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

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-

Written by Dr. Everett Piper

Cambridge Professor C.F.D. Moule once said, “The gospel is more than a declaration … It is something which we do not merely know but experience.” He continued, “The action of Christ in our world is not a dead and static thing,” but on the contrary, “a great flowing stream, not a separate draught of water; the apex of a pyramid, not an unattached point in mid-air.”

According to Moule, there will “never be an end” to the pursuit of justice and righteousness, for there is “a living God at work … through that which we call the Church, the Body of Christ.”

St. Athanasius, whom many have called the author of the Nicene Creed, once wrote, “Seeing the exceeding wickedness of men, and how little by little they had increased it to an intolerable pitch against themselves … [Christ] took pity on our race, and had mercy on our infirmity.”

He went on to conclude: “Lest the creature should perish, and the Father’s handiwork in men be spent for naught,” God “took unto Himself a Body,” a body that not only endures, lives and breathes in His resurrection but also in His church. “A blind man cannot see the sun,” said the bishop, “but he knows that it is above the earth from the warmth which it affords. Similarly, let those who are still in the blindness of unbelief recognize [what] He has brought about through His manifest powers in others,” i.e., the church.

Even those who openly place themselves somewhere along the atheist-agnostic continuum are now speaking honestly about the redemptive power of the church as described by Moule and Athanasius. For example, Fox News contributor Greg Gutfeld, who describes himself as “non-religious,” says, “I haven’t been to church in years. But there is one thing I know: The church is a positive influence in communities, in terms of encouraging charity and neighborly concern.”

Then there is Matthew Parris, writer for the London Times, who extols the virtues of Christian missionary work in Africa: “As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God … Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone, and the machete.”

Indeed, the church is the salt and light of human history. It has preserved culture in the midst of disease, debauchery and despair. It has been a beacon of hope in the darkest days of violence and oppression. Wilberforce led the British to abolish the slave trade. Mueller rescued orphans from the poverty of the industrial revolution. Bonheoffer defied Hitler. William Booth served the poor. Orange Scott, Luther Lee and B.T. Roberts fought for abolition, and Chuck Colson befriended prisoners.

Yes, the church has stemmed the tide of evil time and time again. From the killing fields of Cambodia to the prison cells of Cuba, it has been the “flowing stream” of justice. Amid plague and contagion, it has been the “apex” of care and compassion. In times of terror and war, it has been God’s “mercy on our infirmity” and His “pity on our race.”

Jesus tells us — indeed, he promises us — that the “gates of hell will not prevail” against His church. Not the Orwellian hubris of the European Union. Not the unprincipled materialism of billionaire elites. Not the moral nihilism of the West or the Muslim extremism in the Middle East. Not the “exceeding wickedness” of Planned Parenthood or the pure evil of NAMBLA. Not the child abuse of trans-activism or the comic delusions of drag queen story hours.

Not the selfish focus of “intersectionality” or the disingenuous sanctimony of the SPLC. Not the blatant arrogance of the progressive left or the transparent pandering of those who seek political power. Not the “increased intolerable pitch” of my sin or yours. Nothing can stop the “manifest power” of “a living God at work.” He is not a “dead or static thing,” but alive and well.

“Nothing in all the vast universe can come to pass otherwise than God has eternally purposed. Here is a foundation of faith. Here is a resting place for the intellect. Here is an anchor for the soul, both sure and steadfast. It is not blind fate, unbridled evil, man or Devil, but the Lord Almighty who is ruling the world, ruling it according to His own good pleasure and for His own eternal glory.” ~Arthur W. Pink

Thank God for the church.

This article was originally published at The Washington Times.

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-

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.

Why is it that organizations like the SPLC can designate conservative Christians as hate groups while ignoring radical leftists like Antifa? Why is it that Facebook and Google and YouTube and Twitter appear to punish conservatives disproportionately for alleged violations of community guidelines?

The answer is as disturbing as it is simple. The left believes it is so morally and intellectually superior to the right that it can see nothing wrong with its extreme positions and hostile words. Is it wrong to be intolerant of bigots? Is it wrong to hate (or even punch) a Nazi?

