’s a Biblical one,” she writes. “Therefore, mandating the University’s faculty, students and staff to subscribe to BLM’s political message arguably violates those individuals’ freedom of religion.” Spot on.

If America is going to rise beyond the current climate of Marxist race-baiting, it’s going to take more leaders like State Senator Keim and Russell Vought at all levels.  Plus, a president who gets it and keeps doing something about it.

This article was originally published at Townhall.com.
His website is roberthknight.com.

The theme for Illinois Family Institute’s recent fall banquet was boldness, and our theme verse highlights that quality: “The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are as bold as a lion” (Proverbs 28:1).

Boldness is exemplified by courage, confident strength, resolute purpose, and wisdom that expresses itself with measured words and actions.

For decades, Christian conservatives have tried the kinder, gentler approach with our adversaries. We’ve desperately tried to find common ground wherever and whenever we could. Yet time after time, especially in Springfield, that approach has failed.

Regressive politicians, activists, and many in the media don’t respect us, and they certainly don’t fear us. In fact, they often exploit our most cherished values, pervert them, and then throw them back in our face. And why are they able to do this? Because we have replaced boldness with cowardice and, as a result, they are emboldened to bully us, taking advantage of our good will.

We must understand that politics has become weaponized against us. The apostles of the world are relentless in the pursuit of their wicked goals. They are not above lying, cheating, defaming, and resorting to payoffs. Rhetorical, social, and political malfeasance is, in their view, a justifiable means to their destructive ends—especially when they know full well we will not reciprocate in kind.

Assuredly we will not sink to their level. We will not lie, cheat, or slander in our pursuit of good. But, we can and should abandon our posture of timidity and become more assertive—bolder—in exposing the disastrous consequences of their perverted policy proposals.

We must understand this is not merely an ideological fight between the right and the left or between conservatives and Leftists. This is a war between good and evil that has existed since the beginning of time. As Christians, we must gird ourselves as for battle. We must be prepared and willing to boldly engage in the public square.

Our opponents have three powerful allies on their side: academia, media, and the entertainment industry. They control the culture-shaping megaphones that relentlessly blare their body and soul-destroying messages into the hearts and minds of Americans, specifically targeting our impressionable children.

We cannot compete against this evil with fearful, self-serving silence. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul exhorts the recipients, and us, “be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power.” Similarly, the Psalmist reminds us, “be strong and take heart, all you who hope in the Lord.” Now is the time to toughen up and stop playing it safe; we must speak and act boldly, knowing that our mighty God stands with us!

Earlier this year we told you how regressive legislators and anti-life groups in Springfield have tried to intimidate IFI into silence regarding Illinois’ radical abortion expansion bill—legislation that we likened to the Jewish Holocaust. Their official joint resolution (HJR 55) is still pending a vote. It calls for our right to lobby at the Capitol to be revoked and for the Illinois State Police to investigate us for “hate speech.”

We will not be intimidated by these oppressive schemes.

Christians cannot surrender the public square to those who celebrate the extermination of more than 60+ million pre-born babies—human beings—whom liberals have deemed “unworthy of life.” Rather, we must boldly fight for what we believe, refusing to cower in fear or abandon the truth.

Another example came a couple of weeks after our annual banquet, when the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) attacked Rev. Franklin Graham for keynoting our event, claiming that we have a “history of anti-LGBTQ stances” that are “perhaps even more extreme than” Rev. Graham’s stance.

What the anti-Christian SPLC fails to understand is that our stance on sexual morality is the historical stance that has been held by orthodox Christians for more than two thousand years.

In an article posted on the IFI website, Laurie Higgins rightly points out:

“The Illinois Family Institute does not hate people. … We believe genuine love—as opposed to what passes for love today—entails seeking for others that which is true and good. Genuine love as demonstrated by Christ does not entail affirming all the feelings, beliefs, and volitional acts of others. Genuine love entails concern for both temporal and eternal lives.”

She continued:

We believe the assumptions espoused by both the homosexual and “trans” communities are harming individuals—especially children—and society. Schools are inculcating children with arguable assumptions that are presented as objective facts. The medical community is chemically sterilizing and surgically mutilating children. If these ideologies are false, then opposing them is the antithesis of hatred.

Believing an assumption is wrong, or believing a volitional sexual act is … immoral does not constitute hatred of persons who believe differently and act in accordance with their beliefs. Perhaps SPLC hatewatchers hate everyone who holds different beliefs and moral precepts than they do, but they ought not impute their habits of mind to others.

We at IFI, like many other people, are fully capable of loving those who believe differently and act in accordance with their beliefs—even false and destructive beliefs. And we will express our beliefs with the boldness and clarity that the sanctimonious deceivers at the SPLC express theirs.

In our effort to more effectively pursue good legislation and derail bad proposals, IFI would like to move from utilizing a part-time contract lobbyist to employing a full-time legislative director who will boldly stand as our ambassador for Christ and His Kingdom. But we need your prayers and financial support to make this goal a reality.

Love for our family and our neighbor motivates us. This is why IFI Team members work so hard to counter the lies of the secular culture. The lies of the left must be unmasked, and Christians in Illinois must be equipped to defend pro-life, pro-family truth in the public square. Together we can expose the deception of the sexual revolution, embolden pro-life advocacy, uphold parental rights (including school choice), and respect the rule of law and the U.S. Constitution.

It is vital that we expand our efforts to inform and equip the Christian community in Illinois with email alerts, video reports, podcasts, pastors’ breakfasts, special forums, worldview conferences, and cultural commentaries.

To realize this goal, we will need to significantly increase our marketing budget in order to maximize our presence on social media platforms and conservative and Christian radio stations.

This is where you can help us. We need these financial resources more now than ever to help us accomplish our mission to “boldly bring a biblical perspective to the public square” in Illinois. It is vital that we expand our pro-family efforts and push back against the destructive plans of the SPLC, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and all their regressive allies.

Please, help us reach our matching challenge goal of $70,000 by midnight tonight.  We are just about $5,000 short of this goal, and we believe that we can reach or even surpass that goal in the remaining hours we have today. You are vital to making this mission – and cultural impact – possible.

If we truly believe God’s gifts to mankind of self-government, religious liberty, freedom of conscience, and the right to freely advocate for morality are worth fighting for, then we must act boldly to preserve these gifts!

I hope you will answer the call to faithfully proclaim truth and refute the distorted and destructive messages of our opponents and their sycophant mouthpieces. There’s no time to wait – the deadline is midnight TONIGHT.

Your donation to IFI will enable us to implement our ministry goals and reach out to every county and legislative district in Illinois. We must further fortify those areas that support pro-life and pro-family legislation, as well as fight to breach the strongholds that threaten to annihilate any trace of morals, decency, and common sense in our state.

We are grateful for your generous support throughout 2019 and are excited to see what God will do through our partnership with you, for the benefit of all the citizens of Illinois and the Glory of His Name!

P.S. Please help us uphold, preserve and promote God’s plan for natural marriage and family, the sanctity of human life and religious freedom by investing in the work of Illinois Family Institute by helping us reach our matching challenge goal.

There may have been some optimistic naïfs somewhere in America hoping that the bipartisan condemnation of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for a host of ethical ills followed by  the “resignations” of Morris Dees, Mark Potok, and Heidi Beirich signaled the start of some major housecleaning—housecleaning that might have turned up some morals that had long been tucked away in its Alabama attic. No such luck.

First, some recent history:

IFI hosted our annual fall banquet on Friday, November 1. This year’s banquet speaker was Franklin Graham. Shortly thereafter, one of the SPLC’s Grand Inquisitors, Brett Barrouquere, contacted IFI in a then-suspected, now-confirmed effort to ferret out any sexuality heresy that Franklin Graham may have expressed. To be clear, I mean views that the SPLC deems heretical. The Inquisitors at the Society for the Persecution and Libeling of Christians seek nothing less than either exile or baptism in the pagan “LGB” and “T” religion of sexual anarchy.

