The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has awarded the Trump Administration a victory by staying a lower court decision which blocked the administration’s attempts to restrict the military service of “trans”-identifying people who suffer from gender dysphoria. The court found that Trump’s new policy, which was based on the findings of former Secretary of State Jim Mattis, was in fact a more nuanced version of the original policy and should not have been summarily blocked by District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly. The Trump Administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on its attempts to place restrictions on “trans”-identifying persons serving in the military.

Hanging in the balance are the last vestiges of Christian culture, and the marginalization of those who hold to the words of Jesus: “At the beginning of creation God made them male and female.”  We see this already in Canada, where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government is requiring employers to attest that they respect transgender “rights” in order to receive summer job grants. In the United Kingdom, the Labour Party LGBT+ adviser has argued for the right of children as young as 8 years old to choose their “gender” and begin “transitioning” to embrace their “true selves.” And in America, Christian parents in Hamilton County, Ohio, have lost custody of their 17-year-old daughter after they refused to support her “transition” to male.

LGBTQ groups, celebrities and politicians have expressed outrage over the administration’s proposal to define gender as biological and fixed. This self-evident understanding, unquestioned for millennia, was overturned by former President Barack Obama, who enshrined subjective feeling rather than biological sex as determining one’s “gender.” Thus, a man may decide that his “true gender” is female, and a woman may decide she is male. Further complicating this absurd notion–a notion that would have left our forefathers aghast–are those who refuse to consider themselves either male or female, instead inhabiting the bizarre realm of “gender fluidity.”

The field of battle for the determination of the meaning of “gender” is none other than the several branches of the U.S. military, which of necessity have strict standards for those charged with the vital role of defending the nation. In his memorandum to the president regarding transgenders in the military, former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis concluded: “Based on the work of the Panel and the Department’s best military judgement, the Department of Defense concludes that there are substantial risks associated with allowing the accession and retention of individuals with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria and require, or have already undertaken, a course of treatment to change their gender.”

That this studied judgment angers those who reject the immutable reality and meaning of biological sex defies comprehension, for it should come as no surprise that the military, which turns away diabetics, should decline those who may require major surgery and continual hormone replacement therapy—both of which carry serious health risks. This is recognized by the service members themselves, only 39 percent of which approve of “trans”-identifying troops.  Sergeant First Class Jamie Shupe, who identifies as “trans,” has had second thoughts and now feels he has “a duty to speak about the problems with transgender military service,” which “can seriously affect their duty performance. While they’re obsessing about their gender identity, they don’t have their head in the game.”

The military is all about maximum combat effectiveness. Soldiers do not serve in isolation, but work, eat, shower and sleep together.  No female unit should be required to sleep next to or bare themselves in front of an objectively male peer who insists that he is a woman.  As one commentator notes: “We can’t even agree on which bathrooms trans people can use, but somehow we’re safer if we’re all in the shower together? No distraction there.”

Author Walt Heyer lived as a woman for nearly a decade and suffered medical surgeries and treatments before “detransitioning” back to his true male gender. His book Trans Life Survivors tells the stories of 30 people gleaned from many hundreds of cases who “shared their lonely, surreal experiences falling down the trans rabbit hole, hoping to escape as he did.”  Sadly, our society will suffer dire consequences if it rejects the inborn nature of male and female, as designed by our Creator, which will result in a frightful descent into the “rabbit hole” of sexual anarchy.

Save the Date!

On Saturday, March 16, 2019, the Illinois Family Institute will be hosting our annual Worldview Conference. This coming year, we will focus on the “transgender” revolution. We already have commitments from Dr. Michelle Cretella, President of the American College of Pediatricians; Walt Heyer, former “transgender” and contributor to Public Discourse; Denise Schick, Founder and Director of Help 4 Families, and daughter of a man who “identified” as a woman; and Doug Wilson, who is a Senior Fellow of Theology at New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho, and pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho .

The Transgender Ideology:
What Is It? Where Will It Lead? What is the Church’s Role?
Click here for more information.

Those who claim to be “trans,” say that being “trans” is their “reality” and that everyone should respect that. “Trans”-cultists fail to clarify, however, what kind of phenomenon they are referring to when they talk about their “reality.” As with all Leftist ideas about sexuality, terms must be defined and used consistently. Reality can describe one’s subjective, internal feelings or desires, or it can denote objective, immutable material phenomena. The use of the term “reality” or “real” with respect to subjective, internal feelings simply means that the person claiming to experience a feeling or desire actually experiences it. His desires could be good or bad, morally neutral or reprobate, consonant with objective reality or delusional. Accepting that a “trans”-identifying person’s subjective internal desires are real is a morally neutral act. For example, no one should have any moral qualms about accepting Bruce Jenner’s claim that his reality—used in the sense of describing his subjective desires—is that he is female. Everyone can justifiably accept that he really does desire to be female or thinks he is.

But there are other phenomena that the word “reality” points to: that is, objective material things, like Jenner’s biological sex. Jenner’s desire to be a woman and his attempts to conceal that he’s a man do not make his bodily reality female. And not even commitments to respect—which means to hold something in esteem—require others to treat Jenner’s biological sex as if it didn’t exist or weren’t important. Quite the contrary, commitments to treating others with respect require that we do not deny reality.

When “trans”-identifying persons try to badger others into treating their “reality” as if it were real, they are not saying they want others merely to believe they want to be or think they are the sex they are not. No, they are saying they want all others to treat their objective biological reality as if it were not real. They are claiming that respect requires all others to treat their phantasmical experience—that is to say, their rejection of biological reality—as if it were true.

When it comes to objective material reality, there is no “my” reality. There is only reality. Each person’s subjective desires—especially delusional or disordered desires—place no ethical obligations on others.  That means, for example, that others have no ethical obligation to use incorrect or newly invented pronouns that reflect a set of arguable beliefs about disordered desires. Reality—the real, extant, material world—includes the sexual embodiment of all humans. It is neither compassionate nor good to treat delusional desires as if they reflect objective material reality. Knowing what is compassionate and good depends on knowing first what is real and true—as opposed to “truthy.”

The truth is no man can know that he feels like a woman, because no man can know what or how a woman feels. How could he, given that no man has been a woman? Men who identify as women can only truly say that they assume their feelings are the same kind of feelings women have or that their feelings are like those they imagine women feel.

Many “trans”-cultists claim to know they are the sex they aren’t based on their interest in activities associated with the opposite sex. But that contradicts “progressive” claims that there is nothing intrinsically male or female about, for example, toys or clothing styles. “Progressives” claim the gendered associations that exist are arbitrary and culturally imposed. If that’s the case, then interests say nothing about intrinsic maleness or femaleness.

That’s not the only contradiction. “Trans”-cultists continue to look to hard science in a desperate quest to prove their metaphysical claim about their subjective, internal, non-material feelings. In the meantime, however, they put their faith in unreliable social science as their unreliable arbiter of ultimate truth.

And the culture suffers. Big Brother has outgrown his—I mean zir’s—already enormous britches and is foisting language rules on everyone, starting with government employees. Surgeons and sex-hormone manufacturers are making bank on the surgical mutilation and chemical sterilization of healthy children. Boys, girls, men, and women are being forced to relinquish their privacy in spaces where they undress and engage in bodily functions. The government has been enjoined to participate in fraud by providing falsified birth certificates and driver’s licenses to facilitate sex-“passing.” Women’s sports at all levels are being ruined. Parents are concealing the sex of their children—even from the children themselves. Adults are saying absurd things like “Women can have penises” and “Men can ‘chest-feed’ babies.” Children are being re-educated into believing that subjective, internal feelings about femaleness and maleness supersede in value and relevance biological sex, including in private spaces. The eradication of all public recognition of sexual differentiation is almost here.

Our ignorance of the incoherence and implications of the “trans” ideology along with our cowardice has already started us slip-sliding away, down that proverbial slicked up slope. And who are being hurt the most? Children as usual. And still we say nothing.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Which-Trans-Matters.mp3

Save the Date!!!

On Saturday, March 16, 2019, the Illinois Family Institute will be hosting our annual Worldview Conference. This coming year, we will focus on the “transgender” revolution. We already have commitments from Dr. Michelle Cretella, President of the American College of Pediatricians; Walt Heyer, former “transgender” and contributor to Public Discourse; Denise Schick, Founder and Director of Help 4 Families, and daughter of a man who “identified” as a woman; and Doug Wilson, who is a Senior Fellow of Theology at New Saint Andrews College in Moscow, Idaho, and pastor at Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho .

The Transgender Ideology:
What Is It? Where Will It Lead? What is the Church’s Role?
Click here for more information.

Written by Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon 

In a blog post titled “‘Fairness For All’: Smart Politics, Or A Sellout?” (Dec. 13), Rod Dreher, senior editor at The American Conservative,  reports a defense of the recent decision by the boards of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) and the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) to support “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” “federal antidiscrimination law in exchange for religious liberty guarantees written into the same law.” The defense was made by “a prominent conservative Evangelical political strategist who works at both the national and state levels” and whom Dreher calls “Smith.” Rod himself professes to be unsure about the whole subject; an uncertainty that appears to be fueled by his usual belief that voting Republican changes nothing.

The substance of the defense is essentially born of naïve utilitarianism, overlaid with a veneer of high rhetoric about standing up for the “rights” of LGBTQ persons. In effect: We are losing the battle over human sexuality in the culture so, while we still can, let’s cut a deal with proponents of all things “gay” and “transgender” that gives us something in return. They will (allegedly) recognize our good will and then become favorably disposed to protect our “religious liberties” in both the short- and long-term.

The problem with the argument is that it amounts to a policy of appeasement with sexual extremists who advocate (from our perspective) a grossly immoral sexual policy and have never exhibited a “we’ll stop here approach” before. It is an appeasement that requires us to sacrifice our basic principles to get some statutory assurance that can easily be retracted by legislative vote after a full-court indoctrination surge, predicated on the new law, overwhelms remaining resistance. In addition, it is an appeasement that provides only the narrowest of exemptions for religious institutions while throwing under the bus the vast majority of Christians who work and live outside those institutions.

It requires us to sign our own persecution warrant by conceding on a federal level that homosexual practice, “gay marriage,” and sexual mutilation surgery are (as Houghton College President Shirley Mullen, who sits on the boards of both evangelical organizations argued in a position paper) “basic human rights.” Elevating these high acts of sexual immorality to the status of “human rights” in turn slanders reasoned moral arguments against such acts as virulent prejudice akin to racist views.

It gives jurists and legislators the ammunition they need to dismiss any remaining Evangelical resistance to a program of coerced indoctrination and enforcement as inconsistent residual bigotry rather than an instance of rational moral conviction. As Lydia McGrew has pointed out,

[T]his could sabotage any attempt to get an even clearer baker/florist, etc., religious liberty ruling from the Supreme Court in a subsequent case…. A *federal* law enshrining “public accommodations’ non-discrimination rules for sexual orientation could be just what would influence someone like Kavanaugh and possibly others to reverse course rather than going more clearly in the direction of the Masterpiece [Cake] ruling.

Once Evangelical “elites” support special “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” legislation they have conceded (whether they know it or not) that a man having sex with another man and a man subjecting himself to voluntary castration and adopting a female persona are honorable life decisions deserving full government promotion and support.

