If you haven’t been called it yet, surely, you’ve heard it: the ubiquitous epithet “transphobe.” It’s the evil spawn of “homophobe.” I don’t mean those accused of being “transphobes” are evil spawns of “homophobes.” I mean the term “transphobe” is the evil spawn of the spurious term “homophobe.”

In a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, British writer “Juliet” Jacques, a 38-year-old man who pretends to be a woman, claims “Transphobia … is a respectable bigotry in Britain, shared by parts of the left as well as the right.”

Jacques claims that there are two virulent strains of “transphobia”: One strain “rejects … the idea that gender might not be determined only by biological traits identifiable at birth,” and the other strain, “argues that trans women’s [i.e., biological men’s] requests for gender recognition are incompatible with cis women’s [i.e., normal women’s] rights to single-sex spaces.” Jacques claims that both strains “rely on the conceit that trans and nonbinary people should not determine their own gender identities.”

Translated from “trans”-tortured Newspeak into plain English, Jacques is describing two groups of people still tethered to reality. The first group rejects the idea that biological sex is subordinate to subjective feelings about sex in importance and in how it’s treated in society. The second group believes women have a right to private spaces free from the presence of biological men.

For those not fluent in Newspeak, “gender identity” refers to the subjective internal (or is it infernal?) feelings of reality-untethered people about their maleness, femaleness, both, or neither. Jacques errs when claiming that both reality-tethered groups believe “trans” and “nonbinary” people should not determine their own “gender identities.”

Generally speaking, reality-tethered, biocentric people have no opposition to the reality-untethered determining their own “gender identities.” The problem is the reality-untethered are demanding that society treat their subjective feelings as if they are more important than biological sex and accommodate their subjective feelings in radical ways that rob the reality-tethered of their right to privacy and free speech.

The reality-untethered are demanding that in shared spaces, their subjective feelings about maleness and femaleness supersede biological sex. Those who believe that spaces like locker rooms and activities like sports should correspond to biological sex are being denied their right to determine their sex identities. And the reality-untethered bio-rejectors are demanding that others use language that denies biological reality. They’re demanding that others use language that affirms an imaginary worldview. They’re demanding that their “hurt feelings” determine how others must speak. While they demand that I respect their “reality,” they ignore that my reality includes not just me but everything in the world.

To advance a reality-untethered social and political universe requires the silencing of rational and moral arguments, and that, in turn, requires cultural oppression, known colloquially as bullying.

“Transphobe” is the term of bullying art used to shame and silence anyone who believes biological sex has meaning and that it is more important than subjective, internal feelings about one’s maleness, femaleness, both, or neither.

• A “transphobe” is anyone who feels it is a good thing for humans to identify as the biological sex they are and ever will be.
• A “transphobe” is anyone who believes that females are entitled to be free of the presence of biological males to whom they are unrelated by blood or marriage in places where they undress, shower, sleep, and engage in bodily functions. A “transphobe” is anyone who believes men are similarly entitled to be free of the presence of unrelated biological women in those same kinds of places.
• A “transphobe” is anyone who doesn’t want to have a romantic or erotic relationship with a person or persons of the same sex who pretend to be the other sex.
• A “transphobe” is anyone who believes cross-dressing is wrong.
• A “transphobe” is anyone who believes harm is done to children when they are allowed to cross-dress, adopt opposite-sex names, and be referred to by opposite-sex pronouns.
• A “transphobe” is anyone who believes the medical profession should not prescribe cross-sex hormones to anatomically and biochemically healthy persons to treat their disordered feelings.
• A “transphobe” is anyone who believes the medical profession should not lop off the healthy body parts of teens or adults as a way to treat disordered and often fluid feelings about their maleness or femaleness.
• A “transphobe” is anyone who believes that cross-dressing men should not be reading stories to or twerking in front of toddlers in public libraries.

The chief tactic of sexual anarchists to crush their ideological opponents is to attach the word (or forms of the word) “phobe” to any moral claim they, in their ignorance, detest. They detest the moral claims that homoerotic acts are immoral; degrade those engaged in them; and harm children, families, and society. So, anyone who makes these claims is called a “homophobe.”  Even if these claims are expressed out of love for individuals, children, families and society,  the “LGB” community calls those who express them “homophobes,” haters, and bigots because bullying works.

“Trans” cultists detest the claims that biological sex is profoundly meaningful; that private space-usage should correspond to biological sex; and that cross-dressing, cross-sex hormone-doping, and elective amputations of healthy body parts to treat immaterial feelings is harmful, so anyone who expresses these claims is called a “transphobe,” because bullying works.

While “LGB” and “T” activists and their collaborators claim to worship at the altar of inclusion, tolerance, and non-judgmentalism, and claim to loathe all shaming, marginalization, and taboos, they don’t.

They seek to shame, marginalize, and exclude anyone who doesn’t affirm their sexuality dogma.  They judge theologically orthodox Christians as sinners for rejecting sexual insanity. And they justify their judgmentalism by asserting that they have no obligation to “tolerate intolerance.”

What taboos will cultural regressives next seek to shame and eradicate? Polyamory/Sexual non-monogamy? Consensual adult incest “Genetic Sexual Attraction”? Pederasty and pedophilia “Minor Attraction”/intergenerational love? Bestiality Zoophilia?

Soon all those ignorant, hateful, exclusionary bigots who don’t understand that “love is love” will be called polyphobes, kinphobes, pedophobes, and zoophobes. “Shaming” polys, kin-lovers, child-lovers, teen-lovers, and animal-lovers will be deemed analogous to racism.

Next to arrive on the already defiled cultural scene will be activists for other even fringier paraphilias. Those who identify as sadists, masochists, infantilists, and voyeurs will claim that to live authentically requires no one disapprove of their peculiar habits. Normal people who yet have a moral compass and spine will be called sadi-phobes, maso-phobes, infanti-phobes, and voyeur-phobes.

(A word about voyeurs: If no offense has been committed by men who through cross-dressing, hormone-doping, and surgery are able to conceal their sex from women in women’s locker rooms, then surely no harm is committed by men who through technology are able to conceal their presence from and peep on women in women’s locker rooms. If deceiving women about the presence of men is hunky dory in the case of opposite-sex impersonators, then surely deceiving women about the presence of men is hunky dory in the case of voyeurs.)

Exclusion per se is not intrinsically bad, and inclusion per se is not intrinsically good. Disapproval per se is not intrinsically bad, and approval per se is not intrinsically good. Shame is not intrinsically bad, and shamelessness is not intrinsically good. The goodness or badness of exclusion, inclusion, disapproval, or approval depends on what is being excluded, included, disapproved, or approved.

Likewise, social taboos—renamed “phobias” by “progressives” and pagans when they enjoy the taboo acts—are not intrinsically bad. Every society has and needs taboos. Taboos are nothing more than volitional acts that society deems wrong and harmful. Neither “progressives” nor pagans seek to eradicate taboos, shame, exclusion, or marginalization. Rather, they seek to impose and enforce their views on who should be excluded or marginalized, and what should be deemed taboo and stigmatized.

No society will or should eradicate all taboos, stigmas, shame, or marginalization. Therefore, the questions every civilized or primitive society has to answer are, 1. On what basis will some members of society be marginalized, 2. What will marginalization look like, and 3. What volitional acts will be taboo and stigmatized.

The “trans” cult is a solipsistic cult in which the self determines—or imagines—the world, and nothing outside of or in conflict with this self-imagined world matters. This self-determined, imaginary world is also an anti-Christian world in which evil is deemed good and good evil. In this world, expressing biblical truth about sexuality is taboo, and theologically orthodox Christians will increasingly and brazenly be shamed and pushed to the margins of society where they will be denied their right to speak freely, assemble freely, and exercise freely their religion.

Don’t surrender to the morality-phobic monster that prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/The-LGB-and-T-Mobs-Unleash-the-Morality-Phobic-Monster_audio.mp3

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Mandated Vaccines & the “LGBTQ” Agenda

A troubling trend is occurring in Illinois. It has happened mostly in the background but has become visible with the introduction of two new proposed laws concerning vaccines. If these proposed laws were to take effect, vaccines would be mandated by the state without religious exception. In addition, these bills apply to public and private schools, including Christian private schools and homeschools. Especially egregious would be the mandate for children to receive the HPV vaccine, a vaccine to protect a person from a sexually transmitted disease. Furthermore, and perhaps even more shocking, if this legislation passes, 14-year-olds will be able to receive vaccines without parental consent.