Although no one expects the Southern Inquisition, I did suspect the faux-friendly questions in Barrouquere’s email were laying the groundwork for a smear of Franklin Graham, so I declined to answer them. Instead, since Inquisitor Barrouquere identifies as a muckraker, I quoted a short passage from The Pilgrim’s Progress, which is the source of the term “muckraker.” About all of this I wrote on November 12.

Then on November 13, the SPLC published the anticipated smear of Graham and IFI. Here’s part of what the Inquisitors (or as they refer to themselves portentously, the “Hatewatch Staff”) wrote:

Graham was guest speaker at the anti-LGBTQ hate group Illinois Family Institute’s annual fall banquet titled “Faith, Family and Freedom.” Graham’s remarks included his support of President Donald Trump and what he called the nation’s faltering state of morality. But his appearance at the Nov. 1 event outside Chicago links him to a group with a history of anti-LGBTQ stances perhaps even more extreme than his own.

The Illinois Family Institute is a state affiliate of anti-LGBTQ hate group American Family Association, though it operates independently.

Examples of the Illinois group’s statements about LGBTQ people include that homosexual behavior is “medically, emotionally and spiritually unhealthy.” In July, Laurie Higgins, a cultural affairs writer for the group, said that trans people are harming children, stating that the “ravenous, pro-‘trans’ behemoth smells the blood of children in our murky cultural waters and is hurtling toward them with blinding speed.” Higgins went on to say that “trans activists [are] in league with ‘many homosexuals’” and are “propagandizing, grooming, and mutilating children.”

While including links to the original sources for most of the quotes or facts in their article, for some odd reason, the Inquisitors omitted a link to my article from which they quoted. Could it be they were willing to sacrifice journalistic ethics to prevent their audience from reading the context for the quotes they cherry-picked?

In the service of transparency and sound reporting, click here to read the article to which the SPLC didn’t link, an article that details the seamy side of the “trans” cult’s assaults on childhood innocence that the Inquisitors didn’t want their audience to see.

Maybe the Inquisitors didn’t want their audience to read about the company TranZwear that makes an “extra-small” silicone penis and testicles called a “packer” for girls under five who wish they were boys. And maybe they didn’t want their audience to learn that handmade colorful underpants called “tuck buddies” that conceal the penises and testicles of boys ages 3-14 who wish they were girls can be bought on Etsy.

I sent the link to Inquisitor Barrouquere, so he could add it to the article. So far, he has not fixed his omission.

Once more for the obtuse, deluded, or deceitful:

The Illinois Family Institute does not hate people. IFI holds theologically orthodox, historical Christian views on volitional homosexual activity, marriage, and cross-sex identification. We also hold theologically orthodox views on love, which is inseparable from truth. We believe genuine love—as opposed to what passes for love today—entails seeking for others that which is true and good. Genuine love as demonstrated by Christ does not entail affirming all the feelings, beliefs, and volitional acts of others. Genuine love entails concern for both temporal and eternal lives.

We believe the assumptions espoused by both the homosexual and “trans” communities are harming individuals—especially children—and society. Schools are inculcating children with arguable assumptions that are presented as objective facts. The medical community is chemically sterilizing and surgically mutilating children. Scientists in the hard sciences fear personal and professional repercussions if they express the scientific fact that the human species is sexually dimorphic. The arts and academia suppress dissent from the “LGB” and “T” ideologies. And nothing poses as great a threat to First Amendment protections as those ideologies. Both ideologies depend on an utterly nonsensical comparison of skin color per se to subjective, internal sexual feelings per se, and no one is discussing the sandy foundation on which these ideologies are built.

If these ideologies are false, then opposing them is the antithesis of hatred. Believing an assumption is wrong, or believing a volitional sexual act is immoral does not constitute hatred of persons who believe differently and act in accordance with their beliefs. Perhaps SPLC hatewatchers hate everyone who holds different beliefs and moral precepts than they do, but they ought not impute their habits of mind to others. We at IFI, like many other people, are fully capable of loving those who believe differently and act in accordance with their beliefs—even false and destructive beliefs. And we will express our beliefs with the boldness and clarity that the sanctimonious deceivers at the SPLC express theirs.

Do theologically orthodox Christians still not realize what their silence is facilitating? Their silence is facilitating their own oppression and that of their children and grandchildren. The “LGB” and “T” dogmatists and their regressive allies seek to outlaw the expression of moral claims derived from Scripture that they detest—all in the deceitful names of compassion and inclusivity.

To those misguided Christians who hold the unbiblical belief that Christians are obliged never to say anything sassy, saucy, bold, or hated by those who propagate evil, IFI says this:

If you don’t like the way we address the egregious evil disseminated everywhere by God-haters—the evil ideas that are corrupting the hearts and minds of children, sterilizing and mutilating their bodies, and robbing them of mothers and fathers—then find another way to speak truth about evil. But don’t waste time trying to find the way that won’t enrage homosexual activists, “trans” cultists, and their legion of feckless water carriers. There is no such way. And remember, Christ didn’t promise Christians a cost-free life. He promised us a costly life that entails taking up our crosses daily and being hated by the world that first hated him.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/SPLC-Attack.mp3

IFI works diligently to serve the Christian community in Illinois with email alerts, video reports, pastors’ breakfasts, special forums, worldview conferences and cultural commentaries. We do not accept government funds nor do we run those aggravating popup ads to generate funds.  We depend solely on the support of readers like you.

If you appreciate the work and ministry of IFI, please consider a tax-deductible donation to sustain our endeavors.  It does make a difference.

On Friday Oct. 8, IFI received this strangely kind email from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) “investigative reporter” Brett Barrouquere (an email similar, I learned, to one sent to Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies, but more on that later):

Hi,

I’m a reporter with The Intelligence Project in Montgomery, Alabama. I hope this finds you well.

Currently, I’m assisting a colleague with a story about Franklin Graham speaking to IFI. Why did IFI choose him as a speaker? What did he tell the group? How was he received during his talk?

And, has Mr. Graham spoken to the group before? If so, when?

We are aiming to produce a story next week. Thank you for your time and assistance.

Sincerely,

Brett

I say “strangely kind” because IFI has been included on the SPLC’s “hate” groups list since 2008, one month after I began working for IFI. At the time, the SPLC had zero criteria for determining which groups or individuals constitute haters, a fact I pointed out in articles and to the unscrupulous, unpleasant Mark Potok and his equally unscrupulous, unpleasant henchperson Heidi Beirich, both of whom headed up the “Intelligence Project” that maligns conservative organizations as “hate groups.”

Both Potok and Beirich have “resigned” in the wake of widespread, bipartisan criticism of the SPLC’s profligate, unjustified labeling of conservative organizations as “hate” groups; the SPLC’s abandonment of its mission to combat racism; its greedy profiteering and fear-mongering; and accusations of sexual misconduct and racism leveled at disgraced and fired founder Morris Dees. You can read more about our history with the moral miscreants at the SPLC in my article “A True Story About the Southern Poverty Law Center.”

Upon receipt of this strangely kind email with strange questions about Franklin Graham, who just a week earlier was IFI’s keynote banquet speaker, I decided to find out a bit about Barrouquere. I discovered he omitted something from his job title. On the website Muck Rack, he identifies as “Investigative Reporter at SPLCenter and @hatewatch.”

