Arthur Brooks, devoted Catholic, writer for the Washington Post, and professor at the Harvard Kennedy School, spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast last week. He is a compelling speaker who spoke clearly of his devotion to Jesus. His remarks were based on his book, Love your Enemies, in which he describes his antidote to the culture of polarization and contempt in American discourse. As the title suggests, Brooks told the room of public figures, religious leaders, and politicians, including President Trump, that loving our enemies is the answer.

Brooks gave no clear definition of love in his speech. Instead, he gave actionable steps of love–as he sees it–for the everyday pundit and politician. Here’s a quick summary of Brook’s solution: don’t be mean (or to use Brooks’ term, “contemptuous”), defend your opponents when your friends are mean to them (which Brooks calls “moral courage”), pray, get an accountability partner, and keep a smile on your face no matter what. These are all good ideas, and I would recommend them for all people of good will, but the kind of love we need in the public square right now isn’t sugar and spice and everything nice. We need contemptuous love.

Biblical love is intention and action that brings about good. The “good” to seek in secular life is called the “common good.” The common good is all that society needs to flourish. Rights like individual freedom, pursuing the life you desire, personal responsibility, a free economy, human dignity, free speech, and freedom of religion are some of the pillars of the common good in America. Christian love in the public square, then, is an intention and subsequent action to ensure that the common good is defended and implemented in ways that enable everyone to flourish. The problem with Brooks’ love is that it assumes that everyone wants to implement the good. That is not true.

In the past, both liberals and conservatives agreed on what the pillars of the common good were, even if they disagreed on how best to see those pillars expressed. Since Reconstruction we have been a nation of differences, but we have also had good will toward one another. Today, however, it is different. Dangerous ideas that undermine the very pillars of a free society are pervasive. We can no longer assume that everyone is acting for the common good, for some among us are “wolves in sheep’s clothing.”

These wolves need contemptuous love. At this point, you are probably wondering what kind of pastor would write that contempt is ever a good idea in the name of love. Let me show you some biblical examples of what I call contemptuous love, and what rhetoric calls irony.

When Jesus confronts the Pharisees, he calls them a “brood of vipers!” They are not literally vipers, of course, and the people considered the Pharisees holy. So what’s going on? The Pharisees asserted ideas about God and his demands that laid heavy burdens on people and made them feel far from God. Their ideas were dangerous. This wasn’t just a disagreement about whether to be a Methodist or a Baptist but a discourse on ideas that are destructive to the good of human flourishing. So Jesus uses ironic, contemptuous language to defend and assert the reality that God’s love doesn’t come with prerequisites.

Similarly, after Paul had planted a church in the city of Galatia, there was a group that said that to be a real Christian you had to believe in Jesus and be circumcised. This wasn’t an argument about whether a church should use a guitar or an organ. This was about an idea that would undermine the foundation of Christianity. In rhetoric that Socrates would love, Paul says that those who promote circumcision ought to emasculate themselves. Now this isn’t very nice, and, as Brooks might say, not very loving. But this is love on display. Paul doesn’t mean it literally, for he actually desires Christians to do the opposite. He is trying to awaken this church to the danger in their midst. Despite his use of contemptuous language, he is acting in love.

A significant reason for the partisan divide in the United States is that some of the ideas being asserted are dangerous to the common good. Those dangerous ideas aren’t about the historic left/right divide. Instead, the ideas being introduced are born out of the postmodern philosophy that relegates truth to the same category as wishful thinking. Truth is now whatever you want it to be, and everyone has to celebrate your truth. This has been weaponized in the political sphere so much that the basic tenets of the common good are being undermined and dismantled. Everyone should be alarmed. This is a time for contentious love.

Today, instead of people of good will deciding between abortion being legal but safe and rare and abortion being illegal because life begins at conception, they are now promoting abortion as a moral good. When accepting her Golden Globe award, Michelle Williams spoke about how her decision to abort enabled her to be a successful actress. In Illinois, a woman can get an abortion all the way up until the baby takes her first breath. Celebrating abortion as a moral good is a dangerous idea. We have now moved into a moral space where we celebrate killing. This undermines the common good. A society that recklessly, happily, and continually ends life is a society that will destroy life everywhere. What is being advanced is stupid and dangerous. It’s time to set pleasantries aside. When a wolf is in the hen house you don’t give him a treat. You save the hens by getting him out of the hen house. We need to wake up. It is time for contemptuous love.

At one point, people of good will would debate special legal protections for the “LGBTQQAP community and the redefinition of marriage.  Now, however, support for every sexual minority’s “truth” is a litmus test for whether someone can speak in the public square or have a job. If you find out that a parent is going to allow her child to take puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, you better celebrate—or else. Think that same-sex “marriage” is a bad idea? Shut up, or else. Think that research shows that biological differences between men and women account for the greater number of men than women in STEM fields? Get ready for the mob to come for you. Historically, Western society agreed that we will seek and embrace what is true. Even as leftists claim there is no moral truth, dangerous totalitarian impulses to indoctrinate with their “truths” are destroying that agreement. It is time for contemptuous love.