This isn’t the only erosion of parental rights in Illinois. “Progressives” in the Illinois legislature are also seeking to “teach” our children their “good news” on sex. Desiring to mandate a new curriculum on sex and sexuality through two new sex ed bills, there is a concerted push to normalize behaviors and a worldview starting in kindergarten that is anti-Christian. This includes teaching that novel “gender expressions,” pre-marital and non-marital sex, and non-monogamous heterosexual families are moral goods. If these bills become law, your kids will be indoctrinated with a new sexual ethic that is entirely different from that which has been taught for two millennia.

In Illinois, minors can receive an abortion without parental consent with only a judicial waiver. According to the ACLU, no judicial waiver has ever been denied.

If a minor enters into the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS), the state will provide “gender transitioning” medical treatment, mental health “LGBTQ” advocacy, and placement in “affirming” households whether or not the parents agree. On their website, DCFS states that every child deserves these “rights,” and that these rights include children not in the DCFS system. For now, the law stops them from imposing their worldview on non-DCFS kids. Unless the state’s expansive powers are stopped, it’s not hard to imagine something that should scare all of us. We are on a trajectory where children will be removed from their parents because the parents will not embrace a child’s decisions on his sexuality or “gender identity.”

There are other examples, but these should suffice to show you what Illinois believes. In a new school guidance report that was ordered by Gov. JB Pritzker, the authors assert that schools have an obligation to act as a parent. DCFS also calls itself a parent, and the judge permitting an abortion without parental consent is acting as a parent. The state of Illinois believes it has a stronger claim to parent your child than you do, but the state of Illinois is wrong.

Biological parents are almost always better situated to parent than the state. In his essay “Of Paternal Power,” John Locke has written the strongest and most enduring Judeo-Christian argument for the preeminence of parental rights in modern society.

Parents have the freedom to raise their children as they see fit because this freedom is from nature and is not a right given by the state. Locke writes that parents have “a power over their children and have as much right to their subjection as those who are in the state of Nature.”

For Locke, Nature is the order of creation, and natural laws flow from this order. One of Nature’s laws is that the couple who births a child is a “temporary government” for that child. In other words, in the same way an adult is subject to civil authorities, a child is subject to his parents while he is a minor. The state of Illinois is usurping one of the most fundamental relationships in human society. Its intervention is about the indoctrination of children with a leftist worldview that stands diametrically opposed to a Judeo-Christian worldview. In a state that has more corruption than it does farmland, the last responsibility it should have is the right to indoctrinate our children.

According to Locke, this “temporary government” is built upon parental obligations. The parents have freedom in raising their child because at the end of the day it is their responsibility to do so. Locke writes,

The power, then, that parents have over their children arises from that duty which is incumbent on them, to take care of their offspring during the imperfect state of childhood. To inform the mind, and govern the actions of their yet ignorant nonage, till reason shall take its place and ease them of that trouble … .

This includes the healthcare and education of the child. As a parent, I do not want my children exposed to “LGBTQ” ideology that normalizes what our faith says is sin. Based on science and common sense, “gender” isn’t a personal opinion or a subjective feeling. I will raise my children as the “gender” that is expressed in their sex; this is based on my understanding of gender being a gift from God and a revelation of the image of God in humanity.

My children are vaccinated, but I find it deeply offensive that Illinois would mandate a drug to prevent a sexually transmitted disease. The mandate gives sexual license to my children that I deeply disagree with. These legal mandates are the height of hubris. We must not give away our obligation to parent to the state. If it’s not obvious, Illinois has no idea what it is doing.

In the most serious error of the Illinois parental state, the child is being given adult rights without parental oversight. In what world can a minor be expected to make informed, rational decisions on deeply complex moral and life-changing choices? Locke writes,

Commonwealths themselves take notice of, and allow that there is a time when men are to begin to act like free men, and therefore, till that time, require not oaths of fealty or allegiance, or other public owning of, or submission to, the government of their countries.

Children are not required to act as adults because they are not adults. Children need parents. This is because, according to Locke, they are in the period of “ignorant nonage.” Parents make the decisions “till reason shall take its place and ease them of that trouble.”

The idea that the state would empower kids to decide on invasive medical procedures or embrace novel sexual expressions reveals a society collectively jumping off a cliff. By the very fact of being a child, they lack mature rationality and the ability to understand the effects of decisions, and they have an underdeveloped moral system. When the state intervenes, it interjects its opinions on life, sexuality, and marriage that are radically contradictory to a Christian view of the world. Such interventions are outrageous.

Dear parents in Illinois, please take notice of what is happening. Call your state lawmakers and Governor Pritzker to stop the two pieces of legislation concerning vaccines and the sex education legislation. Then, it’s time to take back parental rights. Our children are our responsibility. Their future, their faith and their well-being are dependent on us pushing back the intrusions of the state. It’s time for parents to fight for our children. Right now, the state is fighting harder for them.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state senator and state representative to ask them to vote against these bills: SB 3788, HB 4870 and HB 5012. Impressionable students in public schools should not be exposed to body- and soul-destroying messages that promote leftist beliefs about sexuality.

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

Illinois parents shouldn’t need any more reasons to get their kids out of the sexual indoctrination hellholes that masquerade as government schools, but here are some more reasons courtesy of the cunning creatures that inhabit the Springfield swamp.

Two weeks ago, two bills were introduced to amend Illinois’ already offensive comprehensive sex ed law: SB 3788, which is sponsored by Illinois State Senators Celina Villanueva (D-Summit) and Laura Fine (D-Glenview), and HB 5012, the chief co-sponsors of whom include the Illinois House’s most objectionable propagandist, State Representative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) along with Representatives Ann Williams (D-Chicago) and Michelle Mussman (D-Schaumburg).

Then on Wednesday, a bill that should be called the “GET OUT OF ILLINOIS SCHOOLS PRONTO” Act (SB 2762), was filed by nine Democrats and will mandate comprehensive sex ed  for all grades. This bill, laughably named the “Responsible Education Adolescent and Children’s Health” (REACH) Act, is heartily endorsed by Planned Parenthood of Illinois and by Illinois’ premiere “LBGT” activist organization, Equality Illinois, which should tell you everything you need to know about it.

Here are some troubling parts of the Villanueva/Cassidy monstrosities that apply to grades 6-12:

• Their bills mandate that all curricular “materials and instruction” must be “affirming” of “individuals, families, and communities” in an “inclusive, respectful, and effective” manner based on their identities as homosexuals or cross-sex impersonators.

• Their bills delete the section that says curriculum must “teach honor and respect for monogamous heterosexual marriage.”

• Their bills add “Course material and instruction shall [must] teach pupils … how to give [and] receive … consent” for sexual activity. Let’s repeat that: Our government is going to order schools to teach 11-year-olds how to give consent for sex.

• Current law requires “evidence-based” curricula. These new bills add the term “evidence-informed,” which is a far less rigorous requirement. “Evidence-informed” resources are much more useful to leftists who want to promote, for example, the “trans” ideology, because there is no hard science proving that social, chemical, and surgical interventions for gender dysphoric children are harmless.

These bills also say that all curricular “materials and instruction” must be “affirming” of “individuals, families, and communities” in an “inclusive, respectful, and effective” manner based on their “religion.” So, does anyone believe that the feelings and beliefs about sexuality, sexual identity, sexual relationships, or marriage of Christians, Orthodox Jews, or Muslims will be explicitly affirmed in exactly the same ways the feelings and beliefs of homosexuals and cross-sex impersonators on these issues will be? Does anyone believe the feelings and beliefs of the religious groups will be presented at all?

Then on Wednesday, things got worse. Nine Democrats in the Illinois Senate sponsored a bill that expands sex ed to include all grades from kindergarten through senior year in high school and includes the following:

• “It is the intent of the General Assembly that comprehensive sex ed shall [must]… promote awareness and healthy attitudes about gender identity, gender expression” and “sexual orientation … and must be available to students in kindergarten through 12th grade.”

• “Comprehensive sex ed in kindergarten through second grade shall [must] include … instruction on the following topics: human anatomy … gender roles … [and] varying family structures.” Discussing human sexual anatomy in co-ed K-2 classes is yet one more way for our culture to dissolve feelings of modesty in young children just as those feelings are beginning to develop. Leftists view that as a good thing.

• “Comprehensive sex ed in the third through 5th grades shall [must] include information about diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions. … and an examination of the harm caused by gender-role stereotypes.”