The SPLC’s Hatewatch describes its mission as “Exposing hate groups and other extremists throughout the United States since 1981.” In the service of “exposing hate groups and other extremists,” Barrouquere contacted IFI to inquire about Franklin Graham. #Eyeroll

Barrouquere is profiled on the professional journalism website Muck Rack, which derives its name from the term muckrake. Theodore Roosevelt coined the term “muckrakers” to refer to journalists who investigate and expose corruption with the intent of reforming society. But the origin of the term muck-rake is older and more fitting of the SPLC’s dirty work. This is what I wrote to Barrouquere:

Dear Brett,

Surely you jest. You want IFI to help the ethically impoverished SPLC’s risibly named “Intelligence Project” produce what is likely yet another smear of a good person?

Muck-raker is a fitting description for those who do the dirty work of the SPLC. Here is the origin of the term “muck-raker” from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress:

“the Interpreter takes them apart again, and has them first into a room where was a man that could look no way but downwards, with a muck-rake in his hand. There stood also one over his head, with a celestial crown in his hand, and proffered to give him that crown for his muckrake; but the man did neither look up nor regard, but raked to himself the straws, the small sticks, and the dust of the floor…. his muck-rake doth show his worldly mind. And whereas thou seest him rather give heed to rake up straws and sticks, and the dust of the floor, than to do what he says that calls to him from above with the celestial crown in his hand; it is to show that heaven is but a fable to some, and that things here are counted the only things substantial. Now, whereas it was also showed thee that the man could look no way but downwards; it is to let thee know that earthly things, when they are with power upon men’s minds, quite carry their hearts away from God.”

Many don’t know that the SPLC also has a toxic “educational” arm called “Teaching Tolerance” whose de facto goal is to carry the hearts of other people’s children away from God:

Our mission is to help teachers and schools educate children and youth to be active participants in a diverse democracy.

Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators—teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners—who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities….

Our program emphasizes social justice and anti-bias. The anti-bias approach encourages children and young people to challenge prejudice and learn how to be agents of change in their own lives. Our Social Justice Standards show how anti-bias education works through the four domains of identity, diversity, justice and action.

Conservatives should no longer be duped by leftist jargon. Anytime the terms “educate,” “civil,” “inclusive,” “social justice,” “anti-bias,” “challenge prejudice,” “identity,” and “diversity,” appear, you know you’ve entered the Upside Down where the meanings of terms bear little resemblance to their true meanings:

1.) Educate=indoctrinate

2.) Civil=incivility toward conservatives, especially Christians

3.) Inclusive=affirm homosexuality and cross-sex identification, ostracize Christians

4.) Social justice=same as above

5.) Anti-bias=promote anti-Christian bias

6.) Challenge bias=same as above

7.) Identity=treat “progressive” beliefs about sexuality as unassailable moral precepts

8.) Diversity=race/skin color, sex, class, and deviant sexuality

The SPLC’s description of Teaching Tolerance omits mention of the chief goal of the SPLC: the eradication of theological orthodoxy from the public square.

Coincidentally, on National Review’s blog “The Corner,” Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) shared that he received a similar email from another “investigative reporter” with the SPLC at about the time IFI received ours. CIS is part of a lawsuit against the SPLC, which added CIS to its infamous “hate groups” list shortly after Trump’s election.

Krikorian’s email, which he hilariously describes as a “Howdy, Hater!” email, came from senior investigative reporter Michael Edison Hayden, who in late September tweeted out “I’m extremely excited about the team we are assembling @Hatewatch.”

Hayden begins with the kind of warm salutation—the “Howdy” part—one wouldn’t expect from someone who views you as a hater and scourge of society: “I hope you guys are having a good day. If you DC folks are a Nationals fan, congratulations.”

Then, Hayden got down to the nitty-gritty “Hater!” part:

Anyway, I wanted to ask you guys about some stuff I have on my plate here. Someone sent me a rather large volume of Stephen Miller’s emails from the run-up to the 2016 election. There are a lot of newsworthy things in these emails…. I know he gave a keynote for you in 2015, so obviously there is some degree of connection but I didn’t know how much.

Hayden went on to ask five questions about CIS’ involvement with Stephen Miller, Trump’s senior policy advisor, including asking about the degree of “closeness” between CIS and Miller, which is similar to the question Barrouquere asked IFI about Franklin Graham.

Krikorian, who, rather than responding to Hayden, forwarded his email to attorneys handling the lawsuit, noted the bizarre conclusion to Hayden’s email:

The e-mail ends, inscrutably, with “Warm regards”. But either you’re writing to the head of a “hate group” who thinks foreigners are “cockroaches” or you offer “warm regards”—it can’t really be both.

The SPLC has proven repeatedly for decades that it is incapable of intellectual consistency, honesty, or morality. The SPLC hasn’t changed its stripes.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/SPLC.mp3

IFI depends on the support of concerned-citizens like you. Donate now

-and, please-

File this story in your now-bulging “Don’t Say You Weren’t Warned” folder.

Just three weeks ago, on September 19, 2019, the U.S. House Ways and Means Oversight subcommittee—chaired by John Lewis (D-GA) and composed of 7 Democrats and 4 Republicans—held a hearing portentously titled, “HOW THE TAX CODE SUBSIDIZES HATE.” Since conservative beliefs on sexuality are deemed “hateful” by regressives, such a subcommittee hearing should raise the alarm antennas of conservatives and libertarians concerned about assaults on the First Amendment by “progressive” thought police who roam the halls of Congress and the nooks, crannies, and interstices of social media.

What should also trouble them is that 3 of the 7 Democrats specifically mentioned or alluded to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as their source for identifying “hate groups.” (Full, shameless, and cheerful disclosure: the Illinois Family Institute (IFI) has been erroneously listed on the scandal-pocked SPLC’s “hate groups” list since shortly after I began writing for IFI in 2008.) Less than two hours after the beginning of the hearing, the Oversight subcommittee tweeted this:

“[H]omosexuality is a poor and dangerous choice, and has been proven to lead to a litany of health hazards to not only the individuals but also society as a whole,” The American Family Association, Tax Exempt Hate Group.

The first of the five witnesses to testify was busy-beaver homosexual activist Brandon Wolf, a “nationally-recognized advocate for LGBTQ issues” and  “Central Florida Development Officer and Media Relations Manager” for Equality Florida who survived the horrific Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida and said this:

[I]f you are not using everything at your disposal to snuff hate out, then you’re simply not doing enough. The time is now for us to fight harder, lead more courageously, and use everything we have to put an end to this cancer that is ravaging our communities…. Rather than use every tool at our disposal to combat hatred, we have chosen to subsidize it, embolden it…. Inaction in the face of hatred has consequences, and it’s high time that this Congress do something to protect those of us in the line of fire.

Wolf was urging Congress to use the IRS as a weapon to mow down moral views about homosexuality he hates and was doing so by deceitfully exploiting a tragedy that evidence suggests had nothing to do with “anti-gay” sentiment.

Journalist, constitutional lawyer, and (homosexual) co-founder of The Intercept Glenn Greenwald and co-author Murtaza Hussain published an article 18 months ago examining in detail the evidence for Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen’s motives:

Mateen went to Pulse only after having scouted other venues that night that were wholly unrelated to the LGBT community, only to find that they were too defended by armed guards and police, and ultimately chose Pulse only after a generic Google search for “Orlando nightclubs” — not “gay clubs” — produced Pulse as the first search result.

Several journalists closely covering the Mateen investigation have, for some time now, noted the complete absence of any evidence suggesting that Mateen knew that Pulse was a gay club or that targeting the LGBT community was part of his motive. 

…

By repeatedly emphasizing this anti-gay motive, U.S. media reports had the effect, if not the intent, of obscuring what appears to have been Mateen’s overriding, arguably exclusive motive: a desire for retribution and deterrence toward U.S. violence in Muslim countries.

