Written by Anita Staver

The purpose of a public restroom is not to make a political statement. Sex-specific facilities were designed for male and female biological differences. Safety concerns are not bigotry.

Target recently highlighted its “inclusive” policy in an announcement, opening the door for any man, regardless of appearance, to stalk women and girls. Target’s policy will invite sexual predators to its stores, exposing women and girls to men peeking through cracks, over and under doors, or waiting for their next victim. Statistical data is not necessary.

I was traveling when the controversy heated up. Using Twitter to warn others, I retweeted an article about a boycott of Target that has ensued following the new policy. Next, I read about a 29-year-old Canadian high school basketball player, and tweeted: “Perhaps he identifies as a teen.”

Fresh from self-defense training with a rented Glock .45, en route to a Wal-Mart in gun-friendly Oklahoma, I constructed another satirical tweet: “I’m taking a Glock .45 to the ladies room. It identifies as my bodyguard.”

I added #BoycottTarget” as the trending topic. Tagging @Target on the end, I intended to draw the company’s attention to women’s safety, not to imply that I would go there. If I intended to visit Target I would have said, “I’m taking a Glock .45 to the @Target ladies room,” instead of adding @Target afterwards.

Our Facebook pages and Twitter feeds filled. Within a few days, the bodyguard tweet gained national media attention, combative commentary and an interview with Alan Colmes of Fox News.

More people agreed than not. One woman messaged me: “With how ‘social media brave’ people are lately, I admire that you keep your cool, continue to be a classy adult and don’t stoop to their level.”

Others — mostly radical leftists, sex addicts and porn-crazed perverts with vulgar profiles — painted me as a vigilante who would barge into a Target with an “assault rifle,” murder a transgendered person and terrify small children. Read my tweet. I never said I was going to Target, with or without a gun. Of course, a “bodyguard” is strictly for defense. Peace through strength.

If physically attacked, I would do as I was taught in self-defense class, and only take the action necessary to stop the aggression. Nothing in my tweet shows a violent intent, notwithstanding frequent and vigorous attempts to twist my words. But truth is irrelevant to “tweet-shamers,” Facebook trolls, smut bloggers and the complicit media.

When I share my concern about sexual predators, the bullies added snarky comments and victim-blaming rape stereotypes such as, “You don’t have to worry, honey no one would touch you!”

I will not be intimidated into silence. This issue is personal.

As a teen, I was the victim of two attempted sexual assaults by strangers in public places, but I managed to escape. In my 20s, a revolver became my constant bodyguard.

Instead of panicking over the prospect of a well-armed woman, the naysayers should be up in arms about sexual assault. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that nearly 20 percent of women in the United States have been victims of actual or attempted sexual assault. And those were just the women who admit to the attacks. I predict that number will increase when sexual predators realize they have easy access to potential victims.

Target’s policies and similar laws passed by misguided government leaders endanger lives. A quick online search for “sexual assault Target store” will bring numerous accounts of crimes already happening inside the stores. It is common sense that publicity about the company’s lax policy invites additional attackers. You may open your window for fresh air, but you wouldn’t broadcast it to potential burglars.

Special rules and laws favoring those who “identify” as the opposite sex can lead to outrageous incidents. In 2012, a middle-aged man born Clay Scott Francis, who called himself “Colleen,” insisted on using the women’s locker room at Evergreen State College in Washington. He was taking estrogen but did not undergo surgery and was attracted to women.

Mr. Francis exposed himself to girls on a school swim team who practiced at the college. Their request for privacy was rejected by the administration and the girls were forced to squeeze into smaller locker room to avoid a naked man.

There are numerous other reports of men who disguised themselves and victimized women. For the safety of women, a biological male should use the men’s bathroom due to physical differences. That is the solution that will keep some women from becoming victims. It is not unreasonable discrimination.

Company policymakers and government lawmakers must not paint a bullseye on women when we are already vulnerable to sexual predators in public places. Women just want to be safe.

Anita L. Staver is president of Liberty Counsel. Article originally published at WashingtonTimes.com.

Written by Kirk Smith

We’ve learned several things since President Barack Obama dictatorially demanded that public school restrooms now be co-ed or risk federal funding. The first thing we learned is that in spite of well-intending parents saying their school is “different from all the other schools,” we now know they will all be the same with regard to restroom and locker rooms practices. Follow the money to D.C.

Second, regardless of how sincere Christian teachers are in their desire to bring Christ into the classroom, they are spiritual eunuchs, who were long ago emasculated and their message muted.  To give true testimony of Christ in their classroom is to suffer termination, a risk that is too great for most to take.

Third, local school boards are powerless as Washington D.C. controls every facet of education down to dictating bathroom policy.

Finally, Christian parents are in a showdown with the state with regard to whose will is absolute in the raising of their children, as they seek to answer, “How important is eternity for our children?”

One upset public school parent recently declared, “Obama’s mandate won’t stand!” Of course, this is the same sentiment embodies in an earlier claim that Christianity could not be taken out of the classroom, Obama could not get re-elected, and Mrs. Clinton had no real chance at the White House.  And here we are. Naïveté is a luxury we can no longer afford. The price is way too high.

The Scriptures make it undeniably plain: “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40). Statistics bear out this truth as the church is losing between 64% – 88% of her professing youth after their first year in college. Others studies reveal that the compromise which leads to this departure begins as early as junior high.

Public school students receive around 15,000 hours of indoctrination in the religion of secular humanism, while Christian parents seek to counteract this avalanche with pizza parties at youth meetings and a thirty-minute weekly sermon. Our children are leaving the faith by the tens of thousands, and we can’t figure out why?

Sadder yet, many will go into eternity unprepared. How long can we Christians elicit the grace of God for our children while sending our children into a culture that we know is spiritually destructive?

How much spiritual carnage do we have to witness before we say, “Enough is enough. This is the last straw. There must be an alternative!”

Not only is there an alternative, it’s been proven to work experientially, statistically, and historically.  It’s called homeschooling.

While homeschooling is not a silver bullet, 94% of homeschooled children do keep the faith of their parents, and 93% stay active in their local church after graduation. These numbers alone should motivate parents to train their impressionable children at home in accordance with Deuteronomy 6.

While many parents feel overwhelmed at the magnitude of this task, there are innumerable resources to help, not the least of which is God.  Ignorance and feelings of inadequacy are no longer justifiable excuses, especially since a parent’s level of education has been found to be a non-factor in their children’s academic success.

I was a public school teacher as was my wife. When we started to homeschool twenty years ago, I shared that I was not anti-public schooling, just pro-homeschooling. That is no longer the case. I know far too much. The public school system is not broken. On the contrary, it is doing exactly what it was designed to do: indoctrinate the next generation into a socialist perspective of voluntary slavery. Consider what educational leader John Dewey wrote:

The moral responsibility of the school and of those who conduct it is to society. [A]part from participation in social life, the school has no moral end or aim. [In religious terminology] the moral trinity of the school [is] the demand for social intelligence, social power, and social interests.

Can the point be made any clearer than that?

I call on all parents who profess the name of Christ to reevaluate their decision to send their children to government schools. We will each stand before God Almighty and have to give an account for the stewardship of our children’s souls. What will we say on that day when we knowingly sent them into a system that rejects His name and teaches doctrines that are diametrically opposed to His Word?

For those of you who feel this tug but don’t know where to start, I want to personally invite you to attend the Illinois Christian Home Educators’ Annual Convention in Naperville, June 2-4. For the past 17 years, my wife and I have made the five-hour trip north in order to be encouraged, instructed, and equipped to raise our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. For more information and to register, go to www.iche.org and click on the convention icon.

Kirk and Joely Smith have been married since 1991. Kirk graduated from Greenville College, teaching and coaching for two years at the high school level before founding the House of Prayer church in Albion, IL, which he pastored for almost 25 years. Joely graduated from the University of Southern Indiana and taught first grade for two years before the birth of their first child after which she stayed home. 

The Smith family live in southeastern Illinois with their 11 children who range in age from toddler to young adult.  They are looking forward to building new relationships and spreading the home discipleship vision of ICHE to all corners of Illinois.

Against the wishes of the majority of community members who spoke at last night’s District 211 Board of Education meeting, the district capitulated to most of the Office for Civil Rights’ (OCR) demands with regard to the gender-rejecting boy who wants unfettered access to the girls’ locker room.

According to one attendee, approximately 80 percent of attendees who spoke opposed any capitulation to the leftist demands of the OCR, and yet within hours of the meeting’s conclusion, the agreement with the OCR had been posted on the school website, indicating that the “hearing” was merely for show. The Faustian bargain had already been struck and the school board held the charade of a hearing just to placate community members. Community members never really had a voice in the district’s momentous, ignorant, unjust, anti-science, anti-rationality, anti-sex decision.

The only small bit of good news is that the gender-rejecting boy at the center of the controversy still does not have unfettered access to the girls’ locker room. He may enter the locker room at will, but when changing clothes, must use private, curtained areas. Apparently any girls who wish not to be seen unclothed by him must use these areas also.

Now that a boy is allowed in the girls’ locker room, the district will provide what are essentially uber-tiny locker rooms within locker rooms.

Even locker rooms that exist solely to separate boys from girls can no longer separate boys from girls. Nothing, not even reality can stand in the way of feelings of sexuality anarchists.

In addition to forcing girls into privacy stalls if they don’t want to be in the presence of a boy while changing clothes in their own locker room, the district has caved to the almighty and highly politicized federal bureaucrats by agreeing to hire a consultant to make sure their capitulating efforts are sufficiently Leftist.

To ensure that the district’s efforts to pretend this boy is a girl are pleasing to Leftists, it must not only hire a consultant who is practiced at the art of deception but must also report back to the OCR begging for their approval and a forgiving kiss on the brown nose.

According to the agreement, the consultant must be an expert in “transgenderism” and “gendernonconformity,” which means the consultant must embrace Leftist assumptions about “gender identity.” Before the district may hire this consultant, it must be granted permission from the unelected, dictatorial, paternalists at the OCR.