Today, our borders have become polarized as never before. Some are advocating for open borders. Open borders are tantamount to the loss of American identity. Roger Scruton links borders with societal cohesion. Open borders is like saying that you can be human without skin. It is an impossibility. Open borders are the surest way to destroy the foundations of the American experiment. This is a bad idea. It is a dangerous idea. It needs and deserves contemptuous love.

Contemptuous love seeks to shock the hearer back to morality. It seeks to motivate the hearer to act for the good. While it might seem “mean,” it is far from it. It is motivated by love for neighbor and love for the neighborhood. Brooks is right in that we need to love our enemies, but unfortunately, the type of love he describes is insufficient.

IFI is hosting our annual Worldview Conference on March 7th at the Village Church of Barrington. This year’s conference is titled “Thinking Biblically About Our Corrosive Culture” and features Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. Rob Gagnon. For more information, please click HERE for a flyer or click the button below to register for the conference.

The story of an innocent birthday cake that wasn’t and the expulsion of 15-year-old Kayla Kenney from Whitefield Academy, a private Christian school in Louisville, Kentucky, has been covered in multiple news outlets. Kenney’s mother, Kimberly Alford, took a photo of her daughter sitting in front of a specially designed rainbow-colored birthday cake, wearing a sweater adorned with rainbow stripes, and then posted it on Facebook. Shortly after the Facebook posting, the theologically orthodox Christian school notified the family that Kayla was expelled.

Here’s an excerpt from the Washington Post story:

Alford instructed a bakery to decorate a cake with colors that “pop,” [Alford] recalled. It just so happened that the cake’s rainbow motif mirrored the design on her daughter’s sweater. … Alford said she is aware that the rainbow-striped flag is a symbol of the LGBTQ community, but emphasized that her daughter’s matching rainbow cake and sweater were simply a coincidental aesthetic and not intended to mean anything more. … “Rainbows don’t mean you’re a certain gender or certain sex or sexuality,” Alford told The Washington Post, adding that she provided the school a receipt from the bakery listing the cake’s design as “assorted colors.”

“It just so happened” that the rainbow cake mirrored her daughter’s rainbow sweater as well as the symbol of the “LGBTQ” community? The rainbow cake and sweater “were simply a coincidental aesthetic and not intended to mean anything more”? A receipt from a bakery that identifies only what the cake decorator needed to know about decorating the cake provides proof of the motives of Kayla?

Someone really thinks Christians just fell off their proverbial turnip trucks while clinging with white knuckles to their guns and religion.

Louisville Courier Journal writer, Billy Kobin, who broke the incredible news story of a Christian school implementing its code of conduct policy, reported that Kenney’s mother “said her daughter is not gay and the cake was simply a fun treat.”

Well, that’s strange because, as author Rod Dreher reports on The American Conservative website, Kayla’s father Mark Kenney wrote this on his Facebook page, “My daughter got expelled from her church for being gay.”

The school responded to the secular press’ incomplete accounts:

Inaccurate media reports are circling stating that the student in question was expelled …  solely for a social media post. In fact, she has unfortunately violated our student code of conduct numerous times over the past two years. In the fall, we met with the student to give her a final chance to begin to adhere to our code of conduct. Unfortunately, she did not live up to the agreement, and therefore, has been expelled.

… All parents who enroll their children in our private school know up front that we ask the students to adhere to a lifestyle informed by our Christian beliefs.

The beliefs on which Whitefield’s code of conduct is based include explicit affirmation of theologically orthodox views of sexuality. Kayla and her parents knew the beliefs of the school and signed the code of conduct.

Dreher also reposted photos from Kayla’s Instagram account of Kayla dressed as a boy, taking a girl to a dance; a post from Oct. 16, 2019 in which Kayla announces, “Me coming out”; a post from months before her expulsion in which Kayla announces, “Me finally getting a GF [girlfriend]”; a photo of Kayla and a girl with the words, “But I was the one in her bed….”; and another photo of Kayla throwing her Bible in the clothes dryer.

While Kayla’s mom acknowledges that Kayla has had disciplinary issues, she misrepresented the nature and extent of those issues, and the mainstream press has been (not surprisingly) incurious about those issues. But Dreher reports the following:

When Alford says her daughter “is no angel,” and confirms that she has had “disciplinary issues,” she’s understating matters. My understanding is that Kayla Kenney had a long, specific list of repeated infractions — bullying, disrespecting teachers, vaping in school (as Alford acknowledges), and so forth. Part of what she has allegedly done is promoting LGBT consciousness in the school, including aggression on that front. I’m trying to be delicate here, but I can tell you that she has transgressed against other students on this front, to promote bisexuality. For example, she allegedly drew rainbows and wrote slogans like “bi pride” on other kids’ papers, and gave at least two different girls the impression that she was sexually harassing them.

The Chicago Tribune’s lifestyle expert and armchair theologian Heidi Stevens assures America “loudly and clearly,” that

If you identify as a Christian and you identify as gay, you don’t have to cleave off one part of yourself to remain true to the other.

