1

Choosing the Gay Lifestyle Over Family and Christ

This past week, a well-known Christian author and former editor for CCM Magazine posted on Facebook and Instagram that he is leaving his wife to pursue a homosexual lifestyle. The details of the story are all too common. Give it a month or two and we’ll see the same scenario play out again, only with different names and titles. Maybe next time it will be a pastor or a worship leader or some other Christian celebrity.

What makes these stories especially heart-breaking is that most of us have experienced more personal versions of them. When the person is someone we know, with whom we have worshipped, gone to school, served in ministry, etc., the tragedy hits home even harder. Worst of all is when the story is someone in our family, like a parent, sibling, cousin, uncle, or, harder still, a spouse or child.

My Friend

A more personal version of this story hit me this past week as well. When I was a teen, I attended a national brand name Evangelical church. In our denomination, the top prospective teens were selected to travel across the nation singing and doing ministry in various churches.

I’ll call the guy I would consider to be the lead kid of the leader kids “Mark.” Even at 17, when I met him, he was a musical prodigy. He had charisma, charm and leadership. He soon went to the brand name Bible college and was probably the most popular kid there, even becoming their admissions director.

He then became a worship leader for several churches (some quite large) around the county. We then lost touch and later reconnected as married-with-children adults through social media. We both had issues with the churches in which we were raised (him west coast and me east coast), especially the fundamentalism that often exhibited itself as arrogance and a lack of love toward others.

As we compared notes as adults, I discovered he was reading new Emergent Church authors (this was probably about 12 years ago) and was going shallower, while I was reading older holiness preachers and desiring to go deeper.

I found we disagreed on much, but I think we still had some mutual respect. We both said we knew as teens that the other would become a leader someday.

One day, the issue of LGBTQ came up in our discussion. Mark defended the “gay Christian” concept in an intellectual sort of way. I’ve learned people who do so are usually doing it for more personal reasons than academic. Either they or someone they love struggles with same-sex attraction. I think that out of frustration with my posts, he unfriended me and we dropped communication. I get it. It is hard when people just aren’t going in the same direction.

Last week, I saw a post on Instagram from a former Christian mega-church pastor who has recently become apostate and now marches in gay pride parades. Mark liked the post. Not having heard from him in a long time, I clicked on his profile and saw that 4 years ago, his church circulated a letter telling the congregation that Mark was stepping down because he was living an openly homosexual lifestyle. I guess his ex-wife and kids were very affirming and understanding, and he had found a gay Christian community that he spends his time with.

This story is becoming more and more common in my life. So many church friends from my youth, as well as ministry leaders, pastors, and even extended relatives, start to go soft on Scripture, then defend sin and finally come out as unbelievers and even God-haters.

I’d like to say something to Mark and others like him. First, I still care about you. I pray for your repentance. I know you believe you are still accepted by God, despite what 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 clearly states, and you are trying to reinterpret His Word to fit your lifestyle. But God will not capitulate and bend Himself to conform to your will.

I have changed over the years as well. I want to be more compassionate and caring, especially to those who struggle with any sin, sexual or otherwise. But I plan to go on with God no matter what. I have no “Plan B.” When Jesus saved me, He didn’t do it half-way. He didn’t shed His blood and suffer excruciating pain for me to ignore His Word and live to do whatever I want in defiance of His clear commands.

I’m not a half-way Christian. I plan to go to Heaven, even if the entire world around me decides to go to Hell. I owe Jesus that much. I’m committed until I die. No turning back. I’ll miss you and mourn for you and pray for you, but I won’t go with you. I pray that you turn while you still can.


Please consider supporting the work and ministry of Illinois Family Institute.

As always, your gift to IFI is tax-deductible and greatly appreciated!

Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.




Transgenderism is Now Rated G

Written by Arielle Leake

The Baby-Sitters Club is a new Netflix series based on the popular children’s books by the same name published in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. The books—and now the television series—follow the lives of four 12-year-old girls and their entrepreneurial babysitting endeavors. Unfortunately, parents who fondly remember the books from their own childhood should think twice before allowing their impressionable children to watch this G-rated show.

Transgenderism is brazenly presented, unchallenged, and actively celebrated. The fourth episode of the show “Mary Ann Saves the Day” prominently displays the show’s cultural indoctrination. One of the four main characters, Mary Ann, is tasked with babysitting Bailey, a young boy who firmly believes he is a girl and lives a transgender lifestyle. The episode is fraught with highly concerning dialogue and messaging. For example, Mary Ann’s friend explains Bailey’s lifestyle to her by saying, “We all want our insides to match our outsides.” This explanation clearly illustrates the two-story dualism underlying the transgender movement or, as Nancy Pearcy puts it in her book Love Thy Body, “the idea that your brain can be at war with your body.”

The scriptwriters are so committed to the idea that your feelings control who you really are that they cannot even promote healthy encouragement. When Mary Ann, who struggles with self-confidence (as most tween girls do), exclaims that she is “a pathetic cry-baby,” the only help her friend can offer is to say, “If you believe you are a pathetic cry-baby who am I to tell you otherwise.” It could have been a moment used to show young girls how to support and encourage one another while not affirming a lie someone believes about themselves. Instead, all the show can muster is a weak statement meant to shove forward the philosophy that how you feel dictates who you are.

Mary Ann finally finds her “confidence” when she takes it upon herself to reprimand the doctor and nurse who dare to address Bailey by his biological sex. Mary Ann instructs them that “from here on out,” they should “recognize her for who she is.” Further, she requests that they bring Bailey something other than the standard blue hospital nightgown, which he evidently finds highly offensive.

Even more appalling, those in the position of authority—both the medical professionals and the child’s parents—willingly go along with the young child’s whims. Instead of helping him see who God created him to be, they encourage his harmful fascinations and reinforce the idea that fitting a certain “stereotype,” whether it be wearing blue or playing tea parties, is what makes you a male or female.

As a young woman, I am disappointed to see a show that will be viewed by many young and impressionable girls espousing such harmful views—without so much as a question about the consequences of these ideas. Instead of giving young girls a proper view of what it means to be a woman, The Baby-Sitters Club presents womanhood as something that is merely a product of your feelings and not a God-given identity.

In a world that is becoming increasingly accepting of transgender ideology, parents should be cautious about the ideas being espoused in the media their children consume. Christians have a role to play in restoring an understanding that humans are a unique combination of both body and soul, which equally make up who we are and are not at war with each other. Nancy Pearcy defines the Christian’s role as being “the first in line to nurture and support kids who don’t ‘fit in’ by affirming the diversity of gifts and temperaments in the body of Christ.” This is exactly the opposite of what is done in The Baby-Sitters Club.


Arielle Leake is a Policy & Government Affairs intern focusing on religious liberty. This article was originally published at the FRC blog.




Three Recent SCOTUS Decisions Christians Should Know About

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has once again entered the cultural frays. Here are three recent decisions that will have lasting consequences for people of faith.

Louisiana Pro-Life Law Struck Down

June Medical Services LLC v. Russo

Issue: Can a state require abortion providers to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital?

Facts: The State of Louisiana passed a law requiring abortion providers to obtain admitting privileges at local hospitals. The law was intended to protect women who may have medical complications during an abortion requiring emergency medical care. However, abortion advocates decried such laws because some abortion clinics would close due to the difficulty in obtaining admitting privileges. The Louisiana law was substantially similar to a Texas law that was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2016 in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt. The Hellerstedt case is very important to understanding the Court’s ruling and the future of pro-life litigation.

Holding: The Court ruled 5-4 in favor of striking down the Louisiana law. All four Democrat-appointed justices held that the law placed an “undue burden” on a women’s right to choose abortion, in violation of Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Roe v. Wade. Chief Justice John Roberts also voted in favor striking down the law but did so on different grounds. The Chief Justice held that the law should be struck down because of stare decisis—the doctrine that a court should generally follow prior court precedent. Because the court already decided this issue of admitting privileges laws in the Hellerstedt case, Roberts reasoned that this similar Louisiana law should also be struck down.

Interestingly, the Chief Justice dissented on this same issue in the Hellerstedt case. Thus, it may be surmised that Chief Justice Roberts thinks these admitting privileges laws are constitutional but will disregard his beliefs in order to protect prior court precedent.

What does it mean for the pro-life cause? Although this case is a stinging blow for pro-life advocates, there may be reason for hope. Chief Justice Roberts appears to have voted against the Louisiana law only to protect prior court precedent on this narrow issue of admitting privileges. However, he may be more sympathetic to other types of pro-life laws that have not been previously decided by the Court. We may still possibly see the Chief Justice join Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh in upholding other types of pro-life laws in the future.

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
Discrimination Prohibited by Title VII

Bostock v. Clayton County

Issue: Does Title VII’s prohibition on “sex discrimination” include discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity?

Facts: The decision involves three cases, including two gay men alleging they had been fired from their jobs because of their sexual orientation. The case also addresses a transgender employee who claimed he had been fired on the basis of gender identity.

Holding: Title VII of the Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits sex discrimination in employment decisions. The law does not mention sexual orientation  or gender identity. However, Justice Gorsuch, writing for the 6-3 majority, held that when an employer discriminates based on an employee’s sexual orientation  or gender identity,  the employer is inevitably discriminating on the basis of sex.

For example, imagine that there are two employees: one heterosexual man dating a woman and the other a homosexual woman dating a woman. If the homosexual woman is fired for dating another woman and the man is not, the only reason–in Justice Gorsuch’s view–the woman is fired is because of her sex. Both employees are participating in the same activity (dating a woman); the only difference is that one employee is a woman and the other is man—thus, sex discrimination. The argument goes that since Title VII bans sex discrimination, the law also necessarily bans discrimination based on sexual orientation.