In short, if I’m a member of the KKK, is it wrong for you to disparage and mock me? If I’m a dangerous homophobe, is it wrong for you to vilify and exclude me? If I’m a hate-filled propogandist spreading dangerous lies, is it wrong for you to mark me and marginalize me?

Of course, there are double standards on all sides of the debate, on the right as well as on the left. And there is more than enough hypocrisy to go around, from the most progressive to the most conservative.

All of us also have our share of blind spots, so we tend to condemn in others what we justify in ourselves. Welcome to human nature.

Still, it is conspicuous that the same behavior gets treated differently by the leftist elite (including many a university professor) and by watchdog groups like the SPLC and by the internet giants.

Back in 2004-05, when I first began to address gay activism, I was widely mocked for saying, “Those who came out of the closet want to put us in the closet.”

The response was consistent: “No one wants to put you in the closet!”

A few years back, I noticed a change in tone: “Bigots like you belong in the closet!”

But of course!

While being interviewed on a Christian TV program back in 2011, I quoted the comment of a Christian attorney. He told me that those who were once put in jail (speaking of pioneer gay activists) will want to put us in jail.

For having the audacity to say this on Christian TV, I was vilified and maligned.

Yet when Kim Davis was jailed in 2015 for refusing a court order to grant same-sex marriage licenses, there was widespread rejoicing on the left: “Kim Davis is ISIS! Lock her up!”

Again, I’m aware of double standards on all sides, and it’s a point of personal reflection and self-examination in my own life.

For example, I believed that, in 2004, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom should have been disciplined for issuing same-sex marriage licenses in violation of the law. Yet I believe that Kim Davis was within her rights in refusing to issue such licenses and her home state of Kentucky failed to protect her, under the law.

These are debates we can (and should) have.

What I’m talking about here has to do with fundamental attitudes, with the basis of our judgments, with the inability to see wrong on one’s own side. I’m talking about a dangerous hypocrisy. (For the record, I never compared Gavin Newsom to Muslim terrorists.)

In my May, 2016, article “Is Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg a Well-Intended Liberal with a Massive Blind Spot?”, I referenced the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann, the notorious Nazi mass murderer, who was apprehended by two Israeli agents while living quietly with his family in Argentina.

They had to wait for several weeks before smuggling him out of the country, during which time they spent many hours in private conversation with him, somehow managing to restrain themselves from taking the law into their own hands.

During one of the conversations, one of the agents realized that Eichmann had given the order to exterminate the village in which his wife’s family lived, killing every single one of them.

When asked how he could do such a thing, Eichmann seemed perturbed, responding, “But they were Jews.”

Of course he gave the order to kill them. What else was he to do?

Again, to be clear, I am not comparing the SPLC or Facebook or Google to Eichmann and the Nazis. That would be as bad as leftists comparing conservatives to Nazis. Not a chance.

I’m simply pointing out that in Eichmann’s twisted world, he was only following orders and doing what was right.

So also, in Antifa’s twisted world (although, again, I emphasize, not as twisted as that of the Nazis), they are doing what is right in violently opposing the tyrannical right. Somebody’s got to do it!

Thankfully, there is an ongoing, healthy push-back against this liberal hypocrisy. In fact, just this week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions called out the SPLC for using hate group labels to “bully” conservatives. Let their hypocrisy be exposed.

But remember: You have been prejudged as guilty, so your mistreatment is well-deserved.

It is this highly bigoted attitude we must overcome with truth, reason, determination, and love.

This article originally posted at Townhall.com.

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.

A Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) investigation discovered that the left-wing nonprofit is closely tied to four of the largest tech platforms on the planet, which routinely consult or collaborate with the SPLC in policing their platforms for “hate groups” or “hate speech,” and the findings were corroborated by Facebook itself.

“[The SPLC is on a list of] external experts and organizations [that Facebook works with] to inform our hate speech policies,” Facebook Spokeswoman Ruchika Budhraja informed the DCNF in an interview.