• “[C]omprehensive sex ed must include … Discussion about … sexting” with 8-10-year-olds. Leftists may be unaware of the many 8-10-year-olds who have never heard of sexting, never heard of porn, and don’t have cell phones. In those many cases, the passage of this law would mean the government would be introducing these young children to sexting. The innocence of their children that, at great effort and vigilance, parents have been able to preserve in the midst of this sex-saturated and defiling culture, the government would steal.

• Comprehensive sex ed “may not use stigmatizing or shame-based instructional tools or stigmatize parenting or sexually active youth,” “may not employ gender stereotypes” (you know, like saying only girls menstruate or only boys have penises), and “may not teach or promote any religious doctrine.”

In other words, schools must express only one judgment on homosexual behavior, cross-sex identification, and same-sex parenting: approval. So, what happens when the next sexual lobby gets their sexual identity added to the lawbooks? What happens when polyamorists are successful in having “polyamory” included in law as a “sexual orientation”?

Let’s for a moment look at not just the trees but the forest too. In that dark forest lurks not only comprehensive sex ed for K-12 students but also the “LGBT” school indoctrination law, which takes effect this coming July and applies to all grades K-12. Every student starting at 5 years old will be exposed to positive images and ideas about homosexuality, cross-sex identification, and activism in the service of normalizing both. There won’t be any way to escape such indoctrination by opting out because it’s going to be integrated across curricula.

According to research conducted in 2018 by the market research firm Ipsos Mori, 88 percent of baby boomers identified as exclusively heterosexual, 85 percent of Gen X identified as such, 71 percent of millennials, and a shocking 66 percent of Generation Z, that is, young people between the ages of 16-22, identified as exclusively heterosexual. Ideas have consequences.

While conservatives claim to believe that homosexuality is not biologically determined, they act as if they believe it is. They have for decades allowed their children to be exposed to “LGBT” dogma because they don’t really believe it will affect their children. Conservative parents have for decades tolerated their children’s exposure to homosexuality-affirming plays, novels, movies, essays, “anti-bullying” programs, and sex ed in school, ignorantly believing such propaganda won’t affect their children’s hearts, minds, and behavioral choices.

But of course, it will, and we’re seeing the toxic fruit of the erasure of sexual taboos and concomitant wholesale cultural approval of deviant sexual behavior. Layer on top of that widespread and easy availability to homosexual and “trans” porn, pro-homo/pro-“trans” postings on social media, loss of faith, broken homes, and broken children in search of connection and existential meaning, and voilà, we’re a pagan culture.

While parents may opt their children out of the sex ed indoctrination, they may not exempt them from the “LGBT” indoctrination that will permeate all other curricula. Fat lot of good opting their kids out of pro-“LGBT” sex ed will do when all their peers are in it and the rest of their classes are similarly poisoned.

A question for the non-gullible in Illinois: If these laws are passed, how long do you give it before the conscience-less swampsters propose a bill amending them to get rid of the opt-out option?

A question for Christian parents: How wicked do the ideas have to become and how young the children to whom these ideas are presented in government schools before you realize government schools are training up your children to go in ways that no one should go?

A question for Christian teachers: How wicked do the ideas you’re asked to teach or implicitly speak (e.g., through the use of incorrect pronouns to refer to “trans”-identifying students) have to become before you will take up your cross and refuse?

A question for pastors, priests, and elders: How wicked do the ideas that children in your congregations are exposed to in government schools have to be before you realize these children are your mission field? How wicked do the ideas that children in your congregations are exposed to in government schools have to be before you will either create affordable schools or make funds available to your families so they can send their children to existing but cost-prohibitive schools?

Government schools are no longer places that shape character or cultivate virtue. Government schools are places dedicated to the ideological grooming of children into the deviant-sex-obsessed world of “progressivism.”

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state senator and state representative to ask them to vote against these bills:  SB 3788, SB 2762 and HB 5012. Impressionable students in public schools should not be exposed to body- and soul-destroying messages that promote leftist beliefs about sexuality.

Even if your children or grandchildren are not in public schools, your taxes are being used for this relentless indoctrination campaign. In addition to sending an email, please call both of your state lawmakers during normal business hours via the state switchboard: (217) 782-2000.

A pupil is not above his teacher; but everyone,
after he has been fully trained, will be like his teacher.
~Jesus Christ (Luke 6:40)

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/sexed_mixdown.mp3

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

Written by Peter Sprigg

“Puberty blockers” are hormones originally intended to deal with “precocious puberty,” in which a child experiences the physical signs of puberty prematurely. Now, however, puberty blockers are being used as a treatment for “gender dysphoria.” The theory is that a child who is already unhappy with his or her biological sex may become even more unhappy when his or her body begins to develop.

The most extreme claim is that transgender children forced to undergo normal puberty will kill themselves. Into this debate came a new academic study published in the Pediatrics medical journal that resulted in headlines like these:

• “Puberty blockers could save the lives of trans teens, study shows” – The Hill
• “Puberty blockers linked to lower suicide risk for transgender people” – NBC News

There’s only one problem. These headlines are wrong.

The word “suicide” implies a fatality. The Pediatrics study was not a study of suicide—because none of its subjects were dead. It was based upon answers given in the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey.

The key outcome referenced in the article was “lifetime suicidal ideation.” This means thinking about committing suicide. The finding that those who received puberty blockers had lower “lifetime suicidal ideation” than those who wanted them but did not receive them got the attention because it was the only one that reached the level of “statistical significance.”

However, “lifetime suicidal ideation” was only one of nine mental health outcomes that were listed in the study.

On four of the nine outcome measures—nearly half—the outcomes for those who received puberty blockers were worse than for those who did not. Most of these differences were small, but one figure jumped off the page. Those who received puberty blockers were twice as likely to have had a suicide attempt resulting in inpatient care (i.e., hospitalization) in the last 12 months as those who did not (45.5 percent vs. 22.8 percent). While we cannot reach definitive conclusions because of the small numbers involved, this raises important questions that are at least worthy of further research.

Also, the lifetime rate of suicidal ideation for those who received puberty blockers were lower than for those who didn’t—but it was still astonishingly high, at 75 percent. This hardly suggests that administering puberty blockers makes most children with gender dysphoria mentally healthy.

The authors acknowledge the study’s design “does not allow for determination of causation.” But they go further, raising doubt that puberty blockers cause lower rates of suicidal ideation—because it may be that people with suicidal ideation were simply considered poor candidates to receive puberty blockers.

Let’s be clear—we cannot conclude from this study that children who take puberty blockers are more likely to commit suicide than those who don’t.

But we also cannot conclude that they are less likely to commit suicide—notwithstanding the breathless media coverage.

Legislators considering restrictions on radical gender transition procedures for minors should make those decisions based on the harmful physical effects and risks of those interventions, many of which are well-known—not based upon the misinterpretation of psychological studies whose implications are far from clear.

This article was originally published at FRC.org.

Now that the Boy Scouts of America has filed for bankruptcy as a result of a deluge of sexual abuse suits, there is an obvious question that must be asked again. Seeing that the BSA leadership was well aware of the long history of male-on-male sex abuse, why on earth did it cave in to homosexual activism? Why did it open the door for openly gay scouts and then scout leaders?

On July 15, 2015 I wrote an article titled, “Boy Scouts’ Moral Suicide Continues.”

I noted then that “the barely hidden, dirty secret of the Boy Scouts of America is that for decades now, several thousand cases of man-on-boy sexual abuse have been swept under the rug, with private payoffs taking the place of open court cases – and to be perfectly clear, the men involved in these cases were normally Scout leaders.

“If such was the case with the ban on openly homosexual leaders in place, what happens when that ban is removed? And how do the Boy Scouts figure out who the bad apples are first? Or are the boys the guinea pigs in this poorly conceived experiment?”

Again, this is not to say that most gay men would abuse gay boys. And it is not to say that heterosexual men would do any better if they were left alone with heterosexual girls.

But is to say that there’s a reason that you don’t have straight men (without women) overseeing Girl Scout troops. And there’s a reason that you should not have gay men overseeing Boy Scout troops. (Or, for that matter, older gay teens left along with younger straight boys.)

In April, 2019, I noted that, “The open secret is no secret anymore. The tragedy is being uncovered for the world to see. As headlines now announce, ‘Sexual abuse scandal rocks the Boy Scouts of America as it is revealed “more than 12,000 members were victims of perpetrators who will soon be revealed in ‘perversion files.”’

“But,” I continued, “this is only the beginning of the travesty.

“Not only has the BSA allegedly covered up thousands of cases of sexual abuse of children, but while this was going on, the BSA actively opened the door to gay scouts and even gay scout leaders. It’s as if they were inviting the complete implosion of their organization.