What does it mean for religious liberty? In Illinois, the legal landscape may not have changed because the Illinois Human Rights Act already prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. However, for roughly half the states that did not previously prohibit LGBT discrimination, employers may now face employment discrimination lawsuits based on an employee’s sexual orientation  or gender identity.

This ruling is not likely to affect churches or other religious organizations. Justice Gorsuch specifically pointed out that there are statutory and constitutional protections for religious organization’s employment decisions. For example, Title VII and Illinois law specifically provides religious organizations the right to impose religious litmus tests on their employees. Nevertheless, churches and ministries who are concerned about such lawsuits should carefully evaluate their organizational documents, statements of faith, and employment practices to ensure their statuses as religious organizations.

Public Aid Programs Cannot Discriminate
Against Religious Organizations 

Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue

Issue: Does the First Amendment prevent a state from getting rid of a state scholarship that allowed funds to go to religious organizations?

Facts: The state of Montana had a scholarship program that allowed families to use public funds to send their children to a school of their choosing. However, the money could not be used to attend religious schools because the Montana Constitution had a Blaine Amendment. A Blaine Amendment prohibits public funds from being used to support any type of religious organization. Blaine Amendments arose to prominence in the late 1800’s due to widespread hostility to Catholicism, fearing that the Catholic Church would attempt to obtain public funding. About thirty states currently have some variation of a Blaine Amendment.

These laws stand in stark contrast to the recent Supreme Court precedent in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. Comer. This case holds that a state violates the First Amendment’s Free Exercise clause when a public funding program with a secular and neutral government purpose discriminates against a religious organization. The case involved a government program to fund safer playground equipment. The Court ruled that the government fund could not exclude a church-owned playground.

With the Montana Blaine Amendment standing in contrast to the Trinity Lutheran case, the Montana court had a catch-22 on its hands. Allowing the scholarship program to be used for religious schools would violate the Montana Blaine Amendment, but discriminating against religious organizations who offer the same services as secular organizations violates the First Amendment. The Montana Supreme Court tried to avoid this predicament by striking down the entire scholarship program so that no school—religious or otherwise—could get the scholarship money.

Holding: The Court reversed the Montana Court’s decision to strike down the scholarship program. Chief Justice Roberts held that the Montana Blaine Amendment violated the First Amendment because it discriminates against religious organizations. Because the Montana court applied the unconstitutional Blaine Amendment in striking down the scholarship program, the Montana court violated the First Amendment in discriminating against religious schools. Chief Justice John Roberts held, “A State need not subsidize private education. But once a State decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”

What does it mean for religious liberty? The decision will allow for the expansion of public funding for religious education. If a state decides to allow for school vouchers for secular private schools, the vouchers must also be allowed for private religious schools.

Furthermore, this decision may have put the final nail in the Blaine Amendment’s coffin. No longer will a state be able to apply laws that discriminate against religious organizations in distributing government funds.


A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois! 

Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.




Self-Identifying Republicans Are Destroying Liberty

I and others have been shouting from our virtual rooftops for over a decade that there is no greater threat to First Amendment protections than that posed by the subversive “LGBTQ” movement. Can conservatives not yet see the end of the short pier toward which GOP leaders have long been pushing them? Really?

(Im)moderate Republicans, Libertarian-leaning Republicans, Republicans with dollar signs rather than Scripture reflected in their myopic eyes have been pushing conservatives toward the end of the short pier, hoping that either spines will crumble or conservatives will tumble into the dark waters. Supremacist Court Justice/lawmaker Neil-the-Usurper-Gorsuch just gave conservatives a huge shove toward the watery abyss.

U.S. Senator Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) is “fine” with Gorsuch’s Law—or as some euphemistically call it, a “Supreme Court decision.” U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said he’s “not disappointed by Gorsuch’s decision:”

“It’s the law of the land. And it probably makes uniform what a lot of states have already done. And probably negates Congress’s necessity for acting.”

No siree, can’t have Congress legislating, especially on controversial issues. “Let unelected Supreme Court justices make law. They’re accountable to no one,” say our cowardly lawmakers.

Conservatives get all giddy with chills running up their legs when homosexuals like Guy Benson, Dave Rubin, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Brandon Straka express Republican-ish views. “Oh gosh, the cool kids like us, they really like us!”

Meanwhile, those smart, articulate, good-looking homosexuals seek to change the Republican Party from within—like a cancer or a Guinea worm (am I allowed to call it the Guinea worm any longer?). We welcome camels into the tent at our peril.

We shouldn’t forget U.S. Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) who supported the radical redefinition of marriage to include intrinsically non-marital homoerotic unions. Did Portman defend his betrayal of the Republican Party and biblical truth with rational arguments? Nope. He said because his son is homosexual, he now supports anti-marriage. If there’s a conflict between faith and sexual license, sexual license has got to win—says Portman. Let’s hope Portman doesn’t have any polyamorous kids.

And then there’s U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) who, along with his father, pushed for and passed a Florida law that legalized adoption by homosexuals without even a piddly carve-out for faith-based adoption agencies. In other words, Gaetz does not recognize that children have an inherent right to be raised by a mother and a father. Either mothers or fathers are expendable in the foolish view of Gaetz.

When Gaetz was on The View, he defended cross-sex passers serving in the military: “We shouldn’t be banning anybody based on who they are or who they love. That’s not the kind of Republican I am.” That’s leftist rhetoric that serves leftist social, moral, and political ends.

The ways socially and morally ignorant Republicans seek to transform the party are ways that pertain to our most cherished and fundamental freedoms. The result will be government schools unfit for children, loss of parental rights, loss of religious freedom, loss of speech rights, loss of association rights, loss of private spaces, loss of Christian colleges’ accreditation status, and the destruction of women’s sports.

Here’s an idea: How about those with conservative fiscal, environmental, and foreign policy views but liberal views on social policy join the Democratic Party and try to change it from within on fiscal, environmental, and foreign policy rather than  remain in the Republican Party and seek to change its position on sexual matters.

Some “socially liberal” Republicans who don’t really respect Scripture abuse Scripture to shame conservatives, saying “Well, Jesus spent time with sinners.” True enough, he did, and we should emulate what he said when spending time with sinners (which, btw, means all humans).

When with sinners, Jesus called them to repent and follow him. He didn’t affirm their sin. I can’t recall a single Bible story in which Jesus said kudos to a sinner for his sin. I suppose it’s possible that God affirmed someone’s homoeroticism before he burned them up at Sodom and Gomorrah—nah.

To love others with Christ’s love is to model his interactions with the lost. He called them to repent and follow him. There is no evidence that he went around praising those who spread lies about sexuality and marriage as Benson and Portman do.

I hope people can hear the frustration in my virtual voice as I say, what the heck is wrong with Christians who have been rationalizing their cowardly silence and capitulation for decades? Those with eyes to see have been writing for decades that First Amendment protections for Christians are slowly eroding, and just now with Gorsuch’s intellectually and constitutionally indefensible act of lawmaking, Christians are fretting about their potential loss of rights.

When “sexual orientation” and then “gender identity” were added to anti-discrimination policies and laws; when public schools started attacking conservative beliefs as “homophobia” through “anti-bullying” programs; when public school teachers started presenting pro-homosexuality novels, articles, essays, and movies to other people’s children; when SCOTUS jettisoned sexual differentiation as a constituent feature of legal “marriage”; when schools sexually integrated bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports; when foster care and adoption agencies lost the right to place children with only heterosexual couples; when schools started firing Christians for refusing to refer to boys as girls or vice versa, Christians largely said nothing. Now courts are starting to remove children from homes if their parents don’t affirm “trans”-cultic practices. And today, when the word “sex” is essentially redefined in the Civil Rights Act by six hubristic SCOTUS justices, what will Christians do?

Do Christians ever ask themselves what kind of culture and what kind of oppression their silence, their capitulation, their spinelessness over the past 10, 20, or 30 years is bequeathing to their children? What will it take for Christians to wake up and do something? When their children can’t send their kids even to private schools free of cross-dressers anymore, will they say something? When the state takes their own grandchildren away from their parents, will they say something? When their daughter or granddaughter has a double-mastectomy at age 13, will they say something? Please, tell me, what will it take for Christians to be part of the solution?

Oh wait, I know when they’ll start pulling their weight. They’ll start right after we get almighty tax policy just right.

Long before the Gorsuch decision, the erasure of public recognition of sex differences was made inevitable by the ignorant decisions made all over the country to add the terms “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to “anti-discrimination” policies and laws. These inclusions in laws and policies—including in school policies—were aided and abetted by the silence of conservatives, and with those inclusions there now remains no way to maintain any sex-segregated spaces for anyone.

If, for example, a university allows a confused biological man called “Sue” to use the women’s locker room, there remains no rational or legal way to prohibit a normal biological man called “Bob” from using it as well. The university can’t say, “Bob may not use it, because he’s a biological man.” First, they’ve already allowed another biological man—i.e., “Sue”—to use it, and second, such a prohibition would constitute discrimination based on sex. And the university couldn’t say “Bob may not use the women’s locker room, because he’s not ‘transgender.'” Such a prohibition would constitute discrimination based on “gender identity.”

The intellectual and legal groundwork has been laid and fertilized for the eradication of all public recognition of sexual differentiation everywhere for everyone, which means no private spaces anywhere for anyone. And in those private spaces, children are likely to see biological men with gravity-defying breasts and the usual male apparatus (yes, they do that). Spend a moment ruminating on that disturbing image, for that is where conservative fear of being labeled “hater” has led us.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Self-Identifying-Republicans-Are-Destroying-Liberty.mp3


A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois! 

Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.