Facing users away from the right

Budhraja explained how outside groups are consulted by Facebook through one to three meetings in order to fashion its hate speech policies, but she would not name which specific organizations it worked with and insisted that they represent all political affiliations.

She then used a May 8 SPLC article that accused Facebook of inadequately censoring “anti-Muslim hate” in an attempt to prove the social media giant does not fully submit to the SPLC.

“We have our own process, and our processes are different and, I think, that’s why we get the criticism [from the SPLC], because organizations that are hate organizations by their standards don’t match ours,” Budhraja insisted, according to the DCNF. “That doesn’t mean that we don’t have a process in place, and that definitely doesn’t mean we want the platform to be a place for hate, but we aren’t going to map to the SPLC’s list or process.”

Following right-leaning users’ numerous complaints over the years about the bias of Facebook, Twitter, Google and YouTube, dozens of nationally renowned conservative leaders banded against the Internet platforms last month by issuing a statement condemning them for their censorship and suppression of conservative speech.

“Social media censorship and online restriction of conservatives and their organizations have reached a crisis level,” their joint statement read, according to Newsbusters. “Conservative leaders now have banded together to call for equal treatment on tech and social media.”

At the time, the SPLC was already suspected for contributing to the platforms’ liberal bias.

“The participants called for the tech giants to address the key areas of complaint, including lack of transparency, when removing content and deleting accounts and the imbalance of liberal content advisers – such as the Southern Poverty Law Center,” Fox News reported.

Amazon and the SPLC – a perfect left match

But Amazon trumps Facebook when it come to collaborating with the SPLC.

“Of the four companies, Amazon gives the SPLC the most direct authority over its platform, the DCNF found,” the DCNF’s Peter Hasson reported. “While Facebook emphasizes its independence from the SPLC, Amazon does the opposite: Jeff Bezos’ company grants the SPLC broad policing power over the Amazon Smile charitable program, while claiming to remain unbiased.”

In fact, an Amazon spokeswoman announced where the Internet giant gets its final word, but she would not say whether her company considers its leftist source as being unbiased.

“We remove organizations that the SPLC deems as ineligible,” the company’s spokeswoman told the DCNF. “[Amazon grants the SPLC that power] because we don’t want to be biased whatsoever.”

One of Amazon’s charitable programs under scrutiny for being in cahoots with the SPLC’s political agenda was targeted.

“The Smile program allows customers to identify a charity to receive 0.5 percent of the proceeds from their purchases on Amazon,” Hasson pointed out. “Customers have given more than $8 million to charities through the program since 2013, according to Amazon. Only one participant in the program, the SPLC, gets to determine which other groups are allowed to join it.”

It was found that the Smile program frowns upon conservatives, Christians and Jews, alike.

“Christian legal groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom – which recently successfully represented a Christian baker at the U.S. Supreme Court – are barred from the Amazon Smile program, while openly anti-Semitic groups remain, the DCNF found in May,” Hasson noted. “One month later, the anti-Semitic groups – but not the Alliance Defending Freedom – are still able to participate in the program.”

Another excuse was also given by Amazon for the way it directs its users to charities using its own – and the SPLC’s – standards and criteria.

“Charitable organizations must meet the requirements outlined in our participation agreement to be eligible for AmazonSmile,” an Amazon spokesperson told Fox News. “Organizations that engage in, support, encourage or promote intolerance, hate, terrorism, violence, money laundering or other illegal activities are not eligible. If at any point an organization violates this agreement, its eligibility will be revoked. Since 2013, Amazon has relied on the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control and the Southern Poverty Law Center to help us make these determinations. While this system has worked well, we do listen to and consider the feedback of customers and other stakeholders, which we will do here as well.”

Tweeting for the SPLC

The other social media giant also determines its enemies and allies, according to the SPLC.

“Twitter lists the SPLC as a ‘safety partner’ working with Twitter to combat ‘hateful conduct and harassment,’” Hassan impressed. “The platform also includes the Trust and Safety Council, which ‘provides input on our safety products, policies and programs,’ according to Twitter. Free speech advocates have criticized it as Orwellian.”

