In the past three days, Twitter has suspended the accounts of the well-known satirical website Babylon Bee and of Division I swimmer Reka Gyorgy. What Gyorgy and Babylon Bee share in common is a willingness to criticize the alchemical superstitions of the “trans” cult.

Babylon Bee mocked USA Today for giving the Woman of the Year award to assistant secretary of health at the Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. Richard Leland Levine, alias “Rachel” Levine, who is a man. In response to USA Today’s insulting award, Babylon Bee tweeted that it had awarded Levine its Man of the Year award. Twitter suspended Babylon Bee’s account for alleged “hateful conduct,” a suspension that will be lifted only when Babylon Bee deletes the tweet.

And the left claims they hate censorship.

Former Olympic swimmer and current Virginia Tech swimmer, Reka Gyorgy sent a letter to the NCAA and tweeted about the injustice of having to compete against a biological male—also known as a man—which cost Gyorgy a chance to swim the 500 freestyle in the NCAA finals. Gyorgy tweeted,

My finals spot was stolen by Lia Thomas, who is a biological male. Until we all refuse to compete nothing will change. Thanks for all the support retweets and follows. I won’t stop fighting.

Christian obligations

Christians should stand publicly with those who are leading the way on this transgressive nonsense, like Reka Gyorgy, Babylon Bee, and this father and mother of a female NCAA swimmer:

Princeton University law professor Robert P. George recently urged those who reject the assumptions on which the “trans” ideology is built to live with integrity:

When you’re pressed to state or list your pronouns, you’re being asked to sign up for a practice with certain ideological presuppositions. It is not, and cannot be, a simple matter of politesse. If you believe in the ideology, and don’t mind being pressed to express your loyalty to its tenets, then, by all means, be my guest. But if you don’t believe it, or if you believe it but object as a matter of principle to being pressured to make public affirmations of beliefs, then stand by your principles and don’t sign onto the practice. The key things, either way, are to recognize what’s going on and have the integrity—and courage—to stick to your principles.

If theologically orthodox Christians believe their beliefs are true, then they should act like it.

Christian failures

The courage of these parents raises the question, why aren’t all Christian parents of high school and collegiate athletes saying publicly what these parents said?

There are two reasons that account for the refusal of so many Christians to speak truth. First, many Christians refuse to stand for truth in the public square unless they are guaranteed that doing so will be cost-free. But that is not what Christ promises those who follow him. He promises that the Christian walk will be costly. He promises that Christians will be mocked and hated just as he was.

While Christians claim to admire men and women who have stood steadfastly and suffered grievously for the faith even to the point of martyrdom, many Christians teach their children by word and deed to flee from even the mildest form of persecution. Say and do nothing that will tarnish a reputation, cost a job promotion, or lose a friend.

According to the leftist, “whose truth?” crowd, there is no objective truth—oh, except every moral belief they hold. THOSE beliefs—the source of which is their reservoir of deep feelings—are absolute, objective, transcendent, eternal moral truths, disagreement with which leftists believe should cost you your reputation, your ability to earn a living, and friendships.

In a sermon series on Romans and preached over fifty years ago, Pastor Martyn Lloyd-Jones identified the second reason for Christian silence in the face of evil, a problem that has only grown since he preached about it:

Christian people are mistaking natural qualities, niceness, a cultural veneer or politeness, for true Christian grace. … How often today is affability mistaken for saintliness! “What a gracious man he is,” they say. What they really mean is this: he never criticizes, and he agrees with everybody and everything. I know of nothing more dangerous than that. … Affability is not saintliness. … We are now judging only by our own subjective feelings, by our impressions and reactions. Is there anything so dangerous?

Real love, as opposed to some saccharine, ever-affirming substitute—requires first knowing what is true.

The danger of judging only by our own subjective feelings is nowhere more obvious than in the “trans” cult. “Trans”-activists in thrall to the delusional and dangerous idea that authentic identity is constituted solely by each person’s subjective feelings are destroying lives and necessary institutions and conventions.