Dr. Gagnon on the Equality Act




Shocking SCOTUS Decision Shockingly Written by Gorsuch

In a shocking U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decision, Justice Neil Gorsuch voted with the axis of evil—that is, with Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor. In Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia, the axis of evil decided that in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the word “sex” includes “sexual orientation” and “gender identity”—both subjectively constituted conditions. As a result, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination in employment based on “race, color, religion, sex, and national origin,” now prohibits employers from firing employees who self-identify as homosexual or as the sex they are not and never can be.

The crux of the argument goes something like this: If a company that allows a woman who gets breast implants and wears lipstick, stilettos, and dresses to work fires a man who gets breast implants and wears lipstick, stilettos, and dresses to work, the company has discriminated against him based on his sex and, therefore, violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

Not only are “trans”-cultists eradicating all public accommodation of real sex differences, but they’re also eradicating every cultural convention that recognizes, honors, and reinforces sex differences. They’re saying that not only are they permitted to reject cultural conventions regarding hairstyles, jewelry, clothing, and makeup, but everyone else must. Further, even biological reality as a signifier of biological sex must be rejected by everyone. So, as the very liberal author of the Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling, has learned, no one may say that only women menstruate.

The tyrannical Supremacist Court of the United States has declared from on its high horse that no employer with over 15 employees may fire an employee who decides to cross-dress at work. For those who remain blissfully unaware, there are efforts afoot to make such a view apply to companies with fewer than 15 employees too.

What if the owner of an independent toy store with three locations in neighboring towns employs 15 people and one of those employees announces he will henceforth “identify” as a woman. Now he cannot be fired—not even if the store where the cross-dressing man works will be destroyed because parents will no longer bring their toddlers and young children to an establishment that will require them to explain perversion to children who are too young to understand it and may be disturbed by it.

Many obstetrician-gynecologists staff their offices with only women—including only women nurses. Now imagine that one of those nurses announces she will be socially, chemically, and surgically “transitioning” and hopes to look like this biological woman one day (yes, this is a woman):

Is it just for doctors to be prohibited from firing her?

In their dissent, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito issued a stinging rebuke of the hubris of the majority opinion:

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination on any of five specified grounds: “race, color, religion, sex, [and] national origin.” … Neither “sexual orientation” nor “gender identity” appears on that list. For the past 45 years, bills have been introduced in Congress to add “sexual orientation” to the list, and in recent years, bills have included “gender identity” as well. But to date, none has passed both Houses. Last year, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would amend Title VII by defining sex discrimination to include both “sexual orientation” and “gender identity,” … This bill remains before a House Subcommittee.

Because no such amendment of Title VII has been enacted in accordance with the requirements in the Constitution … Title VII’s prohibition of discrimination because of “sex” still means what it has always  meant. But the Court is not deterred by these constitutional niceties. Usurping the constitutional authority of the other branches, the Court has essentially taken H. R. 5’s provision on employment discrimination and issued it under the guise of statutory interpretation. A more brazen abuse of our authority to interpret statutes is hard to recall.

The Court tries to convince readers that it is merely enforcing the terms of the statute, but that is preposterous. Even as understood today, the concept of discrimination because of “sex” is different from discrimination because of “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.” And in any event, our duty is to interpret statutory terms to “mean what they conveyed to reasonable people at the time they were written.”

Alito and Thomas preview the deleterious effects this decision will have on American life and liberty:

As the briefing in these cases has warned, the position that the Court now adopts will threaten freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and personal privacy and safety. No one should think that the Court’s decision represents an unalloyed victory for individual liberty.

While churches and other religious organizations, including religious schools, will probably be allowed what is called a “ministerial exception”at least for a timefor those involved in teaching the tenets of their faith, it is unlikely that exemption will apply to those employed in other positions. For example, a private Christian school will be prohibited from firing any math, science, Spanish, or P.E. teacher, secretary, custodian, cafeteria worker, playground supervisor, or crossing guard who decides to identify as the opposite sex, cross-dress, take cross-sex hormones, and surgically disguise his or her sex.

For those churches, Christian schools, and parachurch organizations that reassure themselves that such events are unlikely, just remember what’s happened to Jack Phillips, the Colorado baker who has been relentlessly sued by “LGBT” persons. Sexual subversives are going to specifically target Christian institutions.

Alito and Thomas warn that this pernicious SCOTUS decision will likely be used force the sexual integration of bathrooms, locker rooms, and women’s shelters; to force people to use “gender” obliterators’ “preferred pronouns”; to force employers to cover “costly sex reassignment surgery”; and to force colleges to assign dorm rooms based on the sex students wish they were rather than the sex they are.

This pernicious decision will be used too as a precedent when challenges to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 appear before the U.S. Supreme Court. How could the Court now conclude any way other than that the word “sex” in Title IX includes “gender identity.” When the axis of evil decides that, women’s sports are destroyed, and eventually all women’s records from high school, college, the Olympics, and professional sports will be broken by men.

Good job feminist supporters of the “trans” cult.

In Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s separate dissent, he emphasizes the violation of the separation of powers that the decision represents:

Under the Constitution’s separation of powers, the responsibility to amend Title VII belongs to Congress and the President in the legislative process, not to this Court. … [W]e are judges, not Members of Congress. And in Alexander Hamilton’s words, federal judges exercise “neither Force nor Will, but merely judgment.”… If judges could rewrite laws based on their own policy views, or based on their own assessments of likely future legislative action, the critical distinction between legislative authority and judicial authority that undergirds the Constitution’s separation of powers would collapse, thereby threatening the impartial rule of law and individual liberty. …

Both common parlance and common legal usage treat sex discrimination and sexual orientation discrimination as two distinct categories of discrimination—back in 1964 and still today. As to common parlance, few in 1964 (or today) would describe a firing because of sexual orientation as a firing because of sex. As commonly understood, sexual orientation discrimination is distinct from, and not a form of, sex discrimination. The majority opinion acknowledges the common understanding, noting that the plaintiffs here probably did not tell their friends that they were fired because of their sex. That observation is clearly correct. In common parlance, Bostock and Zarda were fired because they were gay, not because they were men. …

Who likes this SCOTUS decision? The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), that’s who. GLSEN’s raison d’être, is to use schools to normalize sexual deviance, which, of course, means eradicating theologically orthodox views on sexuality. GLSEN tweeted,

[T]oday’s landmark SCOTUS ruling will help to protect the many LGBTQ educators in K-12 schools who have faced harassment or job loss for simply being who they are. It also underscores the need for Congress to pass the Equality Act.

“Who they are” is a convenient bit of Newspeak to conceal what “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” really are. According to cultural regressives, “sexual orientation” is constituted by subjective, internal romantic and erotic feelings and volitional erotic acts. “Gender identity” is constituted by subjective, internal feelings about one’s maleness and/or femaleness or lack thereof. Now that SCOTUS includes conditions constituted—not by any objective criteria—but by subjective sexual feelings, all that remains is for sexual anarchists allied with other anarchists to expand the definition of “sexual orientation” and the job of sexual wokesters will be done. #CultureDestroyed.

So, in the service of “inclusivity,” they will work like the Devil and for the Devil to include polyamory, Genetic Sexual Attraction (i.e., consensual, adult incest), Minor Attraction (i.e., pedophilia, hebephilia, and ephebophilia), infantilism, zoophilia (i.e., bestiality), and every other sexual philia in the list of sexual orientations.

Then once that is accomplished, laws will protect celebrants of sexual disorder from being fired and schools will teacher kindergartners that love is love. Poly “love” will be called good. “Love” between two adult brothers will be deemed equivalent to interracial love. And teaching that “love” between humans and animals is wrong will be condemned as ignorant bigotry based on the hateful ideology of speciesism.

By the way, those naively depending on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to protect their religious liberty can forget about it. The Equality Act, which eventually will pass, explicitly guts RFRA.

This SCOTUS decision is not a victory for the country or for freedom. It’s another tragic defeat for the constitutional separation of powers, self-government, morality, truth, speech rights, and religious liberty. Conservative Christians, you’ve been warned—again.

Listen to this article read by Laurie: 

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Shocking-SCOTUS-Decision-Shockingly-Written-by-Gorsuch.mp3


We take very seriously the trust you place in Illinois Family Institute when you send a gift.
We understand that we are accountable before you and God to honor your trust. 

sustaining-partner-logo-516x260




Question “Trans” Activist Research, Even During Pandemic

Written by Faith Kuzma

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed a viral pattern in the media of seizing on research from elite institutions to once and for all prove transitioning is essential healthcare.  As consumers of popular media, the public is becoming wary.

Case in point: Vice writer Kaye Loggins claims a 2019 Yale study shows improved health outcomes following sex- reassignment surgeries:

[Yale] Research has suggested that gender-affirming surgery, in particular, has a notable and long-term impact on mental health, but far too often, trans people already wait far longer than is safe or healthy for this care. Further delays can be dangerous and even life-threatening.

Loggins brandishes the Yale study as a victory flag over unsuspecting readers, failing to mention Yale’s strong ties to activism and the fact the study’s findings continue to be challenged.

Most of us recognize how dependent universities have become on endowments, yet we may not be as aware of how “trans”-activism now shapes “trans” research.

It’s important to recognize “trans” research always comes with caveats. ABC’s Dr. Danielle Weitzer indirectly notes the researchers’ over-reaching interpretation of data by clearly pointing out that the study’s data replicates earlier evidence showing  gender-affirming surgeries are no cure-all.

Even after “gender-affirming” surgeries, these patients experience profound mental illness: “Compared with the general population, regardless of surgery or hormone treatment, transgender individuals are about six times as likely to have had a mood and anxiety disorder health care visit, more than three times as likely to have received prescriptions for antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications and more than six times as likely to have been hospitalized after a suicide attempt, according to the study.”

Yes, you heard right, “regardless of surgery or hormone treatment,”  “trans”-identified people experience poor outcomes. It’s time to ask just how compassionate is it really to push the biomedical path, as the Vice writer did,  in light of such realities?