When the Czechs were compelled to give up the Sudetenland in the Munich Agreement of 1938 in exchange for a contractual assurance of German respect for their sovereignty, they gave up the most defensible and defended part of the country, relying solely on the “good will” of someone who had shown absolutely no previous interest in respecting territorial boundaries. LGBTQ advocates won’t be rounding us up in concentration camps to be gassed, to be sure. Yet they will continue to press for the elimination of every last vestige of “homophobia” and “transphobia” in society by every and any legislative and judicial means. By their own rhetoric they will still regard as hateful ignorant bigots on the level of the Klu Klux Klan, all the more given new federal “anti-discrimination” legislation from which we now seek immoral exemption.

Evangelicals who think otherwise are foolish in the extreme, giving our enemies the club with which to beat us and then taking them at their word that (for the moment) they won’t beat us with it. Then why give them the club in the first place?

According to Smith, “pluralism is about accommodating deep difference” and that requires Evangelicals to “accommodate sexual minorities” and to acknowledge the latter’s “rights.” It is evident already in Smith’s own language that he has given up the store. He has appropriated language of “minorities” and “rights” previously associated with the cause for African American civil rights and applied it to the “LGBTQ” agenda. By definition, then, any resistance to that agenda is “heterosexist” and “cis-sexist.”

Race is about an intrinsically benign, non-behavioral, and immutable facet of human existence. Don’t confuse rhetoric rightly used to support the cause of racial justice with rhetoric that promotes desires (however innate) to do things at fundamental odds with one’s biological design. Contrary to what Smith claims, it is not part of the “common good” to provide special rights for such behavior that will invariably lead to severe state indoctrination and attenuation of both freedom of speech and the free exercise of religion (whatever exemptions we are briefly granted in the law by LGBTQ powers for our detestable prejudices). Smith says that “gay people have a right to be wrong.” They already have that right. What they want is the right to compel others to do things that violate conscience.

Pluralism has its limits. Would Smith apply the same argument to Evangelical hostility against polyamory and adult-consensual incest (these too involve “sexual minorities” and questions about “rights”)? In a pluralist society must we eventually accommodate these “deep differences” too once there is a societal push for such acceptance? How could he possibly argue otherwise given the fact that moral logic predicates opposition to such behavior on a male-female prerequisite for sexual relations and the integrity of a biologically based sexuality, an opposition now surrendered in the public sphere?

Homosexual practice and transgenderism are not “run of the mill” sexual offenses. They are extreme sexual offenses that attack the very foundation of all sexual ethics. The CCCU and NAE want us to promote legislation that honors and protects such behavior and provides the legal reasoning for coercing acceptance in the whole population.

Smith even admits that LGBT activists believe that

Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 dealt a powerful blow to their hopes…. Now they have Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, and Justice Ginsburg aged and frail. LGBT strategists believe that the likelihood of litigating their way to preferred policy outcomes is low under this Court.

Then Smith argues that, despite this perspective, our cause is hopeless because Trump and a Republican-led Congress haven’t done everything in two years. He completely ignores the fact that we haven’t lost federal ground in the sexuality wars and are on the road to strengthening materially our position vis-à-vis the Court without having to surrender our moral convictions in the public sector.

Smith assures us,

I don’t think they’re doing it as a bad-faith stalling tactic.

How ridiculous. Every political example points in the direction that LGBTQ activists will continue their inexorable pursuit of stamping out homophobic and transphobic prejudice (so-called) by all means necessary. These Evangelical appeasers have the “innocent as doves” demeanor down but not the “wise as serpents” part. California moved from outlawing sexual orientation “change therapy” on the part of licensed clinicians for minors to five or six years later making a concerted effort to outlaw it for adults on the part of pastors where an exchange of funds is involved. LGBTQ politicians will push their agenda to the bitter end.

Once we abandon the moral conviction that homosexual and transgender immorality are not “human rights” requiring state promotion, we have no basis for opposing our further persecution. Bigots (in the thinking of LGBTQ activists) are not entitled to exemptions in the long run for a bigotry that harasses “sexual minorities” and induces suicide attempts. LGBTQ activists won’t think us to be any less bigoted because of our surrender. They will simply view us as conviction-less and unprincipled bigots who deserve what is coming to them.

Most galling of all is that Smith even cites the Golden Rule to justify his position:

In Smith’s view, in a pluralistic society like America 2018, ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ is a good rule for religious liberty advocates and gay rights supporters alike.

Jesus didn’t formulate the Golden Rule to provide special legal protections for, and promotion of, immoral behavior. He formulated it to encourage us to act in the best interest of others rather than to engage in vengeful behavior as a response to wrongs committed against one’s self. Since no true Evangelical can possibly believe that self-dishonoring homosexual behavior and attempted erasure of one’s biological sex are positive goods in the best interests of the practitioners, no Evangelical can support the kind of legislation that the CCCU and NAE are now endorsing.

With this kind of reasoning on the part of Smith, it is little wonder that he wants to remain anonymous.

Robert A. J. Gagnon is Professor of New Testament Theology at Houston Baptist University. He has a B.A. degree from Dartmouth College, an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School, and a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary. His main fields of interest are Pauline theology and sexual issues in the Bible. He is a member both of the Society of Biblical Literature and of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas [Society of New Testament Studies]. He is the author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Texts and Hermeneutics (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2001; 520 pgs.); co-author (with Dan O. Via) of Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003; 125 pgs.); and, as a service to the church, provides a large amount of free material on his website dealing with Scripture and homosexuality.

The leaders of the transgender revolution revile the celebrated declaration, “It’s a boy” or “It’s a girl,” when a baby is born. Transgender activists recognize that their revolution cannot succeed until doctors who deliver babies, or ultrasound technicians at women’s cliques, stop labeling babies as a specific gender. The announcement of a baby’s gender, however, still fills delivery rooms and doctor’s offices with excitement. I predict that this practice will continue.

Recently, an article ran in “The Ethicist” column of the New York Times Magazine. The ethicist in this case is Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah. The headline in the article asked, “Should I Go to a Gender-Reveal Party?” The questioner who wrote in for advice posed to “The Ethicist” the following scenario:

“A close relation is pregnant with her first child and is having a gender-reveal party. She is overjoyed with the addition to our family, as am I. However, I am adamantly opposed to attending the gender-reveal party because it violates my moral code. I have worked in activism for my entire professional life and, though I am cisgender, I have strong feelings about gender politics and equality. Gender-reveal parties, where parents and guests learn a baby’s gender together, violate my values because they reaffirm society’s gender binarism and inadvertently perpetuate the stigma against non-binary genders. I know I will never experience firsthand the challenges of being gender-nonconforming, but when I think about how I might feel, I would be very hurt knowing my parents had a gender-reveal party for me before I was born with my incorrect gender. I know the non-binary community faces much deeper, more urgent problems than this hypothetical situation, but even so, I have a moral aversion to helping affirm society’s gender binarism. Should I attend the party?”

This question represents just one more step towards cultural insanity. The questioner cannot fathom nor allow for a party where people celebrate politically incorrect labels like “boy” and “girl.” Such a party violates the moral code of the transgender movement.

Indeed, the moral unction behind this question is breathtaking. Scenarios like this come, not on the leading edge of a moral revolution. Rather, the moral revolution must have made significant gains before an ethics column in the New York Times Magazine begins to get letters with this kind of moral outrage at a gender-reveal party.

Christians thinking about this moral confusion must first stop at the vocabulary used in this article—particularly the word, “cisgender.” Using that term plays into the entire gender revolution. The term indicates that someone born a male is quite comfortable with being male. Even adopting the vocabulary, therefore, becomes an enormous problem because the vocabulary assumes that you accept the ideology of the transgender revolutionaries—that gender fluidity exists and that the gender assigned at one’s birth may or may not be factual. “Cisgender” signifies that you buy into the idea that all of humanity must be identified on a spectrum, with cisgender at one end and gender-nonconforming, or, transgender at the other end.

Secondly, Christians need to note the kind of moral outrage indicated in the question. The questioner, filled with indignation, lashes out at a set of parents who had the audacity to throw a gender-reveal party—a party that apparently does nothing more than perpetuate binary stereotypes. Indeed, according to this article in the New York Times Magazine, gender-reveal parties could damage relationships between parents and their transgender children who find out that mom and dad threw a party which revealed an “incorrect gender.” This argument asks the reader to make incredible leaps in logic and to possess an imaginative framework which obfuscates all reality.

But here’s the third thing we come to understand about this article: It tells us that the writers, editors, and publishers of the New York Times Magazine believe that these are the kinds of questions we should be concerned about and that we too should experience the confliction, indeed, the outrage present in the question posed to “The Ethicist.”

The question, by itself, poses enormous problems and reveals the erosion of any sane ethic. The answer to the question, however, reveals the extent of this moral erosion. Professor Appiah, who currently teaches at New York University, responds to the questioner by saying, “First, let’s distinguish between two different issues. One is what you’re calling gender binarism—the idea that everyone is naturally either male or female. The other is the fact that trans people will identify with a gender other than the one they were assigned on the basis of their bodily appearance at birth. You could be trans in that sense and still believe in binarism: to say that you were assigned the wrong gender isn’t necessarily to reject the idea that there are two.”

Professor Appiah’s answer takes an interesting turn when he writes that “celebrating the discovery that a baby is a boy or a girl need not in itself stigmatize trans or intersex or non-binary people.” Appiah went on to say, “A parent celebrating the coming birth of a girl could be someone who’d be perfectly happy if the child turned out later to be a boy or neither a boy nor a girl. Indeed, as it becomes easier to identify intersex people prenatally, you could one day imagine having a party that revealed that the child was neither male nor female. And people who do have a hard time dealing with gender-nonconforming people aren’t likely to have their minds changed by the disappearance of gender-reveal parties.”

At certain moments, it appears that a society inches its way right up to the edge of a cliff. At other times, however, you see an argument that sprints towards the edge and leaps right off. That’s exactly the direction Appiah takes his answer.

Appiah goes on to state, “If there’s a problem with these parties, it’s mainly that they encourage the idea that gender is fixed in the womb and by your body. Let’s call that biological determinism about gender. The science in this area is very much a work in progress. But, we already know that gender identification isn’t fixed by your sexual organs and that the social meaning of gender is informed by culture.” Appiah makes a generalized, unsubstantiated claim that rejects any argument that would question his premise. He says that “we already know that gender identification isn’t fixed by your sexual organs.” Appiah’s reasoning demonstrates how the sexual revolution, through moral coercion, creates a change in an entire mentality and worldview. Appiah’s argument enshrines the principles of sexual revolutionaries who make audacious and radical assertions based solely upon the authority of the gender revolution. Anyone who dares to disagree with this unassailable authority represents an antiquarian ignorance and bigotry which must be eradicated.

Again, effectively upping the ante of political correctness, Professor Appiah responds to this questioner by saying that “many aspects of gender are not… biological. You can’t necessarily read from people’s bodies what their gender means to them.” In other words, biological sex has nothing to do with gender identity.

Christians operating from a biblical worldview understand Appiah’s assertions as manifest nonsense. The morally important distinction between male and female is essential. Indeed, the biblical worldview clearly grounds the distinction as a vital component for true human flourishing.

Gender debates dominate the news these days, dumping with them an incredibly toxic level of madness. While Christians should experience alarm, they should also possess greater awareness of the determination that grips the moral and sexual revolutionaries. Articles like this one in the New York Times Magazine, and arguments like Professor Appiah’s, demonstrate the unceasing desire of the LGBTQ agenda to invert civilization itself. As relentless as they might be, the moral revolutionaries aim at insanity and position arguments as reality that have no basis in any scientific court or, for that matter, common sense. Indeed, as demonstrated in Appiah’s argument, the sexual revolution hinders any serious inquiry into sexuality and blatantly obfuscates fundamental questions about the “research” advertised to the public as the new law which must govern opinion, policy, and morality.