Will Thomas, alias “Lia,” has likely been convinced by the “trans” cult that what he’s doing is brave and important. He’s likely been convinced that he will go down in history as a much beloved hero—the Rosa Parks of the “trans rights” movement. Someone should tell Thomas that “trans” cultists don’t care about him. They don’t care about anyone or anything other than their narcissistic, solipsistic, perverse desires.

They don’t care that Thomas will lose most of his swimming buddies because men know that he is stealing places and records from women.

“Trans”-cultists don’t care about the sad life Thomas will lead going forward.

They don’t care about the young women who will not want to date a cross-dressing man.

They don’t care about all the young women who after spending a decade swimming four hours a day all year long, had this year of collegiate swimming ruined.

They don’t care about the feelings of all the women whose locker rooms were invaded by a man who openly undressed in front of them this swim season.

And “trans”-cultists certainly don’t care about Will Thomas’ eternal life.

While “authenticity” for Thomas and Levine centers on their disordered subjective desires and their rejection of material reality, for other people authenticity centers on acceptance of biological reality and biblical truth—including the importance of not bearing false witness. For those people, denying God’s creation of males and females and bearing false witness by using false pronouns are acts of rebellion against God. For those people, such dishonorable acts are profoundly harmful and unloving acts.

Those who claim to revere diversity, equity, inclusivity, tolerance, freedom, and authenticity should be first in line to defend the right of conservative Christians to live authentically Christian lives.

The “trans”-gender house is built on a sandy foundation of faulty assumptions, delusions, biased pseudoscience, and bald-faced lies, all of which are propped up by buckets of ducats from the likes of the Pritzker family, the Stryker family, Tim Gill, and “Martine” Rothblatt and by the suppression of speech. It’s an ugly evil project that is destroying bodies, minds, souls, families, churches, schools, the practice of medicine, institutions related to lawmaking, speech rights, and religious liberty. Who could possibly be behind a project of such scope and enormity?

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Gender-Pretenders-Destroying-Authenticity-and-Liberty-94.mp3

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To be clear from the outset of this article, when I refer to the evil of “trans”-cultism, I am referring to its beliefs and practices—not to people suffering from gender dysphoria or confused by the cultural lies they encounter daily.

Everyone is harmed by “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices—girls, women, boys, and men. Those in bondage to the cult and those outside of the cult are harmed. Adults in bondage to confusion and sexual fetishes are eradicating all sex-segregated private spaces; undermining First Amendment protections of assembly, speech, and religious free exercise; corrupting every cultural institution, including education, medicine, religion, sports, and the arts; putting girls and women at risk of assault by men who pretend to be “trans”; and sowing confusion among children, teens, and young adults.

As with all forms of evil, the most vulnerable—those least able to protect themselves—suffer most. The “trans”-cult allied with a host of profiteers, including semi-celebrity butchers who self-identify as doctors, are experimenting on the bodies of children and young adults with ghastly, barbaric results. No one should avert their gaze from the evidence of this butchery.

Surgeons like Florida’s Dr. Giancarlo McEvenue make big bucks using their skills to disfigure confused, suffering young women, like this young woman:

Here’s the shameless, narcissist Dr. McEvenue gleefully posing for photos with the ghastly evidence of his crime:

For young women, these surgical snake-oil profiteers lop off healthy breasts; remove vaginas, uteruses, and ovaries. They fashion fake penises—also called “phalloplasty”—out of skin peeled off the forearms, thighs, or backs of young women, which leaves permanent sizable scars. These “neo-penises” will never function sexually without mechanical aids.

“Trans”-positive Genderkit UK includes this warning:

Phalloplasty is a complex surgical procedure with significant risks that you must understand before it is carried out. Phalloplasty usually causes significant scarring due to skin grafting (usually on the lower arm). Complications are also common in this operation, particularly problems with urinating which may require surgical correction, including urethral strictures and fistulae (urethra closing up so you cannot urinate). 

These Mengelian butchers castrate young men, using scrotums to create fake vulvas, and scooping the inside tissue out of penises which they turn inside out to create fake vaginas through a new opening they dig out between rectums and urethras. Male bodies will forever view these openings as the wounds they are and try to close them up, so men must manually open them through the weekly insertion of silicone dilators.