Moreover, Weitzer cites Dr. Hansel Arroyo, director of psychiatry and behavioral medicine at Mount Sinai’s Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery, who warns biomedical treatments are not able to address mental health issues: “We know that people who are clinically depressed will often have a bad surgical outcome including poor wound healing, longer hospital stays.”

Despite the study’s own data failing to support claims of health benefits, NBC’s Serena Daniari stressed surgery as essential. Daniari featured sympathetic portraits of “trans”-identified individuals convinced their distress can only be resolved by surgery.

Simply put, the Yale study does not support that conviction. Daniari relies on Laura A. Jacobs for that.  A psychotherapist and board chair at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, a New York-based “LGBTQ” health center, Jacobs asserts, “There’s a lot of research that shows that delaying treatment for trans people increases levels of depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation.”

What she doesn’t say is that much of that research is short term, capturing little more than a honeymoon surgical afterglow. As Paul Dirks points out, research typically covers the first few months or years of post-surgery optimism, obscuring potential later regrets. By contrast, the most rigorous studies do not support pinning our hopes on surgery as the cure to dysphoria and suicidal ideation. The much-cited 2011 Swedish study demonstrated negative health outcomes from sex reassignment surgeries.

Over the long haul, “trans”-identified individuals continue to suffer severe mental-health complications even after the recommended hormones and surgery. As Paul Dirks writes, “The mainstream narrative often says that medical transition is well-studied, and that there is academic consensus on its effectiveness.”

In reality, the literature is fraught with study design problems, including convenience sampling, lack of controls, cross-sectional design, small sample sizes, short study lengths, and enormously high drop-out rates among participants.

Research is only as good as its assumptions. We have seen predictions about the spread of the COVID-19 change, for instance, as revised assumptions affect calculations. What were other unspoken assumptions of the Yale study?  The Yale research team fell back on stigma, economic inequality and victimization for “trans” suicide rates. In reality, the picture is more complicated.

Mission creep is implicated when stigma is assumed. One of the study authors, John Pachankis, heads Yale’s ESTEEM Research Group. An activist objective is stated in the ESTEEM’s research focus on “‘how negative stigma can affect the mental health of LGBTQ individuals’ with the intention to assist ‘members of the community come out of the closet.'”

ESTEEM’s basic operating assumptions include the need to overcome stigma, and that assumption unduly influenced the way data were interpreted.  The result was grandiose claims not supported by the study’s own data.

Since there is nearly universal sympathy for “trans”-identified people and legal protections in Western countries, stigma is the boogie man of “trans”-activism. Yet, especially as regards data from Sweden, Hacsi Horvath, an expert in clinical epidemiology, observes,

If we can take service utilization as a proxy for distress, patients may be at six times higher risk of mental/emotional distress than other Swedes, and that can’t all be from ‘stigma.’

(Note: Hacsi and I communicated over twitter.)

If anything, the Yale study should put to rest the abiding assumption that surgery prevents victimization of “trans”-identified people. Horvath comments:

So in the most liberal country, super accepting of ‘trans,’ these people are totally stressed out, as well as giving up and making serious suicide attempts. These are facts.

All claims that surgery improves “trans” mental health based on the Yale study are premature because as Horvath notes,

We have no clear picture why clinic visits decline somewhat. Given the whole picture, ‘feeling better’ seems possible but not very likely.

Loss to follow-up typically hides unresolved psychological issues, dependence on psychotropic medications, dissatisfaction with negligible benefits of clinic visits, or–most damningly for the Yale study–suicide.

Overall, the validity of the Yale research is suspect, as University of Texas sociology professor Mark Regnerus points out:

If this were a clinical trial seeking to establish the efficacy of a particularly invasive medical treatment in comparison with a non-invasive standard protocol, there is no way that these published results would favor the invasive treatment—in this case, ‘gender affirming’ surgery—when the statistical difference in outcomes was so tiny and fragile.

Because it is such a temptation to find a biomedical remedy for those individuals insisting on one, any claims based on the Yale study or others like it in the future, need to be scrutinized for potential bias.

Big money, in particular, is directing research goals and assumptions especially at a time when “trans”-advocacy is pushing hard to make “transitioning” a civil right. After establishing its promotion by big business, Federalist writer Jennifer Bilek characterizes the “trans” movement in the following way:

Far from a grassroots movement born from oppression, it is generated by the highest echelons of society and attempts to linguistically obfuscate its aim of creating an abstraction out of biological reality.

As a result, “trans”-advocacy and big business are increasingly bundled together. Bilek traces the activities of wealthy investors, not just in building a medical infrastructure, but also by working to institutionalize “trans” rights.

“Trans” so-called “rights” are also bound up with research funding, and the COVID 19 outbreak showed how critical such an alignment can become during a crisis when “trans-rights” activists advocated for “trans”-related medical services to be classified as essential care under the assumption such services derive mental health benefits.

Clearly, it is not just researchers at Ivy-league schools who would like to find an effective treatment for those experiencing bodily distress. Yet, we must question the research on which “trans”-related medical services are based.

Biomedical “transitioning” as a suicide remedy is not warranted. According to researcher Robert D’Angelo:

“[I]n relation to suicide, none of the studies undertaken to date has yet established whether gender-reassignment actually lowers the risk of completed suicide as it is generally assumed to do.”

In the rush by many to affirm “trans”-identifying individuals in the hope of deterring mental health emergencies, there is a tendency to posit glowing health outcomes for biomedical treatments.

The recent Yale study and others like it show much less than those touting them hope, and the great take away should be to question the merits and rigor of “trans” research, even when done under the banner of well-known institutions. The wobbly crutch of activist researchno matter its source—is insufficient justification for perpetuating as standard medical care that for which no real evidence exists.


We take very seriously the trust you place in Illinois Family Institute when you send a gift.
We understand that we are accountable before you and God to honor your trust. 

sustaining-partner-logo-516x260

IFI is supported by voluntary donations from good people like you.




Can Sexual Orientation Be Read into Title VII? SCOTUS Set to Decide

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) has garnered less attention than usual lately with COVID-19 monopolizing headlines. However, with the Court’s term ending in June, some of the most controversial decisions are expected to be released any day now. Among the most notable are three cases involving Title VII of the landmark Federal Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of sex. The question is whether Title VII’s ban on sex discrimination also includes decisions based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The cases are Altitude Express, Inc. v. Zarda, Bostock v. Clayton County, and R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Zarda and Bostock involve gay men suing their employers, alleging that they were fired because of their sexual orientation. Harris Funeral Homes involves a transgender employee who formerly worked in a Christian-owned funeral home in Michigan and claims to have been illegally fired after coming out as a transgender woman and starting to wear women’s clothing.

It should be noted that twenty-two states, Illinois included, already prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Thus, the Court’s decision will not change employment decisions for nearly half the country. However, the cases are yet another instance of the Federal courts delving into a contentious cultural issue.

Title VII prohibits employment decisions based on certain protected attributes like race, religion, and sex. Yet there has been a push in recent years to interpret Title VII’s prohibition on sex discrimination as including sexual orientation and gender identity. The cases have significant cultural, theological, and moral underpinnings; however, the main question for the U.S. Supreme Court is one of statutory interpretation. Here is how the pertinent part of Title VII reads:

“It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employment agency to fail or refuse to refer for employment, or otherwise to discriminate against, any individual because of his race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”

No mention of “gender identity” or “sexual orientation.” Case closed—right? Not necessarily. The Federal courts of appeal have reached different conclusions based on their method of statutory interpretation. The methods have largely centered on “textualism” and “originalism.”

Textualism holds that the plain meaning of the legal text is the only thing you look at in interpreting, with no consideration given to any non-textual sources. Instead of considering the overall purpose of the law, legislative history, or policy arguments, a textualist approach only looks to the four corners of the paper on which the law is written, considering nothing besides the apparent meaning of the text. Textualism has long been heralded by justices like the late Justice Antonin Scalia and Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch.

One would think that since Title VII’s text does not mention “sexual orientation” or “gender identity,” a textualist approach would be an automatically mean excluding these statuses. However, several courts have used a textualist approach to come to the opposite conclusion. No one disputes that Title VII bans sex discrimination—it says so in the text. But LGBT proponents have developed a clever textualist approach to argue that sex discrimination also includes discrimination based on a LGBT status.

The argument goes that by discriminating based on one’s sexual orientation, you are inevitably discriminating based on his or her sex. For example, imagine that there are two employees: one heterosexual man dating a woman and the other a homosexual woman dating a woman. If the homosexual woman is fired for dating another woman and the man is not, the only reason the woman is fired is because of her sex. Both employees are participating in the same activity (dating a woman); the only difference is that one employee is a woman and the other is man—thus, sex discriminati0n. The argument goes that since Title VII bans sex discrimination, the law also necessarily bans discrimination based on sexual orientation. In the same way, a biological man who is wearing woman’s clothing and using the women’s restroom would not be fired if it were a biological woman doing those same things. LGBT advocates claim that this also is sex discrimination.

There are several weaknesses with this argument. In the first example, the primary reason the employee is fired is her sexual orientation, not her biological sex. Title VII’s inclusion of the term “sex” means just that and nothing more. In this case, sex may be a factor, but it is not the primary reason for the firing. Sex and sexual orientation are different concepts. Sex has to do with one’s genetic makeup and reproductive abilities while sexual orientation is based on one’s sexual attraction to others, and gender identity has to do with whether one’s expression or behavior corresponds with his or her biological sex.

A more compelling reason to reject this argument is that by reading sexual orientation or gender identity into Title VII, courts would essentially be acting as policy-makers. For over fifty years, Title VII has never been understood to include sexual orientation or gender identity. In voting for Title VII in 1964, no member of Congress could have imagined that the word sex would also include gender identity and sexual orientation, which have only recently entered the modern vernacular. The courts would simply be reading modern notions of sexuality into a law that was never intended to be used that way.