Twitter admitted it worked with some social policy groups, but would not single out the SPLC.

“[Twitter is] in regular contact with a wide range of civil society organizations and [nongovernmental organizations],” a Twitter spokeswoman told the DCNF.

Googly over the SPLC

And the world’s biggest web browser also taps into the SPLC’s political profiling scheme.

“Google uses the SPLC to help police hate speech on YouTube as part of YouTube’s ‘Trusted Flagger’ program … citing a source with knowledge of the agreement, [and] following that report, the SPLC confirmed [in March that] they’re policing hate speech on YouTube,” Hassan recounted. “The SPLC and other third-party groups in the ‘Trusted Flagger’ program work closely with YouTube’s employees to crack down on extremist content in two ways, according to YouTube.”

The strategic process effectively weeds out conservatives so users can get their fill of leftist content.

“First, the flaggers are equipped with digital tools allowing them to mass flag content for review by YouTube personnel,” he continued. “Second, the groups act as guides to YouTube’s content monitors and engineers who design the algorithms policing the video platform, but may lack the expertise needed to tackle a given subject.”

But this underhanded scheme has gone virtually undetected – with good reason.

“The SPLC is one of over 300 government agencies and nongovernmental organizations in the YouTube program – the vast majority of which remain hidden behind confidentiality agreements,” Hassan divulged.

The SPLC’s fake labels abound

Adding insult to injury, the SPLC has a track record showing that its designations are based more on left-leaning sentiments and emotions than on fact.

“The SPLC has consistently courted controversy in publishing lists of ‘extremists’ and ‘hate groups,’” the DCNF reporter maintained. “The nonprofit has been plagued by inaccuracies this year, retracting four articles in March and April alone.”

The SPLC’s anti-Trump agenda was recently exposed when it had to retract a series of its stories a few months ago.

“The well-funded nonprofit – which did not return a request for comment – deleted three Russia-related articles in March after challenges to their accuracy followed by legal threats,” Hassan recalled. “All three articles focused on drawing conspiratorial connections between anti-establishment American political figures and Russian influence operations in the United States.”

Its pro-Muslim bias was exposed the following month.

“The SPLC removed a controversial ‘anti-Muslim extremist’ list in April, after British Muslim reformer Maajid Nawaz threatened to sue over his inclusion on the list,” Hassan continued. “The SPLC had accused the supposed-extremists of inciting anti-Muslim hate crimes.”

Those who have been vocal against Islamic Sharia law and Muslim militancy have regularly been targeted by the SPLC – including Somali-born women’s rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who also made SPLC’s list.

“Ali – a victim of female genital mutilation who now advocates against the practice – is an award-winning human rights activist, but according to the SPLC’s since-deleted list, she was an ‘anti-Muslim extremist,’” Hassan informed.

Last August, Ali condemned Apple CEO Tim Cook for donating major funds to the SPLC and described the leftist nonprofit the following way:

“[The SPLC is] an organization that has lost its way, smearing people who are fighting for liberty and turning a blind eye to an ideology and political movement that has much in common with Nazism,” Ali declared, according to the DCNF.

United States Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dr. Benjamin Carson was emblazoned on the SPLC’s “extremist watch list” in 2015 because his political worldview aligns with conservatives.

“When embracing traditional Christian values is equated to hatred, we are approaching the stage where wrong is called right and right is called wrong,” the neurosurgeon Carson proclaimed on Facebook after discovering his name on SPLC’s list. “It is important for us to, once again, advocate true tolerance. That means being respectful of those with whom we disagree and allowing people to live according to their values without harassment. It is nothing but projectionism when some groups label those who disagree with them as haters.”

It took four months of backlash from conservatives for the SPLC to apologize and remove the “extremist” label from the 2016 Republican presidential candidate, who is now serving under the Trump administration.

And there have been severe consequences to the SPLC’s intentional mislabeling, as witnessed six years ago.

“Floyd Lee Corkins – who attempted a mass shooting at the conservative Family Research Center in 2012 – said he chose the organization for his act of violence because the SPLC listed them as a ‘hate group,’” Hassan noted.