How does she know this? She knows it because she consulted heretic John Pavlovitz whom she has long admired (not surprising) and about whom Stevens claims there is no one “better” to explain this heresy. Here’s Pavlovitz’s superior defense of heresy as cited by Stevens:

It’s ironic that someone would see the rainbow, which in the story of Noah was a symbol of God’s expansive love, and have that symbol become something they would weaponize. It just shows our complete lack of understanding of the heart of Jesus and what his teachings and what his life were trying to create in the world. A move like that gets cheap applause from others who want that same kind of vengeful religion. It’s the sort of easy win that people get when they exclude people, when they can try to claim some sort of moral high ground. It’s intoxicating. It makes people feel more spiritual. It’s short-hand religion without a deeper theology. If you don’t have a theology of empathy, there is not Jesus there. Even if you look at someone who is gay and you believe that’s not what God wants for people, Jesus encountered people throughout his ministry that would be doing things God wouldn’t want for them. And he always leaves them with more dignity than he found them.”

So many errors, so little time.

God’s rainbow has not been weaponized—well, at least not by Christians. Homosexuals have appropriated it, perverted it, and weaponized it against Christians.

The rainbow symbolized God’s promise not to again destroy the earth by a flood, which he had just done because of the sinfulness of man. It’s a reminder of God’s covenant with man and of his grace and mercy. God loves his creation and at the same time detests much that fallen humans feel, desire, believe, think, and do. God is loving, merciful, holy, and just. And Judgment Day is coming. He has told us in his Word that he will one day judge the world—not by water but by fire—and those whose names are not written in the Book of Life, will be cast into the “lake of fire” for eternity.

Those aren’t my words. They’re the words of the loving, empathetic, holy, and just God who Pavlovitz falsely claims to serve. (Stevens made clear that Pavlovitz doesn’t serve God: “Pavlovitz doesn’t believe being gay is a sin. He believes in and preaches radical inclusivity and believes Jesus did the same.”) God’s Word tells us what acts we must turn from or risk eternal separation from him. Homosexuality is one of those, so, no, you can’t be a Christ-follower and affirm homosexuality.

If Pavlovitz believes that theologically orthodox Christians applaud the expulsion of a troubled teen from a Christian school, desire vengeance against her, or feel “intoxicated” by such an expulsion, then he doesn’t know any theologically orthodox Christians. It appears the Whitefield Academy Administration tried for two years to avoid expulsion.

Why, when theologically orthodox Christians affirm the clear words of Scripture on homosexuality or marriage, are they guilty of “claiming the moral high ground,” but when Pavlovitz cites Scripture to condemn them, he’s not guilty of “claiming the moral high ground”?

I wonder if Pavlovitz believes those who affirm biblical prohibitions of consensual adult incest, polygamy, or bestiality are guilty of “claiming the moral high ground” and of “completely lacking understanding of the empathetic heart of Jesus”?

I wonder too what radical inclusivist Pavlovitz makes of this command from Jesus pertaining to exclusion:

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. (Matthew 18:15-17)

Or this:

Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. (Matthew 7:13-14)

Or this:

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. (Matthew 7:21-23)

Or this:

 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (John 14:6)

Or this from Paul:

But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. (1 Corinthians 5:11)

The biblical goal of excluding unrepentant sinners from the body of Christ is not to be mean but, rather, to prevent the intentional embrace of sin from infecting the body of Christ (“Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?  Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened.”) and to have this separation result ultimately in repentance and restoration of fellowship. It’s ironic that Pavlovitz would accuse others of lacking a “deeper theology” in that he rips Scripture out of context and ignores inconvenient passages.

Of course, Jesus encountered people throughout his ministry who “were doing things God didn’t want for them.” Those are the only kind of people who exist. I’m not sure what Pavlovitz means when he claims Jesus always left those people “with more dignity than he found them.” Jesus called sinners to repent and follow him. He told the woman caught in adultery “go, and from now on sin no more.” Jesus told the rich, young ruler that in order to follow him, the young ruler would have to give up all his riches and give them to the poor. Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” It appears that leaving sinners with “more dignity” entailed their repentance from sin. They couldn’t identify as Christians and identify with sin. Leaving people to wallow in or celebrate sin is not what Jesus did.

Kimberly Alford complained to ABC News that she “feels judged” and her daughter “feels judged.” Alford continued:

We teach our kids, “what would Jesus do?” What would he do here?

Christians should know the answer to that question. Christians are called to judge with righteous judgment. We are not permitted to judge the eternal status of others or to judge hypocritically. But we are to judge between right and wrong action and to express those judgments. Scripture commands Christians to “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.” How can we avoid participating in unfruitful works of darkness if we aren’t told what those are?

I doubt Alford really means Christians shouldn’t judge between right and wrong. I doubt she thinks that if Christians say bestiality is wrong, they’re committing an offense against God. What she’s saying is that she no longer accepts biblical teaching on homosexuality, and, therefore, no one else should either.