For years, LGBT lobbying efforts have tried to pass the Equality Act, which, among other things, would add sexual orientation and gender identity to Title VII’s list of protected classes. The bill has been introduced in Congress for years yet has never been enacted. The U.S. Supreme Court would essentially be adopting a policy that Congress has deliberately decided not to pursue.

There is another form of statutory interpretation called originalism, which some courts have used to come to the conclusion that “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” are excluded from Title VII’s protection. Originalism still focuses on the text of the statute, but a word’s meaning is frozen in time. Instead of incorporating changing meanings of words, as may be allowed under a broader view of textualism, originalism says that a word’s meaning is to be taken from the original public understanding of the text from the time the text was enacted. In other words, if a text was passed in 1950, a court ought to look at what the word meant in 1950–not what it means today.

The wisdom of originalism acknowledges that words change meaning over time, but to ensure a fixed meaning in law, the only meaning that a court will consider is what the public understood the words to mean when it was enacted. This approach is taken in order to avoid changing the law from its intended purpose. In this case, no one seriously argues that Congress or the general public would have understood the term “sex” to include “sexual orientation” or “gender identity.”

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments for these cases in October, and the decisions are expected to come down any day over the coming weeks. Some observers believe Justice Neil Gorsuch to be the swing vote. Justice Gorsuch admitted that the issue was very close in his mind during oral arguments. Congress, the people’s representative, has so far refused to add gender identity or sexual orientation to Title VII by refusing to enact the Equality Act. Yet the Court may choose to bypass the democratic process and adopt this new reading of Title VII.


A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.




Yea, Though I Walk Through The Uncanny Valley

Written by Ignatius Amadeus

No, you’re not crazy. They just want you to feel that way.

There is a special flavor of cognitive dissonance experienced by those confronted with the dawning of a collectivist utopia. It’s found in the twilight between luminescent NuThink and the benighted remainders of objective reality that we plebs cling to so bitterly.

Allow me to illustrate.

Recently, as I perused the social media headlines about the present plague year, I came across a news item whose image featured the governor of Pennsylvania and his secretary of health, Dr. Rachel Levine, who is, in fact, a man. It struck me because the news was not about Dr. Levine’s chimeric redefinition. Rather, it was a serious news piece about a serious issue, and the doctor was peripheral to the point of it. The presentation of such an incongruity–an appointed official whose gender LARP (Live Action Role-Playing) is only slightly more convincing than that of Corporal Maxwell Klinger–without the slightest batting of an eyelash, is the whole game in a nutshell.

You see friend, it requires no acknowledgement, since there is nothing of note here. Only the grotesquely gauche would stumble. We have serious business to do here. Please focus.

The deadpan delivery leaves you feeling gaslit by the reality being proffered. The implicit assertion is not truth, but the situation itself is reality, formed by consensus, and presented without comment.

But, it’s democratic gaslighting.

This collective lack of acknowledgement, cemented by the integration with serious business being done, makes anyone who is tripped up by the disjoint feel that they are on the outside. Anyone hampered by a pedestrian tethering to pre-postmodernism is made to feel the keen edge of their status as other.

It’s akin to walking into a business meeting and finding one of the participants is wearing a bear suit. “What’s with the bear suit?” you ask. You are simply met with cold stares.

This feat of quiet ostracism, this sudden sense that one is an ideological castaway, coalesces all of a sudden. A breeze blows through you, and you realize the season has changed.

You are being gaslit but not by a sociopathic manipulator. The growing psychic pressure is the constricting consensus of an increasingly popular fabricated reality. You are on the business end of a casual conspiracy of complicity. There is a new set of tracks that your train of thought just doesn’t run properly on. You are given two choices: reconfiguration or derailment.

You keep entering business meetings, to be silently greeted by a fellow in a bear suit.

You’re going to keep getting this lesson until you learn it. Capisce?

In After the Ball, a diabolically masterful turnaround strategy created to take American homosexualism from reviled to revered, authors Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen laid out a pathway to bring us to this present moment of bear suit ubiquity. It began with desensitization, progressed through leveraging perceived commonalities, and promised powerful acceptance.

When you’re very different, and people hate you for it, this is what you do: first you get your foot in the door, by being as similar as possible; then, and only then – when your one little difference is finally accepted–can you start you start dragging in your other peculiarities, one by one. You hammer in the wedge narrow end first. As the saying goes, Allow the camel’s nose beneath your tent, and the whole body will soon follow.

This was published in 1989.

Once the concept of tolerance was deformed to mean acceptance, and love was refashioned to include things for which it was not designed, it was clear that The Plan was getting far more cultural traction than anyone had dreamed possible. As the sea change continued, the launching of Same Sex Mirage was a fait accompli. Always, you will note, brought to market in the carefully constructed context of simulated normalcy.

The weight of normalcy packaging + the momentum of previous acceptance = the psychic force applied to dissenters who note the incongruities.

This simulacrum of normalcy, coupled with the raised stakes of whatever novel idea is being introduced, creates an uncanny valley of experience. It’s designed to camouflage the situation such that it sufficiently approximates reality for the initiated, but to the sober-minded, the differences create dissonance. That dissonance is designed to cleave off the bitter clingers–to refuse entry to the non-compliant, and convince them that they are the ones failing to grasp this democratically elected reality.

The pressure can feel immense at times–not the Lilliputian arguments for NuThink–but their collective power to layer up, entangle and enervate. Yes, you can see each point where things got ratcheted up, but the cumulative effect–that you feel.

The most recent gut punch happened when I (virtually) encountered “Dr. Glitterbear,” a Rutgers University professor, in his unicorn-jammie-and-white-pumps ensemble. He had apparently led the charge to have a fellow PhD’s published paper about gender anarchy retracted due to its NuThink compliance failure.

“What’s with the unicorn suit?” Cold stares.

Yea, though I walk through the uncanny valley, I will brook no evil.

As has been noted by those who have experienced totalitarian rule, this immense pressure to conform to a synthesized consensus exerts a real toll on the non-compliant. Presented with each new escalation, the mind struggles like an up-ended turtle wriggling to regain its feet.

It can be exhausting and disheartening to keep the turtle righted.

First, know what the truth is and why it is the truth. If you’re reading this, I will assume that you’re likely well-engaged in this process. Understand that we are in an ontological crisis where millions are being swept out to sea. Know how to anchor to the fixed bedrock of actual truth. While this battle is presented as a quibble over small changes, you must understand that it’s actually a conflict over whether reality is already defined or ad-libbed. For anyone adhering to a belief in Logos and Creation, the definitions are fixed and non-negotiable.

Second, don’t lose your equilibrium. When wading through strong opposing forces, it’s easy to overcompensate. Movements become exaggerated, and overreactions can abound. It’s oh-so-easy to become shrill, alienated, or paranoid. It’s simple to get knocked back into reflexive overreaction. Learn to find grace under pressure, and don’t allow yourself to be distorted by your exertion against the onslaught.

Third, encourage and invest in others to strengthen the bulwark against this flood of Dionysian dissolution. Maintaining relationships with other people who are also committed in their fidelity to truth is important. Though one may be overpowered, two can defend, and a cord of three strands is not easily broken.

Finally, do not think it strange, this fiery trial which is upon us. Be encouraged that the Truth Himself was similarly opposed, and so we now share in that same suffering. Having done all, stand. Simply bearing witness to truth in a raging sea of illusion, is a Kingdom act.


“Ignatius Amadeus has been a brand messaging professional for over two decades, and his writing focus is on society, culture, and communication. His desire is to examine, understand, and express what is happening in our nation in order to clarify and see things move in a restorative direction. A typical Gen-Xer, he is most at home in a mashed-up kaleidoscope of the banal and sublime. His interests range from theology to cinema to fine art and music. Oh, and obsolete technology. He thinks that’s fun, too.”




Judge Commands ADF to Use “Trans” Term

Let’s take a 10-minute break from reading about the Chinese Communist government’s gross malfeasance to look at the malfeasance of an American judge who thinks he has the authority to mandate Newspeak.

In February the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed a lawsuit on behalf of three members of girls’ high school track and field teams in three different Connecticut high schools, claiming that the girls’ rights are being violated by the schools allowing biological boys who pretend to be girls to participate on the girls’ teams. The defendants are the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference and four Connecticut school boards. Controversial U.S. District Judge Robert N. Chatigny ordered ADF attorneys to refer to the boys as “transgender females,” describing ADF’s use of the term “males” as bullying.

First some background on Chatigny: In 2010, Barack Obama tried to move Chatigny up to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, but his nomination met with opposition due to Chatigny’s “empathy” for child rapist/murderers. A Washington Times editorial called his nomination an “abomination”:

The [Senate Judiciary] committee should kill the federal appeals court nomination of Federal District Judge Robert N. Chatigny of Connecticut. … Judge Chatigny has a weird record of empathy for those accused of sexual crimes involving children. … [T]he U.S. Supreme Court eventually reversed Judge Chatigny, unanimously, when the judge tried to rule against one aspect of his state’s version of a Megan’s Law sex-offender registry. In 12 child-pornography cases, Judge Chatigny imposed a sentence either at or more lenient than the recommended minimum—with most downward departures involving sentences less than half as long. And in an outrageous case of judicial abuse, Judge Chatigny threatened to take away an attorney’s law license if the lawyer failed to appeal the death sentence of an eight-time murderer of girls and young women. The judge claimed the killer’s “sexual sadism” was a mental disorder that made the murderer himself a victim.