Anyone or any group not aligned with the SPLC’s ultra-leftist ideas is a prime candidate for the nonprofit’s smear campaign, and its credibility has been challenged on a regular basis.

“The SPLC receives criticism from across the political spectrum for its smearing of conservative and centrist individuals and organizations,” Breitbart News reported.

As a result of the smears, some nonprofit organizations are hit financially by receiving less contributions.

“Conservative groups, like the Alliance Defending Freedom, also face regular smears by the SPLC,” Breitbart’s Allum Bokhari stressed. “As a result, they are barred from Amazon’s charity program.”

Even former President Barack Obama at one time chastised the SPLC for its extremist agenda.

“The far-left Southern Poverty Law Center was [even] too extreme for the Obama administration – but it’s just fine for Silicon Valley,” Fox News commented. “The Obama-era Justice Department once scolded the SPLC for overstepping ‘the bounds of zealous advocacy,’ after the organization labeled the non-profit Federation for American Immigration Reform a ‘hate group.’”

This article was originally published at OneNewsNow.com

There’s a troubling piece titled “Time for a Compromise on Transgenderism” posted on National Review online and written by purportedly conservative, “gay vegetarian”  J. J. McCullough. In condescending language, McCullough argues that it’s time for Americans to hop on the fast train to the Shangri-La of polymorphous perversity. In McCullough’s view, now that Americans have ceased “judging” homosexuality, they should cease “judging” the science-denying “trans” ideology.

He engages in the worst kind of demagoguery in his unholy effort to normalize the “trans” ideology by insulting those who find the ideology destructive and the demands of its advocates tyrannical.

McCullough makes this myopic statement about the cultural transformation of America on the issue of homosexuality:

Disinterest in judging homosexuality is not an attitude government has coerced Americans into, it is the product of a free people’s informed knowledge.

In McCullough’s presumptuous worldview, “informed knowledge” leads inevitably to “disinterest in judging homosexuality.” For clarity—something in which McCullough seems little interested—let’s establish from the outset that judging homosexuality is distinct from judging homosexuals. Judging homosexuality means to make a judgment about the moral status of homosexual activity. Informed, knowledgeable, wise, and loving people can, do, and should make the judgment that homosexual activity is not moral and jeopardizes the temporal and eternal lives of those who engage in and affirm it.

McCullough goes on:

To the extent that America is still having any political debate about homosexuality, it has evolved into a more substantial conversation about religious liberty…. These are difficult debates but are also far more useful than those of earlier eras, which mostly centered on demagogic judgment of the gay ‘lifestyle’ untethered to any tangible constitutional principle or policy objective.

His description of the debates of earlier eras makes me wonder how much he knows about those debates. Countless debates of earlier eras were both useful and substantive.

Surely McCullough is aware that there are non-demagogic bases other than “tangible constitutional principles or policy objectives” on which to debate or to which to tether debates on homosexuality. In fact, debates tethered to ontology, epistemology, theology, and philosophy are far more substantive and essential than those tethered to tangible constitutional principles and policy objectives. And these are the bases on which a free and informed people should be debating.

But “progressives” aren’t interested in debates so-tethered when epithet-hurling, bad analogies, and false claims work effectively to change public views and silence dissent. You know the epithets commonly hurled, like “hater” and “bigot.” McCullough raised epithet-hurling to an art form, calling those who still make moral judgments about sexual behavior immature, unfair, dishonest, ostentatious, insensible, boorish, petty, cruel, and regressive.

Can anyone claim—I mean, with a straight face, truth-telling lips, and a small, perky nose—that Americans have freely arrived at their “informed,” non-judgmental view of homosexuality? Government schools advance the leftist sexuality ideology and censor dissenting views. Corporate America advances the leftist sexuality ideology (look at which organizations they support and look at their ads) and punishes dissenters. Remember Brendan Eich? The mainstream press is in the tank for homosexuality, celebrating as “heroic” those who announce their predilection for erotic activity with persons of the same sex and scorns those who come to reject their prior “gay” identities. The politicized professional medical and mental health communities are controlled by leftists, and small committees create homosexuality-affirming policies that they imply to the public are uniformly embraced by all members. Let’s not forget the arts and Madison Ave, or the wolves in sheep’s clothing who are infiltrating churches. Just try saying in any public forum that you believe homosexuality is immoral. You’ll likely end up on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s hate list and out of a job. Freedom doesn’t taste so free anymore.