We live in a society that has set off a massive chain reaction of confusion. Christians, however, equipped with a biblical worldview and empowered by God’s grace, can clear up the confusion, address the insanity, and promote true human flourishing.

This article was originally published at AlbertMohler.com

The New York Times reached a new low in silliness, ignorance, and alarmism—or would that be new high—with this headline on Sunday: “‘Transgender’ Could Be Defined Out of Existence Under Trump Administration.” What this silly, ignorant, alarmist headline is referring to is the Trump Administration’s reasonable and increasingly necessary decision to make clear that when Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 refers to “sex,” it meant and still means biological sex. Ever-cunning, slippery-as-eels “progressives” at the NYTimes said this:

The Trump administration is considering narrowly defining gender as a biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth, the most drastic move yet in a governmentwide effort to roll back recognition and protections of transgender people under federal civil rights law.

A series of decisions by the Obama administration loosened the legal concept of gender in federal programs, including in education and health care, recognizing gender largely as an individual’s choice and not determined by the sex assigned at birth. The policy prompted fights over bathrooms, dormitories, single-sex programs and other arenas where gender was once seen as a simple concept. Conservatives, especially evangelical Christians, were incensed.

…

The department argued in its memo that key government agencies needed to adopt an explicit and uniform definition of gender as determined “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.” The agency’s proposed definition would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with, according to a draft reviewed by The Times. Any dispute about one’s sex would have to be clarified using genetic testing.

Do you see the cunning rhetorical slipperiness? In the good old days when everyone acknowledged the difference between girls and boys, and women and men, “sex” and “gender” were used interchangeably. But no more. “Progressives” relentlessly pontificate that “sex” and “gender” denote wholly different ontological realities, and yet, in this article, the authors keep slipping between the two definitions.

According to “trans” activists and their “progressive” disciples, “sex” refers to an objective, immutable biological reality determined by genes and revealed in anatomy and reproductive processes—pretty much the same as the Trump Administration is proposing to do. In contrast, in our brave new sexually ambiguous, socially constructed, phantasmagorical world, Leftists preach that “gender” denotes the socially constructed roles, conventions, behaviors, and expectations arbitrarily associated with males and females. “Gender identity” denotes the subjective, internal feelings one has about one’s maleness or femaleness, some combination thereof, or rejection of both.

The NYTimes falsely claimed that the Obama Administration “loosened the legal concept of gender in federal programs, including in education and health care, recognizing gender largely as an individual’s choice and not determined by the sex assigned at birth.”

First, a baby’s sex is not assigned at birth. A baby’s sex—which never changes—is identified at birth.

Second, the Obama Administration did not loosen the legal concept of “gender.” The Obama Administration attempted to circumvent Federal law by redefining the term “sex” by edict, proclaiming that in Title IX the term “sex” includes the subjective, internal, non-material experience referred to as “gender identity.” It is long past time that this brazen usurpation of legislative authority be administratively refuted.

Obama’s presumptuous “gender identity” edicts to multiple government agencies, including the departments of Education, Justice, and Housing and Urban Development; the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; and General Administration Services, are based on the subjective beliefs of “progressives” that biological sex has no meaning or importance relative to feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy that derive from sexual differentiation.

These edicts are based on the non-factual, quasi-religious belief that in private spaces shared by persons unrelated by blood or marriage—including strangers—subjective feelings about one’s maleness or femaleness should supersede objective, immutable biological sex. No explanation is ever provided, however, as to why exactly subjective feelings should trump objective biological sex in determining private space-usage policies.

And these edicts depend on the incoherent belief that, while it’s reasonable and legitimate for women to oppose performing bodily functions or undressing in the near vicinity of objectively male strangers, it’s not reasonable or legitimate for women to oppose performing bodily functions or undressing in the near vicinity of male strangers who seek to pass as women.

Leftists argue that the disguises of some passers are so convincing that their presence in the private spaces of same-sex persons will be disturbing. They’re right. If, for example, a woman has transformed her appearance through body-mutilating surgery, cross-sex-hormone-doping and cross-dressing, her presence in women’s facilities will be disturbing. But this raises several issues:

1.) It is a tacit acknowledgement by Leftists that biological sex matters. They base their justification of the use of opposite-sex facilities by “trans”-identifying men and women on their appearance as the sex they wish they were. So, if a man has used surgery and chemicals to create the verisimilitude of a female body, he believes his superficial, medically-constructed material self matters. But if women think biological sex as revealed in unaltered bodily materiality matters and, therefore, don’t want persons who are objectively male in their private spaces, they are deemed hateful, exclusionary, bigoted “transphobes.”

2.) At the same time, arguing that elaborate disguises should grant passers access to opposite-sex private spaces reinforces the very gender stereotypes “progressives” claim are arbitrary and socially constructed. While arguing out of one side of their mouths that “gender” is an arbitrary social construct, they argue out of the other side that these arbitrary social constructs (e.g., liking stereotypical female activities and wearing dresses) are definitive signs of essential femaleness that should grant them carte blanche access to women’s private spaces.

3.) Passing raises the question of whether deceit justifies or legitimizes unethical behavior. In other words, if it’s legitimate, reasonable, and justifiable for men and women to oppose changing clothes or performing bodily functions in the near vicinity of opposite-sex strangers, does disguising one’s biological sex through dress, chemicals, and/or surgery make invasion of someone else’s privacy legitimate, reasonable, and justifiable? If so, is voyeurism ethically justifiable so long as no one knows it’s happening? To be clear, I’m not equating voyeurism to sexual passing. Rather, I’m suggesting that if concealing one’s sex justifies otherwise unethical invasion of privacy, does concealing one’s presence justify otherwise unethical peeping?

4.) Finally, the problem of which facilities passers in really convincing disguises should use is a problem of the Left’s making. It is they who are attempting to socially construct a bizarre alternate reality that pretends the human species is not sexually dimorphic and that men’s and women’s non-material essences can be trapped in opposite-sex bodies. It is they who then exploit the government to try to impose this unreality on everyone, falsely claiming that the sexual integration of private spaces is required by commitments to equality, inclusivity, and compassion. (One foolish devotee of the “trans” superstition recently told me that equality demands that “transwomen” be treated exactly like women. She means that men who pretend to be women should be treated exactly like women, which is the inverse of what equality demands. Equality demands that like things be treated alike.)

Back to the title “‘Transgender’ Could Be Defined Out of Existence Under Trump Administration.” In case the writers haven’t noticed, it was Obama and his accomplices who tried to define “sex” out of existence in Title IX. In making explicit that Title IX says nothing about either “transgender” or  “gender identity,” the Trump Administration does not define out of existence persons who choose to identify as “trans.” What it does is make clear that the term “sex” refers to, denotes, and corresponds to objective, immutable biological sex. Only a leftist could believe that phenomena that have objective existence can be “defined out of existence”—you know, like claiming “women can have penises” or that “transwomen are women.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Trump-Administration-Stands-for-Biological-Reality-and-Sexual-Sanity.mp3

Read more:

Stuff You Should Know About “Trans”-Cultism

55 Members of American Academy of Pediatrics Devise Destructive “Trans” Policy

Leftists Redefine Bullying

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Despite a lack of evidence proving the safety and efficacy of chemical and surgical interventions and social “transitioning” for those who experience gender dysphoria, “progressives” plow forward mutilating the healthy bodies and manipulating the psychology of children who feel they are or wish they were the sex they are not.

The science-denying, incoherent “trans” ideology affects all of society. The end game for “trans” activists and others in cultic thrall to this superstition is not access for a few boys and girls or men and women to opposite-sex private spaces and sports. The end game is the eradication of all public recognition of sex differences everywhere for everyone. Think about what that means:

• It means children will be raised under the delusion that their anatomy signifies nothing. All that matters is “gender identity.” It means society will tell them that no one—not doctors, parents, or anyone else—knows if they’re male or female.

• It means putting at risk the psychological welfare of students, particularly younger students and those already struggling with other issues, including autism; depression; anxiety; body dysmorphia; eating disorders; OCD; and the effects of molestation, family dysfunction, and bullying. Introducing the “trans” ideology, which teaches the disordered nonsense that a boy can be a girl or vice versa, to at-risk children will confuse and disturb them and will provide a distorted lens through which they may misinterpret their experiences.

• It means that we must all pretend that humans with congenital penises and fake breasts sashaying through our women’s locker rooms in the altogether are women. (Many who identify as “trans” don’t believe surgery is necessary to pass as the opposite sex, which is why you’ll hear terms like “chestfeeding men” or claims like “women can have penises.”)

• It means that at public pools, beaches, and parks, our children will see topless women who pretend to be men but opt to keep their breasts.

• It means that men’s roommates in semi-private hospital rooms may be biological women. And it means women who seek sanctuary from abusive boyfriends and husbands in shelters may be forced to share rooms or private facilities with biological men.

• It means many of us will lose jobs if we refuse to refer to colleagues by incorrect pronouns, which is to say, if we refuse to lie.

• It means that our taxes will continue to subsidize the indoctrination of children with the “trans” ideology through government schools

• And it means the sterilization and mutilation of the healthy bodies of children.

Since the “trans” ideology is metastasizing throughout the sinews of American life—including our schools—all stakeholders must understand the “trans” orthodoxy better. In previous articles, I provided questions that anyone who affirms the “trans” ideology should be asked.[1] In this article, I provide information of which many are unaware, that may be useful to anyone opposing co-ed private spaces in schools, and that should make society reevaluate the barbaric path we’re treading:

• At birth, doctors identify the sex of babies. They do not assign them a “gender.” A person’s sex can never change. Biological sex is not a disorder, illness, deficiency, shortcoming, or error. Scientists and other medical professionals have recognized that biological sex is a neutral, objective, and immutable fact of human nature. Likewise, puberty is neither a disease nor a disorder.

• There is no conclusive, research-based evidence proving that if there is incongruence between one’s objective, immutable, biological sex (and its attendant healthy, normally functioning anatomy and physiology) and one’s subjective, internal sense of being male or female that the problem resides in the body rather than the mind.

• The article “Hormone Therapy for the Treatment of Gender Dysphoria” in the May 19, 2014 issue of the highly respected Hayes Directory reports that the use of hormones and surgery to treat gender dysphoria in adults is based on “very low quality of evidence” and that the use of hormones and surgery to treat gender dysphoria in children and adolescents has no evidence base.[2]

• There are health risks and complications attendant to the use of puberty-suppressing drugs. Boys whose puberty is suppressed will have micro-penises which present surgical problems if they should one day seek vaginoplasty (i.e., there isn’t enough skin to turn into “vaginas,” so more complicated and risky procedures must be used). The health risks of the off-label use of puberty-blockers for the treatment of gender-dysphoria include the arrest of bone growth, decrease in bone density, the “prevention of sex-steroid-dependent organization and maturation of the adolescent brain, and the inhibition of fertility by preventing the development of gonadal tissue and mature gametes for the duration of treatment.”

• “There is an obvious self-fulfilling nature to encouraging a young boy with GD to socially impersonate a girl and then institute pubertal suppression. Given the well-established phenomenon of neuroplasticity, the repeated behavior of impersonating a girl alters the structure and function of the boy’s brain in some way—potentially in a way that will make identity alignment with his biologic sex less likely. This, together with the suppression of puberty that prevents further endogenous masculinization of his brain, causes him to remain a gender non-conforming prepubertal boy disguised as a prepubertal girl.”[3]

• Some of the effects of the off-label use of cross-sex hormones are permanent and long-term risks are unknown:

– Sterility and voice changes are permanent for both men and women.