“And they did so at the expense of vulnerable children, some of whom have been scarred for life.

“Think about that for a minute.”

So I ask the BSA leadership once again: Knowing what you knew, why did you change your policy? Why did you make it even easier for sexual harassment to continue on your watch? (Some would say to me, “Show me the evidence that there was in increase in abuse with openly gay scout leaders.” I would say in rely, “Show me there was not an increase.”)

Back in 2011, Bill Muehlenberg wrote from Australia, “A well known saying affirms that the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world. Homosexual activists know this all too well. As one lesbian put it, ‘Whoever captures the kids owns the future’. Thus we find the constant attempts by homosexual activists to influence children.

“There have been many such attempts lately to get access to young people. For example, in the United States the New Jersey Supreme Court has ordered the Boy Scouts to admit homosexuals. The Girl Scouts have also caved into Political Correctness. Indeed, according to some Scout staffers, one in three of the Girl Scouts’ paid professional staff is lesbian. And in the United Kingdom, the English Scout Association recently lifted the ban on homosexuals becoming troop leaders.”

And this is going to prevent and lessen cases of sexual abuse? Really? This will protect these vulnerable young people?

In his latest article on the subject, Muehlenberg quoted Prof. Paul Kengor, who wrote in 2018, “The Boy Scouts have been emasculated, neutered. The organization that prided itself on courage stands impotent, fearful in the face of feminists and LGBTQ militants. They’ve cowered to the forces of ‘diversity’ and ‘tolerance.’ And for cultural revolutionaries, the defeat of the Boy Scouts is the end of a long march through yet another institution.”

So I ask once more: BSA, why did you do it?

Did you genuinely have the best interests of the boys involved? Did you honestly think that you were not endangering them even more? Did the thousands of allegations of man-on-boy abuse not give you pause to think?

Of course, we could also ask if there was anything the BSA could have done when the first reports of abuse began to surface years ago. As the Catholic Church knows all too well (not to mention many independent churches), covering up sex abuse is never the way to go.

Could policies have been changed to weed out predators? Could a culture of openness been cultivated where victims were encouraged to come forward?

Only those inside the organization can answer those questions, and they are questions that deserve to be answered.

Perhaps others can learn from the BSA’s mistakes.

But there is no excuse that can be made for the policy changes that allowed for openly gay scouts and then openly gay scout leaders. And there is no excuse for companies like Disney, Lockheed Martin, Caterpillar, Major League Soccer, Merck, Intel, UPS, and AT&T which reportedly withheld donations until the policy changed.

In the end, in the name of tolerance, diversity, and inclusion, they opened the door even further to life-destroying abuse.

So I ask once more: why?

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.

Written by Peter Heck

Written by Tony Perkins

Lynn Meagher seriously considered killing herself. Desperate, tormented, and out of options, she went to see a therapist. How should she cope, she cried, knowing that two of her children wanted nothing to do with her? Two children, who, through horrible, mutilating surgeries, destroyed the bodies she’d carried inside her? “I felt I was living in a dream, a nightmare,” she says quietly. That nightmare, the one she wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy, is real. And from now on, every time you walk through the door of a Starbucks, you’re telling moms like Lynn you couldn’t care less.

“I can’t even describe what it’s like to see your own child’s face with the opposite gender superimposed on it. It’s just… I can’t even describe it…” Parents like Elaine Davidson still struggle to talk about the bloody bandages covering the place where their daughters’ breasts used to be. “I begged everyone I could [to stop the surgery]. I begged her. I couldn’t stop it.” Losing a child to this tortured life is like a death in the family. Only, there was no goodbye. No ceremony. “No one sent us flowers,” Lisa grieves. “No one dropped off a casserole.”

So imagine their horror when they scanned the headlines and saw an American company — one as large and powerful as Starbucks — trying to inflict that pain on as many people as possible. In an announcement shocking even for them, the coffee chain is launching a campaign to actively push kids into sex changes that damage them for life. Using #whatsyourname as its call sign, Starbucks started placing ads in the U.K. featuring a young girl (dressed like a boy) who wants the barista to write “James” on her cup. “Taking a customer’s name, writing it on a cup, and calling it out is a symbol of our warm welcome,” Starbucks says.

But it isn’t just the “welcome” customers are supporting. The mega-chain has a much more serious agenda — donating piles of money to trap kids into this lifestyle of pain and suffering. “In addition to the ad campaign, Starbucks states it is partnering with Mermaids,” an activist group for “supporting trans and gender-diverse children.” “Transgender children,” the website says, “deserve the freedom and confidence to explore their gender identity wherever their journey takes them, free from fear, isolation and discrimination.” The goal? For Starbucks to raise at least 100,000 euros for the cause.

These aren’t grown men and women the coffee giant is after. These are children — young girls and boys who are hurting, confused, and being destroyed by adults pushing them to chase these identities, despite the cost. And the cost, hundreds of parents and patients will tell you, is irreversible.

“I remember breaking down. It was like, this was a mistake. It should never have happened. But what do you do about it? How do you go through another harrowing transition? What do you do? I’ve got no hair. I’ve got a beard. I’ve had all [of] my body mutilated. How do I go back?” Debbie was 17. She would do anything to turn back time. “There are thousands of us,” another young woman told the BBC, desperately wanting a way out. A way out from the life companies like Starbucks are telling children is the way to finally get noticed and valued. They don’t mention the heartbreak. The regret. The years of physical agony.

But then, it’s not as if Starbucks’s agenda is a surprise. The liberal business has never truly cared about kids — not after spending thousands of dollars helping Planned Parenthood abort them — or working to deprive them of a married mom and dad. And yet, despite it all, plenty of Christians will still rationalize turning their cars into the first drive-thru sign they see. “We’re uncomfortable with boycotts,” they’ll say. But surely we’re all more uncomfortable funding a war against innocent children. Try clicking through these stories and finding peace at Starbucks — or any company where your dollars help create more victims. Is the coffee really so good that you’re willing to give a portion of every cup to promote this self-destruction? Ask yourself when you read this plea from a mom whose family will never be the same.

“Once we have cut that beautiful body, when the voice is permanently broken, the beard is there for good, the breasts are gone, what happens if the body was never wrong to start with? What will you tell the daughters that realize, too late, that they have destroyed their ability to bear children, or to nurse them? When they find that their wounds had other causes, other origins, and required other treatments? I plead with you to hear the parents, and the many stories of young people who have changed their minds after medical transition. This is not health care, this is a medical experiment. This is not life-saving care, these are criminal actions. And [it] must be stopped.”

You can help. Contact Starbucks and ask them to stop contributing to agendas that permanently scar our kids. Meet Lynn and hear why below.

This article was originally published at FRC.org.

Illinois’ lesbian lawmaker Kelly Cassidy, arch nemesis of the good, the true, and the beautiful and creator of the worst legislation (e.g., the barbaric Baby Snuff Law) to come out of the fetid swamp in Springfield, and her collaborator Robyn Gabel have just sponsored HB 4870, a bill to require all children to mandate the HPV vaccine before entering middle school. And by all, I mean ALL.

This invasive, imperial diktat would apply to children in public and private schools—which includes all private religious schools (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, and Muslim), and homeschools—no exceptions. Don’t be surprised, however, if an amendment is added to exempt homeschools, (maybe even religious private schools). There’s little that presumptuous, self-righteous Springfield swampsters with their super-majorities in both houses fear, but they do fear homeschool parents.

You public school parents are out of luck. You are not feared because the swampsters know that very few Christians in public schools will say or do anything in response to the outrageous diktats the swampsters pass. That’s why they’ve been able to pass their ignorant sex ed law, their ignorant “anti-bullying” law, their pernicious “LGBT” school indoctrination bill—all of which were really Trojan horses to get their pro-sexual deviance ideology into government schools.

Now that America is awash in sexual deviance, the same reprobates whose sexual ideology has caused the spread of sexually transmitted diseases are swooping in to try to fix their mess by interfering in the private lives of all parents.

Whether you choose to vaccinate your children with the HPV vaccine or not is irrelevant. This issue is about the usurpation of parental rights by a ravenous government behemoth seeking to devour not only your rights but also the minds, hearts, and bodies of your children.

Read the bill for yourself and weep—no, don’t weep. Get mad, and don’t take it anymore:

Provides that the Department of Public Health shall adopt a rule requiring students, upon entering the sixth grade of any public, private, or parochial school, to receive the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination and requiring confirmation that the student has completed the series of HPV vaccinations upon entering the ninth grade of any public, private, or parochial school. Provides that the Department shall adopt the rule in time to allow students to receive the vaccination before the start of the school year beginning in 2022. Effective January 1, 2021.