Regressives don’t object to private schools having rules of conduct that reflect moral beliefs. Nor do they object to private schools expelling students for violating rules of conduct. Regressives object to anyone holding the moral belief that homoerotic acts and relationships are immoral. Instead of trying to create the impression that this school expelled a teen for an innocently decorated cake, why don’t regressive news sites just be honest and say a teen was expelled for intentionally violating rules based on Scripture that leftists abhor.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Media-Misrepresents-the-Story-of-Christian-School-That-Expelled-Student.mp3

IFI is hosting our annual Worldview Conference on March 7th at the Village Church of Barrington. This year’s conference is titled “Thinking Biblically About Our Corrosive Culture” and features Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. Rob Gagnon. For more information, please click HERE for a flyer or click the button below to register for the conference.

Written by L. Brent Bozell III

Washington Post book critic Ron Charles made a confession the other day. “I banned a book,” he wrote. “Or at least I helped get it banned, which makes Banned Books Week a little awkward for me this year. Like celebrating Arbor Day by cutting down a tree.”

The book is titled “The Trigger: The Lie That Changed the World — Who Really Did It and Why.” It’s an 898-page paperback. The author, David Icke, is a longtime conspiracy kook from Britain. The publisher is also David Icke. This book is the latest example of 9/11 trutherism. In this version, the “satanic” Israeli government did it, in addition to its role in international drug running and assassinating John F. Kennedy. Charles called it “harebrained word vomit.”

He wrote to Barnes & Noble inquiring about a photo a reader sent him that showed Icke’s book on a “New Releases in Paperback 20% off” table. A day later, a spokesperson told him, “After being alerted to the content, we are removing the book from all stores.”

When asked more broadly about the national bookstore chain’s selection process involving “hate speech” purveyors, the spokesperson added, “We work to never allow content with hate speech in our stores, and in cases when something slips through, we take quick and resolute action to remove it.”

This would thrill most liberal hearts, but Charles asks the obvious question: How will Barnes & Noble determine what is “hate speech”? And is “quick and resolute action” always the wisest course?

In the spirit of Banned Books Week, Charles wonders how hard liberals would fight to defend free speech, even for a book they consider abhorrent. Would they still fight today as the American Civil Liberties Union fought for the right of neo-Nazis to march down the street in Skokie, Illinois?

There’s no need to wonder.

Charles noted that the American Library Association has a new list of Top 10 Most Challenged Books in libraries, and “the list is dominated by books that draw censure for their positive portrayal of LGBTQIA+ relationships,” such as David Levithan‘s 2013 “young adult” novel, “Two Boys Kissing.”

The book chronicles Harry and Craig, two 17-year-olds who are about to participate in a 32-hour kissing marathon to set a new Guinness World Record. It has a broader theme about the dreadful toll of AIDS. Libraries and bookstores promote these tomes in Banned Books Week displays and events.

This is where Charles admirably puts his free-speech advocacy to the test:

“I can’t help noticing that no liberal tastes were harmed in the making of this list. It costs us nothing to celebrate these banned books. The whole campaign is pungent with self-satisfaction, a chance for us enlightened liberals to remind each other that we are freedom fighters.”

The American Library Association is unlikely to promote its own courage in making “harebrained word vomit” about 9/11 available in libraries. This underlines why Banned Books Week often feels like Favorite Books Week. It would be fascinating to know just how many American libraries are stocking the latest David Icke book so we could see how often it is protested by people won’t don’t want to aid the spread of his crackpottery.

Troublemakers with time on their hands could have fun compiling a list of books that libraries choose not to stock. We could host a splashy celebration of Books Librarians Hate Week. They should acknowledge that some noxious books and ideas are worth protesting or ignoring.

But you cannot celebrate free speech except for that which you want to ban.

L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at creators.com.

New York Times columnist Ross Douthat says the culture war in America may not be so much about secularism or atheism replacing Christianity but the rise of an old Christian foe – paganism.

This ancient religion differs from atheism in that it allows for a spiritual dimension to life and creation, but not an omnipotent, benevolent God.  The power is in the creation itself, which is why so many New Age adherents find divinity when they look at a sunset, a flower, or in some cases, their own mirror image.

Mr. Douthat explains the clash of worldviews presented in a new book by Steven D. Smith, “Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac”:

“What is that conception? Simply this: that divinity is fundamentally inside the world rather than outside it, that God or the gods or Being are ultimately part of nature rather than an external creator, and that meaning and morality and metaphysical experience are to be sought in a fuller communion with the immanent world rather than a leap toward the transcendent.”

This is quite different from, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1) and “All things were made through Him” (John 1:3).

Increasingly, “the universe” is replacing references to God in current TV shows and movies.  On the flip side, some of this year’s new Hallmark holiday flicks lean the other way, featuring sacred carols such as “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”

The pagan worldview is promoted by leading figures such as Oprah Winfrey, with her New Age version of “can’t we all just get along?” and the prolific writer Sally Quinn, widow of longtime Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee.