–An interagency statement published by the World Health Organization states that “sterilization should only be provided with the full, free and informed consent of the individual” and that “sterilization refers not just to interventions where the intention is to limit fertility… but also to situations where loss of fertility is a secondary outcome…. Sterilization without full, free and informed consent has been variously described by international, regional and national human rights bodies as an involuntary, coercive and/or forced practice, and as a violation of fundamental human rights, including the right to health, the right to information, the right to privacy.”[4] Since parents or guardians must provide consent for hormonal interventions, and since parents are not being made aware of the experimental nature of the off-label use of hormones for the treatment of gender dysphoria, or of the fact that most children with gender dysphoria outgrow it by late adolescence if otherwise supported through natural puberty, parents and guardians are unable to provide fully informed.

–For biologically healthy men who take estrogen to treat their subjective, internal feelings about their sex, there is an “increased risk of liver disease, increased risk of blood clots (risk of death or permanent damage), increased risk of diabetes and of headaches/migraines, heart disease, increased risk of gallstones, and increased risk of noncancerous tumour of the pituitary gland.”[5] Breast tissue growth in men who take estrogen is permanent.

–For biologically healthy women who take testosterone to treat their subjective, internal feelings about their sex, there is an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and possibly of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, or uterine cancer. Taking testosterone can have a “destabilizing effect” on “bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder, and schizophrenia.”[6] “Male”-pattern baldness and body and facial hair growth in women who take testosterone are permanent.

• Surgery (e.g., mastectomy, orchiectomy [i.e., castration]) is irreversible.

• Men who choose penile inversion vaginoplasty are castrated and their penises inverted to fashion a fake vagina (aka “neo-vagina”). For the rest of their lives, surgeons recommend that they use vaginal dilators once a week. Since the skin of fake vaginas is not vaginal tissue, men must also douche 2-3 times per week for the rest of their lives.

• Some men are unable to have inversion vaginoplasty. For example, because 18-year-old boy and reality TV star Jazz Jennings, who was recently castrated, started puberty blockers so young, his penis was the size of a prepubertal boy’s penis, and, therefore, too small to provide enough skin for a fake vagina. In these cases, skin from the colon or small bowel is used:

This technique… is naturally self-lubricating…. Since the secretion is digestive there is a risk of malodor and frequent secretions, and secretions are constant rather than only with arousal. Wearing panty liners or pads may be necessary for the long term. Bacterial overgrowth (diversion colitis) is common and may present with a greenish discharge…. The bowel lining is also not as durable as skin. Use of intestinal tissue also places the vagina at risk of diseases of the bowel including inflammatory bowel disease, arterio-venous malformations (AVM) or neoplasms [i.e., abnormal growths].[7]

• The Christian Medical and Dental Association “believes that prescribing hormonal treatments to children or adolescents to disrupt normal sexual development for the purpose of gender reassignment is ethically impermissible, whether requested by the child or the parent.”[8]

• The Catholic Medical Association (CMA) “urges health care professionals to adhere to genetic science and sexual complementarity over ideology in the treatment of gender dysphoria (GD) in children. This includes especially avoiding puberty suppression and the use of cross-sex hormones in children with GD. One’s sex is not a social construct, but an unchangeable biological reality.”[9]

• Neuroscientist, professor of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania, and author of The Teenage Brain, Dr. Frances Jensen, explains that,

Teenagers do have frontal lobes, which are the seat of our executive, adult-like functioning like impulse control, judgment and empathy. But the frontal lobes haven’t been connected with fast-acting connections yet…. But there is another part of the brain that is fully active in adolescents, and that’s the limbic system. And that is the seat of risk, reward, impulsivity, sexual behavior and emotion. So they are built to be novelty-seeking at this point in their lives. Their frontal lobe isn’t able to say, “That’s a bad idea, don’t do that.” That’s not happening to the extent it will in adulthood.

• The oft-cited suicide rate of 41% for those who identify as “trans” is based on an erroneous understanding of a study by the Williams Institute—an understanding that ignores the acknowledged and serious limitations of the study.[10] There is no evidence that surgery or chemical disruption of normal, natural and healthy development or processes reduces the incidence of suicide.[11] J. Michael Bailey, Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University, and Dr. Raymond Blanchard, former psychologist in the Adult Gender Identity Clinic of Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) from 1980–1995 and the Head of CAMH’s Clinical Sexology Services from 1995–2010, have written the following[12]:

–Children (most commonly, adolescents) who threaten to commit suicide rarely do so, although they are more likely to kill themselves than children who do not threaten suicide.

–Mental health problems, including suicide, are associated with some forms of gender dysphoria. But suicide is rare even among gender dysphoric persons.

–There is no persuasive evidence that gender transition reduces gender dysphoric children’s likelihood of killing themselves.

–The idea that mental health problems–including suicidality–are caused by gender dysphoria rather than the other way around (i.e., mental health and personality issues cause a vulnerability to experience gender dysphoria) is currently popular and politically correct. It is, however, unproven and as likely to be false as true.

• There is no phenomenon of women trapped in men’s bodies or vice versa, or of men having women’s brains or vice versa. Science has not proven that the brains of transgender individuals are “wired differently” than others with the same biological sex. In other words, there is no conclusive evidence of a “female brain” being contained in a male body or vice versa.[13] In fact, it is impossible for an opposite-sexed brain to be “trapped” in the wrong body. Every brain cell of a male fetus has a Y chromosome; female fetal brains do not. This makes their brains intrinsically different. Additionally, at 8 weeks gestation, male fetuses have every cell of their body—including every brain cell—bathed by a testosterone surge secreted by their testes. Female fetuses lack testes; none of their cells—including their brain cells—experience this endogenous testosterone surge.

• “[C]urrent studies on associations between brain structure and transgender identity are small, methodologically limited, inconclusive, and sometimes Even if they were more methodologically reliable, they would be insufficient to demonstrate that brain structure is a cause, rather than an effect, of the gender-identity behavior. They would likewise lack predictive power, the real challenge for any theory in science.”[14]

• Desistance is “the tendency for gender dysphoria to resolve itself as a child gets older and older.”[15] The best research to date suggests that without social or medical “transition” most (60[16]-90%[17]) gender-dysphoric children will come to accept their biological sex after passing naturally through puberty. [18] While “12- 27% of ‘gender variant’ children persist in gender dysphoria; that percentage rises to 40% amongst those who visit gender clinics.” Research shows that persistence rates rise significantly among those who are given puberty-blockers and “gender-affirmative psychotherapy,” thus suggesting that such interventions lead minors “to commit more strongly to sex reassignment than they might have if they had received a different diagnosis or a different course of treatment.”[19]

• Detransitioning is the process by which someone who has been identifying as the opposite sex, presenting himself or herself as the opposite sex, taking cross-sex hormones, and possibly had surgery rejects his or her “trans” identity and accepts his or her objective, immutable biological sex. The American College of Pediatricians confirms what “detransitioners” assert: There are many possible post-natal, environmental causes for gender dysphoria: Family and peer relationships, one’s school and neighborhood, the experience of any form of abuse, media exposure, chronic illness, war, and natural disasters are all examples of environmental factors that impact an individual’s emotional, social, and psychological development.[20]

• “Mounting evidence over the last decade points to increased rates of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and autism traits among children and adults with gender dysphoria…. It is possible that some of the psychological characteristics common in children with ASD—including cognitive deficits, tendencies toward obsessive preoccupations, or difficulties learning from other people—complicate the formation of gender identity.”[21] A study published in May 2018 “further confirmed a possible association between ASD and the wish to be of the opposite gender by establishing increased endorsement of this wish in adolescents and adults with ASD compared to the general population controls.”[22]

• J. Michael Bailey and Dr. Raymond Blanchard explain the phenomenon of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD):

The typical case of ROGD involves an adolescent or young adult female whose social world outside the family glorifies transgender phenomena and exaggerates their prevalence. Furthermore, it likely includes a heavy dose of internet involvement. The adolescent female acquires the conviction that she is transgender. (Not uncommonly, others in her peer group acquire the same conviction.) These peer groups encouraged each other to believe that all unhappiness, anxiety, and life problems are likely due to their being transgender, and that gender transition is the only solution. Subsequently, there may be a rush towards gender transition…. We believe that ROGD is a socially contagious phenomenon in which a young person–typically a natal female–comes to believe that she has a condition that she does not have. ROGD is not about discovering gender dysphoria that was there all along; rather, it is about falsely coming to believe that one’s problems have been due to gender dysphoria previously hidden (from the self and others). Let us be clear: People with ROGD do have a kind of gender dysphoria, but it is gender dysphoria due to persuasion of those especially vulnerable to a false idea.[23]

• Brown University Researcher Dr. Lisa Littman conducted a survey of parents whose children developed Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria. Littman writes,

In recent years, a number of parents have been reporting in online discussion groups… that their adolescent and young adult (AYA) children, who have had no histories of childhood gender identity issues, experienced a rapid onset of gender dysphoria. Parents have described clusters of gender dysphoria outbreaks occurring in pre-existing friend groups with multiple or even all members of a friend group becoming gender dysphoric and transgender-identified in a pattern that seems statistically unlikely based on previous research. Parents describe a process of immersion in social media, such as “binge-watching” Youtube transition videos and excessive use of Tumblr, immediately preceding their child becoming gender dysphoric. These descriptions… raise the question of whether social influences may be contributing to or even driving these occurrences of gender dysphoria in some populations of adolescents and young adults…. The worsening of mental well-being and parent-child relationships and behaviors that isolate teens from their parents, families, non-transgender friends and mainstream sources of information are particularly concerning. More research is needed to better understand rapid-onset gender dysphoria, its implications, and scope.”[24]

• The number of children “being referred for transitioning treatment” in England has increased 4,400% for girls and 1,250% for boys, which has resulted in calls from members of Parliament for an investigation.[25]

• Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) shares several features with gender dysphoria. BIID is a condition in which “Sufferers… experience a mismatch between their physically healthy body and the body with which they identify. They identify as disabled. They often desire a specific amputation to achieve the disabled body they want.”[26] As with some cases of gender dysphoria, scientists say there is evidence for neurological involvement as a cause of the experience of BIID,[27] and yet physicians largely oppose elective amputations of healthy anatomical parts:

According to the principle of nonmaleficence physicians must not perform amputations without a medical indication because amputations bear great risks and often have severe consequences besides the disability…. for example, infections [or] thromboses.  Even though some physicians perform harmful surgeries as breast enlargement surgeries, this cannot justify surgeries that are even more harmful. Even if amputations would be a possible therapy for BIID, they would be risky experimental therapies that could be justified only if they promised lifesaving or the cure of severe diseases and if an alternative therapy would not be available. At least the first condition is not fulfilled in the case of BIID, and probably the second is not fulfilled either. Above all, an amputation causes an irreversible damage that could not be healed, even if the patient’s body image would be restored spontaneously or through a new therapy…. But since all psychiatrists who have investigated BIID patients found that the amputation desire is either obsessive or based on a monothematic delusion, and since neurological studies support the hypothesis of a brain disorder (which is also supported by the most influential advocates of elective amputations), elective amputations have to be regarded as severe bodily injuries of patients.[28]

• The American College of Pediatricians, “a national medical association of licensed physicians and healthcare professionals who specialize in the care of infants, children, and adolescents” and that split from the American Academy of Pediatrics because of its politicization of the practice of medicine, describes puberty-suppression, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries variously referred to as sex-change, sex reassignment, gender reassignment and gender confirmation surgeries as child abuse.”