You think my rhetoric is excessive? Well, chew on this excerpt from the agreement:

Reporting Requirement: Within 30 calendar days of the execution of this Agreement, the District will provide OCR with a written summary of the expert consultant it proposes to engage, including that individual’s application and resume and/or documentation concerning the individual’s previous position(s), employer(s) or professional affiliation(s).

The OCR has final approval of the Leftist consultant “nominee,” whose salary must be covered by the district.

Oh, but that’s not all, no that is not all.

Already, unbeknown to community members, the district has allowed gender-rejecting students to use opposite-sex restrooms, play on opposite-sex athletic teams, and change their names and sex on official school forms. This spanking new agreement forged in secret with no community input, however, also requires the following:

• When the district sponsors off-campus activities (e.g., prom), the district must work with the hosting facility to ensure that the gender-rejecting boy has access to opposite-sex facilities in the “least disruptive manner” for him. No mention about the degree of disruptiveness high school girls or the employees of the hosting facility must endure.

• The actual sex (or as Leftists and District 211 call it “assigned sex,” by which they must mean “assigned by DNA”) of the gender-rejecting boy on any school documents must be kept separate from his school records in order to better conceal reality and in order to better deceive others.

• If any other students request additional privacy, the school must make reasonable accommodations. So, if a girl—I mean an actual girl—is uncomfortable changing in one of the uber-tiny, makeshift, curtained “privacy” rooms with a boy changing in the uber-tiny “privacy” room beside her, the school must find another solution, and report all of this to the OCR. Of course, what high school girl is going to risk being called hateful by saying this whole mess makes her uncomfortable? The Left wins by humiliating people into submission.

• If the gender-rejecting boy desires a “support team,” well by golly, he gets an entire support team that must include “at a minimum” the boy, his parents, “an advocate or representative of the parents’ choice (if any), a medical professional of the parents’ choice (if any), and relevant District personnel familiar” with the boy. All details related to the composition of the team and content of the meetings must be reported to Big Brother.

• The district is required to create and submit for approval to Big Brother a new non-discrimination policy, and is required to submit “compliance reports” so that Big Brother can make sure the district is behaving in a sufficiently toady-like fashion.

• The district is required to provide a “detailed description of all gender-based discrimination or harassment complaints or incidents” that occur during the OCR’s “monitoring” period which extends to June 30, 2017.

The ACLU, who represents this tragically confused boy, the OCR, and every other Leftist organization promoting ignorant beliefs about sexuality are also guilty of exploiting children. Lying homosexualists put children on the frontlines of an ugly cultural war against truth and then blame those who speak truth when children are bloodied.

Every board member who voted for this agreement should be voted out come their next election, and the cowardly superintendent should be fired.

While those efforts are underway, parents should seriously consider alternative educational options for their children. Public schools are only going to get worse.

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Written by Kaeley Triller

Is it true that the push for “transgender rights” is simply a compassionate effort to protect a tiny, vulnerable portion of society? Is it an innocent, well-meaning effort that will not adversely affect other Americans? The answer to these questions is decidedly No. While we should be compassionate to those who struggle with gender identity issues, we should beware of the push for “transgender rights.”

To be sure, we already have reason to be concerned about the normalizing of transgender identity in our society, from the almost satirical choice of Bruce Jenner to be Glamor magazine’s Woman of the Year to shocking stories like this one, reported by family activist Linda Harvey:

A 17-year-old Chicago girl recently had healthy breasts amputated because she read about the possibility of becoming ‘transgendered’ and decided this was the answer to her depression and suicidal tendencies — and her parents said, ‘Well, OK.’ So Emily is now called ‘Emmett’ and has just begun hormone therapy to (supposedly) become a male.

Yet there is far more at stake than public perceptions about gender identity and the health and well-being of teenagers who amputate healthy body parts.

We’re talking about downright dangerous legislation that even affects our children in their schools. Under the guise of LGBT non-discrimination bills, an aggressive agenda is being advanced across the country, one that protects LGBT “rights” at the expense of the rights of other citizens, foremost of which are our religious rights.

Thankfully, many American Christians have recognized the very real, gay-activist threat to these freedoms of speech, conscience and religion. But when it comes to transgender issues, most are not as aware of the real issues involved.

One obvious concern is the impact on our privacy, specifically, in public bathrooms and locker rooms. If LGBT activists have their way, public bathrooms and locker rooms would be rendered gender neutral, leading to obvious chaos, confusion and possible danger.

As a woman, would you want to use a gender neutral bathroom? As a father, would you want to send your daughter into one? How about you as a woman having to get undressed in the fitness center’s locker room next to a biological male who identifies as a female? (This is not hypothetical; see here.)

How about that biological male getting undressed in the locker room next to your wife, sir?

Transgender activists want to be able to use the bathroom and locker room of their perceived gender identity, no matter how uncomfortable it would make anyone else, thereby imposing the struggles of less than 1 percent of the population on the other 99 percent.

And, while I do not believe that a man who truly believes he is a woman is going into the bathroom in order to check out the ladies — or worse — I’m quite sure that heterosexual predators have taken advantage of these situations to pose as transgender women in order to have access to unsuspecting women. As reported October 8, the “University of Toronto Dumps Transgender Bathrooms after Peeping Incidents.”

Yes, “The University is temporarily changing its policy on gender-neutral bathrooms after two separate incidents of ‘voyeurism’ were reported on campus September 15 and 19. Male students within the University’s Whitney Hall student residence were caught holding their cellphones over female students’ shower stalls and filming them as they showered.”

What kind of madness is this?

It is the madness of the gender-neutral bathroom craze, a direct result of transgender activism. More seriously still, younger children are being negatively impacted, without parental knowledge or consent. As reported by MassResistance on February 19, 2013, “The ‘transgender agenda’ onslaught is now hitting Massachusetts schoolchildren with full force. What you are about to read is nothing short of madness. But it is happening.”

These charges are then outlined in disturbing detail, with direct citations from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s Gender Identity document, including:

• There is a difference between a child’s “assigned sex at birth” and his or her “gender-related identity.”
• All schools must include “gender identity” in policies, handbooks and written materials.
• “A student who says she is a girl and wishes to be regarded that way throughout the school day and throughout every, or almost every, other area of her life, should be respected and treated like a girl. So too with a student who says he is a boy and wishes to be regarded that way throughout the school day and throughout every, or almost every, other area of his life. Such a student should be respected and treated like a boy.”
• Parents can be excluded from the process of a student changing his or her gender identity if the student so desires, meaning that if Jane decides to become Joe at school while hiding this from her parents, she can do so, provided she has a letter from a “parent, health care provider, school staff member familiar with the student (a teacher, guidance counselor or school psychologist, among others), or other family members or friends” verifying that she wants to be treated as a boy.
• The concept of “gender”/biological sex will be removed from all school life.
• There will be mandatory transgender diversity training for children and school staff.
• There will be no tolerance for other students’ discomfort with transgenderism.

As Brian Camenker of MassResistance said to the school board when these changes were being announced, this is “complete lunacy.” But it could well be coming to a school near you if transgender activists succeed.

You have been forewarned.

This article was originally posted at the Stream.org.

Thousands of parents in District 211, the largest high school district in Illinois, should be outraged. And anyone who rightly fears the ravenous appetite of the slavering dumb beast we call the federal government should be equally outraged. The beast’s minions in the laughingly called Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which is a gangrenous section of the cancerous federal Department of Education, has concluded its 2-year investigation of District 211’s actions with regard to a male student who wishes he were a girl. Through its minion the OCR, the Fed-Beast (FEAST), lusting after the bodies and brains of children, has concluded that District 211 has violated federal law.

The very troubled boy—and he is a boy—at the center of this phantasmagorical tale wishes to remain anonymous, so hereafter he will be referred to as “Lola.” Lola has been seeking unrestricted access to the girls’ locker room—yes, you heard that right. Lola—an actual, factual boy, complete, one presumes, with the requisite anatomical parts—wants unrestricted access to the girls’ locker room, which would, of course, include the shower.

Plot summary

What District 211 has already agreed to:

In acts of contortionist-worthy back-bending and misguided charity, the district has agreed to have all school records identify gender-dysphoric students by their new names, identify them as the sex they are not, and refer to them by opposite-sex pronouns (which is to say that the district is lying on school records). In addition, gender-rejecting students are allowed to use opposite-sex bathrooms and are allowed to play on opposite-sex sports teams.

But that’s not all, folks, oh no, that’s not all. According to the Chicago Tribune, the district has also “installed four privacy curtains in unused areas of the locker room and another one around the shower.” This means a boy may, if he wishes, walk through the locker room to the shower area, where presumably girls are showering, to use these private changing areas.

But, even that leaves the beast, its minions, and its allies slavering for more.

What beast-ally John Knight demands:

John Knight, Lola’s ACLU-attorney and FEAST’s ally, vehemently opposes the district’s excessive accommodation of Lola, bleating that requiring Lola to use private dressing areas is unacceptable:

It’s not voluntary, it’s mandatory for her [sic]….It’s one thing to say to all the girls, ‘You can choose if you want some extra privacy,’ but it’s another thing to say, ‘You, and you alone, must use them.’ That sends a pretty strong signal to her [sic] that she’s [sic] not accepted and the district does not see her [sic] as girl.

Word to Knight, neither the “the district” nor any student has a moral obligation to “see her [sic] as a girl,” because he isn’t a girl.

What the beast-minion OCR has decided:

Student A has not only received an unequal opportunity to benefit from the District’s educational program, but has also experienced an ongoing sense of isolation and ostracism throughout her high school enrollment at the school….All students deserve the opportunity to participate equally in school programs and activities—this is a basic civil right….Unfortunately, Township High School District 211 is not following the law because the district continues to deny a female student the right to use the girls’ locker room.

So, now it’s a civil right for boys to use girls’ restrooms, changing areas, and showers.

By “law” the OCR is referring to Title IX, the federal law that prohibits discrimination based on “sex,” which the unelected minions in the OCR have unilaterally decided includes “gender identity” and “gender expression.” When the law was written, “sex” meant objective biological sex, and the law has not changed. The school policy changes that the beast-minion OCR is demanding would require that if gender-rejecting humans with male DNA and penises want to change clothes and shower with girls, they must be allowed to do so—and girls must comply or change in private areas. Not wanting to shower with boys is now seen as an act of bigotry and hatred.