Surgeons have another option for the creation of a fake vagina. They can go in through the abdomen and pull some of the abdominal lining down through the new hole they have excavated between rectum and urethra, thereby creating a fake vagina with intestinal lining.

Oh, but they’re not done. As it turns out, men’s and women’s bodies are very different. So, surgeons remodel men’s chests, chins, Adam’s apples, vocal cords, foreheads, and facial orbital bones in a quest to create believable flesh and bone costumes that can deceive women whose private spaces they hope to invade and even potential romantic partners.

In days gone by, these mutilating surgeries were called “sex change” surgeries, but then “trans”-cultists were forced to acknowledge that a person’s sex can never change. So, like all propagandists, they reached deep into their magic sophistry hat and pulled out “gender confirmation” surgery.

But now there’s a new problem. “Trans”-cultists have been claiming that “gender” is wholly distinct from biological sex. In Transtopia, “gender” is the aggregate of arbitrary socially constructed and imposed roles, conventions, behaviors, and expectations associated with males or females. So, how can surgeons confirm “gender”? Does lopping off healthy, properly functioning body parts confirm arbitrary, socially constructed and imposed conventions? And if those conventions are arbitrary, socially constructed and oppressively imposed, why would surgeons want to confirm such oppression?

Perhaps by “gender confirmation,” our ontological tricksters mean “gender identity confirmation.” “Gender identity” is the rhetorical cloak thrown over the disordered subjective desire to be or delusional belief that one is the sex one is not—disordered desires or delusional beliefs often shaped by external forces, like trauma and social media. No matter the cause, should surgeons use mutilating surgeries as a treatment for disordered desires or delusional beliefs?

Those with a condition called Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) experience incongruity between their subjective, internal sense of themselves as amputees and their objectively whole bodies. Some even engage in self-harm to rid themselves of the body part they detest. In a Healthline article on BIID, well-known bioethicist Arthur Caplan says,

“I think doctors and psychologists cannot set up to maim somebody or harm them. You’ve got to try to get them to treatment, I don’t care whether they appear competent or not,” he said.

A doctor who carried out a theoretically unnecessary amputation in order to prevent his or her patient from doing it themselves with potentially fatal results would fall outside of the widely accepted scope of medically ethical practice, Caplan said.

“There are a lot of conditions like anorexia where there’s a core of people who just don’t respond [to treatment],” he said “You don’t give up, you keep trying. That’s all you can do. You don’t indulge it.”

And yet an entire lucrative “trans” industrial complex has emerged composed of all sorts of morally deficient collaborators to indulge the disordered desires of cross-sex identifying persons.

Surgeons, endocrinologists, pharmaceutical companies that sell puberty-blockers and cross-sex hormones, hospitals with “gender” clinics, academicians who research and promote “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices, counselors, diversity and inclusion “educators,” and entrepreneurs who make accessories to enable girls and boys to conceal their sexual anatomy all profit handsomely from “trans”-cultism and, therefore, are incentivized to keep bodily confusion and  despair alive.

It is unlikely that this “trans” scourge will end soon. Not only are countless men and women profiting from harming young people, but sexual deviants with billions of dollars are promoting the “trans” movement. As they pursue their unholy quest to “trans”-form America, their venomous tentacles reach deeply into medicine, academia, and politics.

Organizations like the Tawani Foundation founded by “Jennifer” Pritzker—a man who pretends to be a woman—the Arcus Foundation founded by homosexual Jon Stryker; and the Gill Foundation, founded by homosexual Tim Gill are using their buckets of ducats to promote the morally disordered and intellectually incoherent “trans” ideology.

The “LGBTQ” activist organization, the Human Rights Campaign, estimates that there are now over 50 clinical “care” programs in the United States for “gender-expansive children and adolescents.” Young women and men who can’t afford disfiguring surgeries can apply for grants or beg for money via GoFundMe. There is no shortage of people who will pay to disfigure others in the service of an alchemical superstition.

And some say Satan isn’t real🙄.