…

Despite this mountain of evidence that strongly negates the original media-disseminated themes about Mateen’s life and his likely motive in targeting Pulse, the early myths remain lodged in the public mind and even in contemporary news reports. In part that’s because much of the evidence has remained under seal, in part because subsequent media debunking received a tiny fraction of the attention of the early, aggressively hyped inflammatory theories, and in part because there has been no political advantage to challenging the politically moving and useful narrative that the attack on Pulse was a hate crime against gay people.

Does anyone really believe full-time homosexual activist Wolf is unaware of this evidence?

Fortunately, one of the Republican members present at the hearing was Illinois’ own Darin Lahood (R-Peoria) who challenged references to the anti-Christian hate group, the SPLC:

[T]he IRS should not be used as a political tool to discriminate against organizations that differ in viewpoints…. We cannot use political disagreement as a metric to define hate speech or a hate group. This type of labeling can and has led to violent acts. I know my colleague just referenced the Southern Poverty Law Center. In 2012, an armed man named Floyd Lee Corkins walked into the Family Research Council Washington headquarters with the intent to shoot and kill as many of its employees as possible. He was apprehended, but not before wounding the non-profit’s business manager. Mr. Corkins later told the FBI that he had seen the nonprofit group listed as an anti-gay hate group on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website.

Also testifying was UCLA law professor, the libertarian-esque Eugene Volokh who argued that with only very narrow exceptions, all speech is protected by the First Amendment:

The Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear that tax exemptions can’t be denied based on the viewpoint that a group communicates…. The Court has also made equally clear that excluding speech that manifests or promotes “hate” is forbidden viewpoint discrimination…. The law may treat groups differently based on their actions, but not based on the views they express…. Groups may be denied tax exemptions for deliberately engaging in speech that falls within one of the few narrow exceptions to the First Amendment, such as true threats of criminal attack, or incitement intended to and likely to cause imminent criminal conduct. But “hate speech” writ large doesn’t fall within any such exceptions.

Our First Amendment rights will not long stand against the sexual appetites of the deviant who run amok among us. Neither our constitutionally protected religious free exercise rights, nor our speech rights, nor our assembly rights will be protected now that they have been subordinated to subjective and disordered sexual desires. And neither will our intrinsic privacy rights remain protected. Cultural critics warned about the dangers posed to this once-great Republic by 1. allowing the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to Guinea-worm their way into anti-discrimination policies and laws, and 2. the Obergefelle U.S. Supreme Court decision, which has been interpreted as legalizing same-sex marriage everywhere in the United States. But conservatives largely dismissed such warnings out of either a failure to think deeply about the implications of these changes or cowardice or both.

Leftists are turning—not turning right—turning against the U.S. Constitution, and slowly they’re coming, step by step, straight for the First Amendment.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your U.S. Representative to ask him/her to reject the SPLC’s definition of “hate groups,” which includes conservative and faith-based groups, such as IFI and AFA. Traditional Judeo-Christian teaching about human sexuality is neither “hateful” nor “vile.” Ask them to stand up for the First Amendment and protect religious liberty and speech rights by rejecting this effort to penalize so-called “hate” speech.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Slowly-Leftists-Turn-Step-By-Step.mp3

IFI depends on the support of concerned-citizens like you. Donate now

-and, please-

Blockbuster news came out this week revealing that Twitter has cut ties with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) because of reports of controversial financial activity, leaders tainted by scandal, and–according to one source–a “toxic” work environment.

The news has rocked an organization whose stated purpose is to combat discrimination, intolerance, and groups that in the view of the SPLC, practice hatred towards others.  The organization reports such groups to the FBI and is often cited by the media.  Academics and others rely upon SPLC’s listings, which they in turn use to ostracize such groups.

Founded in 1971 and based in Montgomery, Alabama, the SPLC is no stranger to controversy.  The group has long been accused of targeting conservative and Christian organizations.  Ironically, the SPLC attacks groups such as the Alliance Defending Freedom and Jihad Watch, who themselves are fighting discrimination and racism.

Controversy has reached to the very top of the SPLC.  Morris Dees, the co-founder of the organization, was accused back in 1994 of discrimination against black employees, who according a local newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser, “felt threatened and banded together.”

In 2007, Stephen Bright, a former president of a sister organization, the Southern Center for Human Rights, accused Dees of being “a con man and fraud” who “has taken advantage of naive people–some of moderate or low incomes–who believe his pitches and give to his $175 million operation.”

Dees was fired this year after two dozen employees complained about mistreatment and sexual harassment.  One former employee claimed that Dees had “a reputation for hitting on young woman” and had caused a staff revolt over his behavior.

Liberty Counsel is coordinating with more than 60 conservative and Christian groups (including IFI) that are considering taking legal action against the SPLC–a number that continues to grow.  The coalition claims that the SPLC, while ostensibly fighting bias and hate groups, is guilty of engaging in the same discriminatory activity that it purports to disavow–actions which resulted in conservative/Christian groups being banned from social media platforms, thus rendering them less effectual.

Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, commented after Twitter disassociated itself from the SPLC: “The rest of the tech companies should follow Twitter’s lead and divorce from the SPLC. It appears to have taken a major implosion within the SPLC for others to finally see what organizations like Liberty Counsel have been saying all along.”

What we may be seeing is a revolution against enormously powerful organizations like the SPLC that for far too long have sought to blacklist groups that do not share their far-left ideology and for whom freedom of expression is a one-way street.

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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Illinois is morally, fiscally, and intellectually bankrupt, and you know what some lawmakers in swampy Springfield are doing with their time and taxpayers’ money? They’ve crafted a stunning resolution titled “Illinois Family Action-Hate Speech” (HJR 55) condemning Illinois Family Action (IFA) and Illinois Family Institute (IFI), falsely accusing us of bigotry and engaging in “hate speech” because in two articles we compared the abortion holocaust to the Nazi Holocaust.

The ten “progressive” sponsors of the resolution falsely accuse IFA of distributing “multiple anti-Semitic, homophobic, threatening, and hateful posts on their official social media page, callously belittling the most appalling tragedies of the Holocaust and recklessly comparing those who disagree with their extreme agenda to Nazis.”

Chicago attorney Joseph A. Morris, who is also a leader in B’nai B’rith and other Jewish and interfaith organizations, served from 1995 through 2001 as the President of B’nai B’rith in the Midwest, and was founder and first Chairman of the B’nai B’rith International Center for Public Policy, said this about the disputed analogy:

I’m Jewish, and not only am I not offended by the comparison between the German Nazi Party’s National Socialism and the U.S. Democratic Party’s Democratic Socialism but I think the comparison is accurate. Wise, principled, and humane Democrats should welcome having their attention arrested by the facts.

The bill’s sponsors filed this resolution just days after a crowd of 4,000 pro-life Illinoisans showed up in Springfield to urge their state senators and representatives to oppose the radical anti-life policies sponsored by these lawmakers and other “progressives”—an event singled out for criticism in the resolution.

Apparently, our anti-constitutionalists in Springfield have forgotten the First Amendment’s protection of speech, assembly, and the right to petition our government for redress of grievances, which is “the right to make a complaint to, or seek the assistance of, one’s government without fear of punishment or reprisals,”—you know, like hateful resolutions.

The resolution is a crock of unsubstantiated ad hominem attacks glued together with more unsubstantiated ad hominem attacks, innuendo, irrelevant red herrings, non sequiturs, and a risible reference to the ethically impoverished Southern Poverty Law Center—an actual hate group.

The central issue is not whether the Nazi Holocaust is an apt analogue for America’s feticidal holocaust. The central issue is whether humans in the womb are persons with intrinsic and infinite worth. If they are, the analogy does not belittle the extermination of Jews by Nazis. If humans in the womb are persons with intrinsic and infinite worth, calling their extermination “health care”—as the resolution’s sponsors do—is an appalling horror.