• Lisa Simons, pediatrician at Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, stated in a PBS Frontline documentary that “‘The bottom line is we don’t really know how sex hormones impact any adolescent’s brain development….’ What’s lacking, she said, are specific studies that look at the neurocognitive effects of puberty blockers.” [29]

• Kenneth Zucker, one of the world’s leading authorities on gender dysphoria, states that,

Identity is a process. It is complicated. It takes a long period of time… to know who a child really is…. There are different pathways that can lead to gender dysphoria…. It’s an intellectual and clinical mistake to think that there’s one single cause that explains all gender dysphoria…. Just because little kids say something doesn’t necessarily mean that you accept it, or that it’s true, or that it’s in the best interest of the child…. Little kids can present with extreme gender dysphoria, but that doesn’t mean they’re all going to grow up to continue to have gender dysphoria.[30]

• Eric Vilain, a geneticist at UCLA who specializes in sexual development and sex differences in the brain, says the studies on twins are mixed and that, on the whole, “there is no evidence of a biological influence on transsexualism yet.”[31]

• Sheila Jeffreys, lesbian feminist scholar, warns against the “transgendering” of children: “Those who do not conform to correct gender stereotypes are being sterilized and they’re being sterilized as children.”[32]

• Heather Brunskell-Evans, social theorist, philosopher, and Senior Research Fellow at King’s College, London, UK, and Michele Moore, Professor of Inclusive Education and Editor-in-Chief of the world-leading journal Disability & Society, critique the “transgender” ideology:

[O]ur central contention is that transgender children don’t exist. Although we argue that ‘the transgender child’ is a fabrication, we do not disavow that some children and adolescents experience gender dysphoria and that concerned and loving parents will do anything to alleviate their children’s distress. It is because of children’s bodily discomfort that we argue it is important families and support services are informed by appropriate models for understanding gender. Our analysis of transgenderism demonstrates it is a new phenomenon, since dissatisfaction with assigned gender takes different forms in different historical contexts. The ‘transgender child’ is a relatively new historical figure, brought into being by a coalition of pressure groups, political activists and knowledge makers…. Bizarrely, in transgender theory, biology is said to be a social construct but gender is regarded as an inherent property located ‘somewhere’ in the brain or soul or other undefined area of the body. We reverse these propositions with the concept that it is gender, not biology, which is a social construct. From our theoretical perspective, the sexed body is material and biological, and gender is the externally imposed set of norms that prescribe and proscribe desirable behaviours for children. Our objection to transgenderism is that it confines children to traditional views about gender.[33]

• Stephanie Davies-Arias, writer, communication skills expert, and pediatric transition critic, writes that “changing your sex to match your ‘gender identity’ reinforces the very stereotypes which [transgender] organisations claim to be challenging… as, in increasing numbers, boys who love princess culture become ‘girls’ and short-haired football-loving girls become ‘boys’. Promoted as a ‘progressive’ social justice movement based on ‘accepting difference’, transgender ideology in fact takes that difference and stamps it out. It says that the sexist stereotypes of ‘gender’ are the true distinction between boys and girls and biological sex is an illusion.”[34]

• Increasing numbers of young men and women experience “sex-change regret” and are “detransitioning.” Unfortunately, some effects of “medical transitions” are irreversible. A BBC documentary includes “Luke,” a young biological woman who regrets taking cross-sex hormones and having a double mastectomy at age 20 shares her experience:

The assumption from the outset was that if I said I was transgender, then I must be. Nobody, at any point, questioned my motives. The only cure for this would be hormones and surgery…. I became very self-conscious of my body. I was developing breasts and periods which, for me, felt like there was an alien crawling out of the inside of my body.  I became very depressed. I thought the only explanation for my gender dysphoria must be that I was actually a man. I was struggling with self-harm and had attempted suicide on a number of occasions and was very much told by the community that if you don’t transition, you will self-harm and you will kill yourself. I became convinced that my options were transition or die. I didn’t understand that the degree of disconnect from and hatred of my body could be considered a mental health problem…. The darkest moment was when I realized that I had actually looked normal for a girl. That I had actually been slim and pretty. That my body hadn’t been grotesque the way I thought it was. Now, as a result of having transitioned, I will always have a female body that is freakish. I will always have a flat chest and a beard and there’s nothing I can do about that…. Nobody wants to question the received knowledge that transition is the only option because nobody wants to be the one person that puts their head up and says “hang on, I don’t think this is all right”.… If I was talking to a gender-dysphoric girl who hated her body the way I hated mine, I would tell her to get out into the mud, to climb trees, to find ways of inhabiting her body on her terms.[35]

• While the American Academy of Pediatrics has formally endorsed chemical and surgical interventions and social “transitioning” for children and teens who wish they were the sex they are not, no one knows exactly how many of the 67,000 academy members agree with this position since only about 55 members created and voted on it. [36]

It is unconscionable for anyone who cares about children and the future of America to remain ignorant of and silent on this issue.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Surprising-Stuff.mp3

Footnotes:

[1] https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/homosexuality/questions-restrooms-locker-rooms-leftists-must-answer/

[2] http://www.hayesinc.com/hayes/htareports/directory/sex-reassignment-surgery-for-the-treatment-of-gender-dysphoria/. Accessed 3.24.16.

[3] http://www.jpands.or g/vol21no2/cretella.pdf

[4] http://www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/media_asset/201405_sterilization_en.pdf

[5] https://apps.carleton.edu/campus/gsc/assets/hormones_MTF.pdf

[6] https://apps.carleton.edu/campus/gsc/assets/hormones_FTM.pdf

[7] http://transhealth.ucsf.edu/trans?page=guidelines-vaginoplasty

[8] https://www.cmda.org/resources/publication/transgender-identification-ethics-statement

[9] http://www.cathmed.org/assets/files/Gender_Dysphoria_Treatment_of_Minors.pdf

[10] http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/AFSP-Williams-Suicide-Report-Final.pdf

[11] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3043071/

[12] https://4thwavenow.com/2017/09/08/suicide-or-transition-the-only-options-for-gender-dysphoric-kids/comment-page-1/

[13] L Mayer, P McHugh, “Part Three: Gender Identity,” The New Atlantis, https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/part-three-gender-identity-sexuality-and-gender

[14] https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/part-three-gender-identity-sexuality-and-gender

[15] https://www.thecut.com/2016/07/whats-missing-from-the-conversation-about-transgender-kids.html

[16] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18981931

[17] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18194003

[18] http://www.sexologytoday.org/2016/01/do-trans-kids-stay-trans-when-they-grow_99.html

[19] https://www.thenewatlantis.com/docLib/20170619_TNA52HruzMayerMcHugh.pdf

[20] https://www.acpeds.org/the-college-speaks/position-statements/gender-dysphoria-in-children

[21] https://www.forbes.com/sites/zhanavrangalova/2017/11/15/growing-evidence-for-a-link-between-gender-dysphoria-and-autism-spectrum-disorders/#26953173153e

[22] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-018-1218-3

[23] https://4thwavenow.com/2017/12/07/gender-dysphoria-is-not-one-thing/

[24] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0202330

[25] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/09/16/minister-orders-inquiry-4000-per-cent-rise-children-wanting/

[26] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/body-integrity-identity-disorder-the-condition-where-sufferers-want-to-be-disabled-a6680306.html

[27] http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2009/03/27/voluntary-amputation-extra-phantom-limbs/

[28]https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15265160802588194 

[29] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/when-transgender-kids-transition-medical-risks-are-both-known-and-unknown/

[30] https://vimeo.com/247163584

[31] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/11/a-boys-life/307059/

[32] https://gendertrender.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/sheila-jeffreys-the-mccarthyism-of-transgender-and-the-sterilization-of-transgender-children/

[33] http://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/64273

[34] http://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/64273

[35] https://vimeo.com/247163584 

[36] https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/homosexuality/55-members-of-american-academy-of-pediatrics-devise-destructive-trans-policy/ 

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One of the accusations that is most offensive to gays and lesbians is that they are child predators who want to seduce our children sexually. I stand with them in finding this accusation to be highly offensive.

To be clear, I have documented elsewhere that the arguments put forth by advocates of pederasty parallel key arguments used by gay activists. And some studies indicate that there is a higher percentage of homosexual pederasty than heterosexual pederasty.

Nonetheless, the vast majority of gays and lesbians are not pederasts. And so, to accuse them of infiltrating our schools in order to prey sexually on our children is both ugly and false. (See, here, however, for potential problems with school-based Gay Straight Alliances.)

The LGBT’s Ideological Goals for Our Children

But what is 100 percent truthful is that while the vast majority of LGBT activists presumably do not have sexual goals for our children, they most certainly have ideological goals. Without a doubt, they want to influence the way our children think.

They want our kids to view same-sex attraction as no better or worse than opposite-sex attraction. (Perhaps some want kids to view same-sex attraction as superior!)

They want children to embrace the possibility of gender fluidity.

They want them to consider whether they might be transgender themselves.

All of this is easily documented, and at this point in history, cannot be reasonably denied. The ideological seduction of our little ones is at hand today. And it has been at hand for some years now.

The Lunchbox

Well over a decade ago I purchased the GLSEN Lunchbox (second edition), containing helps for gay-friendly educators to be used in grades K-12.

The goals, of course, were to teach “tolerance” and to reduce “anti-LGBT harassment” in our schools. But the method was to normalize, if not celebrate, virtually every LGBT talking point.

The Lunchbox included activity cards, some of which listed famous people from history, all of whom were allegedly gay. Other activity cards offered definitions of terms like genderqueer (and remember, the target audience for some of these activities was elementary school children.)

Then there was the exercise called “Getting in Touch with Your Inner Trannie” (as in transgender identity). And I remind you: This goes back over a decade.

When I testified before a local school board, holding up the Lunchbox and its full-length training manual, one of the board members said out loud, “That material is not in that box.” (I guess for some people, it’s better to deny the truth rather than face it.)

What has happened in the years since?

What Has Happened

Here’s the tiniest sampling, not even touching on the many LGBT-themed curricula in our schools.

• A July 25 headline on LifeSiteNews announced: “American Library Association endorses ‘drag queen storytime’ for libraries across U.S.” (chew on that one for a while; need I say anything more?)

• There is now an endless stream of gay-themed books for little children, including titles like Monsters and Robots, which features “poly amorous parents and a bisexual character who is prominent in the story.” This is part of the LGBTQ Picture Books series. (For a sampling of LGBT children’s books through 2011, see here.)

• The same can be said for trans-themed books, such as Who Are You?: The Kid’s Guide to Gender Identity. The blurb states, “This brightly illustrated children’s book provides a straightforward introduction to gender for anyone aged 5+… An interactive three-layered wheel included in the book is a simple, yet powerful, tool to clearly demonstrate the difference between our body, how we express ourselves through our clothes and hobbies, and our gender identity. Ideal for use in the classroom or at home, a short page-by-page guide for adults at the back of the book further explains the key concepts and identifies useful discussion points. This is a one-of-a-kind resource for understanding and celebrating the gender diversity that surrounds us.”

• As of 2016, “A new study by trend forecasting agency J. Walter Thompson Innovation Group found that only 48 percent of 13-20-year-olds identify as “exclusively heterosexual,” compared to 65 percent of millennials aged 21 to 34.” The indoctrination is working!