Every conservative and every theologically orthodox Christian must come to grips with “trans”-cultism. It is an evil in our midst that is harming everyone, and many Christians are failing to respond as Christ-followers should. Reasons for that failure are confusion, cowardice, and lack of information. Many Christians do not know enough to grasp fully how evil and destructive the “trans”-cult is. I hope this article may in some small way contribute to the awakening that must happen.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Butchering-Bodies-of-Suffering-Young-People.mp3

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Always tolerant, liberty-loving, diversity-desiring “progressives” are fuming about a Texas bill that would prevent child welfare services providers, foster families, and adoptive families from being penalized for their faith. While Leftists claim the intent of the bill, titled “The Freedom to Serve Children Act,” is to discriminate against non-Christians, homosexuals, and unmarried couples in child placement, it’s really about stopping discrimination against Christians for exercising their First Amendment rights.

Leftists who view the shifting sands of social science as their sacred texts for determining virtue and parental wisdom hold in contempt those who look instead to Scripture for guidance. Moreover, “progressives” are either ignorant, delusional, or deceitful when it comes to both the content and reliability of their sacred texts, including social science research that compares children raised by heterosexual parents to those raised by homosexual parents.

Heidi Stevens, who writes the “Balancing Act” column in the Chicago Tribune, which focuses on “work-life balance, relationships and parenting from a feminist perspective” provides a perfect exemplar of such “progressives.” Stevens issued a full-throated unequivocal condemnation of the Texas law that if passed would allow Christian foster care and adoption agencies to refuse to place babies and children in non-Christian homes and homes headed by homosexuals.

And what was her justification for this condemnation?

With startling certainty, absolutist Stevens proclaims that “the science is clear: Children raised by same-sex parents fare just as well as children raised by opposite-sex parents.” To prove that the science is clear, Stevens pointed to a review of studies conducted by Columbia Law School researchers that found that 75 of the 79 studies–that they selected–some dating back over 30 years, “concluded that kids whose parents are gay face no disadvantages.” According to the researchers Stevens cites, “‘Taken together, this research forms an overwhelming scholarly consensus, based on over three decades of peer-reviewed research, that having a gay or lesbian parent does not harm children.’”

Whoa, Nelly.

Based on analysis provided by Leftist researchers at Leftist Columbia Law School, Leftist Stevens proclaims that social science—as distinct from hard science—proves conclusively that no harm comes to children raised by homosexuals.

In addition to her absolute certainty based on woefully unstable social science that being deprived of either a mother or father has no effect on children, Stevens fails to define “harm.” For example, one of the studies cited found that “those [young adults] who had grown up in a lesbian family were more likely to consider the possibility of having lesbian or gay relationships, and to actually do so” than those who grew up with a mother and a father. Whether the increased likelihood of experimenting with homoerotic activity constitutes harm depends on one’s definition of harm.  Stevens seems to arrogate to herself the right to define harm for everyone.

So, let’s spend a moment looking at the one study that Stevens specifically singles out for the conclusiveness of its conclusions: the “US National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study: Psychological Adjustment of 17-Year-Old Adolescents”  (NLLFS) published in 2010 in the journal Pediatrics.

Stevens wrote that the study “found that children raised by two lesbian mothers actually scored higher by social and academic measures than kids raised by opposite-sex parents. And they scored significantly lower in social problems, rule-breaking and aggressive behaviors.”

Curiously, Stevens omitted even a cursory description of the study, so here’s a bit about the study that may help illuminate whether Steven’s absolute confidence in the current state of research is warranted [emphases added]:

Between 1986 and 1992, 154 prospective lesbian mothers volunteered for a study that was designed to follow planned lesbian families from the index children’s conception until they reached adulthood. Data for the current report were gathered through… interviews and Child Behavior Checklists that were completed by their mothers at corresponding times.

According to their mothers’ reports, the 17-year-old daughters and sons of lesbian mothers were rated significantly higher in social, school/academic, and total competence and significantly lower in social problems, rule-breaking, aggressive, and externalizing problem behavior than their age-matched counterparts in Achenbach’s normative sample of American youth.