While Cassidy and Gabel are so sure that the HPV is completely safe that they are willing to command that other people’s children be vaccinated, many parents reviewing research like this are less certain:

Discrepancies in the evaluation of the safety of the human papillomavirus vaccine

Hypothesis: Human papillomavirus vaccination syndrome–small fiber neuropathy and dysautonomia could be its underlying pathogenesis.

Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia With Chronic Fatigue After HPV Vaccination as Part of the “Autoimmune/Auto-inflammatory Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants”

Chronic epipharyngitis: A missing trigger in chronic fatigue syndrome

Multiple Evanescent White Dot Syndrome after Human Papillomavirus Vaccination

Severe somatoform and dysautonomic syndromes after HPV vaccination: case series and review of literature

The epidemiological profile of ASIA syndrome after HPV vaccination: an evaluation based on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting Systems

It looks like Springfield swampsters are trying to shoo every last conservative out of Illinois.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state representative to let him or her know that you object to political officials usurping parental rights, especially on medical issues. This is an issue that should be between parents and their pediatrician. Public officials have no moral authority mandating controversial health treatments. Ask him/her to vote against HB 4870 if comes up for a vote.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/HPV-Vaccine-for-ALL-Children.mp3

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

Yesterday, I shared the stories of two suffering teenage girls who deeply regret having taken testosterone and feel betrayed by the medical community that should have protected them during a time of confusion. Now read the story of a suffering mother, Lynn Meagher, who has three children, two of whom—a son and daughter—now pretend to be the sex they aren’t.  At age 20, her now 37-year-old son adopted a girl’s name, was castrated, got breast implants, and a tracheal shave. Then two years ago, her then 23-year-old daughter adopted a boy’s name and started taking testosterone. Both children have severed their relationships with Lynn.

Read Lynn’s incomprehensible story of the family secret she’s been keeping:

As I sit here in a tiny airport in Pierre, South Dakota, having been effectively silenced in a massive international Twitter smear campaign initiated by my own children, who are so brainwashed at this point that they honestly seem to believe I did things I never did, and that I’m some sort of evil monster who abused them nearly beyond the point of recovery, I have decided to tell the truth. I’m sure this truth will be largely ignored, as, unfortunately, people will believe what they make up their minds to believe. But I’ve protected the guilty and kept secrets for people who will not rise to my defense, and I’m done taking the blame that doesn’t belong to me. It’s horrible beyond description having the dysfunction of one’s past and family up on the internet for strangers to play with. If they are going to play, they may as well have the truth.

I will never forget the sunny day in early September 1992, when I learned the truth about my new husband. A happy bride of only three weeks, I was sweeping up the kitchen floor when I noticed a tiny scrap of newspaper. It was a personal ad. That tiny piece of paper tore through my heart like a knife. I don’t remember the exact wording, but this person was red headed. Hot! Liked sexy lingerie. And HUNG! The ad went on to mention several specific sexual acts, none of which I had the vocabulary to understand. At the bottom, in my new husband’s handwriting, a phone number was scrawled in pencil.

Like any life changing memory, the details are seared in my memory. I remember the exact position of the room I was in, the pattern of the floor, the type of broom. But mostly I remember reeling. I thought I knew this man. Obviously, I was wrong. I called his office and his pager. He was working as a social worker at Madigan Army Medical Center at the time. He didn’t answer, so I had him overhead paged. When he called, I told him that I needed him to come home immediately.

And thus began a 23 year long game of manipulation, over which time I extended forgiveness more times than I could possibly recount. I learned that he liked to tie himself up. He liked to dress in lingerie, which he would buy at the local thrift store by the bagfull, and stash away in hiding places all over the house. I learned that he had a weird fetish about ballet dancers. And shoes, particularly ones with lots of straps. I tried not to think about whether or not he liked to wear my lingerie when I wasn’t home. Some things we don’t like to imagine.

I learned that he had several boxes of photos of random women that he had taken over the years- just women out walking along. He saved them. On the way home from church, he would tell me that he hadn’t been able to concentrate on what was happening because he was so distracted by teenagers wearing short skirts. He would leave his therapy journal lying around the house, where he would write about his latest struggles and temptations. That’s where I learned that he was having a hard time not staring too hard at my daughter’s friends, because he noticed that they were starting to develop into women. I feel very badly now for protecting him from that one.

I learned that he tried to hire a transgender prostitute two weeks before we got married, while on a work trip to San Francisco. He claims he didn’t go through with it because the prostitute wanted $100, and that was too much money. So he would have enjoyed himself if the price was better. I was supposed to be grateful that he declined.

His very favorite porn genre is trans porn. It was a trans porn paperback that I found left open in the family bathroom one day. I had no idea how long it had been there. My son was 11 at the time. And he was home. [My husband] was sorry, so very sorry. It was an addiction, and he truly wanted to be freed from it. He went to therapy. Lots and lots of therapy. I can’t remember all the names of the programs he graduated from. And he went to accountability group faithfully every Monday night. But he would inform me that he couldn’t make any promises he couldn’t keep. I guess he forgot that he made lots of promises on our wedding day that he never intended to keep.

Looking back, it is so obvious that I should have left him right then. But he was really good, as most narcissists are, at gaining sympathy and redirecting blame. Over and over the cycle went. I would find things, lots of things. And he would be sorry, so sorry. He was trying to do better, really he was. And he would sleep on the couch for awhile, and then life would go on until the next time I found something. I never looked for this stuff. Detective work isn’t really my style. He was bad at cleaning up the evidence, and I would stumble on the latest.

Our two little girls were the best thing that came of all that. They were precious and perfect and brought much joy. But as time went on, they were troubled. Why I couldn’t see at the time that his porn habit had invaded their lives is beyond me at this point. He would constantly belittle and undermine me. He was the friend parent. I was the bad cop, always trying to get people to clean up after themselves or be respectful or some other awful thing. What I gradually realized is that I had never once heard him tell the kids, “Don’t talk to your mother that way.” I was always somehow the one at fault.

Once, when our daughter needed help and intervention, as revealed in her journal, he bought her a locking briefcase. Rather than working to help her, he put himself in the place of protector against me.

More could be told of the suffering of our children and the collapse of illusion. Suffice it to say, the kids suffered, and I was not the one to blame. My husband, Timothy Edward Meagher, was fired from Madigan Army Medical Center in 2000 after a coworker came into his office to return a coffee cup and found him masturbating to porn. At some time around that same period, there was an argument that spiraled into a physical fight between Tim and our son, during which Tim broke a chair over him. Our son called the police, who interviewed them both and took our son into custody for the night. I was at Costco when this happened. By the time I got home, it was over.  The reason I’m telling this is that it’s now being reported all over the internet that I broke a chair over my “daughter’s” back. That’s the level of lying that’s happening here.

I finally left him in 2015, after stumbling upon his Google search for “tweens in stockings.” I took the computer to the police and asked them to search it. They couldn’t get past a password without Tim’s permission. He refused to give permission. He claims he did nothing wrong. And yet he refused to allow the computer to be searched. As a result of this, he lost his employment at Multicare Medical Center as a social worker.

When I finally left, it was such a freedom. There was an oppression in that home. And my children are still living with him and still under that oppression. I fear for them. I could tell more, and if I have to, I will. But here’s the thing: Timothy Edward Meagher knows the truth about that incident and more. And yet, when our children went online and told lies that are now circulating freely and damaging my reputation, when strangers are postulating that I’m some sort of mommy dearest monster, there’s something he could say: “Don’t talk about your mother that way.”

I forgive because I don’t want to carry this around. But I will not excuse, and I will no longer protect.

Porn kills people. It kills love. It kills innocence. And it kills families.

Does anyone really believe this man’s depravity and selfishness had nothing to do with the confusion of his children?

Society looks back on the 1950’s as a nightmare of gender rigidity and sexual provincialism. But did the brokenness of children then come anywhere close to that of kids since the sexual revolution? Has easy access to even the most repellent forms of porn helped or hurt children? Has easy-peasy divorce helped or hurt children? Has the hook-up culture helped or hurt children? Has the deviant “LGBTQQAP” ideology helped or hurt children?

Our government schools now teach things to children that no child should know. Our doctors do things to children that should never be done. We’re breaking kids and offering as a solution to shatter them.

Lynn is engaged in a heroic and painful struggle to save her children and stop this scourge that is ravaging the bodies, minds, and hearts of countless other children and adults.