What bothers Lola:

According to the Chicago Tribune, “the student, who plays for the school on a girls’ sports team, said she [sic] broke down in tears after her [sic] coaches reprimanded her [sic] for using the locker room to change. The coach told her [sic] some students felt uncomfortable dressing in front of her [sic].”

Think about what that means. It means Lola—a boy—is offended that girls don’t want to change clothes in front of him. Lola is essentially demanding that everyone accept his delusion that he is in reality a girl.

What Superintendent Daniel Cates rightly and courageously said about this arrogant and preposterous decision:

“The policy that OCR seeks to impose on District 211  is a serious overreach with precedent-setting implications….The students in our schools are teenagers, not adults, and one’s gender is not the same as one’s anatomy….Boys and girls are in separate locker rooms—where there are open changing areas and open shower facilities—for a reason.”

Conclusion

It’s not tax rates or immigration policy or ISIS that most gravely injures and weakens America. It’s the bloodthirsty devouring of the hearts, minds, and bodies of our children; the dismantling of marriage and family; and the erosion of the First Amendment. Deception and depravity are consuming our children, often by nibbles that barely register and at other times by huge chunks. The father of lies conceals his deceit under a cloak of compassion. Christians should not be so easily deceived or so easily cowed.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone,
“it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”
~Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll~

Boldly standing for the truth.  Is truth a priority for you?

Princeton University law professor Robert P. George posted an alarming warning on his Facebook page recently about a Christian family who received a letter from the administration of their children’s private “classical” school in which parents were told the school would be accommodating the unbiblical desires of a gender-dysphoric student. Further, the school would be inculcating all students with those unbiblical ideas through compulsory exposure to picture books that depict, espouse, and affirm Leftist beliefs. Here is Professor George’s post, which includes the letter he recommends that the parents send to the school:

A Catholic family whose children attend a private “classical” school received a letter from the school principal informing them of steps the school would be taking to accommodate a “gender non-conforming” child and to prevent bullying. The letter made clear that the school’s official policy would be to embrace a “gender” ideology according to which children would be encouraged to explore and affirm “feelings” and “identities” that did not fit “traditional expectations” for the sex “assigned” to the child “at birth.” (As a matter of scientific fact, sex is “assigned” at conception, but lay that aside for now.) All students would be made to “listen” to books, including “My Princess Boy,” which celebrate the beauty of “being who you are.” Then there would be teacher led “conversations” that would “focus on acceptance and inclusion.”

Of course, as a private school, the school is entitled to adopt any policies its board wants on these matters. Parents who do not wish their children to be subjected to catechism classes in liberal sexual ideology can send them elsewhere. Still, the principal seemed to suggest that she wanted faithful Catholic families and members of other traditional faiths to send their children to her school, so I suggested to the parents the following response:

We are the parents of ____________. We are writing to inform you that our son [daughter] is an ideology non-conforming student. He [she] believes in being kind to everyone and we, as parents, strongly reinforce that belief; but as a Catholic and a member of our family he [she] does not accept expressive individualist dogmas concerning sexuality and “gender identity.” We strongly object to any program in which he [she] would be subjected to indoctrination into the belief that a biological male can be a girl or woman or that a biological female can be a boy or man. Our family and our faith reject the neo-gnostic dualism presupposed by this idea. Any attempt to impose it on our child is an assault on our values and his [her] identity.

Ideological indoctrination by school officials or others under the guise of preventing bullying is itself a form of bullying. Because we oppose all bullying, we are instructing our son [daughter] not to yield to it. We respectfully request that he [she] not be subjected to programs designed to cause her to accept “transgenderism” or other dogmas of contemporary liberal secularist ideology. We particularly request that he [she] not be made part of a captive audience that is forced to listen to one side, and one side only, on questions of sexuality and “gender.”

Although we do not want our child to be subjected to indoctrination or “thought reform,” we do want him [her] to be educated. We therefore do not object to him [her] being required to hear moral opinions that differ from his [hers] or ours, so long as the matters at issue are addressed objectively and so long as there is a full and fair presentation of the competing point[s] of view. So, for example, where liberal ideas are presented concerning sexuality and “gender,” we have no objection to our son’s [daughter’s] participating so long as perspectives that are critical of liberal ideology on these subjects are also fully and fairly presented.

If someone were to suggest that children are too young to hear competing points of view or that the presentation of competing points of view would confuse them, our reply is that if they are old and mature enough to be subjected to school-cased instruction concerning sexuality and “gender,” then they are old and mature enough to hear both or all sides, not just one.

Yours sincerely,

I wholeheartedly affirm everything Professor George has said with one exception. I have long urged parents to express this same idea to their school administrations and teachers with regard to middle and high school students. I do not, however, believe that young children should be exposed to any presentations or materials that affirm Leftist assumptions about gender dysphoria (or homosexuality).

That said, I suspect Professor George doesn’t either. When he suggests that it would be acceptable for children to be exposed to objective, full, and fair presentations of both sides of the issue—which would necessarily exclude picture books like My Princess Boy—I suspect he’s calling the administration’s bluff. Professor George surely knows that this school will never present fully, fairly, and objectively both sides of the issue. Further, he anticipates the objection that children are too young to hear competing views and refutes it (otherwise known as “prolepsis”).

Keep this letter to send to your own school administrations if necessary.

Now that churches and younger Christians are abandoning orthodoxy on sexuality, parents must be vigilant and pro-active about what their children’s teachers and school administrators believe and endorse regarding homosexuality, gender dysphoria, and marriage, even if their children attend private Christians schools.

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work to advance the truth in the public square!

Through their foolishness, selfishness, and arrogance, “progressives” are responsible for the harm being done to children, teens, the family, the church, the First Amendment, and what’s left of American culture.

Through our ignorance, selfishness, cowardice, and passivity (if not apathy), we Christians are complicit in this harm.

Tragic teen victim of perverse Leftist ideology

The tragic story of a teenage boy—a senior in high school—who just two months ago underwent a grotesque amputation of his genitalia, illustrates the egregious and obscene nature of the evil that too many Christians have facilitated.

Caden Boone, who has changed his name to “Katherine,” underwent what the New York Times stupidly calls an “operation that had changed her, in the most intimate part of her body, from a biological male into a female.”

Any scientist with the courage to speak truth in a public square dominated by anti-science ideologues would explain that no human can change from a biological male into a female.

It’s excruciating to say this, but charlatan doctors are changing teenage boys, not into girls, but into de facto eunuchs.

According to the Times, Caden Boone never demonstrated the usual childhood signs of gender dysphoria:

Kat Boone did not fit the stereotype of a girl trapped in a boy’s body.

As a child, she dressed in jeans and shirts, like all the other boys, and her best friend was a boy. She liked to play with cars and slash bad guys in the Legend of Zelda video games. She still shuns dresses, preferring skinny jeans and band T-shirts.

But as a freshman in high school in Cazenovia, N.Y., she became depressed and withdrawn. “I knew that the changes going on with puberty were not me,” Kat said. “I started to really hate my life, myself. I was uncomfortable with my body, my voice, and I just felt like I was really a girl.”

When she discovered the transgender world on the Internet, she had a flash of recognition. “I was reading through some symptoms, not really symptoms, but some of the attributes of it did click,”

Boone, whose father moved out when he was in fifth grade and who had never demonstrated discomfort with his sex, became depressed during his freshman year in high school and had his penis amputated before he graduated three years later.

The Times reporter acknowledges that “there are no proven biological markers for what is known as gender dysphoria.”

Tangled Leftist web

The Left is really getting tied up in intellectual knots as their doctrinaire assumptions about race, homosexuality, biological sex, “gender,” and “identity” come home to roost. In their lowered consciousness, “progressives” are doing what roosting chickens do: excrete excrement. Unfortunately, they’re also tracking their doo-doo all over the lives of young people.

We’ve been told for decades that race is an immutable biological reality, but now we’re told race is a social construct. We’ve also been told ad nauseum told that homosexuality is analogous to race, but if race is a social construct, then what about homosexuality?

We’ve been told that the binary categories of male and female are arbitrary and socially constructed, shaped by societal conventions and expectations. But then why do so many “transwomen” insist that their desire to dress like caricatures of 1950’s pin-up girls is evidence of their “female brains”?

And if there exist no substantive and real differences between men and women, why do homosexuals claim they’re attracted only to those of their same sex?

Who’s being compelled to lie?

Syndicated columnist Clarence Page, who both is and “identifies” as black, compares Bruce Jenner’s gynophilia to the “negrophilia” of Rachel Dolezal, the white woman who identifies as black:

Dolezal…says she wants to look the way she feels inside. That’s her right, as long as she’s honest about it. Jenner made news by “living his truth,” as many in the transgender community say. Dolezal lived a lie.

What about less famous “transpeople” who are hormone-doping, lopping off body parts, stitching on other body parts, changing birth certificates, driver’s licenses, and falsely claiming to be the opposite sex? Do they have an obligation to tell everyone what Jenner because of his fame will never have to tell (i.e., that he is in reality a man)? Does the obligation not to tell a Dolezal-like whopper require all “transpeople” to fess up to their real sex? Are men who are passing as women living a lie? “LGBT activists claim that “transpeople” are not living a lie, because they are living the truth of their “gender identity.” But there’s also the pesky phenomenon of biological sex. Many believe that subjective desire is subordinate in importance to objective reality.

And what about the freedom of others–you know, “cisgenders” who remain anchored to reality–who want to live the way they feel and believe?  What about people who believe and feel strongly that objective biological sex is real and meaningful and should be affirmed? What about people who believe and feel strongly that pretending that a gender dysphoric boy is a girl harms him deeply and possibly irreparably?

And what about teachers who believe and feel strongly that lying is wrong and yet are being required by the government to lie by being required to refer to gender dysphoric boys as “she” and “her”? What about teachers whose identity includes a commitment to truth-telling?

Connection between love and truth

“Progressives” talk endlessly about “identity,” squishing their definition into whatever shape suits their libidinous appetite for morally untethered sexuality. My generation (referred to by a waggish millennial pastor friend of mine as the “worst generation”) advocated free love. We’ve all been duped. The costs are incalculable, and in order to know which acts (including speech “acts”) are loving requires first a knowledge of truth.