…

Between 1986 and 1992, prospective lesbian mothers…were recruited via announcements that were distributed at lesbian events, in women’s bookstores, and in lesbian newspapers throughout the metropolitan areas of Boston, Washington, DC, and San Francisco.

The study’s own authors point to several study limitations that undermine Stevens’ claim that the research is conclusive:

1.)  It was a non-random sample.

2.)  “[S]ome…participants expressed fears that legislation could be enacted to rescind the parenting rights of lesbian mothers.” In other words, participants may be motivated to skew their answers out of fear they may lose their children.

3.)  “[T]he data did not include the Achenbach Youth Self Report or Teacher’s Report Form. A more comprehensive assessment would have included reports from all 3 sources.”

4.)  The study participants and the representatives from the “normative” group “are neither matched nor controlled for race/ethnicity or region of residence.”

If Stevens had bothered to read some of the comments following the study, she may have been surprised to learn that this study isn’t quite as conclusive as she assumes. Or perhaps she did read the comments, but for political reasons, chose to ignore the inconvenient ones. Here are two comments from physicians:

“The conclusions…that children of lesbian mothers demonstrate superior psychological adjustment compared to children of traditional families, even when the parents separate before the children are fully grown, are, on their face, a bit fantastic. Is the implication, that fathers are an undesirable component of the family, to be taken at face value? Such a conclusion, notwithstanding the caveats acknowledged by the authors in their discussion, begs for a better study with randomly selected subjects, objective measurement and followup, and appropriate control groups” (Robert P. Sundel, Pediatric Rheumatologist).

“I must take issue with the interpretation and conclusions of the authors as well as the decision by Pediatrics to publish the article. The study conclusions were based solely on the parental responses to the Child Behavior Checklist. Parents who complete CBCL’s on their own children for a study that could potentially report negative findings on the outcomes of children raised in lesbian homes have a clear, self-serving bias. The fact that the study chose not to include the self reported CBCL or the teacher CBCL is mentioned, but it begs the point? Why? Were the results contradictory? On the surface it appears that the study authors are only reporting data that supports a specific, predetermined view-point. I will not be referencing this article or results as valid until ALL of the data is made public for review” (Daniel Trementozzi, Pediatrician).

This study included an alarming statistic that Stevens didn’t mention: By 2009 when the study concluded, 56 percent of the lesbian couples were no longer together. While the study didn’t include divorce statistics for the traditional families, research shows that in 2009 the divorce rate in the United States was  somewhere between 3.5 percent – 16.9 percent. The average age of the lesbians at the conclusion of the NLLF study was 52. The divorce statistic for women ages 50-59 in 2009 was 41.1 percent. It appears that lesbian relationships are really, really  unstable.

Whenever studies emerge that undermine the sacred tenets of the homosexuality-affirming ideology, Leftists point to the organizations that funded the research to cast doubt on undesirable conclusions. So, who funded this particular study that Stevens finds as unassailable as evidence that Earth is round?  Here’s who:

1.)  The Gill Foundation: Tim Gill is the infamous multi-millionaire founder of QuarkXPress and homosexual activist who pours money into state legislative races around the country to transform state legislatures into pro-homosexual political machines.

2.)  The Lesbian Health Fund of the Gay Lesbian Medical Association

3.)  Horizons Foundation: A San Francisco grant-making organization whose motto is “Fueling the LGBTQ Movement.”

4.)  Roy Scrivner Fund of the American Psychological Foundation (which is a grant-making foundation associated with the American Psychological Association). To be eligible for a grant from this fund, one must “Demonstrate commitment to LGBT family issues” and provide a “description of” the “proposed work’s…expected outcomes.” This grant is named in honor of Roy Scrivner, a homosexual activist and the founder of “the APA division of Family Psychology’s Committee on Lesbian and Gay Family Issues.”

5.)  Special thanks were offered to Dr. Ellen Perrin, an activist in support of all things homosexual whom I mentioned in a recent article on the AAP; UCLA’s Williams Institute, an “LGBT” advocacy think tank; lesbian professor Esther Rothblum; and lesbian researcher Heidi Peyser who is raising twin sons with her partner. Peyser “holds a degree in LGBTQQ psychology, and has been a reviewer for the Journal of Lesbian Studies.”