Ms. Quinn writes on religious topics for the Post, and used to edit the Post’s religion page, which is a smorgasbord of modern heresies, the wilder the better.   The Left favors almost any religious expression other than orthodox Christianity, which is why it’s soft on paganism and even Islam.

The latter’s militants are inflicting terror all over the world, most recently when a gunman yelled “Allahu Akbar” before gunning down 16 people, killing at least two, at a Christmas market in Strasbourg, France on Dec. 11.  The Post, like the rest of the media, downplayed it, ignoring the religious motivation and playing up the shooter’s criminal past.

Ms. Quinn chronicles her own plunge into witchly pursuits in her 2017 memoir “Finding Magic” in which she describes dabbling with the paranormal and hexing people she didn’t like.

She says she left behind the dark arts following three deaths that occurred shockingly soon after her hexing.  But she’s not done with the occult.  In a Washingtonian magazine profile in August 2017, Michelle Cottle wrote, “Ouija boards, astrological charts, palm reading, talismans—Quinn embraces it all. And yes, she has been in contact with her husband since his passing. Through a medium. Repeatedly.”

A week ago Monday, Ms. Quinn moderated a bookstore appearance by porn star and Trump accuser Stormy Daniels.  She said, with her son looking on, that she planned to attend Daniels’ strip show that evening, and that “I’ve watched Stormy’s porn, and it’s good. She knows what she’s doing.”

If you wonder why the Post gives short shrift to the biblical view that sex is a God-given gift to be enjoyed only in marriage, well, it shouldn’t be a mystery.

Elsewhere in the Post’s Style section, columnist Monica Hesse admits an addiction to the classic movie “White Christmas,” but makes sure to point out its politically incorrect flaws, such as a song about minstrel shows.  The movie is redeemed when Danny Kaye rebuffs a kiss from the beautiful Vera Ellen.  Mr. Kaye “demures so vehemently that the ‘White Christmas’ message boards have speculated that the character might be gay. Well, if so, kudos to that subversive choice, too.”

Kudos for subversion of romance between a man and a woman?  This is liberal virtue-signaling at its purest.   In the progressive worldview, everything is political, including sex.

Ms. Quinn says that friends have repeatedly asked her to place a hex on President Trump, an idea which, to her credit, she’s rejected. But think about that. Sally’s lefty pals hate Mr. Trump so much they want him magically killed, not just removed from office.

Pre-and-Post Christian pagan societies are not known for their qualities of mercy.

Robert Knight is a Townhall contributor. His latest book is “A Nation Worth Saving:   10 Steps to Restore Freedom” (djkm.org/nation, 2018).

This article was originally published at Townhall.com

The idea of two distinct sexes has been acknowledged as fundamental reality for thousands of years by billions of people, biology and every major religion.

The Trump administration agrees, which is why the Health and Human Services Department is circulating a proposal defining gender this way for purposes of interpreting Title IX of the Civil Rights Act:

”The sex listed on a person’s birth certificate, as originally issued, shall constitute definitive proof of a person’s sex unless rebutted by reliable genetic evidence.”   Further, the determination should rest “on a biological basis that is clear, grounded in science, objective and administrable.”

This means that when a baby is born, it’s still OK to say, “It’s a girl!” or “It’s a boy!” without having to ask the baby which sex it thinks it is.

Unsurprisingly, the Trump administration’s straightforward return to sanity has triggered a hysteria unseen since a majority of Americans had the audacity to say out loud that marriage is the natural union of male and female. The dystopic Left is apoplectic that anyone still dares to resist their distorted view of human sexuality.  They know that most people know better but are afraid to say so.

This is about much more than some people claiming to be the other sex and trying with the help of the media to rig the culture and legal system to their version of reality.  It’s a power struggle. The ruling elites aim to make us say that up is down, right is wrong, sweet is bitter and life is death.

Leading the charge, the Washington Post ran an editorial that said the HHS proposal, first reported by fellow cultural Marxists at the New York Times, was a “denial of reality” and based on “warped logic.”  Seriously.

Here’s more: “A brief conversation with a transgender person would cure most Americans of the notion that their expressed gender identity is a shallow preference, a phase or something other than a deeply held knowledge that their body does not match who they are.”

There’s nothing shallow about someone being so out of kilter with their own biology that they would contemplate surgical removal of otherwise healthy body parts.

The same people who accuse traditionalists of imposing their values on others insist that biology is meaningless.   But just because someone strongly believes something does not make it so.  Some people are afflicted with species dysphoria, in which they believe they are animals, a  “non-human species trapped in a human body.”  Are you going to believe them or your lying eyes?

There’s nothing wrong with treating transgender people with kindness.  We should all strive to live out Jesus’ admonition to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. But we need to oppose obscene developments like drugging children to delay their natural puberty in order to steer them into identifying with the opposite sex.  That is child abuse.

Here’s a welcome corrective from Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, who once favored sex-change surgery but now opposes it.