McCullough then moves on to a harsh indictment of anyone who rejects the “trans” mythology, criticizing as “theatrical” the natural and wholly sound repulsion people feel about barbaric amputations of healthy breasts and castrations. McCullough evidently believes that the perduring presence of a human phenomenon is some sort of argument in favor of its normalization:

[M]ost adults could admit [transgenderism] does seem like a rather persistent aspect of humanity…. If we concede that transgenderism is not going away, and is not something anyone intends to exert effort toward ending, then Americans, especially conservative ones, should reflect on our culture’s honest and fair attitude toward homosexuality and acknowledge that the most sensible path out of the present acrimony will probably require similar compromise. Some degree of cultural ceasefire and consensus seems the only path for both sides to maintain a degree of pride while avoiding a more radical, disruptive societal transformation.

McCullough doesn’t explain how unwavering commitments to sexual truth and morality are inconsistent with maintaining a “degree of pride.” Assertions without evidence are more his gig.

Here McCullough is tilting in the direction of a “naturalistic fallacy,” which suggests that because something exists, it’s good. Does he believe Americans should “compromise” on every “persistent aspect of humanity” that isn’t going away? If not, on what basis does McCullough decide which persistent aspect of humanity ought not be accommodated? What sorts of compromises are Americans obliged to make and who decides? So many questions untethered from tangible constitutional principles or policy objectives.

I would argue that radical, disruptive societal transformation has been caused by the “trans” ideology and will be exacerbated in intensity and extent by further compromise, resulting in incalculable harm to countless lives.

McCullough then again ridicules conservatives in his morality-untethered effort to compel acquiescence to compromise:

Part one of the compromise will be borne by cultural conservatives and traditionalists. It asks for broad tolerance for the reality that transgender men and women exist, and are entitled to basic human dignity, just like everyone else. This… impl[ies] that acts like ostentatiously calling people by pronouns they don’t want… are boorish and petty. It means acknowledging that arbitrary discrimination against transgender people is a cruel bigotry like any other.

Can I get a “wowzer”?

1.) Conservatives have never denied that “transgender men and women exist” (and by “transgender men and women,” McCullough means men and women who pretend to be the sex they are not).

2.)  Conservatives agree that those who embrace a “trans” identity are entitled to human dignity—which their embrace of a “trans” identity undermines. McCullough’s implied proposition—which is wholly untethered from tangible constitutional principles and policy objectives—is that respect for the dignity of “trans”-identifying persons requires silence on the “trans” mythology.

3.)  Without warrant, McCullough characterizes as “ostentatious” opposition to bearing false witness (i.e., calling “trans”-identifying persons by incorrect pronouns). Maybe he could tell conservatives how they can live in accordance with their belief that lying is wrong without acting “ostentatiously”?

4.)  What is “arbitrary” discrimination? Would prohibitions of objectively male persons in women’s private spaces be arbitrary discrimination? If so, how is it more “arbitrary” to believe that access to private spaces should correspond to objective, immutable biological sex than to believe it should correspond to subjective, internal feelings about one’s “gender identity”?

Perhaps McCullough doesn’t believe sex-segregated private spaces are arbitrary. Perhaps his claim that “Tolerance does not necessitate a purge of any and all public manifestations of the gender binary in the name of extreme exceptions to the rule,” means he approves of sex-segregated private spaces. The problem is we don’t know, because he doesn’t say.

Unfortunately, his maybe-sop to conservatives was followed by yet another insult:

Transgenderism seems to be the issue on which many on the right prefer to let loose their inner reactionary, which then further rationalizes petty tyranny on the left.