• LGBT activists have decided not to cloak or hide their agenda in the least. In the words of S. Bear Bergman on the Huffington Post, “I Have Come to Indoctrinate Your Children Into My LGBTQ Agenda (And I’m Not a Bit Sorry).” (This was originally published on March 7, 2015.)

Bergman explains, “All that time I said I wasn’t indoctrinating anyone with my beliefs about gay and lesbian and bi and trans and queer people? That was a lie. All 25 years of my career as an LGBTQ activist, since the very first time as a 16-year-old I went and stood shaking and breathless in front of eleven people to talk about My Story, I have been on a consistent campaign of trying to change people’s minds about us.”

Ideological Indoctrination

Again, Bergman is not talking about sexual recruitment. Absolutely, categorically not. But he is talking about changing people’s minds, beginning with children: “I want them to know that we’re absolutely as worthwhile and worthy of love and respect as anyone, and that if you’re kind to us and behave yourself well there’s a better than even chance you can get an invitation to brunch.”

And what if that means children coming into conflict with their parents or their religion? Bergman doesn’t flinch: “I want kids to know this even if their parents’ or community’s interpretation of their religious tenets is that we’re awful. I would be happy — delighted, overjoyed I tell you — to cause those children to disagree with their families on the subject of LGBTQ people.”

I stand with Bergman in calling for the gracious treatment of all human beings. And I personally counsel parents to encourage their children to befriend other kids who are marginalized. In this effort, we agree.

But with everything within me, I will resist the LGBT indoctrination of our children. I urge you to stand together with me. Better still, I urge you to stand together with your kids.

This article was originally published at The Stream.com

What the heck is wrong with Denver attorney “Autumn” Charlie Scardina? Oh yeah, he’s delusional. He thinks he is or wants to be a woman. And he definitely masquerades as one. That’s not an excuse for his reprehensible act of going after Masterpiece Cakeshop baker Jack Phillips, but it may help explain it.

In June 2017, just after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to take Phillips’ case regarding his refusal to bake a cake for a same-sex faux-marriage and in full knowledge that Phillips would refuse his request, Scardina called the bakery to try to order a cake with a blue exterior and a pink interior for the celebration of his futile quest to become a woman—something he erroneously calls a “transition.”

As Scardina knew he would, Phillips refused, so Scardina filed a complaint with the loathsome Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which has “issued a finding” in which it declares that “there is sufficient evidence to support” Scardina’s “claim of discrimination.”

And we’re off to the races. “Autumn” may find running in heels challenging.

Phillips did not “discriminate” against Scardina based on Scardina’s desire to be a woman or his choice to masquerade as one. Phillips refused to use his skills and labor to create a product he has never created and that would convey a message that violates his religious convictions. If Scardina, still adorned in all his inglorious fakery, were to request a cake to celebrate, for example, his parents’ anniversary, Phillips would create it and sell it to him. Why is the distinction between refusing to sell a type of product or refusing to create an offensive message or refusing to serve a type of event and refusing to serve persons so difficult for cultural regressives to understand?

A word about “transitioning.” Men and women don’t and can’t. Castrations on anatomically and biologically healthy men don’t turn them into women. They turn them into eunuchs. Inverting penises to turn into fake vaginas doesn’t turn men into women. Tracheal shaves, feminizing facial surgeries, cross-sex hormone-doping, and evening gowns don’t turn men into women. Sure, with multiple surgeries, lipstick, flowing hair, and elaborate costuming, men can create disguises more likely to deceive people, but they cannot transition from man to woman.

This effort to destroy the small business of a Christian baker who seeks nothing other than to live his life as an authentic Christ-follower is revolutionary. Many dark forces impel and sustain this science-denying madness. There is the sexual revolution that ushered in the notions that our bodies are only instruments for our pleasure; that bodies have no intrinsic teleology (and certainly not related to procreative potential); and that there are no absolute, transcendent, objective moral truths. Second-wave feminists taught that there are no substantive differences between men and women (well, except when they argued there are, and women are superior). Then came the “LGBTQ” revolution that taught us the lie that men and women are interchangeable when it comes to sexual partners. The old heresy of Gnosticism reared its ugly head. Gnosticism teaches that the human person is dualistic rather than an integrated, inseparable whole composed of body and soul. Add to this toxic stew the cowardice of Christians who should know, care about, and speak truth but now stand largely silent while the bodies of men, women, and children are being mutilated in Frankensteinian and futile experiments, and voilà, a revolution of historic proportions is upon us.

At the most fundamental level, this revolution constitutes rebellion against God and his created order. It’s yet another manifestation of man’s pursuit of disordered desires, including the desire to be like God, which are the desires that get humans into mess after mess. Some messes, however, are worse than others. This is among the worst.

And cultural regressives will brook no resistance. They demand that every man, woman, and child genuflect to all cultural manifestations of their madness. In our schools, in our leisure activities, in our language, in our restrooms and locker rooms, and one day in our churches, we will be made to pretend that men can become women—or else. Live and let live is definitely not their motto.

Remember the concerted effort to force Jack Phillips to bake multiple cakes with unholy, deceitful messages next time some cultural regressive scoffs at the suggestion that Christians are being persecuted. Remember this next time some cultural regressive says the “lgbtqqap” ideology affects only the persons who embrace it. Remember this next time an opportunity presents itself for you to speak truth and, instead, you feel like God is “leading” you to remain silent.

Isn’t it remarkable how often we Christians feel “led by God” onto the path of least resistance—you know, the same path everyone else is on—the wide, crowded path lit by thin strands of those tiny, bedazzling lights that illumine little?

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Male-Attorney-Who-Pretends-to-Be-a-Woman-Goes-After-Jack-Phillips.mp3

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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I earnestly hope and pray that every child and adult struggling with gender identity issues will find wholeness, peace, and happiness from the inside out. I earnestly hope and pray that we will live to see the day when every person who feels trapped inside the wrong body will find internal resolution without hormones and radical surgery. At the same time, I wholeheartedly oppose the transgender revolution and predict that, ultimately, it will fail. Here’s why.

1) The transgender revolution is oppressive. As reported on July 16 on Lifesite News, “Failing to refer to a gender-confused student, professor, or staffer by his or her ‘preferred’ pronouns could become a fireable or expulsion-worthy offense at the University of Minnesota, according to proposed guidelines currently under consideration.”

It is not enough to allow a biological male to identify as a female. Hardly. Society must conform, or else. If “he” now identifies as “she” (or “xe” or “ze”) and you fail to use the right pronoun, you will be punished.

This is already the law in New York City. And Canada has taken steps to make this kind of enforced speech the law across the country.

This cannot succeed in the long-term. Society will push back.

2) The transgender revolution is irrational. As a result of trans activism, tampons are now available in some college campus bathrooms. After all, we are told, men menstruate as well!

Yes, a woman who identifies as a man but still gets her monthly period is actually a menstruating man.

And we are supposed to believe this nonsense? We are supposed to shake our heads and say, “How quaint”? I don’t think so.

Recently, however, trans activists have taken things to a new depth of irrationality. Men who identify as women have declared that they get their periods too – just differently! So, other biological realities must now be redefined as well, and a monthly cycle is no longer a physical event.

To quote a “trans girl” directly: “Nobody teaches trans girls about our periods. We just get these weird times where we’re moody and crampy and sad and we don’t know why and just chalk it up to another reason we’re not good enough in life.

“So, just so you all know: Trans. Girls. Get. Periods.”

Enough said. This is beyond irrational.

3) The transgender revolution is unhealthy. Trans advocates tell us that failure to diagnose and treat gender dysphoria will result in depression, suicide, or other forms of self-harm. And I’m sure that, in some cases, post-hormone and post-surgery, many individuals are more satisfied with their quality of life.

Others would point to the high percentage of suicides after surgery, along with the substantial number of people who experience sex-change regret.

But there’s more to be concerned about. A recent headline on a gay website announced, “Hormone therapy linked to dangerous health issues in trans women.” Yes, “Researchers set out to examine heart and circulatory health in transgender people, and found that transgender women face a greater chance of strokes, heart attacks, and blood clots compared to their non-transgender counterparts.”

And what about kids who are put on hormone blockers before puberty, then put on a life-long regimen of hormonal therapy? What will the ill effects be?

4) The transgender revolution is extreme. Scarlett Johansson, one of the biggest female names on the big screen, recently felt the wrath of transgender activists, withdrawing from her starring role as a trans man after protests. How dare a female actor play the role of a trans man when there are plenty of trans men who can play the role.

But isn’t this what actors do? It’s one thing for a white man to paint his face in order to play the role of a black man.

But actors act. They play all kinds of roles that are unrelated to their private lives. They play villains and thieves. They play athletes and politicians. They play liars and saints, good guys and bad guys. They play super heroes and super criminals. They play aliens and vampires. And all that is acceptable – unless they play a trans person.

Enough said.

5) The transgender revolution is dangerous. When you insist that a biological male who identifies as a female has the “right” to use a women’s bathroom, locker room, and dressing room, you are asking for trouble.

A headline from England stated, “Transgender prisoner who was put in a female jail despite not having sex-change surgery ‘sexually assaulted four women inmates before being moved to a male prison’.”

So, a biological male with male organs intact (and obviously, still attracted to women) was put in a women’s prison. Should we be surprised by what happened?

In the States, Planet Fitness sided against a female, former sexual assault victim who protested against the presence of a man (identified here as “Mr. Rice”) in the locker room. As explained in the case being brought by Liberty Counsel, “This is not the only incident with Mr. Rice known to Planet Fitness. Another woman reported that he exposed his naked body to her in the women’s locker room at this location. In another instance, he was involved in an argument with another woman over use of the tanning room. Misogynist, anti-woman harassment should have no place in Planet Fitness locations, and violates Florida law.”

6) The transgender revolution is unnatural. There are fundamental, undeniable differences between men and women, which is why there is an increasing pushbackagainst biological males competing against biological females.

Even among some feminists and lesbians, there is resistance to trans women being accepted as females. And it is for good reason. A biological male will never be a female.

7) The transgender revolution is an attack on children. Trans advocates would tell us that they are helping children, that they are saving them many years of grief and pain and confusion. In reality, for every child they might help (and even at that, in a temporary, non-holistic way) they are confusing many more children — innocent, tender kids.

As the Daily Mail asked, “Are children as young as 11 really capable of making life-changing decisions about their gender?”

We are playing with fire here, and there will likely be many, many casualties before we wake up.

There is much more that could be said, but here’s a final reflection. For decades now, billions of dollars have been invested to discover a cure for cancer. Chemotherapy is not sufficient. Radiation treatment only goes so far. Other “cures” fall short of the mark.

In the same spirit, let us continue to pursue better treatments for those diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Surely there is a better way than hormone blockers for children, double mastectomies and sex-change surgery for older teens, and hormones for life.

Let’s work toward this while firmly resisting the transgender revolution. We owe it to our kids and grandkids.

This article was originally published at Townhall.com.

You’ve heard the old saying that starts, “Hell hath no fury”? It pretty well describes today’s transgender activists.

If you want to see how far down the slope civic discourse has slid in the land of free speech and “tolerance,” I give you an article in The Atlantic by Jesse Singhal [sic] entitled, “When Children Say They’re Trans.”

Rather than the unabashed cheerleading you might expect in a secular, progressive magazine, the article is surprisingly balanced. And that’s just the problem for transgender activists.