“I have witnessed a great deal of damage from sex-reassignment,” he wrote. “The children transformed from their male constitution into female roles suffered prolonged distress and misery as they sensed their natural attitudes…. We have wasted scientific and technical resources and damaged our professional credibility by collaborating with madness rather than trying to study, cure, and ultimately prevent it.”

At the end of the cross-dressing 1959 comedy “Some Like It Hot,” Joe E. Brown is driving away in a speed boat with Jack Lemmon still dressed as a woman.  Insisting he wants to marry “her,” Mr. Brown hears Mr. Lemmon give a half dozen excuses until finally ripping off his wig in exasperation and declaring that they couldn’t marry because, “I’m a man!”

The cheerful Mr. Brown smiles and says, “Well, nobody’s perfect.”

No, nobody is perfect, which is why we need to approach people who are hurting with compassion while declining to become co-dependents in their denial of reality.

Robert Knight’s latest book is “A Nation Worth Fighting For: 10 Steps to Restore Freedom.”  This article was originally published at Townhall.com.

Leftists, controlled by “LGBTQ” activists and in thrall to their dogma, have redefined yet another term: bullying. They seek to impose their redefinition on all of society in their relentless quest to socially condition everyone into affirmation of their sexuality ideology. There’s no better evidence that they have redefined “bullying” than their claim that Melania Trump’s campaign against cyberbullying is hypocritical because her husband allegedly cyberbullies.

The often-foolish Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank recently made that claim in a column in which he argued that President Donald Trump cyberbullied former CIA director John Brennan by calling him a “political hack.” Milbank also accused Trump of cyberbullying special counsel Robert Mueller, former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman, John Dean, U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Charles Schumer (D-NY), Governors Andrew Cuomo, (D-NY) and John Kasich (R-OH). Milbank’s evidence that Trump cyberbullied these people? He called them names on Twitter.

Milbank’s argument raises the question “What is a bully?”

My Random House Dictionary defines a bully as “a blustering, quarrelsome, overbearing person who habitually badgers and intimidates smaller or weaker people.”

My American Heritage Dictionary defines it as “a person who is habitually cruel, esp. to smaller or weaker people.”

My Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “a tyrannical coward who makes himself a terror to the weak.”

My Oxford American Dictionary defines it as “a person who uses strength or power to coerce others by fear.”

Is calling famous adults in positions of cultural power names “cruel”? Are John Brennan, Robert Mueller, Chuck Schumer weak? Are they terrified by Trump’s tweets? Does tweeting mean things about famous adults in positions of cultural power constitute the use of coercive strength and power?

Apparently, the spanking new Leftist definition of “bully” omits all references to smaller or weaker people, which means that untold numbers of people—including countless “progressive” pundits, politicians, professors, teachers, and actors—are guilty of bullying.

If all epithets constitute bullying, then was former Obama press secretary, Jay Carney a bully when he called Milbank a “hack.”

When Milbank called U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) a coward and said the president is “surrounded by hooligans,” was Milbank bullying?

When perpetual power-seeker Hillary Clinton called Trump supporters “deplorables,” was she bullying?

When Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn called opponents of the legal recognition of homosexual unions as marriages sophomoric Bible-thumpers, hankie-twisters, and poisonous debaters, was he bullying?

When the editor and publisher of the “progressive” magazine The Nation, Katrina Vanden Heuvel, said former president George Bush was incompetent, untrustworthy, and dishonest, was she bullying?

When former President Barack Obama called Kanye West a “jackass,” was he bullying? When Obama called a segment of the population bitter Bible-clingers was he bullying?

Are “progressives” bullies when they call theologically orthodox Christians ignorant, hate-filled bigots for their belief that homosexual acts are immoral?

Was Jesus a bully when he called the Pharisees a “brood of vipers?”

If someone is a hack, a jackass, or a viper, is it bullying to say so?

If we use the true definition of bullying, it becomes clear who the bullies are. Bullies are those who possess cultural power—and by cultural power, I mean our dominant cultural institutions—and wield it against those with little or no cultural power.

It is “progressives” who control government schools, academia, the arts, professional medical and mental health organizations, mainstream media, social media, and corporate America. When Trump tweeted that John Brennan is a “political hack,” he was not guilty of bullying. When Carney called Milbank a hack, he was not bullying. When cultural power-brokers call an elderly florist a bigot, they’re bullying.

For tactical reasons, “progressives” have decided that when it comes to adults talking about adults, bullying no longer refers to coercive, threatening, cruel treatment of weaker people. They do that all the time. Now it refers to any speech by conservatives that’s not pleasant, sufficiently obsequious, or ideologically aligned with their views. But remember, no one has an obligation to acquiesce to Leftist language rules.

This is not an endorsement of speech that is uncivil or intemperate, but not all unpleasant speech is uncivil or intemperate. There is even a cultural place for expressions of hatred. Decent people with properly formed consciences will hate wicked acts and will say so even in the face of coercive bullying by the culturally powerful.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Leftists-Redefine-Bullying.mp3

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I have had two children; I was old enough, when I became pregnant, that it made sense to do the testing for Down syndrome. Back then, it was amniocentesis, performed after 15 weeks; now, chorionic villus sampling can provide a conclusive determination as early as nine weeks. I can say without hesitation that, tragic as it would have felt and ghastly as a second-trimester abortion would have been, I would have terminated those pregnancies had the testing come back positive. I would have grieved the loss and moved on.