It must be stopped.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/merger_A-Terrible-Secret-.mp3

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

Here are just two of the countless unbearable stories of sorrow and regret that the mainstream press doesn’t want to tell. Here are just two of the many nightmarish stories that “gender therapists,” cosmetic surgeons, urologists, endocrinologists, pharmaceutical companies, and vocal coaches who profit from the confusion of children don’t want you to hear. Here are the accounts of bone-deep anguish from young people who feel betrayed by adults who facilitated the chemical and surgical ravaging of their once whole and healthy bodies:

I’m 16 and my body is ruined. I destroyed every piece of me that made me a female, or at least, the parts that made me look and feel like one. I was on testosterone for a year and a half so my voice is fucked, my boobs are gone, I’m very hairy. … Just don’t really see the point in living if it’s gonna be like this. I can’t believe that everyone in my life failed me so hard. How are we letting insecure 14 year old girls make the decision to mutilate and ruin their bodies. I’m angry. I’m angry at this sick agenda. I’m angry at the sick people who think you have any other choice but to accept what you were given at birth. I’m angry that these sick people are pushing their sick agendas on sick, insecure, damaged, naive, gullible, children. Children don’t know what they want. Neither do the rest of these “trans” people. I’m sorry but you can’t change who you are. All it will do is send you into madness. Unfortunately, I’ve had to learn that lesson the hard way. I don’t “feel” like a girl or a boy. I just am. I’m just me. I wish someone could’ve told me that I was beautiful just the way I was. I was so beautiful. Now I am ruined. I was a singer. I had a delicate, soft voice. Now it’s harsh, like a teenage boy’s. All of these regrets, all of these memories, the pictures on my phone that I can’t stop staring at, staying up all night crying, listening to recordings of my old voice, realizing how if someone had just paid attention to me, maybe I wouldn’t be in this situation. I’m furious, and there’s nothing I can do except warn other young girls not to make the same mistake that I did. But I wouldn’t have listened either. I wanted that escape. I wanted to be a man so bad. Being a girl brought me nothing but tragedy. I was beaten and molested as a child. I felt weak. I wanted to be strong. I didn’t want to be another object for men to use. I wanted to be seen as a person. Well, now I’m a freak.

---

Two years ago, I was a healthy, beautiful girl heading toward high school graduation. But after taking testosterone for a year, I turned into an overweight, pre-diabetic nightmare of a transgender man. …

I’m one of many young women that have been failed by the medical system. I was diagnosed with gender dysphoria, a mental-health condition. I was treated with mega-doses of powerful testosterone that ravaged my body, caused me to gain 50 pounds, and put me at risk for heart disease, diabetes, and teenage menopause.

I’m not putting all the blame on the mental health people or the doctors. These are regretful choices I made as a teenager. But I trusted the doctor’s advice. They were the experts, who was I not to listen to them?

But telling an 18-year-old girl that mega-doses of testosterone would fix her mental health problems? They didn’t even talk to me about other treatment options! No doctor or therapist suggested I give myself time to grow up, or wait and see what happens with counseling sessions – no doctor or therapist told most young people outgrow their feelings of wanting to be the opposite sex.

The only advice I got was to take mega-doses of testosterone.

I did this to myself for almost a year. Meanwhile, my mom was crying daily about why I was doing this to myself, all the while blaming herself.

Finally, one day, my grandfather sat me down to talk about it. With tears in his eyes, he asked me to stop.

That was a saving grace. I would have let this treatment kill me before admitting I’d screwed up. His intervention saved my life.

Today, I continue to deal with the permanent side effects of messing up my body.

I’m not a political person. I’m just a young person that needed help from doctors, and unfortunately got caught up in this medical scandal.

More and more young people are being deceived every day, being told that the solution to their insecurity and identity problems is to get a sex change. The problem is, a person’s sex can’t really be changed. You can take hormones and have cosmetic surgeries, but that doesn’t really change your sex, or solve your problems. I wish I knew that when I was younger.

These young people who have stopped identifying as the sex they are not are called “detransitioners,” and there are many of them. With broken families, abuse, trauma, absence of faith, and inculcation with perverse ideologies on sexuality and “identity,” the world is creating deep wounds in children, providing distorted lenses through which these wounded children misinterpret their experiences, and offering wicked solutions for which wounded children in desperation grasp.

As the number of “trans”-identifying children and teens explodes—particularly among adolescent girls, we will hear more and more of these stories. Already there are thousands of young adults detransitioning and telling their stories. How many more do you need to hear before you speak up? Are you going to be one of those countless adults who stand silently by as children’s bodies are mutilated because you’re too cowardly to stand against the forces of ignorance and evil? Are you going to just go about your daily business, risking nothing even as 13-year-old girls have their healthy breasts amputated? Does your silence bring glory to God? Do you not love these children as yourself?

Will you protest drag queen story events for preschoolers when your local library hosts one?

Will you tell your children’s teachers that under no circumstance are your children to be exposed to any classroom discussions, activities, presentations, or resources that address cross-sex identification (or homosexuality)?

Will you tell your government school administration that your children may not share locker rooms or restrooms with opposite-sex students?

Will you ask your pediatrician for his or her view of chemical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors and change doctors if he or she affirms such destructive nonsense?

If you live in Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, or Texas where bills have been proposed or will soon be proposed banning chemical and surgical interventions for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors, will you vigorously and publicly support those critical bills? Will you ask your lawmakers to sign on as co-sponsors of those bills?

If you live in Illinois, where the first such bill in the nation was introduced almost a year ago by one of Illinois’ finest lawmakers, State Representative Tom Morrison, will you vigorously and publicly support both his bill and him? Will you contact your state representative and ask him or her to sign on as a co-sponsor of the bill?

If your really care about children, you will do all of the above.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/trans-nightmares_mixdown.mp3

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Progressives are Punishing a Gay Professor for Stating the Obvious

Progressives, drunk on cultural power and sanctimony, steeped in vapid ideology, and patinated in faux-fragility demonstrate that history does, indeed, repeat itself as the political left again become oppressors.

The most recent demonstration of leftist tyranny comes from the University of Washington (UW) where Stuart Reges, an openly homosexual lecturer in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering, is being hounded out of his 15-year job by students, colleagues, and administrators who have no understanding of the critical importance of First Amendment protections to a healthy body politic.

The saga began in June of 2018 when Quillette, an online “platform for free ideas,” whose female founders “respect ideas, even dangerous ones” and “believe that free expression and the free exchange of ideas help human societies flourish and progress,” published an article by Reges titled, “Why Women Don’t Code.”

His article, inspired by the firing of James Damore by Google for the offense of writing an inter-office memo on, inter alia, the disparity in numbers between men and women and the absence of intellectual diversity at Google, addressed similar problems within academia, including the enraged responses to his pleas merely to discuss diverse views on diversity.

In this first article for Quillette, Reges established both his academic credibility as well as his bona fides regarding his commitment to fostering a love of computer science in young women. Then he addressed three professionally perilous topics:

• Reges argued there are, broadly speaking, two different approaches to advancing workplace “diversity,” one of which is the “equality agenda” that seeks to remove “artificial barriers.” He calls the other approach the “equity agenda,” which “involves a commitment to righting the wrongs of the past. Political and religious diversity are not on their list because they don’t represent the immutable characteristics previously used to justify discrimination.”

• The equity agenda’s view of “inclusion often demands the exclusion of ideas and opinions.”

• Reges next stated what should be a commonplace observation: men and women are different. Instead, that observation was met with howls of outrage from those who ironically argue that in order to attract more women into the computer science field, the field must change in ways that will attract women—who, they claim from the other side of their mouths—are no different from men.

• Finally, Reges argued—with evidence—that there are complicated reasons for the male-female disparity in the field of computer science, among which are innate inclinations and free choice.

Jordan Peterson, 2018 cultural mega-star, then tweeted about Reges’ article, which put Reges on the radar of the faux-fragile and sanctimonious, including students and colleagues at his own school and in his own department. Since, Reges had a three-year appointment, the intolerant had to wait until December 2019 when his appointment expired to exact revenge, and exact it they did. In another article published January 11, 2020, Reges reported the following:

I was stripped of my primary teaching duties and given a highly unusual one-year probationary appointment. … In the 15 years I have been part of the school, I am the first regular lecturer to be offered less than a three-year extension. … The one-year reappointment is also odd given my faculty rank. I was the first lecturer in the College of Engineering at UW to be promoted to the rank of principal lecturer. The faculty code indicates that the normal period for reappointment for a principal lecturer should be at least three years. The administration had to obtain special permission from the provost to make such a short appointment. It is also perhaps worth noting that I am the only current member of the faculty in the Allen School who has won the Distinguished Teaching Award, which is the highest award given for teaching at UW.