Since logic and evidence still matter to some Illinoisans—resolution-signatories excepted—let’s don our rhetorical hazmat suits and waders and trudge through the murky, fallacy-infested resolution.

Resolution’s false allegation of “anti-Semitism”

The posts to which they refer are presumably one by Teri Paulson titled “Why is Legalized Abortion Called a Holocaust” and one by this writer titled “Leftist Hysteria and Their Language Rules” in which there is not one sentence that is anti-Semitic or that “callously belittles” the appalling horrors of the Holocaust. None of the sponsors has explained how comparing the egregious horrors of the slaughter of 61,000,000 humans in the womb to the egregious slaughter of 6,000,000 Jews and others in the Nazi Holocaust constitutes a callous belittlement of the Holocaust.

Quite the contrary, comparing the feticidal holocaust to the Nazi Holocaust does the opposite. It amplifies and illuminates the horrors of both. No one who compares the feticidal holocaust to the Nazi Holocaust would make such a comparison if they did not view the extermination of Jews as an incomprehensible horror. Can the Springfield ten really not comprehend that?

When asked whether he finds the analogy offensive, Orthodox Jew David Blatt said,

No. How is it any different? It baffles me that my liberal co-religionists endorse abortion-on-demand given the legacy of the Shoah.

Will the gang of ten in Springfield condemn Mr. Blatt as an anti-Semite?

The analogy is not reckless, nor is it new. Those who object to it do so because they have concluded that the product of conception between two humans is not a human created in the image and likeness of God and endowed by his or her Creator with certain unalienable rights, chief among them the right not to be exterminated. IFA and IFI reject the ontological and moral assumptions of “progressives” on incipient human life.

We reject the worldview that asserts that women have a moral right to have their offspring killed. We reject the worldview that asserts that mentally or physically imperfect humans are less worthy of life than their mental or physical “superiors.” Perhaps those who are enraged at IFA/IFI can explain how the pro-feticide philosophy regarding “defective” humans in the womb differs from the Nazi principle of  “life unworthy of life”?

Perhaps the sponsors can explain exactly why the comparison of a society in which the government has granted to mothers the absolute legal right to have any or all of their children exterminated for any or no reason to a society in which the government exterminates citizens because of their race is so evil that making it—that is, the comparison—must not be permitted and anyone who does make it should be condemned by the government.

Resolution’s false allegations regarding hatred and “callous belittling”

If there is any callous belittling being done, it’s by “progressives” toward humans in the womb. If there are hateful words being expressed, it’s by “progressives” who shriek “hater” at anyone who dares to challenge their beliefs and actions with the same conviction, boldness, and tenacity that they demonstrate.

Resolution’s false allegation of “homophobia”

Once again for the obtuse and/or demagogic “progressives” among us: no matter how many times you charge conservatives with “homophobia,” criticism of volitional homosexual acts or relationships does not constitute fear or hatred (i.e., “homophobia) of those who identify as homosexual. IFA and IFI hold theologically orthodox views of marriage and homosexual acts and relationships—views that are shared by the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, and many Protestant denominations. We have a constitutional right to express those views without being harassed, intimidated, and bullied by Springfield “progressives.”

IFA and IFI even have a right to quote, recite, and post what St. Paul says about homosexuality:

Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

Resolution’s false allegation of IFA/IFI threats

There’s really nothing to say other than neither of the “posts” that inflamed the resolution’s sponsors or any other posts written for IFA/IFI include any threats. We unequivocally denounce the use of violence. If the resolution sponsors cannot provide evidence to support that pernicious claim, they owe IFA/IFI an apology (Weather reports say it’s still hot in hell, so…).

Resolution’s false allegation of bigotry

The term “bigot” refers to a person who is “obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices, especially one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.”

Clearly, there is a distinction between bigotry and moral views. Bigotry cannot simply refer to holding moral views, for if it did, everyone but sociopaths would have to be considered bigots because everyone but sociopaths holds certain behaviors as moral and others as immoral.

The word “obstinacy” in the definition of “bigot” warrants some discussion. First, “obstinate,” according to the American Heritage Dictionary, connotes “unreasonable rigidity.” I would argue that conservative views on, for example, homosexuality are completely reasonable, and that conversely, liberal views are woefully unreasonable.

In order to determine whether a tenaciously held conviction reflects obstinacy requires an evaluation of the content of the belief and the justifications for that belief. For example, few would characterize the act of tenaciously holding the belief that female genital mutilation is wrong to be a manifestation of obstinacy or bigotry.

Moreover, “obstinate” cannot be severed from the other parts of the definition. Bigotry is the obstinate devotion to uninformed inclinations, especially ones that result in hatred of members of a particular group.

The key phrase for distinguishing between bigotry and moral conscience is that a bigot’s opinions are “uninformed,” and the bigot “regards or treats the members of a group… with hatred and intolerance.” Certainly, there are those in society who demonstrate this kind of behavior, but true Christ-followers do not treat anyone with hatred.

I neither treat people who self-identify as homosexual with hatred or intolerance, nor do I feel any hatred for them. My beliefs about homosexual conduct in no way diminish the love I feel for those who self-identify as homosexual, the respect I have for their admirable qualities, the pleasure I take in their company, or the recognition I have of their infinite worth.

I would argue that the views of “progressives” on homosexuality are uninformed, while those of IFA/IFI employees are fully informed.

Tolerating, respecting, or loving people does not require affirming all their feelings, beliefs, or actions. Neither does it require withholding criticism of their beliefs or those actions impelled by their feelings and beliefs.

Resolution’s smelly red herring (or is it a non sequitur?)

The sponsors of the resolution dangle a big, fat, smelly red herring in front of Illinois lawmakers, apparently assuming they’re too foolish to tell the difference between relevant evidence and a big, fat, smelly red herring plumbed from the depths of the swamp where the sponsors live and move and have their being.

The sponsors cite as part of the justification for their resolution the 2004 murder of an unarmed Capitol guard by a  schizophrenic young man who had stopped taking his meds and was hearing “voices and thought members of an underground society in Eastern Europe were controlling him” at the time of the murder as part of the justification for the resolution falsely accusing IFI and IFA of “hate speech and threats.”

Say whaaat?

Let’s see if we can make sense of this: Fourteen years ago, a schizophrenic man who was off his meds murdered an unarmed Capitol guard, so there should be a “formal investigation” into IFA’s/IFI’s non-existent “hate speech and threats,” and our lobbyists’ credentials should be revoked pending the outcome of the investigation.

Nope, can’t do it. Still doesn’t make sense.

Resolution’s risible reference to the Southern Poverty Law Center

Now we come to the resolution sponsors’ appeal to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as some sort of arbiter of moral authority. Yes, that SPLC—the infamous “hate-group” tracker/real hate group—the one embroiled in yet another ethics scandal, the one that makes beaucoup bucks off “progressives” by labelling as “hate groups” any organization that holds theologically orthodox views of sexuality.

In contrast to the aforementioned wholly irrelevant Capitol shooting, the SPLC’s fake hate-groups list has been the actual cause of a shooting. In 2012, Floyd Corkins showed up at the offices of the theologically orthodox Family Research Council, intent on killing the staff. He shot and wounded a security guard who was able to stop him. Corkins said he was inspired to commit acts of violence by the SPLC’s hate-groups list.

Just wondering, does hurling epithets at IFA/IFI employees, falsely accusing them of issuing threats and of being anti-Semitic, homophobic, hateful, and bigoted constitute hate speech? Might it result in violence against us?