McCullough believes that opposition to the science-denying myth that men can, in reality, be women or vice versa is “reactionary,” and that any who cling to that rational belief are responsible for “trans” tyranny. Conservatives just can’t win. Refuse to embrace irrationality and they’re reactionary and culpable for the unethical responses of the irrational.

On one aspect of this debate, McCullough demonstrates a modicum of wisdom:

[T]he risk of psychologically and physically damaging children by encouraging or enabling them to embrace transgender identities before pubescence must be acknowledged as a valid concern backed by credible evidence. Protecting children from the confusing, anxious, dangerous world of adult sexuality and sexual identity before their developing minds can fully conceptualize its complexities is not bigotry, it is good sense, and the sovereign right of every parent. It should be the responsibility of the public education system as well.

But read carefully: McCullough applies this sound warning only to pre-pubescent children—not to all minors.

McCullough concludes with more manipulation, this time employing two types of fallacies (i.e., chronological snobbery and appeal to emotion):

American history teaches that it is neither the radical nor the regressive who are ultimately vindicated in their response to cultural disruption, but rather those cautious conservatives who assign themselves the difficult task of thoughtfully working through the new and unexpected in the cause of preserving a social order as peaceful and free as the one that came prior.

Who will now rise to that task?

Well, history teaches lots of things. It also teaches that not everything new and unexpected is good or can contribute to preserving a peaceful, free social order. It teaches that cultural disruption often follows the embrace of false, destructive ideologies and that people can be mightily influenced to acquiesce by propaganda, sophistry, peer pressure, and coercive policies untethered from sound ontology, epistemology and morality. And it teaches that cautious thoughtfulness can include courageous commitment to transcendent, enduring moral truth.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/National-Review-Online-Demagogue-Taunts-Conservatives.mp3

For up-to-the minute news, action alerts, coming events and more you can now sign up for IFI Text Alerts!

Stay in the loop by texting “IFI” to 555888 or click here: goo.gl/O0iRDc to enroll right away.

Click HERE to donate to IFI

The evidence against the far Left-wing agenda of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is overwhelmingly plain. Yet, this sinister agenda is ignored by many corporations, politicians, academics and the so-called “news” media. With their assistance, the SPLC regularly maligns conservative voices, especially Christian organizations that promote traditional sexual morality.  Illinois Family Institute has been targeted by the SPLC since 2008.

As I point out in the video interview below, the SPLC’s designation of IFI as a hate group is laughable and an outright lie. Yet it continues to be used by partisan activists.

To  put it plainly: the SPLC is a far Left organization of liberal lawyers who raise millions of dollars annually by resorting to name calling. In recent years, their primary goal has been to label organizations that affirm theologically orthodox views of homosexuality (and now gender dysphoria) as “hate groups” in order to advance the radical LGBTQIA (more to come) agenda.

If the Left were honest, they wouldn’t hesitate to identify SPLC’s bigotry against groups that hold to 2000 plus years of a traditional Christian understanding of God’s design for sex.  But they are not honest.

Moreover, the Left isn’t content with redefining sexual morality and the institution of marriage. They are desperately trying to redefine what it means to be a Christ-follower. This is nothing new, of course. There have always been false teachers who sought to add to the Word of God, create their own standards of righteousness, and to diminish God’s view of sin (1 John 5:17) – as merely minor problems with which we that we all deal (Rom: 1:32). Think “white lies.”

Those who mix humanism with a dollop of Christian flavor want to claim the title of “Christianity” but fail to see that they supplant the Gospel truth with feckless human thinking and flawed understanding of compassion. Scripture isn’t silent on this: Isaiah 55:8; Proverbs 3:5-7; Jeremiah 17:9; and Matthew 15:19.

The Christian faith is defined by the Word of God. Once it is mixed with other human philosophies, it ceases being “Christian.”

It’s time for conservatives to fight back!

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to sign the petition now asking corporations to stop funding SPLC.

The Left is working overtime to silence and/or marginalize conservative voices in America
The time to support IFI is now!

As a Wikipedia editor, I’ve made many edits and updates over the years to the American Civil Rights Union’s Wikipedia page without interference.