So, for example, if homoeroticism is neither ontologically nor morally equivalent to heterosexual activity, then affirming it as such is not loving.

If homoerotic desire and activity are not ontologically equivalent to race, then affirming them as equivalent is either foolish ignorance or evil.

If homoerotic activity is, in reality, immoral, it is feckless and unloving to assert that it is moral.

If our biochemistry can contribute to powerful desires to engage in activities that are immoral, then telling children that because biochemistry may contribute to homoerotic attraction, homoerotic activity is inherently moral is a foolish and dangerous statement.

If biological sex (i.e., being male or female) is an immutable, profoundly meaningful, and objectively good ontological reality, proclaiming it mutable or subordinate to disordered desire is at best ignorant, at worst evil.

If love sometimes requires that humans tell their friends or family members that they ought not act on a powerful, persistent desire, then it is deeply dishonest to assert that society must affirm homoerotic activity and relationships simply because homoerotic desire is powerful and persistent.

Identity according to “progressives”

The Left created and exploits a deformed conceptualization of identity because it serves their lust for sexual autonomy.

Identity may signify the aggregate of all personal phenomena. These phenomena can be roughly and simplistically divided into categories:

1.  Morally neutral, unchosen phenomena (e.g., nation of origin; skin, eye, and hair color; height; I.Q.; number of siblings; food tastes)
2. Unchosen feelings, some of which impel us toward wrong behavior and some of which impel us toward right behavior (e.g., anger, covetousness, compassion, polyamory/”consensual non-monogamy,” gender dysphoria; heterosexual attraction; homoerotic attraction; “genetic sexual attraction,” “minor attraction”)
3. Unchosen experiences (e.g., music or sports that our parents required, sickness, accidents, childhood molestation)
4. Freely chosen phenomena (e.g., values, beliefs, actions).

Alternatively, identity can refer to aggregate of unchosen feelings and freely chosen values and beliefs that individuals affirm as good and upon which they think it’s morally legitimate to act.

“Progressives” seek to confuse people by demanding that society treat all categories as ontologically identical, which in turn serves their social and political ends. In their twisted world, if it’s wicked to judge a particular eye color as wrong or inferior, then it’s wicked to judge someone’s freely chosen actions (well, primarily actions related to sexuality) as wrong.

Conversely, in this topsy-pervy world, if one ought to treat eye color as morally neutral, then one has an obligation to treat homoerotic activity and cross-dressing as morally neutral.

Of course, “progressives” don’t apply that principle consistently. They don’t argue that if society has an obligation to treat eye or skin color as morally neutral, then society has an obligation to treat theologically orthodox Christian beliefs/identity as morally neutral.

Christian identity

Anyone who claims to find their identity in Christ has an obligation to expose the unfruitful deeds of darkness and to try to protect children. Most Christians—including our religious leaders—have failed and continue to fail.

We have failed because of our own selfish desire to live outside God’s stipulations for sexuality, marriage, and divorce.

We have failed because of our own intellectual, moral, and spiritual sloth.

We have failed because of our cowardly refusal to suffer for Christ and His Kingdom.

In the current cacophonous din borne in damning darkness, our children are hearing that turning Caden Boone into a eunuch is a sign of love.  And still we say nothing.

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Recently at Horace Mitchell Primary School, a K-3 school in Kittery Pointe, Maine, parents were sent a letter explaining that  school guidance counselor Dana Rickerich had read a picture book to 20 of the 22 classes about a boy (yes, an actual boy) who experiences gender confusion—a picture book that the administration clearly deemed age-appropriate. Parents were not notified ahead of time, and, therefore, were not offered the option of exempting their children from exposure to Leftist beliefs about gender confusion.

According to the local press, superintendent Allyn Hutton said this about Rickerich reading I Am Jazz to 5-9-year-olds: “[E]ducating students about transgender people is important because there are students within the district that identify as such.”

First, reading a biased picture book imbued with Leftist beliefs about gender confusion is not “educating.” It’s indoctrinating.

Second, while Hutton may believe it’s important to expose young children to every phenomenon experienced by students in the school or affirmed by their parents, others disagree.

Third, if schools were not permitting cross-dressing and adopting changes in restroom, locker room, and pronoun-use policy that embody Leftist beliefs, young children who cannot possibly understand this psychological disorder would have no need to be “educated” about other students’ disordered desires.

Fourth, there is no justification for indoctrinating students into Leftist ideology on gender confusion.

It is tragic that these parents can never eradicate from the imaginations of their children the confusing and perverse ideas that presumptuous, ignorant government employees have now introduced to them. If these  employees truly understood and respected conservative beliefs, they would weep over what they have done—not merely regret getting caught in the blowback from their own hubris.

The parent of a gender-confused student in this district offered this feckless attempt at justifying the unjustifiable:

Reading ‘I am Jazz’ by Jazz Jennings to students is a way of showing them that gender can be more complicated than just boys and girls. Some people are born somewhere in between. LGBTQ issues should never be classified as a ‘sensitive subject’—there is nothing sensitive about the way we are born. Blonde hair, brown hair, gay, straight, or somewhere in between, we are all people and we all need acceptance.

Unless this parent is referring to children born with objective intersex conditions, he or she is wrong. What, pray tell, is this parent’s proof that some children with no genetic or anatomical disorders are born somewhere in between male and female?

Children born genetically male or female with fully functioning anatomy are boys or girls. It is unproven, subjective, Leftist assumptions that are making this issue unduly complicated. And an issue so fraught with complexity, subjective assumptions, and controversy is wholly inappropriate for 5-9-year-olds.

Further, this parent has no right to impose his or her absolutist belief that homosexuality and gender confusion “should never be classified as a sensitive issue” or the belief that acceptance of people requires affirmation of all their beliefs, desires, or behaviors.

Incidents related to gender confusion are happening with increasing frequency in elementary schools. In some schools, parents of gender-confused students are requesting permission to send letters to all families in their child’s school in which they appeal to the emotions of parents, trying to persuade them that cross-dressing is an appropriate and compassionate response to gender confusion. In other words, they are trying to persuade parents that Leftist assumptions should be adopted and that opposition to Leftist assumptions is cruel.

Perhaps other parents should be permitted to send letters to all families to persuade them of the ways their child is harmed by being forced to share restrooms with opposite sex children, or by being forced to treat cross-dressing as if it’s normal and good, or by being forced to pretend that a boy is a girl by referring to him with opposite sex pronouns.

Would the principal of Horace Mitchell School permit the mother of a 7-year-old boy to whom Rickerich read I am Jazz send a letter to all families sharing the confusion and distress that discussions of Gender Dysphoria caused him and evidenced when he asked his mother “if he was ‘transgender’ or not and also whether or not he could be ‘a girl in love with a girl’”?

Rickerich shares her pernicious Leftist ideology on the school’s website:

Some may think primary school students are too young to worry about addressing issues surrounding gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) students. Not so, experts say. It’s never too early to begin teaching children about respecting differences.

Does Rickerich actually believe that all differences are worthy of respect (which means to hold something in esteem)? One would hope that adults would be wise and prudent enough to know that some “differences” found in the human family are not worthy of esteem.

Now that “LGBTQ” activists are on the verge of hoisting their rainbow flags over public high schools and middle schools, they are arming themselves to take the battle for the hearts and minds of 5-11-year-olds. Ineffectual middle school and high school administrators and teachers—including even followers of Christ—have demonstrated time and time again that they lack the knowledge, wisdom, courage, and integrity to properly engage the enemy. And no matter how “nice” they are or well-intentioned, no matter how prestigious the academic institution from which they graduated or how many advanced degrees they have, those who seek to expose little ones to lies about sexuality and physical embodiment are enemies of God, truth, love, and families.

Emboldened purveyors of perversion seek to change the feelings and beliefs of other people’s children while these children are too young to think critically about an issue of such complexity. Moral regressives do this by deliberately exposing children to biased images and ideas and by censoring dissenting ideas.

So, when the confused parents of a gender-confused student come to your school requesting inappropriate accommodations, here are some questions and concerns that should be posed to school board members before they implement foolish and destructive policies:

1.)  If gender-confused students should not be required to use restrooms or locker rooms with students whose “gender identity” they don’t share, why should other students be compelled to use restrooms or locker rooms with students whose biological sex they don’t share?

 2.)  If there are two distinct phenomenon, biological sex (constituted by objective DNA/anatomy/biology) and “gender identity” (constituted by subjective feelings/desires), why should locker rooms and restrooms be separated according to “gender identity” rather than objective biological sex? What justification is there for subordinating objective biological sex to “gender identity”?

 3.)  Bathrooms and locker rooms have historically corresponded to objective biological sex. Any policy change that allows students to use restrooms and locker rooms that do not correspond to their objective biological sex signifies a deeply troubling policy change. It would mean telling every student that facilities in which private, intimate activities take place no longer correspond to objective biological sex but to subjective feelings about the sex users wish they were.

 Such a policy would teach students that “gender” is not related to or determined by DNA and manifest in biology and anatomy, but that it is determined solely by subjective feelings. Such a policy change would teach young children that their physical embodiment has no inherent, immutable meaning. It would teach them that their maleness or femaleness is wholly detached from physical embodiment, and that maleness or femaleness is determined by thoughts and feelings. This is a momentous and troubling proposition—not a fact—and public schools have no right to teach it either implicitly or explicitly through school policy. Further, no community member has any obligation to accept as true the theory that “gender” has no connection to DNA and anatomy.

5.)  Allowing gender-confused students to use opposite-sex restrooms would teach all students that modesty about one’s body is less important than the subjective feelings of those who experience gender confusion.

Many parents believe that boys should leave a bathroom if a girl enters, and girls should leave a bathroom if a boy enters. How will it make a gender-confused student feel if opposite-sex students who are properly using the correct restroom leave when the gender-confused student enters? Are we now going to tell girls that they have no moral right to leave a restroom when a gender-confused boy enters?

