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A User’s Guide To Free Expression And Bathroom Sanity

Written by Ryan T. Anderson, PhD.

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision redefining marriage, LGBT activists shifted their focus to the “T” in LGBT and to eliminating any dissent on marriage. At the federal, state, and local levels, the cultural Left has proposed using government coercion—in the forms of fines, penalties, and regulation—to make all Americans accept a new orthodoxy on sexuality: Boys must be allowed unfettered access to girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms, and shower facilities; bakers must bake same-sex wedding cakes.

Meanwhile, big business and special interest lobbyists have denounced attempts to limit these initiatives. Republican governors such as Mike Pence of Indiana and Dennis Daugaard of South Dakota have caved to media hysterics and cultural cronyism. Pence watered down his state’s religious freedom law; Daugaard vetoed a bill that would have accommodated transgender students, but not allowed boys in girls’ bathrooms.

My recent book, “Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom,” discusses these phenomena in detail. Here are the Cliff’s notes on four types of laws to keep an eye on.

1. Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Laws

These laws have been used to penalize bakers, florists, photographers, and adoption agencies. There is no federal Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) law, and most states and cities don’t have them yet. But LGBT activists are pushing to pass them across the country.

The proposed Equality Act would add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to more or less every federal civil rights law that protects on the basis of race, expanding them beyond their current reach and explicitly reducing current religious liberty protections. If made law, the Equality Act would have government treat people who believe we are created male and female, and that male and female are created for each other, as if they were racists.

SOGI laws also force schools, businesses, restaurants, and other places open to the public to allow biological males who identify as women into the ladies’ restrooms. This tramples private property rights, which would say whoever owns the bathroom should be able to set the bathroom policies, be they sex-specific, unisex, or something else. Government shouldn’t force owners to grant unfettered bathroom access based on gender identity, regardless of the safety, privacy, or modesty concerns of owners, employees, and patrons.

Thankfully, citizens are pushing back. When the Houston city council voted to impose a municipal SOGI law, Houstonians organized and collected more than enough signatures to put the issue to a vote of the people. In November, 61 percent of voters resoundingly rejected it. And don’t let the media tell you it’s a city of bigots. Houstonians have elected Annise Parker, a lesbian, as mayor three times. But they drew the line at SOGI and won despite threats of boycotts and retaliation from big business (which proved empty).

Earlier this year a proposed sexual orientation bill died in the Indiana statehouse, partly because its supporters couldn’t stop fighting over the specifics. Gender identity wasn’t specifically included in the bill, SB 344, which made the LGBT lobby unhappy. Moreover, in a bid to broaden support, the bill’s authors tacked on limited religious exemptions as a “compromise.” The prospect of any religious exemptions upset many in the LGBT lobby. In their view, no one should be free to follow his beliefs about marriage in public life if it violates LGBT dogma.

SOGI laws increase cultural tensions, further empower an already powerful special-interest lobby, and impose unjustly on people of many different faiths. At the end of the day, they are both unnecessary and a threat to religious freedom.

2. Bathroom Privacy and Accommodation Laws

SOGI laws are the problem. But what are some of the solutions? One answer is to protect privacy at the bathroom and accommodate transgender students. But LGBT activists don’t like this at all.

Their official policy is that boys who identify as girls should have unfettered access to girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms, and shower facilities. Anything less than full access to the bathroom and locker room of their choice is, they say, a transphobic denial of civil rights and equality. This extreme position is out of step with the majority of Americans, and utterly inconsiderate of the concerns of the non-transgendered community.

Earlier this year South Dakota crafted an even-handed policy respectful of everyone’s interests. Unfortunately, the governor caved to special interest hysterics. The South Dakota bill would have prevented biological males who identify as girls from using girls’ private facilities in public schools, but it also would have required local school officials to make reasonable accommodations for such students, such as providing access to single-occupancy facilities. A win-win arrangement for everyone, it would have protected all students’ privacy and safety and created new accommodations for transgender students.

Ask yourself: Why do we have gender-specific locker rooms in the first place? It’s because of biology, not because of “gender identity.” Separate facilities reflect the fact that men and women have bodily differences; they are designed to protect privacy related to our bodies. So the South Dakota bill continued the bathroom policy America has always had, while also requiring local schools to find reasonable accommodations for transgender students.