In an April 16 conference call with ADF attorneys, Big Brother Chatigny issued this astonishing command regarding the boys on the girls’ track teams:

[Y]ou must refer to them as “transgender females” rather than as “males.” Again, that’s the more accurate terminology, and I think that it fully protects your client’s legitimate interests. Referring to these individuals as “transgender females” is consistent with science, common practice and perhaps human decency. To refer to them as “males,” period, is not accurate, certainly not as accurate, and I think it’s needlessly provocative. I don’t think that you surrender any legitimate interest or position if you refer to them as transgender females. That is what the case is about. This isn’t a case involving males who have decided that they want to run in girls’ events. This is a case about girls who say that transgender girls should not be allowed to run in girls’ events. So, going forward, we will not refer to the proposed intervenors as “males”; understood?

What a galling display of arrogance in the service of an incoherent, ignorant, and destructive ideology. “Transgender female” is a leftist term created to propagate an ideology. Forcing ADF attorneys to use it does not protect their clients’ interests. It does exactly the opposite. It undermines their interests while promoting the interests of the defendants, the boys who are violating the rights of the girls, and the “trans” cult.

Exactly what “science” is he referring to? The hard science that says that the human species is sexually dimorphic? The hard science that says biological sex can never change? The hard science that points to the serious health risks of cross-sex hormone-doping and surgical attempts to create “neo-vaginas”? Do tell, Big Brother Chatigny, what hard science dictates that biological boys who wish they were girls must be referred to as “transgender females.” From my understanding, Big Brother’s language diktat has nothing whatsoever to do with hard science and everything to do with a controversial ideology.

Exactly what “common practice” is Big Brother Chatigny referring to? The common practice has forever been to refer to biological males as males. Even today, millions of people refer to biological males who pretend to be, or wish they were, or falsely believe they are female as males. Sure, leftists like Big Brother Chatigny are hell-bent on coercing common practice to change via commands, fines, and laws, but their efforts violate the First Amendment rights of those who seek to speak truth that is consonant with hard science.

Big Brother Chatigny makes the absurd claim that referring to biological males as males is “not as accurate” as his PC choice of the PC term “transgender females,” which is merely a political stepping stone to the next step when the “trans” cult demands “transgender” be dropped.

In Transtopia where “transgender females” are females, why should they be discriminated against by being referred to as “transgender females”? If other females (you know, actual females) are just called “female,” so too should biological males who pretend to be females. When that day arrives, Big Brother Chatigny will surely command those who appear before him in court to stop saying “transgender females,” UNDERSTOOD?

With no sense of irony, Chatigny argues that human decency requires humans to participate in an elaborate deception that denies biological reality, mutilates bodies, disrupts healthy biological processes, and requires both lying and violating the privacy rights of others.

Chatigny argues that referring to biological males who pretend to be female as “males” is “needlessly provocative.” Has the man utterly lost his capacity for rational thought? Does he really not see that commanding others to refer to males as females is needlessly provocative? Adding “transgender” to “females” does not make it less provocative.

Leftists arrogate to themselves the unilateral right to redefine every term that suits their moral, philosophical, or political purposes. They get to redefine marriage, love, safety, tolerance, bigotry, bullying, hatred, he, she, female, male, and now “provocative.” Like a gang of scornful Humpty Dumpties, leftists proclaim, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

Yes, this case is exactly about males running in girls’ track and field events. Does he think there exists no such objective phenomenon as biological males in nature? Does he believe biological male is merely a construct, idea, or epiphenomenon of the mind made real or instantiated only by the commingling of thought and desire?

George Orwell warned about the political abuse of language by oppressive governments which he called “Newspeak”:

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all… a heretical thought… should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever. … [T]he special function of certain Newspeak words … was not so much to express meanings as to destroy them. 

That is exactly what the “trans” cult and it’s “progressive” sycophants like Chatigny are doing.

Fortunately for their plaintiffs and all the rest of sane society, ADF will not yield to the unseemly, unconstitutional commands of Big Brother.  The ADF filed a motion asking that the judge recuse himself, arguing that “A disinterested observer would reasonably believe that the Court’s order and comments have destroyed the appearance of impartiality in this proceeding. That requires recusal.”

Kudos to and prayers for ADF.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Judge-Commands-ADF-to-Use-Trans-Term.mp3


We take very seriously the trust you place in Illinois Family Institute when you send a gift. We understand that we are accountable before you and God to honor your trust. IFI is supported by voluntary donations from good people like you.

sustaining-partner-logo-516x260




This American Life of Sexual Perversity

There is a new reality makeover show on The Learning Channel (TLC) titled Dragnificent in which four men who impersonate women (also known as “drag queens”) travel the country exploiting the desire of humans to grasp the cheap brass ring: fifteen minutes of fame. While behaving like clownish juveniles, these men-children with wounded pasts teach women with wounded pasts how to dress for their body type and wear makeup. The spectacle of grown men prancing about like children in cartoonish outfits pretending their work is good is a grotesque and tragic deceit that mars the image of God imprinted on them and harms society.

Dragnificent is just the newest effort of America’s entertainment industry to use storytelling to refashion this once-admirable American life into a cesspool of hedonism, profligacy, and perversion. By crafting stories that portray corrosive sexuality as joyful, carefree, cost-free, and even noble, our storytellers, in thrall to the father of lies, erode and corrode the principles, beliefs, and values that made this American life commendable.

However did we get here? How did we arrive at a cultural place in which ordinary people—moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas—tolerate, watch, approve, and even celebrate such depravity?

Remember when the truly sick Alfred Kinsey abused infants and polled pederasts in prison to advance his notion that sexual immorality is good for society? Remember when profligate pornographer Hugh Hefner mainstreamed porn, mainlining it into the synapses of men’s brains? Remember the sexual revolution of the 1960s that fertilized the weeds first planted by Kinsey and then watered by Hefner? Remember when homosexuals claimed they just wanted homosexuality to be tolerated? Approval—so they claimed at the time through lying lips and under growing noses—was neither requested nor required. Remember the claim that eradicating the social taboo against homoerotism would affect no one, no way, no how except for those who wanted to engage in it? Remember when self-identifying homosexuals said they just wanted civil unions—not marriage? Remember the snarky, mocking, scornful and idiotic rhetorical question spit at conservatives by homosexuals: “How will my marriage affect your marriage?”

Well, starting with Kinsey, too many Americans decided pleasure trumped self-restraint, the almighty Self trumped God, and being cool trumped being uncool. We stopped fighting for marriage, for our children, and for our country. And now this American life is dragnificent.

So, let’s take a moment to look at the dragnificent world that deception, selfishness, and cowardice have created:

  • Five unelected Supreme Court Justices decided that the single most enduring, cross-cultural constituent feature of marriage—i.e., sexual differentiation—is irrelevant to marriage and imposed their radical notion on the entire country.
  • Children are being created to be intentionally fatherless or motherless in order to satisfy the desires of people who choose to be in relationships that are by design non-reproductive.
  • There are now scads of picture books and Young Adult novels for children that depict positively homoeroticism, motherless and fatherless families with homosexual parents, and “trans”-cultism.
  • Ten percent of characters on scripted television shows are homosexual or opposite-sex impersonators with the goal of the “LGBT” community to double that rate within five years.
  • Restrooms, locker rooms, shelters, and athletics are being sexually integrated, thereby robbing girls, boys, women, and men of rights.
  • Pornography of the vilest and most shameful forms is easily available even to children.
  • There is a pandemic of child sexual abuse and trafficking that dwarfs COVID-19 in the human suffering it causes.
  • “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that nearly 20 million new STIs occur every year in this country, half of those among young people aged 15–24.”
  • Women have renamed prostitution “sex work,” call it “empowering,” and are fighting for its legalization.
  • Young men are unable to perform sexually with women because of their decade-long porn addiction.
  • Degrading “kink” practices are becoming normalized in the same ways homoeroticism and “trans”-alchemy were.
  • There are “sex weeks” at prestigious universities.
  • There are state laws mandating that kindergartners be taught positively about homoeroticism and science-denying “trans”-alchemy.
  • There are state laws prohibiting counseling for those who experience unwanted homoerotic desires and gender dysphoria.
  • Medical professionals are blocking the natural process of puberty in physically healthy children who experience gender dysphoria.
  • Medical professionals are administering untested and risky cross-sex hormones to physically healthy children who experience gender dysphoria.
  • Medical professionals are amputating the healthy breasts of teenage girls and castrating teenage boys who experience gender dysphoria.
  • There is a decade-long reality show in which drag queens compete to be America’s next drag superstar. In 2020, a U. S. Congresswoman (AOC) appeared as a judge on that show.
  • There’s a reality show on (TLC) that follows the troubled life of a young boy whose parents exploit him as he seeks to pass as a girl.
  • There are drag queen story hours all across the country in which perverse cross-dressing men groom and indoctrinate toddlers while lying through their lips and under their growing noses, falsely claiming their repugnant acts honor diversity, foster tolerance, and cultivate creativity, all under the approving eyes of parents.
  • There’s a YouTube series for preschoolers called Queer Stuff for Kids hosted by “gender non-binary” lesbian Lindsay Amer.
  • The mainstream press calls pregnant women who masquerade as men “pregnant men.”
  • The polyamorous or “sexually non-monogamous” community is growing and demanding—like the homosexual community and “trans”-cult before them—to be affirmed.
  • Adults and teens send photos of their naked bodies to acquaintances.
  • “Trans”-cultists command society to mis-sex them by using opposite-sex pronouns, or using plural pronouns for singular people, or using newly invented pronouns, all in the service of concealing their sex and facilitating a false and destructive ideology.
  • Religious liberty is being attacked through lawsuits to force Christian business owners to violate their religious beliefs, policies to force Christians to participate in lies, and laws like the Equality Act that will force people of faith to subordinate objective material reality (i.e., biological sex) to disordered subjective immaterial feelings about biological sex in violation of their beliefs.