6.)  Regarding “age-appropriateness” of picture books about gender confusion:

First, parents should demand to know what specific criteria are used to determine “age-appropriateness” and specifically who (that means schools must name names) makes the determination regarding age-appropriateness.

Second, the central issue under debate concerns what is objectively true about physical embodiment. Public schools, which are arms of the government, should promote only that which is objectively true. Picture books about gender confusion are always biased, espousing only liberal views of gender confusion and cross-dressing. And a biased presentation of a highly controversial topic constitutes not education but propaganda.

These books are intended to persuade readers—including young impressionable readers—to accept one set of ideas about gender confusion. They are intended to appeal to emotions—not to critically examine the topic. These picture books advance one set of beliefs about the nature of Gender Dysphoria and how best to treat it.

If children are too young to be exposed to both sides of the debate, or if parents of gender-confused children and schools are unwilling to expose students to both sides of the debate, then these picture books and, indeed, this entire topic is age-inappropriate.

7.)  No matter how well-intentioned, a letter from parents of gender-confused children to all families will embody only one set of beliefs about what gender-confusion is and what best serves the child. Such a letter will serve to manipulate the feelings of families and, therefore, is highly inappropriate.

8.)  Changes in restroom policy (as well as letters from parents and picture books) would teach all children in school that compassion requires that others affirm the belief that feelings—not bodies—determine maleness and femaleness. That is a controversial and subjective belief—not an objective fact.

9.)  Changes in restroom policy (as well as letters from parents and picture books) would teach all children in school that it is good to affirm the belief of a gender-confused child that he or she is, in reality, the opposite sex. Arms of the government, which public schools are, have no business affirming as objective truth such a subjective, arguable claim.

10.)  Regarding cross-dressing:

If a gender-confused boy wants to wear distinctly female clothing or a gender-confused girl wants to wear distinctly boys clothing, they themselves recognize that clothing has profound meaning relative to objective biological sex. If that’s the case, the government has no right to tell students that cross-dressing is morally acceptable, or that students shouldn’t notice that a student is cross-dressing, or that students shouldn’t find cross-dressing peculiar or wrong.

If teachers would not tell students that their expressions of disapproval of, for example, skimpy clothes are wrong, then teachers have no right to tell students that their expressions of disapproval of cross-dressing are wrong. Teachers have no ethical right to pick and choose which moral propositions regarding clothing may be expressed and which may be censored.

 11.)  Pronoun use:

Pronouns correspond to objective biological sex—which cannot change. Pronouns do not correspond to the sex people wish they were. There exists no right for one segment of the population to unilaterally change grammar or demand that others subscribe to their novel and self-serving beliefs about grammar and  “gender.”

No school should require either teachers or students to use pronouns that do not correspond to objective biological sex, because such a requirement would constitute the government requiring an employee or student to lie. No arm of the government has the ethical right to require individuals to lie. And no arm of the government has the right to tell its employees or students that compassion requires changing how pronouns are used or what pronouns denote.

Taxpayers must with sense of urgency seek preemptively to establish in policy that restrooms, locker rooms, and pronoun-use correspond to objective biological sex. These issues are not trivial. We should know that by the passion and tenacity with which the Left pursues them. The policy changes that “progressives” are pursuing will necessarily teach lies  to all children about physical embodiment, cross-dressing, modesty, and compassion.

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Written by Carlos D. Flores

We should make public policy and encourage social norms that reflect the truth about the human person and sexuality, not obfuscate the truth about such matters and sow the seeds of sexual confusion in future generations for years to come.

By now we are all undoubtedly familiar with the tragic suicide of Joshua Alcorn, the transgender teenage boy who, in late December, walked onto a freeway with the intention of ending his life. In an apparent suicide note, Joshua cites a host of reasons for why he was led to end his life, most prominent of which were his parents’ attempts to discourage his identifying as a girl and his being sent to therapists in an attempt to relieve these feelings. All of the problems that ultimately culminated in his suicide, writes Joshua, stem from the fact that, from the time he was a small child, he felt like a “girl trapped in a boy’s body.”

No sooner had Joshua’s heart stopped beating than the story of his suicide was seized by LGBT activists and pruned to advance a familiar narrative of a sexual minority fighting cultural oppression. Joshua’s parents immediately began to be chided as “repressive” and “bigoted” and even began to receive various threats from LGBT internet crusader-activists.

Transgenderism and Gender Identity

I have not referred to Joshua by using female pronouns or by using his self-invented female name of “Leelah.” The reason I am not doing this is simple: Joshua was not a girl—he was a boy—and to address males with female pronouns or females with male pronouns is to contribute to our culture’s confusion about sexuality and the nature of the human person, which is literally leaving casualties in its wake. No amount of surgical mutilation of body parts, effeminate behaviors, or artificial female appearances can make a man a woman.

LGBT activists will respond in various ways to this. They might first respond by saying: “Okay, true enough: Joshua was biologically a male. But you have misunderstood our claim: we contend that his sex was male, yes, but his gender was female because he ‘identified’ as female.” The idea here is that people have a sex, which is either female or male and which one cannot choose. In addition to this, however, there is “gender,” or what sex one is more comfortable “identifying” as. The response to this is simple: Why think that what one “identifies as” is significant at all, especially to the extent that others should actively recognize or cater to such an identity, and especially when the identity one adopts is contrary to reality?

Consider the following analogies. Suppose that a Caucasian man from Finland—call him Gunther—suddenly decided that he identifies as being of Sub-Saharan African descent. Suppose further that, in light of this, Gunther undergoes unusual procedures to have his skin darkened and his skull’s bone structure re-shaped so as to resemble that of individuals of Sub-Saharan descent. Would we think that such a person has suddenly become of Sub-Saharan descent through such procedures? Of course not, and his identifying as such does nothing to change this. His appearance as someone of Sub-Saharan descent might be very convincing. But, again, this doesn’t change the fact that he is not of Sub-Saharan descent.

Similarly, suppose that a seventy-year-old man—call him Bob—comes to identify as a sixteen-year-old. Wouldn’t we think it absurd if people considered it “rude” or “bigoted” to tell the man: “You are not sixteen years old. Your identifying as such doesn’t change this fact, and we will not indulge you in your strange delusions by not calling attention to your old age and by pretending that you really are sixteen years old”?

The cases of Gunther and Bob and the situations of individuals who believe themselves to be transgender are perfectly analogous. In the case of the transgender individual, he identifies as something he is not—someone of the opposite sex—and seeks to undergo harmful surgeries and hormonal treatments in order to have his physical state match his identity of himself as someone of the opposite sex.

Our mental faculties, like our physical ones, are ordered toward various ends. Among these ends is the attainment of truth. To this extent, it is perfective of our mental faculties to recognize how we truly are (and thus apprehend a truth). It is for this reason that we can make sense of mental disorders such as anorexia nervosa as disorders: they involve persons’ having persistent, false beliefs about their identity or how they really are. In the case of the anorexic, someone who is dangerously underweight believes falsely (but tenaciously) that he is really overweight. It would be a proper procedure of medicine, then, for a therapist to help an anorexic individual to do away with his anorexia, restoring the individual’s mental faculties to their properly functioning state.

Gender Reassignment Surgery Is Not Medicine

Those in favor of transgenderism also (naturally) support gender-reassignment surgery as a perfectly legitimate medical procedure for individuals (including children) with gender dysphoria. Now, put to one side the fact that 70-80 percent of children who report having transgender feelings come to lose such feelings. Ignore, for the moment, the fact that individuals who undergo gender reassignment surgery are 20 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population. Instead consider the following question: Can we reasonably categorize gender reassignment surgery as a medical procedure in the first place?

Before we answer this question, we might venture to ask: what is medicine? Here is a plausible answer: medicine is the enterprise of restoring bodily faculties to their proper function. Our bodily faculties are ordered toward certain ends. This seems impossible to deny. Eyes, for example, are ordered toward (i.e., their function is) seeing, the stomach is ordered toward breaking down food, the heart is ordered toward pumping blood, etc. So if, say, someone’s eyes were not able to achieve their end of sight well, it would be rightly considered a medicalprocedure to seek to restore this individual’s eyes to their proper function. Similarly, it would be a medical endeavor to seek to restore an individual’s defective heart (one that has arrhythmia, say) to its proper function. All well and good.

But what are we to make of this “gender reassignment” surgery? Insofar as such a surgical procedure involves the intentional damaging and mutilating of otherwise perfectly functioning bodily faculties by twisting them to an end toward which they are not ordered, such a thing cannot, in principle, possibly be considered a medical procedure. And because love compels us to seek the good for another, it is thus a grave evil to condone such surgical procedures.

On Gender Identity Disorder Therapy

A similar point can be made about gender identity disorder therapy. Transgenderism activists are seizing Joshua’s tragic death to insist that such therapy ought to be criminalized. A petition is floating around the internet to ban so-called “transgender conversion therapy,” a procedure that involves, presumably, an attempt by a professional to help a person who is experiencing a gender identity disorder (also known as gender dysphoria). If the progress of the homosexual movement is a guide to what will come next, we can expect that laws will soon be passed criminalizing individuals’ receiving therapy to help them do away with transgender identities or desires—even for those who want to relieve themselves of such identities and desires.

Recall our earlier discussion of anorexia. Like the anorexic, the transgendered individual tenaciously holds to false beliefs about his identity or how or what he truly is: he believes that he is a sex that he is not. Dr. Paul McHugh’s words here are particularly incisive:

The transgendered suffer a disorder of “assumption” like those in other disorders familiar to psychiatrists. With the transgendered, the disordered assumption is that the individual differs from what seems given in nature—namely one’s maleness or femaleness. Other kinds of disordered assumptions are held by those who suffer from anorexia and bulimia nervosa, where the assumption that departs from physical reality is the belief by the dangerously thin that they are overweight.

It would thus be a perfectly proper procedure of medicine for the transgendered individual to visit a therapist to seek his professional help to relieve himself of his disordered transgender identity insofar as this would amount to a restoring of the transgendered individual’s mental faculties to their properly functioning state. The suggestion, then, that gender identity disorder therapy should be criminalized is as absurd as the suggestion that therapy to eliminate anorexia should be criminalized.