Conclusion

It’s a routinely issued diktat that one must never compare the Holocaust or Nazism to, well, anything. I respectfully disagree. Not all analogies that include Nazism, the Holocaust, or Hitler constitute reductio ad Hitlerum fallacies. Some analogies are, as Joseph Morris asserts, accurate.

If we’re permitted to revisit ideas as settled by science and commonsense as women don’t have penises or men can’t become pregnant, surely, we can revisit the arguable claim that there are no points of correspondence between the slaughter of humans in the womb and the Holocaust. And if there are points of correspondence, then surely we can revisit the unwritten law of “progressives” that no one may point them out.

Maybe, just maybe, “progressives” want to censor the comparison of the feticidal holocaust to the Nazi Holocaust because they fear it’s true. What if God wants us to see the abortion holocaust as analogous to the Nazi Holocaust? What if it’s Satan who wants to blind our eyes to the similarities and silence our tongues from identifying them? What if those lawmakers and citizens who react in anger (or tactical faux-anger) are doing the bidding of the father of lies? And what if  conservatives who buckle when “progressives” hurl epithets at them are “now seeking the approval of man” rather than that of God?”

Joliet Diocese Bishop Daniel Conlon requested that all churches in the diocese play a recorded message from him in which he said in part,

The state of Illinois is currently facing a crisis far greater than anything economic. It is truly a matter of life and death. Legislation is being considered in the Illinois General Assembly that would permit abortion anytime during pregnancy; right up to the moment of natural birth all nine months…. I need your help in convincing our elected officials that this proposed legislation is just plain wrong…. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a courageous critic of Nazism wrote, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak, is to speak.”

In the eyes of “progressives” in Springfield, is Bishop Conlon guilty of anti-Semitism and callous belittlement of the appalling tragedies of the Holocaust for his implied comparison of the abortion holocaust to the Holocaust? Will they add his name to the resolution condemning “hate speech”?

This unsubstantiated, malignant resolution constitutes a reprehensible abuse of power by morally corrupt lawmakers to silence speech. Every decent lawmaker, especially those who value the lives of the unborn and the First Amendment, should vote against it.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to contact your state senator and representative to ask them to reject this dangerous resolution. Ask them to vote down HJR 55 and the unprecedented and tyrannical action being taken by extreme partisans in the Illinois General Assembly.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/HJR55.mp3

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois! 

Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.

Chasco Middle School in Port Richey, Florida did what many presumptuous and foolish k-12 schools around the country are doing: The administration unilaterally decided to sexually integrate the boys’ locker room with no notification to either the boys or their parents. The boys, and shortly thereafter their parents, learned about it when an objectively female student who seeks to pass as a boy humiliated them when she entered the boys’ locker room while they were in their underwear. The boys immediately left the locker room and sought help from two P.E. teachers—Robert Oppedisano and Stephanie Christensen—who according to Liberty Counsel, “were powerless to respond, because administrators had placed a gag order on them, and told them that they could not answer the boys on these questions.”

To be clear, not even student and parental notification would make this unjust and foolish decision right. Providing no notification just made a lousy decision worse.

Liberty Counsel further outlined the outrageous nature of the Chasco administration’s decision:

Robert also objected to administrators’ order that he continue to walk into and supervise the locker room, despite a girl potentially being nude or undressed in that area. The administrators told him that the girl in question had “every right to use the locker room,” including the right to disrobe in the open locker area, and shower in its open showers, where Robert is required to periodically walk in and supervise. Robert will not knowingly place himself in a position to observe a minor female in the nude or otherwise in a state of undress. Now, Robert has been told by administrators that he will be transferred to another school as discipline for “not doing your job in the locker room.”

Now, as a result of the incoherent “trans” ideology, a male P.E. teacher could be fired for intentionally being in the presence of an undressed objectively female student if she’s satisfied with her biological sex and a male teacher could be fired for refusing to be in the presence of an undressed objectively female student, so long as she is dissatisfied with her biological sex. What if a male teacher is in the presence of a genderfluid objectively female student who, while changing clothes on a day when she’s “identifying” as a boy, suddenly “identifies” as a girl? Yikes.

Some questions for the Chasco Middle School administration:

• Do students have any right not to be seen partially or fully unclothed by students, staff, faculty, or administrators of the opposite sex?

• Should “trans”-identifying coaches be treated as if they were the sex they pretend to be? For example, should the objectively male swim coach who pretends to be a woman be allowed full access to the girls’ locker room? If not, why not?

• Do staff and faculty who believe it is profoundly wrong to see pubescent students of the opposite sex partially or fully unclothed have any rights?

• Why do we have any sex-segregated locker rooms and restrooms in public schools if objective biological sex has no intrinsic connection to feelings of modesty and the desire for and right to privacy when engaged in intimate bodily functions or changing clothes?

Ironically, while violating the physical privacy of children, the Chasco administration is trying to cloak its secret plan to sexually integrate private spaces by appealing to—you guessed it—privacy. But neither privacy policies nor laws prohibit the administration from notifying students and parents that the school has adopted—with no board vote—a new practice of sexually integrating locker rooms and restrooms and that boys and girls can expect that they will be sharing private spaces with persons of the opposite sex. (As an aside, I wonder how female faculty or administrators would feel if they were in their underwear in a women’s faculty locker room when without notification an objectively male colleague walked in.)

The brains behind this “trans”-cultic operation to violate the privacy of and humiliate students is Jackie Jackson-Dean who consulted with every pro-“LGBTQ”-advocacy organization she could find—including the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) government school indoctrination arm, ironically called “Teaching Tolerance.”

The weedy thicket of Dean’s recommendations include encouraging the school to participate in every pro-homosexual/pro-“trans” event sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), encouraging teachers to use incorrect pronouns when referring to students who masquerade as the opposite sex, and publicly praising teachers who affirm pro-“LGBT” orthodoxy (thereby implicitly shaming those who don’t).

Jackson-Dean’s Twitter account reveals she’s a hardcore, far-left pro-homosexual/pro-“trans” activist who loves the SPLC and opposes Brett Kavanaugh.

There’s an odd omission in her rainbow-adorned document. She neglected to mention this which comes right out of a document to which she links:

On the federal side, the Title IX regulations issued by the U.S. Department of Education allow schools to provide separate but comparable bathrooms, locker rooms, and shower facilities on the basis of sex…. While there is no definitive national legal authority on the issue, federal courts in non-school cases have recognized a fundamental right to privacy or acknowledged the legitimacy of safety concerns in cases involving individuals undressing, using the restroom, or showering in an area to which a member of the opposite birth sex has access. Moreover, a federal district court recently asked the question whether a university engages in unlawful discrimination in violation of Title IX or the Constitution when it prohibits a transgender male [i.e., a biological female] student from using restrooms and locker rooms designated for men on campus. The court concluded: “The simple answer is no.”

If adult coaches are required to be in the presence of partially or fully undressed students of the opposite sex who “identify” as “trans,” there remains no rational reason to prohibit adult coaches from being in the presence of partially dressed or fully nude students of the opposite sex who accept their sex. In short, the “trans” ideology has invalidated objective, immutable biological sex and its anatomical manifestation as having any relevance in separating humans in spaces where bodies are exposed.

I’ve tried to warn that the ultimate goal and logical outworking of the “trans” ideology is to eradicate all public recognition and valuation of sex differences. According to the “trans” ideology, all it takes to “identify” as the opposite sex is a declaration. No gender dysphoria diagnosis or experience of gender dysphoria, no surgery, no cross-sex hormone-doping, not even cross-dressing is necessary to identify as the opposite sex. Further, society is obligated to treat “trans”-identifying persons in all ways and in all contexts as the sex they declare they are. Therefore, a girl with intact breasts who identifies as a boy should be free to undress and shower naked with the boys, and a boy with an intact penis and testicles who identifies as a girl should be free to undress and shower with girls. A girl with intact breasts who identifies as a boy should be allowed to swim on the boys’ swim team wearing a boys’ Speedo. Male coaches who enter boys’ locker rooms should treat girls who pretend they’re boys and are changing no differently than boys who are changing.