Stevens dismisses research indicating that children raised by homosexuals suffer negative consequences and seems untroubled by the fact that some of the studies she cavalierly dismisses have fewer methodological flaws than studies she and her ideological compeers at Columbia Law School favor. As one would expect, Leftists critique research whose conclusions they don’t like with a vigor and rigor they don’t apply to research whose conclusions they do like.

For those who care about diversity and critical thinking, click here, here , here and here for more information.

Stevens, presumably a defender of diversity, is offended that theologically orthodox Christian foster care and adoption agencies might want to place children with families that affirm theological orthodoxy and that don’t affirm homoerotic behavior—behavior that is clearly condemned in both the Old and New Testaments:

As for the non-Christian part of the bill: We could take a look around the world, where Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and atheists have been successfully raising children for centuries. We could take a look around our country, where the same is true…. Christians don’t have a monopoly on kindness, understanding, commitment or unconditional love — all things children need from their parents. Neither do heterosexuals.

The problem with Stevens’ claim is that no one argues that Christians or heterosexuals “have a monopoly on kindness, understanding, commitment or unconditional love” or that homosexuals, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews or atheists are incapable of loving children. This is a quintessential straw man argument.

What theologically orthodox Christian child care organizations believe is that proper parenting requires more. Here again, we first need to define “successful.” Just as Stevens may believe that the successful raising of children includes more than just teaching them about kindness, understanding, commitment, or unconditional love, so too do many Christians (and Jews and Muslims). Many Christians believe that the successful raising of children includes teaching them about Jesus and teaching them moral virtues including virtues that pertain to sexuality.

Parents from the aforementioned groups will likely not raise up children in the way they should go with regard to faith in Christ as the only way to salvation and eternal life. And homosexuals will surely not teach children that homoerotic activity jeopardizes eternal life. Does it shock Stevens or anyone else that people who follow a faith tradition believe in its precepts?

Christians believe that great harm—indeed, the greatest harm imaginable—comes to those who do not accept the substitutionary work of Christ on the cross. Those in homosexual relationships will not teach children about the need of all to repent of sins articulated in Scripture.

Stevens believes that “there’s a problem with accepting state funding while discriminating against members of the public.” There is no problem with some child placement agencies helping children (and the state) by placing children in good homes. If Leftists really cared about the needs and welfare of children, they would not force organizations like Catholic Charities to stop serving children. How does increasing the burden on other agencies and making fewer homes available for children serve the needs of already suffering children? Once again, Leftists put the desires of homosexual adults above the needs of children.

The more serious constitutional issue pertains to the violation of First Amendment religious Free Exercise protections that Leftists pursue with an unholy passion. Denying state monies to only theologically orthodox Christian child placement organizations would be unconstitutional in that it would represent favoring either non-religious organizations over religious or favoring some religious organizations (e.g., “progressive” Christian organizations) over others. All child placement agencies “discriminate.” That is, they make distinctions about what criteria best serve the needs and rights of children. “Progressives” want the unilateral right to determine what those criteria are.

Stevens quotes from a 2013 statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) that says—and I paraphrase—while the number of parents is important (i.e., the magic number 2), parental sexual differentiation is not. Maybe Stevens could write a column “libsplaining” why either mothers or fathers are dispensable but having two parents is important.

Because AAP leaders are water carriers for “progressivism,” AAP statements have no credibility on matters homosexual and “trans.” As I wrote in April, fewer than two dozen AAP members create and vote on policy, and the vast majority of members see policy statements for the first time when the public sees them via press releases.

Stevens concludes with this amusing Deep Thought: “Children deserve devotion, not dogma.” Once more for the road, some definitions:

Dogma: A principle, belief, or statement of idea or opinion, esp. one authoritatively considered to be absolute truth.

Dogmatism: Unfounded positiveness in matters of opinion; arrogant assertion of opinions as truth.

Stevens looks to Columbia Law School researchers as the authoritative arbiters of truth. Others look to the Bible.

Children deserve devotion to Scripture, not “progressive” dogmatism.

Listen to this article as a podcast!

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