Some Common Objections

Now, an apologist for transgenderism might retort in the following way: “You’re missing a key point: the brains of, say, men who ‘identify’ as women have been shown to resemble those of women. This shows that there is a biological basis to their identifying as such.” In response, we might begin by asking for empirical evidence that this dubious claim really is true. But even if this were the case, this doesn’t show that men whose brains “resemble that of a woman’s” (whatever that means) are truly women after all. If we are to say that the person simply is the brain, as the one who espouses this objection seems to suggest, then, because presumably even males who identify as women have brains with male DNA, it follows that they are men after all.

But we don’t even need to grant that the presence of such-and-such brain states is relevant at all. For example, we may suppose that, through habitually behaving as a sixteen- year-old, the brain activity of the seventy-year-old mentioned above “resembles” that of a sixteen-year-old’s. Does it follow, then, that the seventy-year-old really is sixteen years old? Or that he is really a sixteen-year-old trapped inside a seventy-year-old’s body? Of course not. The most rational conclusion is that such an individual has some sort of cognitive or psychological defect associated with identity and self-perception. The same can be said for the transgender individual.

Indeed, it should not come as a surprise to find out that our daily activities shape our brain-states or alter the way our brains behave. After all, it is more or less common knowledge that, say, the process of learning to play an instrument has the effect of establishing new neural pathways, thus causing a change in brain-states. Thus Dr. Norman Doidge comments: “Now we know the brain is ‘neuroplastic,’ and not only can it change, but that it works by changing its structure in response to repeated mental experience.”

On the topic of sexuality more specifically, consider the fact that habitual porn use seems to result in (or correlate with) decreased gray matter in the brain, and that habitual porn use changes the sexual tastes of men. If habitually watching pornography can change a man’s brain so significantly, then it should hardly be surprising that through intentionally and habitually behaving like a woman a man’s brain would too change to some extent. But again, this does not thereby show that such a man is a woman after all; all it shows is that through habituated action of some sort, the man’s brain behavior has changed.

Another response might be to ask rhetorically: “Well, what about intersex individuals?” The implication is that the existence of intersex individuals somehow shows that the nature of sex is up for grabs for everyone, intersex or not. But this doesn’t follow at all. In the genuine case of intersex individuals, it may very well be appropriate to express puzzlement or ignorance as to what to make of such an attribute, metaphysically speaking, and perhaps leave it as an open question whether such individuals are either male or female or whether they should be encouraged to undergo surgical procedures in the interest of their health. Cases in which an individual is intersex, however, are exceedingly rare. Indeed, even granting the point, it would not be unfair to say that in 99.99 percent of cases (and even this might be too low a percentage), a person is either male or female. And unsurprisingly, most of the individuals who believe themselves to be transgender have perfectly functioning male or female reproductive systems. This question is both irrelevant and fruitless.

Finally, the LGBT activist might retort by asking: “but how will a man identifying as a woman affect you?” If these were simply private issues, this might be a valid point (though a concern for the physical and mental well-being of individuals struggling with their gender might obligate us to reach out to them in such a case). But, alas, LGBT activists are actively working to make it the case that the state and private businesses cover “gender-reassignment” surgeries, that men who identify as women be able to use women’s restrooms, that girls who identify as boys be able to play on male sports teams, that we consider it immoral to refer to infants as male or female lest we insidiously impose upon them a “gender” they might not identify with, that we ban therapy to treat gender dysphoria, and that we generally co-opt language and social norms to reflect pernicious falsehoods about the human body.

How a man’s identifying as a woman will personally affect me, you, or John Doe is irrelevant. What is relevant is whether we will make public policy and encourage social norms that reflect the truth about the human person and sexuality, or whether we will obfuscate the truth about such matters and sow the seeds of sexual confusion in future generations for years to come.

Carlos D. Flores studies philosophy at UC Santa Barbara. He is the president of the UC Santa Barbara Anscombe Society and has written for Ethika Politika. Originally published at ThePublicDiscourse.com.

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Tragically, three days after Christmas, 17-year-old Joshua Alcorn committed suicide by stepping into the path of a tractor-trailer. Josh suffered from both gender dysphoria and depression. He left behind a suicide note that lays the blame for his pain on those in society who reject the assumptions of the Left about gender confusion, including his Christian parents.

Josh was particularly upset that his parents did not support his decision to start “transitioning,” which is yet another deceitful Leftist term because it suggests that one can transition from one sex to the opposite sex—a claim the Left implicitly acknowledges is impossible. Their implicit acknowledgement comes in the form of changing the name of the surgical procedure that mutilates healthy bodies from “sex reassignment” surgery to “gender confirmation” surgery. Though such surgery does, indeed, provide confirmation of the presence of a serious delusion or disordered desire, it does not confirm any objective existential reality.

But perhaps Josh was wrong. Perhaps his parents, motivated by love, were right in standing firm for the truth that he was in reality a boy. Perhaps they had read  in The Guardian that “There is no conclusive evidence that sex change operations improve the lives of transsexuals, with many people remaining severely distressed and even suicidal after the operation, according to a medical review….of more than 100 international medical studies of post-operative transsexuals by the University of Birmingham’s aggressive research intelligence facility.”

Perhaps they had read about the study of 324 “sex-reassigned” men and women published in 2011 which found that they “have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population.”

Or perhaps Josh’s parents had heard about the deep regret some men and women experience following their sex “reassignment” butchery.

The Left attributes to conservatives blame for the depression and suicidal ideation of both those who identify as “transgender” and those who identify as homosexual, and in so doing overlook other possible causes for the depression that these girls, boys, men, and women experience.

Perhaps the depression and suicidal ideation that gender-confused teens, post-op “transsexuals,” and homosexuals experience results in part from societal disapproval,* but perhaps their anguish results at least in part from apprehension of the truth that God has written on their hearts regarding homoerotic activity, cross-dressing, and bodily mutilation.

Or perhaps both depression and disordered desires related to sexuality are symptoms of other underlying problems.

Unfortunately, homosexual and “trans”activists are making it impossible to explore such possibilities. They vehemently oppose such exploration even if it may result in less suffering for those who experience same-sex attraction or gender confusion.

Homosexual and “trans” activists are not interested in finding ways to mitigate suffering unless such ways include promoting their assumptions about homoerotic activity and gender confusion. They will tolerate no discussion of theories regarding causation that may undermine their social and political goals of compulsory affirmation of their non-factual beliefs. The promotion of their self-serving sexuality ideology supersedes everything, including the welfare of others.

Since the Left dominates academia, the arts, and the mainstream press, we all know what they believe about homoerotic attraction, gender dysphoria, and the depression that often accompanies both, but here are some other ideas that are worthy of consideration:

• Perhaps teaching teens who experience same-sex attraction or gender confusion the politically expedient lie that all conservatives hate them contributes to their anguish.

• Perhaps the anguish of homosexual or gender-confused teens is exacerbated when they’re told that their only hope for a fulfilling life depends on the affirmation of their same-sex attraction or desire to be the opposite sex.

• Perhaps telling homosexual or gender-confused teens that their desires will never change contributes to their despair.

• Perhaps the refusal of “progressives” to tell teens who experience same-sex attraction that childhood molestation can contribute to what homosexual therapist Howard Fradkin refers to as “sexual orientation confusion” does a disservice to them.

• Perhaps early exposure to images and depictions of homoerotic activity contributes to the development of homoerotic desire and to homoerotic experimentation. Children are being exposed at ever younger ages to images of homoerotic activity through novels, magazines, advertising, music, television, movies, online porn, and public school teachers. It seems at least possible that such exposure may lead to questioning the moral status of homoeroticism, to sexual arousal, and to homoerotic experimentation, particularly among young boys whose bodies are awash in testosterone.The Left has long promoted the fiction that they know with certainty that same-sex attraction is biologically determined, which may lead conservatives to the grave error of believing that only some children are biologically vulnerable to being aroused by homoerotic images. But can anyone say with certainty that exposure at young ages to homoerotic images or early experimentation with homoerotic activity due to exposure to such images will not create a persistent desire for such activity?

• In regard to gender confusion, the Left often claims that “God doesn’t make mistakes,” meaning that if a girl or boy feels they were born in the wrong body, they actually must have been born in the wrong body. End of story. But if it’s true that God doesn’t make mistakes, why would anyone assume that healthy properly functioning sexual anatomy is a mistake that requires barbaric medical interventions, some of which result in sterility? Virtually no one makes a similar claim about those who experience Body Integrity Identity Disorder.

Acknowledging the profound suffering of Josh Alcorn should not lead other parents of similarly suffering teens to affirm their desires or to blindly accept that Josh’s posthumously published words reflect the real cause of his suffering. Most teens at some point or many points blame their parents for their suffering in matters great and small.

With nothing but the words of a deeply depressed, confused, and despairing teen for evidence, the vicious, foolish, and supremely arrogant homosexual activist and bully extraordinaire Dan Savage heaped more pain upon grieving parents by writing that Josh’s “parents threw ‘her’ in front of that truck. They should be ashamed—but 1st they need to be shamed. Charges should be brought.”

There is no evidence that Josh Alcorn’s parents abused him or even rejected him. They rejected his belief that his desire to be a girl signified something true and good. They rejected Josh’s belief that his desire to be a girl should be affirmed as central to his identity. And they rejected his request to pursue bodily mutilation. Despite the claims of Dan Savage to the contrary, reports indicate that Josh’s parents loved him deeply and expressed that love to him.

Apparently homosexual and “transgender” activists like Savage hold the peculiar view that in order to properly love teens, parents must affirm all of their beliefs, feelings, and volitional acts. But wiser minds understand that parental love for children who experience unchosen same-sex attraction or gender confusion is not demonstrated through affirmation of disordered desires.  Genuine love is inseparable from truth. Parents of children who experience same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria must learn how to communicate their love while always affirming truth about sexuality, gender, embodiment, and human flourishing.

If Christians hope to alleviate the suffering of children and adults who experience same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria, they must guard against the lies that now devour them. Don’t believe the lie that speaking truth in love causes death. And don’t believe the false accusations of those who do not know truth.

Instead, remember these words from Jesus who accuses rightly:  ^“You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). It is the Father of Lies who deceived Josh and then falsely accuses all those who follow Christ for Josh’s suffering.