That’s an excerpt from an op-ed penned by Ruth Marcus, editor for the Washington Post and Harvard Law School grad.

Been there, not done that.

My late wife Mary Hickey was a beautiful and wickedly smart woman. More important, she was the loving mother of my three children.

In 1988, we learned that we were to be blessed with our second child. Fifteen weeks into Mary’s pregnancy she was tested via the same amniocentesis ritual described by Ruth Marcus. Mary’s obstetrician was a woman who determined there was a 99.9% surety that our child would be a Down Syndrome baby.  Mary responded, “So what?”

The doctor snorted, ” Well, I would abort it ASAP.”

Mary replied, “Well, you’re fired.”

Mary also called her a name I won’t repeat and shopped for a physician who would first, do no harm.

Our son was born, and he is a big healthy, happy, strapping broth of a man, who was captain of his high school football team and is now a stationary engineer.

Science.  Think about it.

I am an English teacher, and Mary was an art teacher. Mary died in 1998 and ordered me to send all three children to Catholic schools. I did. Sadly, they were raised by me and without this smart and loving woman.

I can be as much a monster as the worst of people. My literary studies taught me that a monster is a warning/a portent. The word comes from the Latin monere: to warn. 

The Golem, Grendel, and Irish Banshee all came from human imagination. Science gave us nastier monsters.  Frankenstein, Mr. Hyde and designer babies come from science, or man’s attempt to usurp God.

We all have monsters within us, but those of us who have metaphysical connections to eternal truths–that is the  belief in God–fear Him who created us out of love more than the monsters we create out of our fears, insecurities or vices.

The Greeks created a monstrum horrendum in the character of the first feminist Medea. Medea slaughtered her sons to show the gods that no man could hurt her “when Jason deserted Medea for the daughter of King Creon of Corinth; in revenge, Medea murdered Creon, his daughter, and her own two sons by Jason and took refuge with King Aegeus of Athens, having escaped from Corinth in a cart drawn by dragons sent by her grandfather Helios.”  She then, like Ruth Marcus, moved on.

She could have it all and she married King Aegeus who dumped her when she tried to poison his son Theseus. Kill your kids, why not kill other people’s kids. That is the mad genius of abortion supporters, ” I would have grieved the loss and moved on.” Monstrous.

Ruth Marcus offers sober and clinical reasons for aborting a Down Syndrome child that all add up to selfishness:

I’m going to be blunt here: That was not the child I wanted. That was not the choice I would have made. You can call me selfish, or worse, but I am in good company. The evidence is clear that most women confronted with the same unhappy alternative would make the same decision.

I am going to be blunt here, an Austrian paper-hanger was in good company from 1933-1945.  Monstrous.

It’s dangerous to paint with a broad brush. I think we do that too often when we, as conservatives, go after the press for media bias. Many times when I see conservative leaders decry media bias, I ask “was that a biased story, or were you just unprepared for the interview?”

Now that’s not to say media bias isn’t real – everyone knows that the majority of the press comes from a liberal perspective.  Even CNN’s Jake Tapper has admitted that media bias is real, and Mark Leibovich of the New York Times agrees that most of the media is center-left.

One of the most obvious examples of media bias shined through in the last few weeks.

Here’s the situation: You have two high profile state Attorney Generals. Both have clear and distinct ideologies:

Attorney General #1 is a conservative.

Attorney General #2 is a liberal.

As such, they work with and receive donations from organizations that support their ideologies.

When Attorney General #1 is making national news, these ties are reported in the Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post, etc, etc. When Attorney General #2 is in the news, these ties are conspicuously left out. You get one guess on which one is the conservative…

If you guessed the Attorney General #1, you win!

Attorney General #1 is Scott Pruitt, the former Oklahoma Attorney General, who is now President Trump’s head of the EPA (a great selection in my opinion). As Oklahoma Attorney General, Pruitt sued the EPA more than a dozen times because, under President Obama, the agency continually issued unlawful regulations on states and businesses.

The coal and gas industries Obama was attempting to regulate were supportive of these lawsuits, and therefore, supported Pruitt. I think most people would agree that it’s noteworthy and good journalism for the media to report on Pruitt’s ties with the oil and gas industry as he’s taking on a job like this. This certainly doesn’t disqualify him, but it’s relevant information.

Meanwhile… in California. Two Attorney Generals have investigated David Daleiden and The Center for Medical Progress. Daleiden is the undercover journalist who exposed Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted baby-body parts.

Yet instead of going after Planned Parenthood for their inhumane business practices, the California AG’s have turned their wrath on Daleiden: first raiding his home, and now pressing charges.

The two California Attorney Generals Kamala Harris (who is now a U.S. Senator) and Xavier Becerra have received tens of thousands of dollars in donations from Planned Parenthood and other backers of the abortion industry.