Said one on Twitter: “This guy’s one-man crusade against trans people has gone on for years. It really doesn’t make sense. Sad that the Atlantic gave him a cover story to spread his pseudoscience and bigotry.”

Said another: “This article can and will cause real, tangible harm to the trans community and trans youth.”

And finally this: “[Bleep] off with this transphobia. And on pride month too. This article and cover are an absolute disgrace. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Long-time conservative activist Cliff Kincaid recently interviewed Liberty Counsel’s Mary E. McAlister. They covered a lot of important ground in a little over 30 minutes. Here is the intro to the video interview (see below):

Mary McAlister of Liberty Counsel discusses the Soros-backed transgender revolution in America, including its “progress” under former President Obama and what President Trump is doing to reverse the damage to our nation and our families.

Transgenders, including children forced to undergo these medical procedures and experiments, suffer genital mutilation, become sterile, and have a high suicide rate.

McAlister and host Cliff Kincaid also address the fact that one of the transgender pioneers was Dr. John Money, who also promoted sex between adults and children. 

Kincaid opens by asking McAlister how the transgender movement could have moved so far so fast. She explained that “It’s all part of an orchestrated event that has been really in the works for 20-30 years. It’s been very systematic.”

Obama’s presidency and the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision “legalizing” homosexual “marriage” has given these “sexual revolutionaries” the courage to move faster, McAlister explained. The overall goal is to “undermine the entire Judeo-Christian foundation of the country,” to destroy the nuclear family so chaos results and the government is empowered to take total control of society.

Kincaid and McAlister also delve into some of the distasteful realities that are involved in transgenderism, namely, genital mutilation. McAlister shares the tragic story of Dr. John Money‘s experiment on David Reimer, a boy whose penis had been destroyed during a botched circumcision. David had a twin brother, and Money, a transgender pioneer at Johns Hopkins University, got permission from the parents to raise David as a girl in order to demonstrate that it is nurture, rather than nature, that determines sexual identity. David’s life was a nightmare of suffering that culminated in his suicide at age 38.

Kincaid asked McAlister about her Twitter account which says this:

Mary E. McAlister
@MaryEMcAlister
Conservative Christian Wife Mother Lawyer Seeking to stop the satanic sexualization of our children and the destruction of the family

Both Kincaid and McAlister were unafraid of addressing the spiritual dimensions to the “trans” ideology:

Cliff: Using that word “satanic” [in her Twitter feed] — what do you mean by that?

Mary: It’s absolutely evil. God has made us in His image. He has set out rules for living that enable us to live rich and full and healthy lives…. All of what is going on is aimed at tearing all of that down. Well, we know who does that. That’s the enemy, Satan and his minions…. We’re in a spiritual battle. We’re not fighting against flesh and blood.

The depravity and irrationality gripping the nation, including even in elementary schools, testifies to the powers and principalities against which we wrestle.

The end game of this destructive force, which some refer to as Cultural Marxism, is the destruction of civil society. Once the family is destroyed, the government will step into the resulting vacuum and grow in power.

For more information, please watch this informative interview:

https://youtu.be/7mZQPwR-enE

Join IFI at our May 5th Worldview Conference

We are excited about our fourth annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned John Stonestreet on Sat., May 5th in Medinah. Mr. Stonestreet serves as President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. He is a sought-after author and speaker on areas of faith and culture, theology, worldview, education and apologetic.  (Click HERE for a flyer.)

Mr. Stonestreet has co-authored four books: A Practical Guide to Culture (2017), Restoring All Things (2015), Same-Sex Marriage (2014), and Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview (2007).

Join us for a wonderful opportunity to take enhance your biblical worldview and equip you to more effectively engage the culture:

Click HERE to learn more or to register!

If our world survives a few more generations, historians will doubtless look back at our current era and ask, “Was there something in the water? Something in the air? How is it that an entire society went mad at the same time?”

If you’ve read my columns over the years, you know I have compassion for those who genuinely struggle with their gender identity. That is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone, something I do not treat lightly. At the same time, you know that I have often spoken against today’s cultural madness in which perception becomes reality.

In the latest example of that madness, the Boston Marathon (among other marathons) has announced that men who identify as women can compete with the women.

Since everyone runs together, it would simply mean that their times would be compared with the times of the female runners. And since both the male winner and the female winner receive the same prize money ($150,000 in Boston), if a man who identifies as a woman beat the other ladies, he would win the prize.

Again, I’m not questioning the fact that some men believe they are really women (and vice versa). I’m simply stating the obvious: These men are not biological women, and it is not fair for a biological male to compete against a biological female. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist at MIT to explain these simple facts.

But who cares about facts these days? What I feel is the only thing that matters. My morality. My truth. My reality.

Yet this corporate insanity is not limited to America.

Writing for the Daily Wire, Amanda Prestigiacomo tells us what is happening in Iran:

“The Iranian ‘women’s soccer team has found a loophole. Instead of comprising a team of actual women, they have added on eight full-grown men who they claim are transgender and awaiting sex changes.

“‘The country’s football association was accused of being “unethical” for knowingly fielding eight men in its women’s team,’ reports The Telegraph.

“‘[Eight players] have been playing with Iran’s female team without completing sex change operations,’ said Mojtabi Sharifi, an official described as ‘close to the Iranian league.’”

Yes, “Members of the national team were ordered on Wednesday to undergo gender testing. Iran’s soccer governing body implemented random checks in 2014 after four women’s team players were discovered to be biological men who never underwent a sex change.”

If you’re wondering why these male players weren’t noticed before, it’s because, “Players on the Iranian women’s team are mandated to wear long-sleeved jerseys, pants, and hijabs.” (Adding to the sad irony of this story is this: While homosexual acts are punishable by death in Iran, sex-change surgery is “rampant” and is actually pushed on gays by some Islamic clerics.)

To say it once more: I’m not passing judgment on the motivation of these men. I’m not making a determination about the absence or presence of gender confusion in their lives.

I’m simply saying that there’s a reason we have boys’ sports and girls’ sports in our children’s schools (let’s not forget about the locker rooms and showers!). And there’s a reason we divide into male and female sports in every major professional league, as well as the Olympics. Men and women are built differently.

Last year Science Daily reported that “Researchers identif[ied] 6,500 genes that are expressed differently in men and women.”

Specifically:

“Weizmann Institute of Science researchers recently uncovered thousands of human genes that are expressed – copied out to make proteins – differently in the two sexes. Their findings showed that harmful mutations in these particular genes tend to accumulate in the population in relatively high frequencies, and the study explains why. The detailed map of these genes, reported in BMC Biology, provides evidence that males and females undergo a sort of separate, but interconnected evolution.”

This makes perfect sense.

A 2014 report from the University of Helsinki indicated that “Identifying genetic associations with X chromosomal genes can be particularly valuable in helping researchers to understand why some characteristics, such as height, differ between sexes…Because women have two copies of this chromosome and men only one, identifying genetic associations with X chromosomal genes can be particularly valuable in helping us to understand why some characteristics differ between sexes.”

Is anyone really surprised?

I do understand that a tiny percentage of people have a chromosomal or genetic or biological abnormality, because of which they do not fit neatly into normal categories. But I seriously doubt that the 8 men playing on the Iranian women’s soccer team fit into this unique, neither fully male nor fully female category. Or that Bruce Jenner fits into this category. Or that the first man who will run as a woman in one of the marathons will fit into this category.

Last year, “Andraya Yearwood, a freshman who was born a male, won the girls 100-meter and 200-meter dashes at the Connecticut high school Class M state championships.

“Kate Hall — who last year won the girl’s 100-meter dash Class M state title as a sophomore — came in second to Yearwood at this year’s 100-meter race and was tearful in the aftermath, the Hartford Courant reported.

“‘It’s frustrating,’ Hall of Stonington High School told the Courant. ‘But that’s just the way it is now.’”

Let’s hope it doesn’t stay that way for long.

This article was originally published at AFA.net

The noxious Leftist “Inclusive Curriculum” bill (SB 3249 and HB 5596) created by two Chicago-based homosexual/”trans” activist organizations (i.e., Equality Illinois and the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance) is moving through the Illinois Senate. The central goal of this costly and ideologically driven mandate that robs schools of local control is to use curricula in government schools to transform the way children think and feel about homosexuality and biological-sex rejection (aka as “transgenderism”).

If passed, this indoctrination bill will require that any “book or book substitute that will be used as a text or text substitute” in grades K-12 include the “role and contributions” of homosexuals and of men and women who adopt opposite-sex personas (also known deceptively as “transgender”).

In other words, all materials used in schools will be required to address the roles and contributions of people who define themselves by their disordered sexual desires and sexual behaviors.

In addition, this bill will require that “the teaching of history of the United States in public schools shall include a study of the role and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in the history of this country and this State.”

There’s more:

This instruction shall be designed to teach that LGBT individuals have a rich history and have made substantial and valuable contributions to society, including government, arts, sciences, mathematics, sports, education, and in the economic, cultural, and political development of society. The instruction shall teach about the rich advocacy among the LGBT community and the LGBT community’s allies…. Instruction shall reinforce that all people, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression [i.e., cross-dressing], have a right to be treated with civil, legal and human rights….

When possible, adults, including school district employees who openly identify as LGBT and other openly LGBT adults in the community that the school district may decide to consult with, should be involved in the development and delivery of this instruction at the discretion of the LGBT individuals.

There are no good reasons for teachers or textbooks to mention or discuss the sexual interests of contemporary or historical figures who have contributed something noteworthy to society. Their exceptional accomplishments should be noted, but their sexual proclivities—especially controversial sexual proclivities that many view as both immoral and destructive—have no place in public schools.

Homosexual and “trans” activists are not centrally concerned about ensuring that the accomplishments of Sally Ride, James Baldwin, and Oscar Wilde are included in curricula; they already are. Homosexual and “trans” activists from Equality Illinois and the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance are centrally concerned about ensuring that students know that Ride, Baldwin and Wilde were sexually and romantically attracted to persons of the same sex. Homosexual and “trans” activists seek to transfer the good feelings children and teens have about accomplishments to homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation. It’s a ploy to render disordered feelings and immoral actions innocent by association with accomplishment.

But the quasi-religious ontological and moral dogma of the homosexual and “trans” communities regarding biological sex, “gender,” and “gender identity” are not facts and are not neutral. They are articles of faith—arguable beliefs—that government schools have no right to propagate either explicitly or implicitly. Taxpayers should no more be forced to subsidize material based on the quasi-religious beliefs of homosexual and “trans” activists than they should be forced to subsidize material based on the beliefs of, for example, the polyamorous community.

Would any lawmaker vote in favor of mandating that schools teach about the “roles and contributions” of polyamorists and poly-activists, or the roles and contributions of other communities whose identities are constituted by what many view as disordered desires and immoral volitional activities, like “amputee-wannabes,” infantilists, zoophiles, sadomasochists, and sibling-lovers (i.e., “Genetic Sexual Attraction”)?

“LGBTQ” activists take umbrage at such comparisons, declaiming that their sexual predilections constitute an authentic identity somehow set apart from those who identify as polyamorists, amputees, or babies, to which others may respond, “Who are you to judge?”

What if children or their parents experience such desires, engage in behaviors impelled by such feelings, or identify as poly, “amputee wannabes” or “infantilists”? What if they experience unwanted “minor attraction,” “genetic sexual attraction” or zoophilia? If homosexuals and “trans”-identifying persons should be able to see their predilections represented in curricula, shouldn’t other identity groups be able to see themselves represented in curricula? Should the accomplishments of people throughout history who experienced such feelings be excluded simply because they don’t yet have a powerful lobbying group that invents language that cloaks their beliefs in the appearance of objective facts?