*The fact that disapproval of a particular behavior causes distress in those who desire to engage in such behavior does not mean that disapproval is wrong.

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The inmates are running the asylum in Indy.

Until recently I had not heard of the National Federation of State High School Associations, or NFHS. This Indianapolis-based organization has, since 1920, developed and published playing rules for high-school sports in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Like so many other national organizations charged with establishing curricula, policies and practices for primary and secondary education (consider the NEA), the NFHS has become completely overrun by radical leftists and sexual extremists. It has placed political correctness and the adult “LGBT” political agenda above the welfare and safety of the boys and girls it purports to serve.

Last week, I received an email from a concerned public educator. He is also an NFHS member and high-school sports announcer: “I wanted to pass along to you an advisory that the National Federation of State High School Associations recently released on ‘Developing Policies for Transgender Students on High School Teams,’” he wrote, adding that, “in light of [his] positions,” and the threat of near-certain employment termination, he wished to remain anonymous.

And so I clicked on the link provided. It led me to an NFHS advisory penned by University of Massachusetts “social justice education” professor emerita Pat Griffin. (In other words, “Dr.” Griffin has a PhD in BS and has made a good, taxpayer-funded living shoveling it into that expansive black hole known as the “collegus craniumus.” As I have addressed before, “social justice” is simply code for “social-ism,” or, more precisely, cultural Marxism.)

Writing on behalf of the NFHS, Griffin advises every high school administrator in America that, according to the Federal Office of Civil Rights, Title IX requires that boys pretending to be girls, and girls pretending to be boys, must be permitted to compete on, and share locker room and showering facilities with, the sports teams of the opposite sex.

This is a bald-faced lie.

Griffin then lays the fantastical foundation for her entire “advisory”: “It is important for policy-makers to understand that transgender girls (who were assigned a male gender at birth) are not boys.”

This, of course, is objectively, “I am Napoleon,” house-full-of-kitty-cats cray cray. (Figure out a way, Ms. Griffin, to do a full override of a “transgender” kid’s reproductive system, give him a fertile uterus, vagina, birth canal and the like, preform a complete DNA/chromosome reversal, and we might at least have a place to begin a discussion. Until then, seek therapy. Your Huxleyan delusions are hurting, not helping, the sexually confused children you claim to serve. Besides, it makes you look nuttier than squirrel poop.)

Griffin then states the obvious, complaining, “School officials often see transgender students’ interest in participating in sports according to their affirmed gender identity as disruptive.” She further objects, “[P]ractices such as requiring them to use locker rooms and bathrooms that correspond to their gender assigned at birth discourage participation.”

“Gender assigned at birth.” Get that? Orwell would be proud. As if a person’s immutable, biological sex is both subjectively determined and arbitrarily “assigned” to them by our “heteronormative” American patriarchy.

You’re assigned homework, Ms. Griffin. You’re not assigned “gender.”

Therefore, administrators have a “responsibility,” she demands, “to ensure that transgender athletes have access to athletic teams according to their affirmed gender identity and that these students are safe in locker rooms and on the playing field.”

Girls playing boys’ football, boys playing girls’ basketball and coed showers – what could possibly go wrong?

Griffin then acknowledges, and promptly dismisses, “four major concerns” raised by mentally stable parents and school administrators. To the person who even dabbles in objective reality and speaks English only, the following will appear as gibberish. Fortunately, I speak fluent Moonbat and have translated accordingly.

“These concerns,” she writes, “are: 1) transgender girls [meaning boys pretending to be girls] are really boys [meaning real boys] despite their affirmed gender identity as a girl; 2) fear that non-transgender boys [meaning boys not pretending to be girls] will pretend to be girls [like ‘transgender girls’ do, only, in this case, just pretending to pretend to be girls] to win championships or get more playing time on girls teams; 3) transgender girls [meaning boys pretending to be girls] pose a safety risk for non-transgender girls [meaning real girls] in some sports, like basketball or field hockey; and 4) transgender girls [meaning boys pretending to be girls] have a competitive advantage over non-transgender girls [meaning real girls].”

“The belief that transgender girls are not ‘real’ girls is sometimes expressed as a concern,” she adds.

Ya think?

What a tangled web of gender identity disorder and “progressive” pathology we weave. Note that all of the “concerns” Griffin rejects happen to be 100 percent legitimate and fact-based. It is not a “belief” that “transgender girls are not real girls.” It is an empirical, biological fact that “transgender” girls are not real girls. They are, have always been and always will be boys, no matter how deep-seated their sexual confusion.

Still, the main issue here, the one that exposes the NFHS as nothing more than a dangerously reckless vehicle for radical “social change,” is the issue of safety.

Continues Griffin: “Some sports leaders and parents express concerns that allowing transgender girls [meaning high school boys] to participate on girls teams will pose a safety risk for non-transgender girls. This concern is based on an assumption that transgender girls are bigger, stronger and unable to exercise adequate body control resulting in an increased risk of injury to other participants.”

Again, this is utterly surreal. It is not an “assumption” that post-pubescent boys are “bigger” and “stronger” than girls, it is an irrefutable fact that they are. Girls, with the rare exception, are physically weaker, slower and less aggressive than boys. They have far less testosterone, muscle mass and a skeletal frame that is smaller, less dense and, therefore, more frail by comparison.

Pumping kids full of dangerous hormones or mutilating their genitalia changes none of this.

It’s easy enough to dismiss Ms. Griffin as the left-wing extremist she is. It’s not so easy, however, to dismiss the NFHS, which has both authorized her to represent the organization and to develop highly dangerous policies that will be adopted by high schools nationwide.

As a licensed attorney, and having once worked for years in the insurance industry, I can tell you that if a high school permits a sexually confused boy to play on a girls’ sports team, and that boy hurts a female player, that school has exposed itself to tremendous liability.

My suggestion to parents? If your high school allows boys to play on your daughters’ sports teams, sue, sue, sue.

And if, God forbid, one of those boys actually injures your daughter, then don’t just sue the school – sue the NFHS and Pat Griffin.

They’re ultimately accountable for this foolishness.

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What one subject could possibly bring together radio host Rush Limbaugh, drag queen Ru Paul, and Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia?

It is the “T” word in the LGBTQ acronym, “transgender,” now hailed by Time Magazine as the new civil rights frontier.

And for Rush and Ru, it is the “tranny” word in particular that brings them together.

Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.

Before broaching this topic, however, it’s important to remember that many people do suffer terribly because of gender identity issues, sometimes to the point of suicide, and as I’ve said many times before, whatever we can do to help these people find true wholeness, we should do it.

That being said, I do not believe that ultimate, true wholeness is found in crossdressing or in putting prepubescent kids on hormone blockers or in resorting to sex-change surgery plus hormones for life.

And because I hold to these views, I am officially transphobic. (If you’re not familiar with terms like transphobe, transphobic, and transphobia, then you’d better get used to them in a hurry.)

I also do not believe that trans is the new black any more than I believe that gay is the new black, which officially makes me not just a transphobe but a bigoted transphobe.

Such is the climate of the day.

Time’s May 29, 2014 cover story was entitled “The Transgender Tipping Point,” and the article began by explaining that, “Nearly a year after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, another social movement is poised to challenge deeply held cultural beliefs.”

It was this article that Rush was referring to on his May 29th show, stating that it was the folks at Time “who discuss the Scalia Supreme Court ruling and what he meant, and they say he was right. Now doors are wide open.”

This would not be the first time that Scalia’s warnings have proven true.

Already in 2003, in his dissenting opinion to Lawrence v. Texas, where 6 Supreme Court justices found a constitutional “right” to sodomy, Justice Scalia stated that, “State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest . . . are … called into question by today’s decision.”

Precisely so.

Things have gotten to the point that today, in some states, transgender rights overrule everyone else’s rights. They even overrule common sense.

Getting back to Rush, he was referencing Time’s story when a caller who identified himself as Tina (he would obviously want to be referred to as “she”) took exception to his comments, not realizing that he was citing Time’s sentiments rather than his own.

As the conversation ensued and Tina explained that it was offensive to use the word “tranny,” Rush sarcastically played along, a fact which escaped Huffington Post columnist Catherine Taibi, who wrote that, “Rush Limbaugh got a long overdue lesson on Thursday when a transgender caller, Tina, smacked down his use of the word ‘tranny.’

“While attempting to defend himself against the caller’s claim that he is anti-transgender rights, Limbaugh assured her that he has ‘been for trannies for a long time.’”

Did Taibi not understand what Rush was doing? He even stated after the break, “I made a note to ask [Tina] a question ’cause she was still talking and I covered the note up with a piece of paper. It’s a salient question. ‘How do you react when you hear people talk about trans fats?’ But I never got a chance to ask. So hopefully I will have an opportunity to ask that and clarify whether or not that’s offensive. ‘Cause we don’t want to use it if it is.”

Did Taibi really miss this?

What makes this more interesting still is that Tina, the caller, told Rush that Ru Paul had taken a position on the term tranny. As noted in Daniel D’Addario’s May 27th article on Salon.com, “Over the weekend, RuPaul accused those offended by his use of [the term Shemale] as well as ‘tranny’ of operating in bad faith and policing his behavior in an attempt to become the oppressor . . . .”

Paul even tweeted out the message, “Forget an outside threat, the ‘Gay Movement’ will eat itself from the inside out,” with reference to Orwell’s Animal Farm.

So, transgender is the new civil rights frontier, Time Magazine acknowledges the accuracy of Justice Scalia’s warnings, Rush Limbaugh plays along with a transgender-identified caller and makes a sarcastic note to himself to inquire about the term “trans fats” being offensive, the Huffington Post thinks Rush is being serious, and Ru Paul predicts that the “Gay Movement” will destroy itself.

Welcome to America, 2014.

Who can predict what’s coming next? Perhaps it will be that not only Scalia’s warnings but those also of Ru Paul will prove true?

You know how conservatives are always warning against non-discrimination laws that include sexual orientation and gender identity language? We try to communicate that not only are such laws unnecessary, but also pose a threat to other freedoms. For example, they will prevent a Christian school from requiring its teachers adhere to a statement of faith. Such laws also lack common sense and will lead to abuse by disturbed individuals that pose both privacy and safety concerns for people.