At least as troubling was the response from a group of graduate students who filed a grievance against Reges with the Union of Academic Student Employees and Post Docs at the University of Washington (UAW) and then concocted recommendations that reveal their puerility:

• A relaxation of grading on coding style.

• Allowing students to work together in a group for part of their grade instead of requiring them to complete all graded work individually.

• Training for TAs in inclusion and implicit bias.

• Review of all course materials for inclusiveness. For instance, of a lecture that involves calculating body mass index (BMI) using guidelines from the National Institutes of Health, the report noted that it “seems insensitive to present students with a program that would print out that some of them are ‘obese’ while others are ‘normal.'”

• A reduction in the amount of effort expended pursuing cheating cases by 50 percent even though there has been no reduction in cheating cases.

These graduate students also recommended “that courses incorporate inclusiveness best practices as outlined in an Allen School document,” including these:

• The addition of an indigenous land acknowledgement to the syllabus.

• The use of gender-neutral names like Alex and Jun instead of Alice and Bob.

• The use of names that reflect a variety of cultural backgrounds: Xin, Sergey, Naveena, Tuan, Esteban, Sasha.

• An avoidance of references that depend on cultural knowledge of sports, pop culture, theater, literature, or games.

• The replacement of phrases like “you guys” with “folks” or “y’all.”

• A declaration of instructors’ pronouns and a request for students’ pronoun preferences.

Puerility and Newspeak come to academia.

To illustrate the “mob mentality” among students and administrators, who seem to believe the ends of destroying the career of Reges justify hasty judgments, incuriosity, and deceit, Reges tells the story of an anti-affirmative action campus bake sale he attended:

[T]he UW College Republicans organized an affirmative action bake sale, at which cookies were sold to Asians for $1.50, to whites for $1, and to African Americans and Hispanics for 50 cents. Cookies were free to Native Americans.

I attended the event to see how it was received and ended up having an hour-long conversation with a young woman about race relations on campus. . . .

The Stranger published an article about the event which included photographs of my interactions with the young woman. I was quoted as saying, “I don’t see racism on campus.” … But, as footage of our exchange captured by a local news team later confirmed, what I actually said was “I don’t see rampant racism on campus.” A small but important difference between a denial of ongoing racism and a disagreement about its prevalence.

[T]he day after the article in the Stranger appeared, I received a message from the director of the Allen School which included this:

. . . in my opinion, this is not about freedom of speech, and it’s also not about affirmative action. . . . This is about your lack of sensitivity to minority students and your continued (and almost gleeful) denial of their experiences, which I find extremely regrettable and disappointing coming from somebody of your stature and experience.

[The director] later told me that his judgment was based entirely on the misreported quote. He didn’t ask me what had happened. He didn’t ask if the quote was accurate. He simply concluded that I was insensitive to minority students. How he decided that I was “almost gleeful” is beyond me, but it indicates a reflexive disapproval among some my colleagues since the publication of my Quillette essay.

So far, the oppressors have failed to break or even bend Reges. He has since “joined Heterodox Academy” and “attended the 2019 Heterodox Academy Conference and the 2018 faculty conference for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).” Reges won’t acquiesce to the oppressors because he understands what’s at stake. Perhaps his warning will strengthen the spines of conservative students, teachers, and administrators:

Today, the people on campus who need to worry about expressing their ideas are conservatives and religious people. Now it is gays doing the punishing of anyone who opposes gay marriage, gay adoption, hate speech codes, and civil rights protection for gays. Everything old is new again. I’m once again having private conversations behind closed doors in my office with closeted individuals, but this time they are students, faculty, staff, and alumni who oppose the equity agenda. They are deeply concerned about the university’s direction, but they are also afraid of jeopardizing their current or future job prospects. They also worry about losing friendships and professional relationships. One faculty colleague described it as “mob rule.” … I am concerned that people believe free speech is improving on college campuses when in fact things are getting worse. We have fewer overt examples of speakers being shouted down and disinvited, but now the censorship is going underground. Those who talk to me behind closed doors censor themselves because they know the consequences of speaking up.

If every conservative would speak up, the oppressors would lose.

This article was originally published by our good friends at Salvo Magazine. Check them out and subscribe to this great publication!

Why Christians must engage the culture on sexual ethics or be responsible for our civilization’s demise

As a Christian pastor, I am seeing a dangerous trend among American Christians: There seems to be a philosophical and theological framework developing in reaction to a culture that is becoming increasingly hostile to a Christian worldview. In many cultural spaces, the Christian worldview is considered laughable and openly despised. The response of a large segment of evangelicals is to privatize faith and talk publicly only about issues that don’t ruffle cultural feathers.

This is most profoundly seen in the cultural conversations on sexuality. Every evangelical is ready to talk about clean water in Africa, but you will find very few who want to talk about the necessity of Christian sexual ethics as a cultural standard. The reason is crystal clear. Christian sexual ethics are despised in secular society. They are viewed as hateful and repressive. Younger evangelicals see the writing on the wall and want nothing to do with this—as they view it—embarrassing part of their faith. They might very well be traditional in their sexual ethics, but they have talked themselves into believing that no one else needs to know these biblical truths. Sadly, they couldn’t say why Christian sexual ethics are good for the culture anyway.

A new trend among evangelicals is a posture of apology: “we are so sorry that the Bible says this is not a good idea.” Then, they have “listening conversations,” in which they listen to how damaging these cultural ethics have been. Then, they apologize again. Through silence or apology, a large segment of Christians have removed themselves from the public square on the conversations of sex, desire and gender. They want to be relevant. Staying quiet on sex and gender seems to keep us acceptable to the powerful cancel culture.

What happens when the Christian worldview on sexuality loses its defenders in the public square? What happens when a society removes its long-held prohibitions on sexual activity outside of the traditional marital covenant—one man, one woman for life? What happens when marginal sexual impulses of a society aren’t just tolerated but celebrated as a societal good? What happens when morality itself shifts so that gay marriage, gender fluidity and surgical “gender” interventions are held as high examples of society’s wisdom? What happens when what has been considered wrong in Western culture for millennia are now examples of a person’s ultimate expressions of courage and “authenticity”?

This is the world in which we find ourselves. The legal right to marry someone of the same sex is now viewed as a constitutional right. The era of “gender fluidity” is here. Children can now get medicine and surgery to repress and conceal their embodied sexual development and become what their fallen hearts desire, whatever that might be.

Catastrophically, this is not all that this new sexual freedom wants. The goal of the new sexual-freedom culture is not just freedom to do what an individual desires but also to force everyone to celebrate every sexual expression. With fascist-like devotion, they are taking aim at our children.

In Illinois, a new law has been passed that requires the inclusion of LGBT “contributions” to United States history. But this is not about historical contributions; it is about ideological indoctrination. In Joy Pullman’s Federalist article on the new law, Brian Johnson, an LGBTQ advocate, reveals that they are using this law to teach our children to accept the lifestyles of the LGBTQ community as a positive good:

“Imagine a generation of Illinois students having learned the positive contributions of LGBTQ people to U.S., Illinois, world history. … I think it’s only going to have a positive effect on our society’s view of LGBTQ people.”

The angels weep as we sacrifice our children through silence to the new god of tolerance.

Christian silence brings a great human cost. By remaining silent, we are handing our culture a death sentence. This sounds alarmist but if what follows is true, then the alarm must be rung.

Harvard sociologist J.D. Unwin’s seminal work Sex and Culture makes the danger to our country and culture clear. Unwin, a secularist, performed a sociological survey of 80 societies, looking at their sexual ethics and the state of the culture. His work shows a direct link to the flourishing of a society and the sexual ethics they embrace.

There are four stages of civilization that have repeated themselves throughout human history. The first stage is “zoistic.” Zoistic societies “have no … political organization; usually their ‘chiefs’ are social elders or magicians,” and they are “sexually free.” These are primitive societies that cannot provide care to their inhabitants.

The second stage is “manistic.” Manistic cultures embrace “ancestral worship.” The dead are worshipped, placated or served. Manistic societies “compelled an irregular or occasional [sexual abstinence].” Such societies do little to harness this power for the good of its members.