Ideas do, indeed, have consequences.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/This-American-Life-of-Sexual-Perversity.mp3


If you appreciate the work and ministry of IFI,
please consider a tax-deductible donation to sustain our endeavors.




Ideologically Grooming Kids Through Storytelling

Still don’t believe sexual anarchists are coming for the hearts and minds of the nation’s children? Well, check out this just-released book published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Penguin books, and geared toward children 10 and older: Middle School’s a Drag, You Better Werk Harder!, a book the publishers describe as a “hilarious, heartfelt story,” “full of laughs, sass, and hijinks” that “shows that with a little effort and a lot of love, anything is possible.”

Sounds amazing, doesn’t it?

Well, if you caught the allusion to “twerking” in the title, you may be a little less sanguine about children reading this hilarious, heartfelt story about love and possibility. For those who don’t know, “twerking”—as defined by the online Merriam-Webster Dictionary—is “sexually suggestive dancing characterized by rapid, repeated hip thrusts and shaking of the buttocks especially while squatting.”

Here’s more from the publisher:

In this heartfelt and hilarious new novel from Greg Howard, an enterprising boy starts his own junior talent agency and signs a thirteen-year-old aspiring drag queen as his first client.

Twelve-year-old Mikey Pruitt—president, founder, and CEO of Anything, Inc.–has always been an entrepreneur at heart. … Unfortunately, most of his ideas so far have failed. …  But Mikey is determined to keep at it.

It isn’t until kid drag queen Coco Caliente, Mistress of Madness and Mayhem (aka eighth grader Julian Vasquez) walks into his office … looking for an agent that Mikey thinks he’s finally found his million-dollar idea, and the Anything Talent and Pizzazz Agency is born!

Soon, Mikey has a whole roster of kid clients looking to hit it big or at least win the middle school talent show’s hundred-dollar prize. As newly out Mikey prepares Julian for the gig of a lifetime, he realizes there’s no rulebook for being gay—and if Julian can be openly gay at school, maybe Mikey can, too, and tell his crush, dreamy Colton Sanford, how he feels.

The author of this gut-busting novel about middle-school drag queens, Greg Howard, is a homosexual man in a pretend “marriage” to a third-grade teacher, who was inspired by the real-life child drag queen, the exploited “Desmond is Amazing” about whom I wrote over a year ago. Middle School’s a Drag, You Better Werk Harder! is being adapted for television by David Heyman, producer of all the Harry Potter films and Quentin Tarantino’s film Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.

Howard’s first Young Adult (YA) novel for teens, titled Social Intercourse (available free online), is a pornographic story about two 17-year-old boys, one of whom was adopted by two lesbians after his father abused him and his drug-addicted mother. The other boy’s mother left him and his father after having an affair with the mayor. The adopted boy, Jax, is the handsome football star with a girlfriend with whom he regularly has sex, and the other, Beckett, is an out and proud homosexual. The book concludes with Jax and Beckett in a homoerotic relationship with the approval of all parents and most of the high school football team. The story also includes Beckett’s father having a sexual relationship with one of Jax’s lesbian moms; a hate-filled Christian pastor who engages in homoerotic acts with his music minister; egregiously obscene language; a description of a teen boy having his anus bleached; and references to masturbation, oral sex, anal sex, and a teen girl’s vibrator.

If this book isn’t obscene, then the word “obscene” is now meaningless.

The publisher of Social Intercourse, Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers recommends this porn for kids ages 14+. Publishers Weekly, a publishing trade magazine that reviews books recommends Social Intercourse as a “funny and satisfying love story.” And Booklist, a book review publication of the leftist American Library Association, says this about Social Intercourse:

The language is raunchy, the innuendo is frequent, and the energy is irrepressible. Hand this debut to readers tired of problem novels who are looking for a hilarious romp.

We now have adults recommending a hilarious pornographic romp for teens that depicts evil as good. And on the basis of these recommendations schools and public libraries make purchasing decisions with public money. Social Intercourse is available at public libraries across Illinois, including in Algonquin, Arlington Heights, Batavia, Berwyn, Chicago, Decatur, Deerfield, Des Plaines, Dolton, Downers Grove, Ela, Elgin, Elmhurst, Evanston, Frankfort, Geneva, Glencoe, Grande Prairie, Green Hills, Indian Prairie, Kewanee, La Grange, Libertyville, Marion, Mattoon, McHenry, Naperville, North Aurora, Oak Lawn, Oak Park, Orland Park, Palos Heights, Pekin, Prairie Trails, Rockford, Skokie, St. Charles, Tinley Park, Waukegan, Westchester, Winnetka, and Woodridge. (This list is not exhaustive.)

Illinoisans, librarians whose salaries you subsidize have used your hard-earned money to purchase porn that your children can now access and read without your knowledge or permission. And don’t be naïve. This is not the only ugly, deviance-espousing material your taxes have purchased to ideologically groom your children.

Author Greg Howard’s main characters are less like pitiable heroes who conquer evil and more like Mr. Hyde—the wicked side of Dr. Jekyll whose freely chosen actions resulted in his usurpation by Hyde:

I became, in my own person a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind … a soul boiling with causeless hatreds, and a body that seemed not strong enough to contain the raging energies of life. …

The powers of Hyde seemed to have grown with the sickliness of Jekyll. … Jekyll … thought of Hyde, for all his energy of life, as of something not only hellish but inorganic. This was the shocking thing; that the slime of the pit seemed to utter cries and voices; that the amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned; that what was dead, and had no shape, should usurp the offices of life. And this again, that that insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an eye; lay caged in his flesh, where he heard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born. 

If we are going to allow homoeroticism to be depicted to children, then let the depiction reflect truth. If we love children—all children—then we will fight for truth.

In How to Read a Book, former University of Chicago professor, philosopher, author, and co-founder of the Great Books Foundation, Mortimer Adler warns,

The best protection against propaganda of any sort is the recognition of it for what it is. Only hidden and undetected oratory is really insidious. What reaches the heart without going through the mind is likely to bounce back and put the mind out of business. Propaganda taken in that way is like a drug you do not know you are swallowing. The effect is mysterious; you do not know afterwards why you feel or think the way you do.

Do not underestimate the effect of stories on the hearts and minds of all humans, but especially impressionable children. Cultural regressives are fully aware that storytelling captures imaginations and through imaginations captures hearts and minds.

In describing biblically Christian art, Calvin Seerveld offers a lens through which we should view all art, including literature that we serve to children on a faux-gilded plate:

Art is Biblically Christian when the Devil cannot stand it. If the Devil can stand it or would hand out reproductions, then there is no Biblical Christian character to it. … The Devil cannot stand exposure of sin as sin, dirty, devastating misery for me; it unmasks him.

Greg Howard produces anti-art for children—anti-art that the Devil loves.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Ideologically-Grooming-Kids-Through-Storytelling.mp3


If you appreciate the work and ministry of IFI,
please consider a tax-deductible donation to sustain our endeavors.




Dr. Robert A.J. Gagnon: Is “LGBTQ” Pressure Beginning to Crack the Evangelical House?

Our season of sheltering-in-place provides the ideal opportunity to prepare for the next season when we will re-engage in the public square. One of our responsibilities as Christians is to help foster an environment in which truth prevails and families flourish. Just before our home-sheltering began, Illinois Family Institute hosted our annual Worldview Conference, this year titled “Thinking Biblically About Our Corrosive Culture,” with speakers Dr. Michael Brown, theologian, author, and radio host; and Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon, theologian, author, and professor at Houston Baptist University.

In his first presentation, Dr. Gagnon exposed the myriad ways that the “LGBTQ” heresy is making inroads into the church, including in evangelical churches that many assume are impenetrable by heretics. He begins by briefly outlining how mainline denominations were infected by sexuality heresy and then provides evidence that the beginnings of a similar trajectory are present in evangelical churches.

He examines the troubling rhetoric of Preston Sprinkle, president of the theologically conservative Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender, of J. D. Greear, president of the culturally influential Southern Baptist Convention, and of Revoice and the “spiritual friendship” movements, both of which are movements led by and appealing to Christians who experience homoerotic attraction but affirm biblical sexual ethics.

Dr. Gagnon concludes by urging Christians to prioritize political issues rightly when voting and clarifies the monumental stakes for Christians should “progressives” take control of the U.S. Senate and White House and pass their chief legislative project: the culture-transforming, rights-nullifying, pernicious Equality Act.

Please make time to watch Dr. Gagnon’s important presentation.


If you appreciate the work and ministry of IFI,
please consider a tax-deductible donation to sustain our endeavors.




The Rise of Homosexual Family Madness

A British man now living in Florida who freely chooses to be in a type of erotic union that is by design sterile believes it is his right to create children who will have no connection to their mothers and no certainty about who their father is. Here is his morally repugnant, convoluted story.

In 1999, then-30-year-old Barrie Drewitt-Barlow and his then-35-year-old partner whom he later “married,” Tony Drewitt-Barlow, purchased eggs from Tracie McCune and rented the womb of Rosalind Bellamy to acquire their first two children: a boy named Aspen and a girl named Saffron.

The fertilized egg that became Aspen split, so they froze Aspen’s identical twin, defrosted him four years later, and implanted him in the rented womb of another woman, Donna Calabrese. Aspen now has an identical twin brother Orlando who is four years younger than he is.

About nine years later, the millionaire Drewitt-Barlow fathers purchased yet more eggs, rented Calabrese’s womb again, and had two more boys, Dallas and Jasper, born in 2010. The biological mother is a “Brazilian model whom Barrie spotted on the catwalk and paid £35,000 for the privilege” of donating her eggs.

Both men contributed sperm to the selfish, dystopian reproductive project, and while they know which biological child each sired, they’re not telling the children. Apparently, the two men are entitled to children, but their children aren’t entitled to know who their biological fathers are.