Adding sexual orientation or gender identity to non-discrimination laws eventually leads to allowing transgender and cross-dressing persons into bathrooms, locker rooms, and other facilities for the gender they are biologically the opposite of. So, in the end, cross-dressing men get to go into women’s locker rooms, and transgender females are allowed into men’s bathrooms.

Our opponents try to laugh it off, as if that sort of thing has never happened and will never happen. Enter Rodney Kenneth Peterson. A recent article explains that Mr. Peterson decided to get“dressed up in women’s clothes — and a brunette wig — and unsuccessfully attempted to sneak into student-only areas of a women’s residence hall on the campus of Loma Linda University in Southern California…Eventually, dormitory staff members noticed a cross-dressing, middle-aged man in their midst and confronted him.”

It has been determined that Mr. Peterson sought to take pictures with his cell phone of the females in the residence hall and that he has tried this stunt in other places. Evidently Mr. Peterson hasn’t been listening to the politicians that assure us these things never happen as a result of adding sexual orientation and gender identity to non-discrimination laws.

Another ill-effect of this language being added is the story of Don Ennis. Don is a middle-aged ABC News editor that believes he is a woman trapped in a man’s body. So he decided to become transgender, leave his wife, and change his name to Dawn. Don, err…um…Dawn of course used the women’s restroom and other facilities since “she” was obviously identifying now as a woman. The problem is that Dawn decided she was really a he and changed his name back to Don and apologized to friends after realizing that he is “not transgender after all.”

The problem in each case is that laws are being passed to accommodate a minority group that is very confused. If a person can wake up one day and conclude that he is a she or that she is really a he trapped in a woman’ body, the opposite can be just as true. Just as Don came to the conclusion that he was “not transgender after all” so can others now saying they are trapped in the wrong body.

Just as Mr. Peterson decided to cross-dress in order to fulfill his perverted fantasy, so others can abuse non-discrimination laws with sexual orientation and gender identity language to similarly take advantage of unsuspecting girls and women.

Add to this the very dangerous trend of adults encouraging gender confusion in children. Rather than recognize the natural curiosity of children which can lead to a temporary period of gender experimentation, parents are quick to conclude their sons are girls and their girls are boys. From there, with the encouragement of their parents, these children become locked into a pattern of behavior that at one time was classified as a mental disorder, but is now seen as “normal.”

So what happened to Don Ennis? He says he was diagnosed as transgender and began living accordingly. Now he says he is absolutely certain he was misdiagnosed and is “totally, completely, unabashedly male.” Was Mr. Ennis confused about being confused? Was he trying to take advantage of a politically correct corporate world in order to fulfill a perverted fantasy?

The danger with non-discrimination laws that include sexual orientation and gender identity is that they elevate one class of people based on variant characteristics over the rest of the population with non-variant characteristics. No African American has ever suddenly realized he was “a white guy.” Outside of surgical procedures even biology is non-variant. Homosexuality, transgenderism, and other sexuality based characteristics seem to be unstable.

Do we really want our daughters to become accustomed to grown men seeing them in the bathroom or the locker room? Where does that kind of “normal” lead? I submit that it leads to a society where our daughters become so accustomed to grown men seeing them in various states of dress and undress that they think nothing of sending pictures of themselves in their underwear, or even nude, to the boys in their school. Pornography becomes a routine part of life. Engaging in sexual activity with numerous partners of various sexual orientations at a young age becomes the standard.  

Is that really the society we want to leave for our daughters and grand-daughters?

Written by Thaddeus Baklinski, LifeSiteNews.com

A prominent Toronto psychiatrist has severely criticized the assumptions underlying what has been dubbed by critics as the Canadian federal government’s “bathroom bill,” that is, Bill C-279, a private member’s bill that would afford special protection to so-called “transgender” men and women.

Dr. Joseph Berger has issued a statement saying that from a medical and scientific perspective there is no such thing as a “transgendered” person, and that terms such as “gender expression” and “gender identity” used in the bill are at the very least ambiguous, and are more an emotional appeal than a statement of scientific fact.

Berger, who is a consulting psychiatrist in Toronto and whose list of credentials establishes him as an expert in the field of mental illness, stated that people who identify themselves as “transgendered” are psychotic or simply unhappy, and pointed out that hormone therapy and surgery are not appropriate treatments for psychosis or unhappiness.

“From a scientific perspective, let me clarify what ‘transgendered’ actually means,” Dr. Berger said, adding, “I am speaking now about the scientific perspective – and not any political lobbying position that may be proposed by any group, medical or non-medical.”

“‘Transgendered’ are people who claim that they really are or wish to be people of the sex opposite to which they were born, or to which their chromosomal configuration attests,” Dr. Berger stated.

“Some times, some of these people have claimed that they are ‘a woman trapped in a man’s body’ or alternatively ‘a man trapped in a woman’s body’.”

“The medical treatment of delusions, psychosis or emotional happiness is not surgery,” Dr. Berger stated.

“On the other hand,” Dr. Berger continued, “if these people are asked to clarify exactly what they believe, that is to say do they truly believe whichever of those above propositions applies to them and they say ‘no’, then they know that such a proposition is not true, but that they ‘feel’ it, then what we are talking about scientifically, is just unhappiness, and that unhappiness is being accompanied by a wish – that leads some people into taking hormones that predominate in the other sex, and even having cosmetic surgery designed to make them ‘appear’ as if they are a person of the opposite sex.”

He explained that cosmetic surgery will not change the chromosomes of a human being in that it will not make a man become a woman, capable of menstruating, ovulating, and having children, nor will it make a woman into a man, capable of generating sperm that can unite with an egg or ovum from a woman and fertilize that egg to produce a human child.

Moreover, Dr. Berger stated that the arguments put forward by those advocating for special rights for gender confused people have no scientific value and are subjective and emotional appeals with no objective scientific basis.

“I have read the brief put forward by those advocating special rights, and I find nothing of scientific value in it,” Dr. Berger said in his statement. “Words and phrases, such as ‘the inner space,’ are used that have no objective scientific basis.”

“These are the scientific facts,” Dr. Berger said. “There seems to me to be no medical or scientific reason to grant any special rights or considerations to people who are unhappy with the sex they were born into, or to people who wish to dress in the clothes of the opposite sex.”

“The so-called ‘confusion’ about their sexuality that a teenager or adult has is purely psychological. As a psychiatrist, I see no reason for people who identify themselves in these ways to have any rights or privileges different from everyone else in Canada,” he concluded.

REAL Women of Canada asked Dr. Berger for a statement on the issues surrounding Bill C-279 after the organization appeared before the review committee hearings on the bill.

Gwen Landolt of REAL Women told LifeSiteNews that after being initially refused permission to present their perspective on the bill to the review committee, the group was accepted, but found that all other groups and individuals who had been accepted to appear before the committee were supporters of Bill C-279.

“It can scarcely be an impartial review of any bill if only the witnesses supporting the bill are invited to speak to it,” Landolt said.

Landolt explained that after passing second reading on June 6, 2012, Bill C-279 went to the Justice and Human Rights Committee for review.

At the review committee hearings, REAL Women of Canada presented a 12 page brief setting out the harms created by the bill, and pointing out that the terms “gender expression” and “gender identity,” as written in Bill C-279, were so broad that they could be used to protect pedophilia along with other sexual perversions, if passed into law.

REAL Women provided the committee with evidence that post-operative trans-gendered individuals suffer substantially higher morbidity and mortality than the general population, placing the so-called “sex reassignment” surgery and hormone treatment under continued scrutiny.

They pointed out that a pioneer in such treatment, Dr. Paul McHugh, distinguished professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, stopped the procedures because he found that patients were no better adjusted or satisfied after receiving such treatment.

McHugh wrote in 2004 that “Hopkins was fundamentally cooperating with a mental illness” by catering to the desires of people who wanted surgery to change their biological sex.

“We psychiatrists, I thought, would do better to concentrate on trying to fix their minds and not their genitalia,” he stated, adding that “to provide a surgical alteration to the body of these unfortunate people was to collaborate with a mental disorder rather than to treat it.”

Landolt noted that the committee hearings ended in confusion over the terminology presented in the bill, and that even the bill’s sponsor, NDP MP Randall Garrison (Esquimalt – Juan de Fuca), was not clear as to who is included and who is excluded in these terms.

“The definition for ‘gender identity’ proposed by Mr. Garrison is a subjective one that he defined as a ‘deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex that the individual was assigned at birth’,” Landolt said, adding that “The committee engaged in extensive discussions on the meaning of “gender identity” and “gender expression” without much clarification.”

“As a result, instead of a smooth, orderly dispatch of this bill through the Committee orchestrated by Garrison, Conservative MP Shelly Glover (St. Boniface, Manitoba) and Conservative MP Kerry-Lynne Findlay (Delta-Richmond-East, BC), the committee hearings broke down in confusion at the final hearing on December 10th. The result is that the bill will be reported to the House of Commons as originally written without amendments,” Landolt stated.

Following this state of confusion over terms at the review committee, REAL Women sought out an expert in order to provide the scientific and medical evidence relating to “transgenderism” and the other terms used in the bill.

Gwen Landolt told LifeSiteNews that REAL Women of Canada will be including Dr. Berger’s statement in an information package to be sent to MPs before the bill comes to final vote.

“It is crucial that MPs know that this legislation is harmful, not only to those who think themselves transgendered but also to society, and should not be passed into law,” Landolt said. “We must therefore write to our MP’s to request that they speak against this troubling bill.”

Dr. Berger is certified as a specialist in Psychiatry by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada and by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, and is an elected Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He is also a past Chairman of the Toronto district of the Ontario Medical Association and past President of the Ontario branch of the American Psychiatric Association.

Berger has been an Examiner in Psychiatry for the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology for twenty five years, has taught as Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto, and is the author of many published papers on different aspects of Diagnosis and Independent Psychiatric Assessments, as well as author of the book “The Independent Medical Examination in Psychiatry” published by Butterworth/Lexis-Nexis.