So, imagine my shock when I was alerted this past Monday that someone had made the page revert to a very old version with content deleted and outright errors inserted. I went online and corrected a couple of things, but my corrections were instantly undone. Then, it got worse.

On Wednesday, another editor removed a lion’s share of the content describing the ACRU’s activities and issues. Gone were entire sections on election law, environmental regulation, gun laws and religious freedom.

Some of the worst damage was done to the personnel section. Judge Robert Bork, who died in December 2012, was updated as a current ACRU Policy Board member. So was James Q. Wilson, the celebrated political scientist who died in March 2012.

On Friday, another editor restored the severely outdated issue sections but left the personnel errors. Earlier, an editor “nominated” the entire ACRU page for “deletion.”

What might seem at first like a trivial nuisance is indicative of the power those hostile to liberty have over those who defend it. To a new generation, Wikipedia is Britannica, but without factual safeguards.

Virtually all of the updates I added over several years were deleted. According to the site history, the revisions by several “editors” began this past April and continued right up through this week.

When I contacted a Wiki administrator who was listed as one of the revisers, I was told that because of my ties to the group (I am an ACRU Senior Fellow) I have a conflict of interest and could not fix anything myself. Instead, I should review a complicated procedure for suggesting edits, which may or may not be made. My request to restore my previous edits in order to correct the many errors was flatly denied.

This is very serious business. It amounts to sabotage.  When people want to learn about an organization or person, they often go straight to Wikipedia. While it’s bad form to cite Wikipedia as a sole source, it’s an excellent starting point for research on any topic. Millions of people access it daily, making it one of the top six websites in the world.

If viewers see an absurdly outdated, sloppy page, it could deeply affect an organization’s ability to get out its message. Frustrated by the intransigence, I looked up Wikipedia’s conflict of interest policy, which is murky and geared toward preventing hostile edits that are defamatory or false, or self-serving inaccuracies, not edits of an entirely factual nature, such as listing current personnel or programs.

One of Wikipedia’s cardinal rules is: “If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it (boldface in original).”  In the essay, “Wikipedia: Ignoring all rules – a beginner’s guide,” it states, “Perhaps the spirit of the rule could be said in an even better way: Use your common sense over anything else.”

Common sense tells me that fixing blatant errors is something that Wikipedia should appreciate.

There is no guarantee that certain administrators will even make suggested edits if they have an ideological axe to grind, as indicated by many of the changes and deletions to the ACRU page even before the big purge.

The editing history reveals these:  “Environmental and property-rights litigation: rename to ‘Environmental regulation’”… “Second Amendment and gun litigation: rename to ‘Gun control.’”

What’s wrong with the previous entries? Ah, one mentions property rights, and the other cites the Second Amendment. The progressive Left prefers they not be mentioned, or even known to younger Americans.

The question is: After years of being left alone, why did the ACRU page suddenly come under such attack? And, have Wikipedia editors subjected other pages of nonprofit groups to this kind of micromanagement? This is beginning to smack of the Obama IRS’s targeting of the tea parties.

Could this have something to do with the fact that the ACRU has been fighting vote fraud by forcing counties to clean up their inaccurate voter rolls and has a case pending in federal district court against high-profile Broward County, Florida?

The malicious trashing of the ACRU’s Wikipedia page is not unlike the damage done to Christian charities by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s false designation of them as “hate groups,” which the charity index GuideStar affixed to these groups’ entries. One of them, D. James Kennedy Ministries, is suing the SPLC for defamation. Good for them.

In May 2016, a report by the website Gizmodo accused Facebook editors of intentionally suppressing articles with conservative content, a practice long suspected by many conservative activists.

Last Monday, PragerU, a nonprofit educational website run by conservative talk show host Dennis Prager, filed a lawsuit accusing Google and its subsidiary YouTube of censoring more than 30 of its videos as “inappropriate.”

As fewer and fewer companies control the flow of information, we must be increasingly vigilant for attempts to silence conservative voices.

Wikipedia is supposed to be “self-correcting.” Let it be so.

Article originally posted at Townhall.com.