But LGBT activists accused attacked the state of “transphobia.” And big businesses threatened boycotts. As the bill reached the governor’s desk, the head of the Human Rights Campaign warned that “history will not treat kindly those who support this discriminatory measure.”

The Obama administration also wants to be on the Left side of history here. It claims that a 1972 civil rights lawrequires schools to allow unfettered bathroom and locker room access based on “gender identity.” In 2014, the U.S. Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights announced that Title IX—the 1972 law protecting the equal rights of women and girls in education—now required schools to allow boys who identify as girls into the girls’ bathroom. This unilateral reinterpretation of federal law cannot stand.

The nation is primed for yet another clash in the culture war—this time over school bathroom policy. The South Dakota legislature gave the entire United States an example of how to defuse controversy and craft principled public policy that creates good outcomes for everyone. It should have been signed into law.

We now need leaders to show courage and do the right thing: to stand up to the special interests and protect the rights and interests of all children.

3. Religious Freedom Restoration Acts

Historically, Americans have protected religious freedom by requiring the government to meet a burden of proof before it acts to substantially burden the free exercise of religion. This was the test that the Supreme Court applied under the First Amendment—up until 1990. When the Court turned away from that test, Congress voted in 1993 to reinstate it by passing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).

Championed by the ACLU and liberal senators Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy, it passed with 97 Senate votes and a unanimous voice vote in the House. President Bill Clinton signed it into law. RFRA bars government from substantially burdening religious exercise unless it can show a compelling interest to do so and does it through the least restrictive means possible.

Twenty-one states have implemented similar laws, and 11 more have constitutional religious liberty protections that state courts have interpreted to provide a similar level of protection. These commonsense laws place the onus on the government to justify its actions in burdening the free exercise of religion.

Over the last 20 years, RFRA-style laws have balanced the fundamental right to religious liberty with compelling government interests. They have protected Native Americans’ freedom to wear headdresses with eagle feathers, Sikhs’ freedom to wear religious head coverings in court, Muslim prisoners’ freedom to grow short beards, and Jewish inmates’ rights to kosher meals.

The federal RFRA protects against federal government violations of religious liberty; state RFRAs protect against state violations. Yet when Indiana proposed a near identical state version of RFRA last year, all hell broke loose. Similar hysterics are now erupting in Georgia and West Virginia over their RFRA proposals.

4. First Amendment Defense Acts

RFRAs create balancing tests that judges use. They protect religious exercise generally, then leave it to judges to determine if government has a compelling interest being pursued in a narrowly tailored way that justifies burdening the religious exercise in any particular case. But experience shows that ideologically driven judges can and do get it wrong. In cases where the risk of neglect or even hostility to the law by judges or government is acute, we can and should single out particular actions for protection and say government may never burden them.

We need both broad protection and specific protections. So, in addition to RFRA, Congress has passed a variety of laws that protect pro-life conscience. In Roe v. Wade the Supreme Court invented a right to an abortion. But after Roe Congress made clear that government cannot require a pro-life doctor or nurse to perform an abortion—that they, too, had rights that required specific protections from hostile judges and bureaucrats.

Likewise, in the Obergefell decision, the Supreme Court redefined marriage throughout America by mandating that governmental entities treat same-sex relationships as marriages. The Supreme Court did not say that private schools, charities, businesses, or individuals must abandon their beliefs if they disagree, but some governments are acting as if it did.

Indeed, there is no justification to force these entities to violate their beliefs about marriage. As Justice Anthony Kennedy noted, traditional beliefs are held “in good faith by reasonable and sincere people here and throughout the world.” Americans who believe that marriage is the union of husband and wife should continue to be free to live and work according to their convictions.

Now, state and federal legislatures should make it clear that no private person or institution should be forced to recognize or help celebrate a same-sex marriage—that is, that they have a right to believe—and live out—what they’ve always believed about marriage: that it’s the union of husband and wife.

The federal First Amendment Defense Act (FADA), and various state bills modeled on it, is a measured, reasonable, commonsense policy. It would ensure that no government agency discriminates against individuals or institutions for following their convictions about marriage as a man-woman union. For example, a government could not revoke their tax-exempt status or deny them government grants, contracts, accreditation, or licenses because of their beliefs. The bill protects freedom and pluralism in the wake of social change—embodying the best of American values.