We all know that schools—at least for now—wouldn’t teach about the accomplishments of polyamorists, “amputee-wannabes,” sibling-lovers, zoophiles, infantilists, or sadomasochists. Even if school leaders believed the feelings of persons in these groups were powerful, persistent, and unchosen, and even if school leaders believed biochemistry influences the development of their feelings, school leaders would not allow k-12 students to be taught that an important historical figure was a polyamorist, “amputee-wannabe,” sibling-lover, zoophile, infantilist, or sadomasochist. Why is that?

The reason is not merely that no one has yet demanded that they do so. The reason is that school administrators and board members—at least for now—believe the behaviors integral to those conditions are unhealthy, disordered, and immoral and that teaching about the role and contributions of those who engage in them would serve to normalize the phenomena.

Well, here’s an inconvenient truth: many believe the same about homosexuality and the science-denying cult of biological sex-rejection. What right have arms of the government (i.e., public schools) to treat the beliefs of Leftists on those two issues—homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation—as if they were objectively true?

“LGBTQ” activists are so invested in exploiting taxpayer-funded schools to indoctrinate other people’s children that Equality Illinois is dedicating their annual “LGBTQ Advocacy Day” to pressuring lawmakers to pass the wildly inappropriate Inclusive Curriculum bill. This Wednesday, April 11, Equality Illinois is busing their supporters to Springfield for lobbying-training and lawmaker-goading.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to both your state representative and state senator to ask them to reject this effort to politicize curricula in order to advance biased beliefs about sexuality to children in government schools.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Leftist-Public-School-Indoctrination-Bill-Moving-Forward-in-Springfield.mp3

IFI Worldview Conference May 5th

We have rescheduled our annual Worldview Conference featuring well-know apologist John Stonestreet for Saturday, May 5th at Medinah Baptist Church. Mr. Stonestreet is s a dynamic speaker and the award-winning author of “Making Sense of Your World” and his newest offer: “A Practical Guide to Culture.”

Join us for a wonderful opportunity to take enhance your biblical worldview and equip you to more effectively engage the culture.

Click HERE to learn more or to register!

It may be the drip, drip, drip that gets your kids. A scene in a movie, a passage in a novel, a sympathetic portrayal of homosexuality in a play, a song by a well-know musician, a bullying prevention presentation at school, a visually arresting advertisement depicting homosexuality or opposite-sex impersonation positively… week after week, month after month, year after year.

Add to that the vociferous condemnation of disapproval of homosexuality or of the “trans” ideology (including opposition to co-ed private spaces) and voilà, children’s hearts and minds have been transformed—or, rather, deformed.

There are no widespread rational discussions of Leftist positions in which “progressive” arguments are presented with reasons and evidence. No dissenting arguments are explored. This, my friends, is how propaganda and demagoguery work.

And it’s everywhere, even in places you would least expect it, like Monroe Middle School in the heart of conservative Wheaton, Illinois, home of evangelical academic flagship Wheaton College.

Defacing the walls of Monroe Middle School are offensive student drawings that positively portray both homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation, some accompanied by ignorant (i.e., lacking knowledge) and troubling captions.

One drawing shows two boys hugging, cheek-to-cheek with a heart floating above their heads and a rainbow scarf encircling both their necks with the caption, “Be who you are, not who they tell you to be.”

Is that a good slogan on which schools should tacitly put their imprimatur? What does it even mean? Does it mean our identities are defined by our powerful, persistent desires? Any desires? All desires?

Who are “they” in the command to ignore “who they tell you to be”? Is there a difference between someone saying that homosexual activity is destructive to bodies and souls and telling someone who to be? Don’t teachers and administrators teach children every day in myriad ways who to be—and who not to be? Isn’t part of the job of teachers to teach children right from wrong? Isn’t that what character development necessarily entails?

Certainly, Christians believe that identity cannot be centered around the affirmation of sinful impulses of which homosexual impulses and the desire to be the opposite sex are but two.

Another drawing depicts a boy in girl’s clothing and a girl in boy’s clothing holding hands with the caption, “LOVE IS LOVE.”

Is that true? Is there just one universal, undifferentiated human experience called love? Are all loving relationships the same? If so, then logically, sex must be a morally justifiable part of all loving relationships. Man-woman, man-man, woman-woman, man-man-woman, woman-woman-man, adult-teen, adult-child, teen-child, father-daughter, mother-son, brother-brother, coach-team member, professor-student, etc.

Now don’t go all judgmental on me. And do not tell anyone in any of these kinds of relationships “who to be.” Remember, LOVE IS LOVE.

Here are some other questions someone should ask the powers-that-be at Monroe Middle School:

• Were these drawings part of a teacher’s assignment? If so, who was the teacher?

• If not, how did they come to be, and who gave permission for them to be on the walls?

• Were parents of all students notified ahead of time that there were going to be pro-homosexual and pro-“trans” drawings on the walls?

• How long have the drawings been up, and how long will they remain up?

• Are all forms of love identical?

• What other materials that depict homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation positively are the 11-14-year-old Monroe Middle School students being exposed to?

• Does Monroe Middle School allow any students to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms?

• Would the administration permit students to hang drawings of, for example, young women who experience “sex-change regret” and feel sorrow over their sterility; irreversible voice changes; and scarred, breast-less chests?

Often sexual anarchists drip, drip, drip their propaganda and demagoguery into the minds and hearts of children, but lately, grown arrogant and brazen from feasting on their victories, they flood children with their noxious lies. For example, several years ago, California passed a law similar to the one wending its way through the Springfield swamp (the “Inclusive Curriculum” bill). The California law, passed in 2011 is dishonestly called the “Fair Education Act” and requires that all social studies and history classes in grades k-12 include the “role and contributions of… lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans.”

The California law also prohibits public schools from using any materials that reflect “adversely upon persons because of their… sexual orientation.” So, while being required to present resources that depict homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation positively, the law censors all resources that present dissenting views. The problem is that, unlike race, homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation are constituted by subjective feelings and volitional acts that many view as immoral. Prohibiting dissenting voices transforms education into indoctrination.

In November 2017, California adopted its first set of textbooks for grades k-8 since the law took effect in 2012. Eight of the proposed textbooks were accepted, while two were rejected. Those two were rejected “because they failed to address the sexual orientations of historical figures who were LGBT, or widely speculated by historians to have been LGBT. They include poets Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, authors Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and President James Buchanan.”

As I wrote recently in regard to the “Inclusive Curriculum” bill proposed in Illinois, sexuality anarchists seek to use cultural achievements to suggest without stating that homosexuality and biological sex-rejection are good because people who affirm homosexual or “trans” identities did great things. Leftists seek to associate homosexuality and opposite-sex impersonation with achievement in order to transfer the positive feelings people have about achievements to homosexuality and gender confusion.

The California law not only requires that schools include the role and contributions of homosexuals and opposite-sex impersonators but also—and unbelievably—those suspected of being homosexuals or cross-dressers.

It’s not just Wheaton parents with children in or soon-to-be in Monroe Middle School who should be outraged. All district taxpayers should be outraged. Their property tax dollars are being used to indoctrinate children with a pernicious ideology that undermines truth and human flourishing. In other words, their money is being used to harm children.

Teachers who don’t recognize truth do not deserve to be entrusted with other people’s children. Teachers who know truth but don’t battle tenaciously and courageously for it in public schools should be ashamed for abdicating their moral duty.

Finally, all Illinoisans need to contact their state lawmakers to urge them to reject SB 3249 and HB 5596, or we will end up with the same kind of law California has, only Illinois’ proposed law is worse. It will really flood the Land of Lincoln with noxious lies.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to both your state representative and state senator to ask them to reject this effort to politicize curricula in order to advance biased beliefs about sexuality to children in government schools.

More ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to Monroe Middle School Principal Bryan Buck and Superintendent Jeff Schuler to express your objections to the inappropriate displays, which express arguable ideas on highly controversial topics.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Sexuality-Propaganda-from-Drip-Drip-Drip-to-Downpour.mp3

IFI Worldview Conference May 5th

We have rescheduled our annual Worldview Conference featuring well-know apologist John Stonestreet for Saturday, May 5th at Medinah Baptist Church. Mr. Stonestreet is s a dynamic speaker and the award-winning author of “Making Sense of Your World” and his newest offer: “A Practical Guide to Culture.”

Join us for a wonderful opportunity to take enhance your biblical worldview and equip you to more effectively engage the culture.

Click HERE to learn more or to register!

What was once unthinkable has become unquestionable. And so, every Christian must know how to engage this transgender moment.

Imagine this scenario: Your 17-year-old daughter tells you she’s trapped in the wrong body, is really a boy, and wants hormone therapy to begin the process of transitioning. As her parent, you love your daughter, but you disagree. You want to look at other options to help her.

She decides to take you to court. Even though she’s a minor under your care, the judge decides your beliefs are a danger to your daughter, and takes her from your custody.

Well, imagine this scenario no more. That’s exactly what happened in Ohio recently.

And we shouldn’t be surprised. As Ryan Anderson, a Senior Research Fellow in American Principles and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation warns, Americans can expect more cases just like this one.

Anderson’s in-depth research of the transgender movement and sexual ideology is now available in his new book, “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment.” And I don’t say this lightly, this book is one every single Christian needs to read and understand.

This is a movement with considerable momentum—in popular culture, education, and even public policy. It’s an evolving movement. Here’s what I mean: as Anderson points out, gender ideology used to be based on the idea that our sex (in other words our physical natures, including reproductive organs and hormones) was biological, but our gender was socially constructed.

Activists challenged traditional gender roles as being oppressive and too generalized. But today the movement claims that sex is not biological, but assigned at birth. As if the doctor makes a random decision to identify a child as male or female. That’s how, the popular theory goes, boys can be trapped in girl’s bodies, and vice versa.

This is, of course, a scientifically indefensible position, and assumes that deep in some part of one’s brain (though we’re not sure where), our true gender identity is located. The theory is advancing, not on its merits, but on political power and name-calling: that only bigots insist on biological realities.

What Anderson does so well in “When Harry Became Sally” is to articulate how transgender ideology is hopelessly tied up in contradictions. He’ll help you spot those contradictions and articulate them with clarity and kindness to others.

But even so, many Christians still wonder why they should care about this one. Maybe they are still wearied over the same-sex marriage battle, or like many of us, maybe this is one of those issue that hits a little too close to home.

Well, I think there are at least two reasons we should care. First, Christians have always proclaimed that our bodies matter. This is no trivial point of Christian theology. Scripture tells us that God made us in His image, male and female. That Jesus became flesh and dwelt among us, and that He was physically resurrected from the dead. We cannot go along with any ideology that denies God’s created order.

And the second reason we should care is, well, the children. Ideas have consequences, and bad ideas have victims. Transgender ideology is disproportionately aiming at children, teaching them that they are not the inherently valuable image bearers God created them to be. If we love our neighbors, especially the kids, we cannot remain silent on this one.

We will send you a copy of “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment” as a thank you for your gift today. Visit BreakPoint.org to get your copy.  It will equip you to defend the truth of God’s plan for human sexuality and identity—and help those impacted by the transgender movement.

And if you come to our website, you’ll find other articles and teaching resources on this issue also.

This article was originally published at BreakPoint.org