Yet when this story broke in the Associated Press, this detail was left out. Don’t you think it’s a little relevant that the person pressing charges against Daleiden received campaign contributions from the organization that was embarrassed and exposed by his reporting?

Apparently none of the major media outlets did. Showcasing once again why trust in the media is at an all time low.

Read more:  62% in U.S.: News media has party favorites

Written by Andrew Mullins

A few days ago Australian papers ran a Washington Post story about Bill/Kate Rohr under the heading: “It’s not about the gender. It’s about the soul: Transgender at 70”. Despite a happy marriage to a childhood sweetheart, two adopted children and prestige as an orthopod, Bill finally found a never-before-experienced sense of fulfilment when at seventy years of age he opted for reassignment surgery.

The article argues that early life conditioning as an explanation for the transsexual phenomenon is old hat — the real reason is hormones, or rather the feelings that hormones give us:

“Today, an overwhelming number of doctors and scientists dismiss the idea that environment, or behavioural conditioning, causes a person to be transgender. Most agree that sexual anatomy, sexual orientation and gender identity are the result of three distinct developmental processes in the fetal brain. Yet only recently have researchers begun to tease out how that brain is masculinised or feminised. Hormones, it appears, play an essential role.”

I find this remarkable, palpably wrong, and in the interests neither of persons who identify as hetero nor of those who identify as trans. Gender is being defined as a hormone induced feeling, totally separate from anatomy, as if the development of sexual anatomy were distinct from those hormones in the first place.

Further, we are asked to believe that one’s life project should be guided by such feelings. Yet feelings are fickle, we all know that. Emotions enrich, and they can empower us to act, but they can also be dead wrong. Who has not unleashed his or her passions and then had to humiliatingly apologise? If we reduce our sexual identity to a mere feeling of gender, we betray the central importance of gender in who we are.

This is the old lie of dualism wrapped up in another cloak. We are not simply our minds. There is more to personality than thoughts and feelings. Persons are a complete body and soul package, not reducible to body or psyche, at least if the person is healthy and mature.

Descartes, probably the most famous dualist of them all, thought otherwise, regarding matter and spirit, body and mind, as irreconcilable realities. It is fascinating to read in his Meditations on First Philosophy his account of personhood in terms of consciousness, with his famous “Cogito ergo sum” – “I think, therefore I am.” For him, persons are identical with their minds but not with bodies. “I have a body that is closely joined to me,” he wrote (ii, 54) — joined, but not an intrinsic part of him.

Let us be implacable foes of dualism in all its guises.

Our psyche is embodied. Anatomy, perception, and behaviour are integrally united. Dualism is a dead end because it cannot explain the interaction between body and soul. Practically every neuroscientist in the world now agrees that mental life correlates to the material neurobiological signature.

In his major teaching text, Nobel prizewinner, Eric Kandel, insists:

“The break with the tradition that mind and consciousness arise from a mysterious interaction of spirit with body actually focused the problem of consciousness for the 20th century neuroscientist. Philosophically disposed against dualism, we are obliged to find a solution to the problem in terms of nerve cells and neural circuits.”

This is good news, as long as we think of a person as the complete package, and not just body or spirit. This view of the person is confirmed by scientists who now report that the good habits that constitute character are embodied habits. See for example the marvellous work by Ann Graybiel of MIT who has published extensively on the neurobiology of voluntary, good habits. Demonstrably we are able to consolidate our wiring, so to speak, so that we are more cheerful, more resilient, less lazy, and have more self control.

When we wrench humanity out of its body, mischief ensues. What we do in our bodies affects us as persons and, conversely, our choices bring bodily consequences. One of Aristotle’s greatest insights about reality, turning the history of western civilisation away from Platonic idealism, was his insistence (in the Nicomachean Ethics) that our behaviours, in our bodies, change us as people.

You may have seen the dramatic images of brains atrophied through substance abuse. A habit of lies, makes one, even neurobiologically, a liar. Aritotle writes that an act of infidelity may be overcome, but a habit of infidelity makes one a different person. So what does a habit of anger, or a habit of pornography do? These are profound insights into how our moral makeup depends on our own choices.

A friend told me recently that his marriage took a major turn for the better when he stopped snapping back at his wife and instead changed his own behaviours. He tells me he has discovered an important secret in relationships: be positive and you help those around you be positive as well. He feels so strongly about this he wants to give marriage talks to couples in crisis. He has been there.

Feelings cannot become the yardstick by which we measure our actions. They may spur us to do good — to help the poor derelict we are walking past — but to run one’s life on feelings will be totally unhelpful. To change one’s body to suit them must be a false remedy for whatever troubles the soul.

Dr. Andy Mullins, author of Parenting for Character and an occasional contributor to MercatorNet, is past headmaster of two Sydney schools, Redfield and Wollemi Colleges. In his doctoral thesis he investigated the neural substrates of virtue. He is currently working in Melbourne. He holds an adjunct professorial position at University of Notre Dame Australia

This article was originally posted at Mercatornet.com