Protecting minority rights after major social change is also a hallmark of American tolerance and pluralism. Yet as Georgia moves to enact a FADA, big business and special interests are attacking it.

This is yet another example of cultural cronyism. Businesses in Georgia were always free to embrace gay marriage—to bake wedding cakes for gay marriages and make floral arrangements for same-sex nuptials—and many do. But now activists want the government to force everyone in Georgia to do it. They’re threatening boycotts, travel bans, and relocations of businesses if the government doesn’t do as they wish.

Big business—as represented by “individual corporate giants including Hilton Worldwide, Marriott and InterContinental Hotels Group,” the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, and the Georgia Hotel and Lodging Association—have all claimed the religious freedom bill would open the door to widespread discrimination.

But if every Hilton, Marriott, and InterContinental hotel in Georgia already hosts receptions for newlywed same-sex couples, why can’t Georgia protect the mom-and-pop bed-and-breakfast or local Knights of Columbus hall that has a different set of beliefs about marriage? This law doesn’t harm minority rights; it protects them in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage.

The hypocrisy of big business lobbying against the law is astounding. They want to be free to operate in Georgia according to their values, but they don’t want small-business competitors to be free to operate according to theirs. If all of the major corporations are already in favor of gay marriage, then this religious freedom law poses no threat. It merely protects the rights of those who disagree.

What to Do Now

America is in a time of transition. Courts have redefined marriage, and beliefs about human sexuality are changing. During this time, it is critical to protect the right to disagree and the civil liberties of those who speak and act in accord with what Americans had always believed about marriage—that it is the union of husband and wife.

Good public policy is needed at the local, state, and federal levels to protect cherished American values. This means SOGI laws must be defeated. Bathroom privacy and accommodation laws should be enacted. And religious freedom should be protected—with RFRAs and FADAs.

These policies would help achieve civil peace amid disagreement, maintain pluralism, and protect the rights of all Americans, regardless of what faith they may practice.


 

Ryan T. Anderson, PhD, the William E. Simon senior research fellow in American Principles and Public Policy at The Heritage Foundation, is the author of “Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom.”


This article was originally posted at TheFederalist.com




The Absurdity of Transgenderism: A Stern but Necessary Critique

Written by Carlos D. Flores

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

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

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

Transgenderism and Gender Identity

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gender Reassignment Surgery Is Not Medicine

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

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

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

On Gender Identity Disorder Therapy

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

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

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

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

Some Common Objections

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


 The Truth Project

First Annual IFI Worldview Conference
featuring Dr. Del Tackett
April 10-11, 2015

CLICK HERE for Details




Illinoisans Duped by “Anti-Bullying Act”

Editor’s Note: This is perhaps one of Laurie’s most important articles exposing the radical agenda in our public schools. Please read, take action, and then share this extremely important information with your neighbors, relatives, and friends.  David E. Smith, IFI’s Executive Director
 

Bullying in schools is a serious problem that must be addressed. In a misguided, poorly reasoned attempt to address it, Illinois legislators recently passed the disastrous “School Anti-Bullying Act” (SB 3266).

The problem of bullying did not necessitate any new state laws in that virtually every school in the state has more than adequate anti-bullying policy. The problem is not with a lack of policy, and the solution is certainly not this new, poorly constructed law.

For those who naively believe that “anti-bullying” policies, programs, and legislation are centrally about ending bullying, please note where and when Governor Pat Quinn signed into law the Illinois “School Anti-Bullying Act.” The symbolism of the time and place of the signing ceremony points to the real purpose of the legislation, which is to exploit legitimate anti-bullying sentiment and Illinois public schools to undermine traditional beliefs about the nature and morality of homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder. If this legislation were not a Trojan Horse for getting homosexuality-affirming resources into public schools and were truly about addressing all forms of bullying, why would Quinn sign it into law on the Sunday morning of the Chicago “gay pride” parade, and why hold the ceremony at Nettelhorst Elementary School — the Chicago elementary school that has marched in the “gay pride” parade for two years — which happens to be located in the homosexual neighborhood called Boystown?