So, now what would have once been too scandalous to even imagine is being or going to be required.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Chasco.mp3

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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The hate business may not be what it used to be – at least on the government level.

The Defense Department has become the latest federal agency to sever ties with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an Alabama-based, hard-left group whose “hate map” is being used against Christian groups.

Well, bully for the Pentagon for showing that bully to the door.

The DOD’s pullback from the SPLC was reported by the Daily Caller, which said that a Justice Department attorney stated in an email that the DOD “removed any and all references to the SPLC in training materials used by the Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute (DEOMI).”

In 2014, the FBI dropped the SPLC from its resources page after congressional staff, acting on behalf of the Family Research Council (FRC) and other Christian groups on the “hate map,” met with FBI officials to discuss their concerns, according to the Daily Caller.

Once hailed for tracking the Ku Klux Klan and other extremists, the SPLC has in recent years been wielded against mainstream Christian organizations over their defense of Biblical sexual morality and marriage.

If you say out loud that men are different from women, you just took a big step toward the “hate map.”  If you say that marriage necessarily involves both sexes, bingo.  And if you say that it’s not loving to steer boys into identifying as girls, you might earn an SPLC mention alongside skinheads and Neo-Nazis.

The SPLC also targets those who oppose illegal immigration and those who believe Islamic expansionism is a threat to freedom.  All in all, the SPLC might want to consider changing its name to Hate, Inc.

In 2015, the SPLC placed presidential candidate Ben Carson, who now heads the Department of Housing and Urban Development, on an “extremist” hate watch list.  After taking considerable flak, the SPLC removed the citation and apologized to Dr. Carson.

But this guilt-by-association ploy is having a huge effect in Silicon Valley, where cyber giants who fancy themselves do-gooders look to the SPLC for guidance.

“Right now, [the SPLC is] cutting off hate groups from sources of financing by pushing digital companies like Amazon not to allow hate groups to use their services,” said SPLC’s founder, direct-mail wizard Morris Dees.

Google, Facebook and Twitter are under congressional scrutiny for allegedly “shadow banning” conservative and religious postings.

“The most dangerous aspect of this high-tech offensive on pro-faith groups and individuals is buried deep in the algorithms of these gatekeepers for the new economy,” said Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel.

Google now supports a “hate news” database that links to articles referencing Liberty Counsel and other Christian groups on the SPLC “hate” list.  The SPLC’s smears have led Amazon Smile, a charity donation program run by Jeff Bezos’ Amazon company, to ban pro-family Christian groups.

Last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced a $1 million Apple donation to the SPLC and added a portal so iTunes buyers could donate directly. Big Tech, meet Big Hate.

The SPLC’s perfidy has led to “hate” labels on Christian groups listed in GuideStar, the charity group database, which removed some labels after a public outcry.  Discover/Diners Club is now blocking transactions with some pro-family groups, according to Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver.

Making false accusations of hate is profoundly hateful, but it’s also lucrative. The SPLC, which has raised millions since its 1971 founding, has fattened its endowment to more than $477 million, according to its latest Form 990.

In August 2017, D. James Kennedy Ministries, for which I have written several books, finally had had enough and filed a defamation lawsuit against the SPLC in Alabama and also sued GuideStar and Amazon.com, Inc.  The ministry withdrew the GuideStar suit but continued the other litigation.  Liberty Counsel also sued GuideStar, but that suit was thrown out last January by U.S. District Judge Raymond Jackson, a Bill Clinton appointee.

In August 2012, Leo Johnson, the building manager at FRC headquarters in Washington, D.C., was shot while preventing an attempted mass murder by a man who said he was inspired by FRC’s presence on the SPLC’s “hate map.”

The shooter, Floyd Lee Corkins II, planned to kill as many people as possible and jam Chick-fil-A sandwiches into their faces to protest Chick-fil-A’s and FRC’s support for natural marriage.  He was sentenced to 25 years in prison in September 2013 for committing an act of terrorism while armed and other offenses.

Apparently, the SPLC did not find this compelling enough to remove FRC from its “hate map,” where it remained until very recently.  However, FRC – along with D. James Kennedy Ministries, the American Family Association, Alliance Defending Freedom, the Ruth Institute, the American College of Pediatricians and many other reputable Christian groups, along with the Jewish-led parents group MassResistance – is still listed on the SPLC’s “Hate Watch” page.

For pro-family activists, it’s become a badge of honor.

This is a story that illuminates the critical importance of sound church leadership informed by unequivocal, courageous commitment to biblical truth.

No Protestant denomination will be spared attacks on theological orthodoxy by apostates and heretics who view Scripture as a means to their pernicious ends of normalizing sexual sin. The attacks will come in fits and starts, and the victories for wolves in sheep’s clothing will be incremental. True Christ-followers need to be steeped in Scripture, led by pastors who know and boldly teach truth, discerning, and committed to suffering for Christ and his kingdom.

The recent Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC) annual meeting called the Gathering, at which delegates vote on leadership and doctrinal positions, serves as a sad example of what is going awry within Christendom.

IFI has a personal connection to the ECC Gathering—a connection that led to a deeply troubling revelation in the days preceding the late June event. Pastor Lance Davis, until recently an IFI board member, resigned on June 12, just nine days before the start of the ECC Gathering. In March, Davis had been nominated by the ECC Board of Ordered Ministry for the position of Executive Minister for Develop Leaders/Ordered Ministry. The vote for his nomination took place at the Gathering on Friday, June 22.

As mentioned, Davis resigned from the IFI Board on June 12, citing his desire to focus on the upcoming election, specifically emphasizing the critical importance of getting elected in order to retain the ECC’s theologically orthodox positions on matters related to homosexuality—positions that have been under sustained attack in the ECC for several years.

IFI learned that on June 19, the heretical ECC group called “Mission Friends for Inclusion” (MF4i), whose chief goal is to undermine theological orthodoxy on homosexuality, published a blog post that says this:

We did have some concerns about Rev. Davis’s history, including his involvement with the Illinois Family Institute (IFI), which has been categorized as an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center for the last nine years. He told us that he was involved with them during the same-sex marriage legislative debate in Illinois years ago, but disassociated himself from them after they published an “egregious” and “mean-spirited” blog about some Covenant clergy. He noted that he was “deeply offended” and reached out and apologized to the clergy for this blog.

We also asked Rev. Davis about the involvement of Illinois Family Action (the legislative arm of IFI) at an event at his church in March 2016.

…

Rev. Davis ended his email with the following message,

“My church hosted a town hall meeting during the last presidential campaign in response to my community’s displeasure with Ted and Raphael Cruz’s dismissive stance regarding the plight of the African American and Hispanic communities. IFI, Freedoms Journal and other conservative organizations ‘invited’ themselves to the meeting. This was the beginning of the end of my relationship with IFI.”

To say we at IFI were shocked would be an understatement. Here are the factual errors in Davis’ response to the MF4i—errors which IFI shared with Pastor Mark Pattie, head of the nominating committee, two days before the election:

1.) While Davis said the beginning of the end of his affiliation with IFI was March of 2016 after the Rafael Cruz event at his church, Davis did not end his affiliation with IFI until June 12, 2018—one week before the MF4i blog post was published and over two years after Davis told MF4i that his affiliation had begun to end (whatever that means). He was an active board member who consistently indicated he supported our mission—including our positions on matters related to homosexuality.

2.) While Davis claimed Illinois Family Action (IFA)—our 501(c)4 sister organization—invited itself to a townhall meeting at his church, the truth is IFA organized the event.