In an interview with the Daily Mail in 2015, Tony, the older Drewitt-Barlow, proclaimed that their lifelong commitment was ironclad:

Barrie and I will never split up. We’re soulmates. But also we’d never do that to our children because of the pain it would cause.

Last October, Barrie and Tony split up.

The now-50-year-old Barrie began an erotic relationship with his daughter’s 25-year-old bisexual ex-boyfriend, Scott Hutchison. Barrie and Scott then bought eggs and rented a womb for the purpose of gestating their triplets who are due in October. Barrie announced,

Our family has too many boys and too much testosterone! So we used sex selection to even things out. We know we are having girls. … We found a beautiful, young, educated egg donor. … We met 15 egg donors at the Beverly Wiltshire hotel, the hotel in the film Pretty Woman. We decided that would make the perfect setting to find the woman who would add the part of the DNA for our baby girl. Once we found our surrogate we transferred three blastocysts (embryos), two girls fertilised by Scott and one girl fertilised by me.

Barrie, his young paramour Scott, his ex Tony, Aspen, Saffron, Orlando, Dallas, Jasper, and the triplets will all be sharing the same homejust one big, strange family created to satisfy the desires of selfish adults.

Barrie isn’t done yet with his profligate inseminating. He donated sperm to a lesbian couple in the U.K. who will be giving birth one month before his and Scott’s triplets are born here in the United States.

Barrie writes about the nature of the homoerotic relationship into which he’s bringing three babies:

I know people will think Scott is only after my money and all that — he is, after all, 25 years younger than me — but I don’t care. I’m going to enjoy every moment that I can, while I can. After all, you only have one life.

This is the toxic fruit of the sexual revolution that began the erosion of cultural taboos regarding sexual activity. Sexual revolutionaries severed sexual acts from procreation, sexual acts from marriage, and then sexual acts from sexual differentiation. The only purpose for sex became carnal gratification. Sex lost all meaning. While children gained sexual autonomy—the right to erotic gratification—they lost the right to be raised by both a mother and a father, preferably their own biological parents.

The damage done to children’s rights and needs by the sexual revolution—from the denial of family through divorce and sperm and egg donation to the “trans”-cultic destruction of their hearts, minds, and bodies to their extermination in the womb—constitutes the justice issue of our time. How many presidential candidates who claim to care about social justice will address it?

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/The-rise-of-homosexual-family-madness_audio_01.mp3


Subscribe to the IFI YouTube channel
and never miss a video report or special program!




Female-Impersonating “Teacher” Uses Girls’ Restroom

Mark Vincent Busenbark, a middle-aged man with a cross-dressing alter ego he calls Vica Steel, has been creating intellectual and moral havoc in Frank Allis Elementary School in Madison, Wisconsin for a year. Last school year, Busenbark, a science teacher, created a creepy video about his creepy predilection for cross-dressing and pretending to be sometimes a man and sometimes a woman. Then, with the permission of his administration, he presumptuously showed his creepy “coming out” video to all K-5 students without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

In this video, he describes in biased language his disordered and delusional view of his sex, asks to be referred to as Mx. Steel, asks that students refer to him by absurdly by the pronouns “they,” “them,” and  “theirs” (presumably to accommodate his imaginary alter ego), and then reads a picture book about a little girl who identifies as both female and male, which he tells the students is “just like” his story.

In this book, those who reject the “trans” ideology are depicted as an undifferentiated mass of specters with evil eyes who refuse to use the false pronouns of the little girl who grows up to be a “nonbinary” teacher.

Here’s part of what the cunning propagandist Busenbark, doing his best Mr. Rogers impersonation, said to all the K-5 students:

Hello. Let me introduce myself. You’ve known me as Mr. Busenbark or Mr. B. … There is one truth that I’ve hidden from you, [and] until about a month ago from my fellow teachers, from friends, [and] from family. I am transgender. Maybe you know what that means. Maybe you don’t. Maybe you’ve only heard those words through the filter of those who hate and fear. … When I was a child, I was named a boy, but that never felt right or true. … Can I tell you how terrifying it is coming out, being honest about a truth I’ve hidden for decades? The only words I knew for people like me when I was growing up were words of hate and words of fear. And those words are still out there. … I know that you will love and honor me as we move forward. And now let me introduce myself anew. … I am going to take my wife, Stella Steel’s, last name. And I am going to use—not Mr. and not Ms.—but Mx. So, you can call me Mx. Steel. … And for my pronouns, I’m using “they,” “them,” and “their.”

Busenbark is cunning in that, to other people’s young children, he suggests that at birth, children’s “identity” is “named,” whereas, in reality, their sex is acknowledged.

He’s cunning in that, to other people’s young children, he suggests without stating outright that those who reject the “trans” ideology and the cultural and interpersonal demands of “trans” cultists are hateful and fearful.

He’s cunning in that, to other people’s young children, he suggests that his feelings, desires, and beliefs constitute “truth.”

He’s cunning in that, to other people’s young children, he suggests that to love and honor him require that they affirm his disordered beliefs about biological sex and wicked efforts to masquerade as the sex he is not.

And he’s cunning and manipulative in that he tries to engender sympathy by telling other people’s young children that he is terrified to tell them he’s “trans.”

The complaints of angry parents who confronted the administration for its failure to notify parents or obtain permission for their children to view Busenbark’s “trans” propaganda fell on morally deaf ears, which evidently emboldened the already bold Busenbark further: This January, he started using the girls’ restrooms—again with no parental notification.

And again, parents found out and justifiably objected to a grown man sharing a restroom with little girls. The school then found itself embroiled in a public relations nightmare, so they did what “progressive” districts do when entangled in an imbroglio of their own making. They tried to spin the story by saying the problem was allowing an adult to share restrooms with children.

Hogwash.

Anyone who works in a public school knows that teachers commonly share single-sex multi-occupancy restrooms with students because there are far more student restrooms than staff restrooms.

Male staff use boys’ restrooms, and female staff use girls’ restrooms. When I worked at Deerfield High School, I always used the girls’ restrooms. It was never an issue with students. No girls of any age object to the presence of women in their restrooms.

The problem in the Madison, Wisconsin elementary school is not that teachers are using the same restrooms as students. The problem is that a man was using a girls’ restroom.

Busenbark doesn’t belong in women’s staff restrooms either. Are adult women too spineless to say that? Are male faculty members and administrators too lacking in testosterone to defend the assaults on the honor and dignity of their colleagues by a cross-dressing man? Sheesh.

Girls and women have an intrinsic right to be free of the presence of biological males in their restrooms. Conversely, boys and men have an intrinsic right to be free of the presence of biological females in their private spaces.

In an open letter published in an “LGBT” magazine in Madison, an unhinged Busenbark went off on his own district for trying to find a way to keep him out of little girls’ restrooms by making all staff stay out of all student restrooms. The district is trying to keep the “trans” cult off their backs by camouflaging the fact that they want the cross-dressing man out of the girls’ restrooms. Here’s part of what the mixed up, muddled up, shook up “Mx. Steel” wrote:

In the 23 years that I’ve been in the district, students and staff have always used the same multi-stall bathrooms in our schools. Does that shock you? Women using the same bathrooms as girls? Can I ask you to name any public space that segregates bathroom use by age? … In the 23 years I’ve been in the district, there has never been a complaint about women using the same bathrooms as their students. … Women have used that bathroom for decades. No complaints. I used it. I am an open and out transgender woman. I fought decades with the trauma that our society laid on me. But I stood up and I came out, and yes, I used the bathroom because, seriously, can you just let us pee! Within days a transphobic parent complained to the district and our leadership. … I, alone, of all our female staff, I was to change the bathroom I used.

Busenbark is right on one point and in addressing it, he has exposed the deceit of his district administrators. They don’t really care if adults share restrooms with students. That’s a smokescreen to stave off the wrath of the tolerant “trans” cult when they find out that a female-impersonating man is being excluded from the girls’ restrooms.

But on his central point, Busenbark is wrong. He is not a member of the female staff.

This foolish, mawkish, juvenile, and tendentious letter from the principal of the Frank Ellis Elementary School  illuminates just how lost today’s government school leaders are and why parents must find educational alternatives for their  children:

Leading with love

As the principal of Frank Allis Elementary, I have the responsibility to lead our school with love, acceptance, understanding and justice. I hold the responsibility to hold the space where everyone is honored and affirmed. Frank Allis is a Welcoming School and we are proud to openly support our science teacher, Mx. Vica Steel. Vica Steel identifies as transgender. …

Public schools have the responsibility to teach students how to become caring, inclusive, welcoming members of our communities. … [W]e believe that teaching about gender diversity is essential to creating gender-inclusive schools free of bias and bullying.

We reject the exclusion of anyone’s known identity, as this is an act of discrimination. We will continue to support and affirm Vica’s identity. …

We believe every person should feel connected and respected for who they are and Vica is not excluded from this principle. Vica aka Mx Steel came out as their true self. Their courage has resulted in the strengthening of our community. We are all more beautiful because of Vica Steel’s inclusion in it.

Leading with love,

Sara Cutler

Well, at least Cutler is semi-honest when she refers to “teaching” about “gender diversity,” which is euphemistic language for using government schools to impose a leftist sexuality ideology.

Neither love, acceptance, justice, honor, care, inclusivity, welcome, support, nor respect require humans to affirm every feeling, desire, belief, or act that other humans choose to place at the center of their identities.

Enquiring minds want to know, when Busenbark intrudes into the private spaces of girls who, along with their parents, believe it’s wrong for girls to share private spaces with persons of the opposite sex, is he showing them love? Is he honoring them?

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Female-Impersonating-Teacher.mp3


A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

Click HERE to learn about supporting IFI on a monthly basis.