SB 3266 was initiated by the homosexual advocacy group Illinois Safe Schools Alliance (ISSA), which grew out of the unholy alliance of the Chicago chapter of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and the Coalition for Education on Sexual Orientation. According to the homosexual newspaper the Edge, “ISSA and its allies and predecessors worked more than a decade to get the legislation passed.” ISSA Executive Director Shannon Sullivan praised the passage of this legislation. You may recognize this name: Shannon Sullivan is the lesbian who has been working to introduce resources that affirm homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder to elementary school children in Oak Park.

Below are some excerpts from the actual text with the most problematic language emphasized:

Bullying on the basis of actual or perceived race, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, age, marital status, physical or mental disability, military status, sexual orientation, gender-related identity or expression….

“Bullying” means any severe or pervasive physical or verbal act or conduct, including communications made in writing or electronically, directed toward a student or students that has or can be reasonably predicted to have the effect of one or more of the following:

causing a substantially detrimental effect on the student’s or students’ physical or mental health….

substantially interfering with the student’s or students’ academic performance; or substantially interfering with the student’s or students’ ability to participate in or benefit from the services, activities, or privileges provided by a school….

Bullying, as defined in this subsection (b), may take various forms, including without limitation one or more of the following: harassment, threats, intimidation, stalking, physical violence, sexual harassment, sexual violence, theft, public humiliation, destruction of property, or retaliation for asserting or alleging an act of bullying. This list is meant to be illustrative and non-exhaustive….

Each school district and non-public, non-sectarian elementary or secondary school shall create and maintain a policy on bullying, which policy must be filed with the State Board of Education.

This legislation is disastrous for two reasons.

First, it is disastrous because it is an “enumerated” law which means it includes the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender-related identity or expression” (i.e., “transgenderism,” “transsexuality,” and cross-dressing) in the list of conditions for which students cannot be bullied. Why, in a non-exhaustive list that omits other conditions for which students are bullied, would these two be specifically named? Do our legislators and the crafters of this legislation actually expect the public to believe that there are more students bullied for their same-sex attraction or cross-dressing than for being shy, socially awkward, impulsive, overweight, studious, or athletically challenged? And why not use the proper term for “gender-related identity or expression” which is Gender Identity Disorder (GID)?

The answer is that the motives behind both the inclusion of these particular terms as well as the refusal to use the correct term, GID, are wholly political. Those who proposed and promoted this legislation are seeking to end bullying based on “real or perceived” homosexuality or GID by transforming the moral and political views of students. This new law with its inclusion of the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender-related identity and expression” will be used to introduce resources that implicitly and explicitly affirm homosexuality and GID in even elementary schools and will be used to simultaneously censor resources that espouse traditional views.

Second, it is disastrous because of its ambiguity. For example, the bill identifies bullying as “any severe verbal conduct that can be reasonably predicted to cause a substantially detrimental effect on a student’s mental health.”

  • How is the vague phrase “substantially detrimental effect” defined? If a teacher brought in two scholars to debate same-sex adoption and one of the conservative scholar’s arguments was that homosexual acts are inherently morally flawed, could a homosexual student claim that he experienced a substantially detrimental effect on his mental health? Or what if a classmate made such a point in a classroom discussion?
  • Do athletic codes that prohibit genetic males from joining the girls’ swim team “substantially interfere” with the ability of a boy who has GID to “participate in the activities provided by the school”?
  • What if a teacher in order to have students study both sides of the public debate on same-sex marriage assigned reading from conservative scholars or columnists that asserted that same-sex marriage should not be legalized because homosexual practice is not moral? Could a homosexual student claim that he was publicly humiliated?
  • Does this new legislation render illegal a high school dress code that prohibits boys from wearing lipstick and dresses to school?
  • If a school counselor were to provide a student or his parents with information about GID counseling, could that be considered gender identity discrimination or bullying if the student claimed the provision of such information humiliated him or had a detrimental effect on his health?
  • If a school prohibited a boy with GID from using the girls’ bathrooms, could the school be found liable for violating this law?
  • Does this require all public and private non-religious schools to create policy on bullying that specifically mentions “sexual orientation” and “gender-related identity and expression”?