3.) While Davis said the Cruz event organized by IFA was “in response to” his community’s “displeasure with Ted and Raphael Cruz’s dismissive stance regarding the plight of the African American and Hispanic communities,” it was, in fact, organized to support the candidacy of Ted Cruz.

4.) While Davis said he disassociated himself from IFI after I wrote an article critical of some ECC leaders in January 2018, the truth is he was an active board member until June 12, 2018 and had consulted with us a number of times in the two weeks before the election on matters related to it.

Moreover, he had generously complimented me on and thanked me for the article he described to MF4i as “egregious” and “mean-spirited.”

Finally, how could Davis disassociate himself from IFI in Jan. 2018 when, according to him, he had begun ending his affiliation almost two years earlier in March of 2016? Oh, what a tangled web….

During the Q & A with Davis prior to the vote at the Gathering, a pastor expressed his appreciation that Davis had ended his relationship with the Illinois Family Institute, which he referred to as a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group. Davis—who sat on our board and asked for our help as recently as two weeks before this comment was made—spent not even 15 seconds to defend IFI against the false characterization. Following the Q & A, Davis was elected.

Although this experience was the most personally dispiriting incident at the Gathering, it wasn’t the only dispiriting one.

Once again, heretics within the ECC persisted in trying to change the ECC position on homosexuality, with Peter Hawkinson, pastor of Winnetka Covenant Church—about whom I have written—making yet another play for heresy. He’s nothing if not persistent in advocating for the enemy.

And then there was Mark Nilson, pastor of Salem Covenant Church in Worcester, Massachusetts, and until 2015 pastor of North Park Covenant Church in Chicago. Nilson, rather than appealing to Scripture in his comments, tugged on the unreliable heart strings of fallen people, telling them that one of his two sons affirms a homosexual identity and, therefore, Nilson can’t officiate at his wedding. Since Nilson can’t officiate at a faux-wedding between his son and another man, he refuses to officiate at a true wedding between his other son and a woman. That’ll teach the church a lesson it won’t soon forget.

At least as problematic is that Nilson’s wife Robin has a rainbow flag as her Facebook profile picture. A prior profile picture of hers was the symbol of the Human Rights Campaign—a deep-pocketed, homosexuality-affirming, anti-Christian hate group. It should be shocking to all ECC members and leaders that both a pastor and his wife who serve in this denomination that affirms theological orthodoxy on homosexuality publicly affirm heresy.

A denomination cannot rationally maintain both the position that God detests homosexual acts and relationships and that he approves of them. Former evangelical and current heretic David Gushee wrote this about the irreconcilable nature of those two theological positions:

I now believe that incommensurable differences in understanding the very meaning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the interpretation of the Bible, and the sources and methods of moral discernment, separate many of us from our former brethren…. I also believe that attempting to keep the dialogue going is mainly fruitless. The differences are unbridgeable.

And despite what ravenous wolves in sheep’s clothing say while they await their next tasty meal, unity never trumps truth.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Trouble-in-the-Evangelical-Covenant-Church.mp3

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If you appreciate the work and ministry of IFI, please consider a tax-deductible donation to sustain our endeavors.  We need your support, and are deeply grateful for those who stand with.

It’s often difficult to distinguish truth from satire on websites like The Onion and the Babylon Bee, and a few days ago many woke up to this headline:

Southern Poverty Law Center Apologizes for Mislabeling Group as Anti-Muslim Extremists, Agrees to $3.3M Settlement

But it’s a real news story, not a joke. It’s from Accuracy in Media, and here is a short excerpt from its report:

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has a history of flagging its political opponents as “extremists,” apologized to Muslim anti-terrorism group Quilliam and its founder Maajid Nawaz for wrongly naming them in their Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists…

The SPLC also agreed to pay a $3.375 million settlement, which Quilliam and Nawaz intend to use to fund work fighting anti-Muslim bigotry and Islamist extremism, according to a statement from the SPLC.

So the SPLC has actually admitted defamation, but only against one Muslim organization.

Here is what the Alliance Defending Freedom’s Jeremy Tedesco had to say in response to this news:

“It’s appalling and offensive for the Southern Poverty Law Center to compare peaceful organizations which condemn violence and racism with violent and racist groups just because it disagrees with their views. That’s what SPLC did in the case of Quilliam and its founder Maajid Nawaz, and that’s what it has done with ADF and numerous other organizations and individuals.

This situation confirms once again what commentators across the political spectrum have being saying for decades: SPLC has become a far-left organization that brands its political opponents as “haters” and “extremists” and has lost all credibility as a civil rights watchdog…

SPLC’s sloppy mistakes have ruinous, real-world consequences for which they should not be excused.”

National Review’s news writer Jack Crowe also posted on this news and following his article, a video was included that summarizes some of the SPLC’s outrageous defamation examples in 90 seconds.

The Washington Times reported this:

“A coalition of 45 prominent conservative groups and figures called Wednesday on those partnering with the Southern Poverty Law Center to sever their ties, saying the center’s credibility has been further eroded by this week’s defamation settlement.”

The coalition is also threatening a lawsuit against the SPLC and issued warnings to CEOs and news editors who are complicit in the defamation by citing the group’s anti-Christian bias. Here is the text of the joint statement which was also signed by the Illinois Family Institute’s executive director David E. Smith:

JOINT STATEMENT BY ORGANIZATIONS DEFAMED BY THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER

We, the undersigned, are among the organizations, groups and individuals that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has maligned, defamed and otherwise harmed by falsely describing as “haters,” “bigots,” “Islamophobes” and/or other groundless epithets. We are gratified that the SPLC has today formally acknowledged that it has engaged in such misrepresentations.

In an out-of-court settlement announced today, the Southern Poverty Law Center formally apologized in writing and via video for having falsely listed Maajid Nawaz and the Quilliam Foundation as “anti-Muslim extremists” in one of the SPLC’s most notorious products, The Field Guide to Anti-Muslim Extremists. It also agreed to pay them $3.375 million, tangible proof that the SPLC, which amounts to little more than a leftist instrument of political warfare against those with whom it disagrees, fully deserves the infamy it has lately earned. For example, in addition to its settlement with Nawaz and Quilliam, the organization has had to disavow multiple misstatements and other errors in its reporting in the past few months.

Journalists who uncritically parrot or cite the SPLC’s unfounded characterizations of those it reviles do a profound disservice to their audiences.

Editors, CEOs, shareholders and consumers alike are on notice: anyone relying upon and repeating its misrepresentations is complicit in the SPLC’s harmful defamation of large numbers of American citizens who, like the undersigned, have been vilified simply for working to protect our country and freedoms.

With this significant piece of evidence in mind, we call on government agencies, journalists, corporations, social media providers and web platforms (i.e., Google, Twitter, YouTube and Amazon) that have relied upon this discredited organization to dissociate themselves from the Southern Poverty Law Center and its ongoing effort to defame and vilify mainstream conservative organizations.

The list of signatories can be read following the statement here.

It is also interesting to note this update on the SPLC’s finances from the The Washington Free Beacon:

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a left-wing nonprofit known for its “hate group” designations, now has $92 million in offshore investment funds, according to financial statements…

The controversial organization reported $477 million in total assets and $132 million in contributions on its most recent tax forms, which cover Nov. 1, 2016 to Oct. 31, 2017. That represents an increase of $140 million in its total assets from the previous year. Millions flowed to the group following the deadly Charlottesville, Va. attacks from employees at companies including JP Morgan Chase and Apple as well as from actors such as George Clooney.

Google, Twitter, YouTube, Amazon, JP Morgan Chase, Apple, and evidently the SPLC’s itself represent some “deep pockets” when it comes to potential lawsuits and settlements.