Since the list of bases on which bullying is prohibited is deliberately “non-exhaustive,” what is the justification for the exclusion of other conditions for which students may be bullied? The current legislation gives examples from three broad categories of conditions but offers no reasons for the inclusion of some conditions and the exclusion of others:

1. Disorders (e.g., GID): Why does the bill include only one disorder (i.e., GID) while excluding other disorders, like Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Attention Deficit Hyper-Active Disorder (ADHD), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), anorexia, bulimia, and Aspberger’s Syndrome, all of which can lead to behaviors for which kids are bullied? And why does the bill not use the correct designation, Gender Identity Disorder, rather than the politically biased terms “gender-related identity and expression”? It seems likely that there are more students in public schools who are ridiculed for behaviors related to ADD, ADHD, or Aspberger’s Syndrome than there are students who are ridiculed for behaviors related to GID.

The inclusion of only this one psychological disorder and the failure to use the correct designation reflect the acceptance of particular assumptions regarding the nature and morality of cross-dressing that are controversial and unproven. The use of the politically biased phrase, “gender-related identity and expression” exposes the political nature of this bill and the influence of the “transgender”-affirming Illinois Safe Schools Alliance in the creation of this legislation.

2. Conditions centrally defined by impulses and volitional behavior that carry moral implications (e.g., “sexual orientation” and Gender Identity Disorder): Why does the bill exclude other behaviors that many consider immoral and for which kids may be bullied, like “sexting,” aggression, stealing, plagiarizing, drug use, and promiscuity? For example, students who use drugs are called “druggies” and “stoners,” and girls who are promiscuous are called “sluts” and “hos.” Obviously, schools no more need policy that specifically mentions homosexuality to protect homosexual students than they need policy that mentions promiscuity in order to protect promiscuous students.

The reason that no other conditions that are centrally defined by desire and volitional acts that many deem immoral are included is that the crafters of this legislation seek to use law to promote the unproven belief that homosexuality and GID are analogous to race. By including these conditions in a list of morally neutral conditions, they seek to reinforce implicitly their false assumption that homosexuality and GID are morally neutral. Indeed, the use of the political term “sexual orientation,” which embodies the ideas of biological determinism, immutability, and moral neutrality, rather than “homosexuality” further exposes the political nature of this legislation. When crafting their own policy, schools should replace “sexual orientation” with the less political term “homosexuality.” (Further, when replacing the term “sexual orientation,” there is no reason to add the term “bisexuality,” because no one is bullied for the heterosexual part of bisexuality.)

3. Conditions that carry no moral implications (e.g., race, sex, and disability): the crafters of this bill excluded other morally neutral conditions for which far more students are bullied, like obesity, nearsightedness, farsightedness, acne, speech impediments, shyness, social awkwardness, or lack of athletic ability. These omissions further reveal the political nature of this legislation.

Focus on the Family’s anti-bullying project, True Tolerance, warns against the inclusion of specific categories:

Listing certain categories creates a system ripe for reverse discrimination, sending the message that certain characteristics are more worthy of protection than others. Instead of bringing more peace and unity, this can politicize the school environment and introduce divisiveness among different groups of students and parents.

A more general, and therefore more inclusive, description would be far superior. It’s too bad Illinois legislators didn’t consider the apolitical, concise, and inclusive anti-bullying policy created by the Alliance Defense Fund.

The new Illinois law requires the creation of a fifteen-member Task Force whose responsibility it will be to make recommendations “for preventing and addressing bullying in schools in this State.” The Task Force is required by this bill to include a high school or college student who has been bullied. This student should be someone who has been bullied for characteristics such as race or disability that have no behavioral manifestations about which there is moral controversy.

The Task Force must also include representatives from organizations that address bullying. To avoid yet even more policy blunders, these representatives should be from organizations that are not centrally concerned with the partisan socio-political goal of normalizing homosexuality. To avoid the appearance of being a tool for the homosexual movement, the Task Force should exclude representatives from GLSEN and the Safe Schools Alliance or balance them with representatives from conservative organizations like IFI.

So far only twelve states, including, unfortunately, Illinois, have anti-bullying legislation that specifically mentions “sexual orientation” and “gender identity/expression.” The inclusion of these terms in anti-bullying policies and legislation allows homosexualists to use them as cultural battering rams to destroy First Amendment speech and religious protections. The central purpose of the inclusion of these terms in legislation and policy is not to protect homosexuals and “transgenders” but to censor the expression of traditional moral beliefs and ultimately eradicate them.