The third society is termed “deistic.” Deistic societies erect temples to respond to the powers of the universe. Successful deistic cultures are “energetic.” Unwin shows how sexual restraint and this social energy are tied together, writing that “members of all the deistic societies demanded the tokens of virginity as proof that a girl was virgo intacta when she was married.” Such a society prescribed “pre-nuptial chastity” to restrain sexual energy. To the degree that the sexual energies were restrained, the society was proportionally energetic:

[T]he accomplishments of extremely energetic societies are territorial expansion, conquest, colonization and the foundation of a widely flung commerce.” Sexual restraint, chastity, and marriage cause a society to flourish.

The fourth stage is termed “rationalistic.” Rationalistic cultures develop the arts and sciences and have intellectual advancements, and are also best positioned to care for all segments of society. In short, a rationalistic society is the kind of society where humans can truly flourish.

Western society is at the rationalistic stage, the apex of societal development. Yet according to Unwin, we are in a precarious place. Unwin’s demonstrates that when sexuality is properly constrained, the energies of that restrained sexuality is [sic] used for the good of society. But when a culture begins to expand “sexual freedom. … the society will begin to display less energy” and display “human entropy.” Such entropy is a decline into disorder. If left unchecked, the society will decline and be overtaken by others.

Surely, we have much to defend and protect. Arguably, Western civilization is the greatest society that has existed in human history. Built upon the foundation of the Hebrew tradition and the teachings of Jesus, the great fruit of Western civilization is representative democracy. No other modern government has done more good for human flourishing than the one we are a part of today. It is built upon the blood, sweat and tears of nameless citizens, saints and soldiers through the ages. The common good of our fellow humans around the world is dependent upon its survival and its ideas taking hold.

But it is time to sound the alarm. We are in danger of an extinction-level event, societally speaking. The house is on fire. We have expanded our sexual freedoms. We are losing all sexual restraint and the future is clear: a declining society that very well might be swallowed up by powers that can no longer be held at bay. If your neighbor’s house is on fire and they are asleep, you do not stop yelling to wake them up even if it annoys the whole block. Better to be annoyingly loud than watch your neighbors burn.

How might we be annoyingly loud on sexual ethics in a culture that is on fire? First, we need to remember what it means to be human. In Genesis 1:26-28, we see important ideas about humans that have been foundational to modern Western society. The first important idea that the Bible has given Western society is that every man and woman bears the image of God. Notice that biological sex is foundational to image-bearing and not an expression of personal choice. Our sex is what we are, not what we choose or how we feel. We can’t allow this pillar of civilization to be thrown out because a few post-modern intellectuals have decided biological sex doesn’t matter. It matters. and we must say so. Society’s future is at stake.

Second, the Genesis text teaches that each person is of immeasurable value. This value should be tended to, defended and cultivated. In Western culture, this means constraining sex to marriage because it is in a committed relationship that one man and one woman can honor and serve the image of God in one another. From this, the sexual ethics of Judaism and Christianity find their foundation. Sexual boundaries protect the beauty of God’s image in humanity. According to Unwin, this boundary enables society to flourish. Without it, there will be hell to pay.

The third biblical idea is this: “be fruitful and multiply.” In Christian theology, this is referred to as the creation mandate. If the image of God in humanity is where each person finds his or her identity and worth, then the creation mandate gives the purpose of human sexuality. In Western society, the family is the foundation. The human family is to be a womb of love, creation and protection. In the love of a father and a mother, a child matures in the stability of a life-long commitment. This purpose gives an aim for sex. Pleasure alone provides no restraint. Procreation and restrained pleasure in marriage enables society to flourish.

It is these ideas that have formed the basis of human advancement and human flourishing since the age of the enlightenment in Western society. It is the highest level of hubris to think we are above this pattern of sexual restraint and social energy. We ignore Unwin at our peril.

It is the task of those who believe this is true and care about the future of human good to articulate and speak out for the good of the Judeo-Christian sexual ethic. It’s time to be annoyingly loud. In every area of life—with family, friends, colleagues, church, and in the public square and politics—we must be apologists for the common good. Make no mistake: those who believe in the new sexual ethic and destructive “gender” theories are not going to stay quiet. They are loud. If left unchallenged, a Christian worldview will be relegated to the trash dump of history. And if Unwin is right—and the research is sadly compelling—this new age of sexual freedom will propel our culture into destruction.

I have heard so many Christians speak ill of Western civilization or claim it doesn’t matter that Christians defend it. This demonstrates that they have no idea what comes next if we remain silent. According to Unwin, a culture that moves into our stage of sexual permissiveness has one generation to restore essential sexual restraints before the culture begins to diminish.

There is still time, but Christians cannot stay quiet. We know what is good and right. The house is on fire, and the occupants are sound asleep. If we love our neighbors, then we must engage. Gentleness and meekness have their place, but this moment demands something more. It demands courage to be annoyingly loud. It demands that we not be silenced by the crowds. It demands a willingness to be persecuted. We should do this because human flourishing is at stake. So, wake up, dear Christians. There is a fire to extinguish.

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

Well, well, well, the Facebook Overlords were busy censoring even on Sunday. Neither peace nor rest for the wicked, it seems.

Sunday, IFI was notified that the Overlords, in their infinite ignorance, had determined that a post written and posted on IFI’s Facebook page by me on Thursday night violated their “Community Standards” on “Hate Speech.” The post was about the openly homosexual, flamboyant, cross-dressing actor Billy Porter’s upcoming appearance on Sesame Street—a PBS television program for preschoolers paid for by the public (Add this appearance to the swelling list of ways the normalization of sexual deviance affects everyone, despite the claim from liars who have long said it would affect no one except those who directly engage in it).

The Overlords falsely claimed that the post was “Hate Speech,” which is defined by the Facebook Overlords as “dehumanizing speech, statements of inferiority, or calls for exclusion or segregation” based on “what we call protected characteristics — race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender, gender identity, and serious disease or disability.” (emphasis added)

Here’s the banned post:

Sesame Street is all in on inculcating the nation’s little ones with the dogma of sexual anarchists. They’ve announced on their FB page that openly homosexual, cross-dressing, faux-married actor Billy Porter will be a guest.

“It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were cast into the sea than that he should cause one of these little ones to sin (Luke 17:2).”

Christian Parents: Get your kids out of government indoctrination hellholes. No Christian should have their child in a “school” that introduces egregious sexual deviance to little children, that presents sexual deviance positively, and that sexually integrates private spaces. In Illinois, starting next fall, that’s every school at every level.

Churches: Make it possible for your families to get their kids out of government indoctrination hellholes. They share the same damnable mission to promote the same damnable ideology that Sesame Street does.

Christian Teachers Working in Government Indoctrination Hellholes: No Christ-follower has a moral right to teach evil ideas to children or to use incorrect pronouns when referring to students who seek to pass as the sex they aren’t.

By calling theologically orthodox views of sexual immorality “hate speech,” Facebook engaged in “hate speech” based on “religious affiliation,” thereby violating its own Community Standards.

Word to the Overlords: Expressions of moral disapproval of volitional acts that you Overlords celebrate do not constitute hatred of persons no matter how many times you claim they do.

Our time is so dark that society rejoices in exposing toddlers to cross-dressing and homosexuality, and heaps condemnation on those who call such perversion wicked.

Hey Christians, you know those lumps you keep tripping on in the darkness? They’re dead canaries.

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20)

“Please share this article before Facebook deletes it.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Facebook-Removes-IFI-Post.mp3

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

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

Here’s an excerpt from the Washington Post story:

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

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

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

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

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

The school responded to the secular press’ incomplete accounts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So many errors, so little time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or this:

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

Or this:

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

Or this:

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

Or this from Paul:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

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

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

“[F]or Precious Brady Davis,
getting her husband pregnant meant going off hormones.”

How’s that for a head-scratcher of a quote—a quote that actually appears on the no-longer reputable NBC 5 Chicago “news” website  in a story about two “trans”-cultists who are married and recently had a baby. The pretend-wife is “Precious” Brady Davis,” a biological man who pretends to be a woman. The pretend-husband is “Myles” Brady Davis, a biological woman who pretends to be a man. Myles-the-real-mother is the director of communications and press secretary for Illinois’ premier “LGBTQ” propaganda organization, Equality Illinois. This woman really knows how to spread propaganda.

The “trans power couple” are in the news again, and again they’re in the news for pernicious reasons. When Myles was 20 weeks pregnant, she learned that she would be listed as the baby’s mother on the birth certificate, because she is, well, the mother.

As “trans”-cultists and propagandists so often do, Myles contacted an attorney with Lambda Legal who contacted the Illinois Department of Public Health, which immediately cried uncle … or aunt … or something. Suffice to say, the state caved to the “trans”-cultists.

The birth certificate will now identify the mother—the biological woman who gestated and birthed the baby girl—as the “father” and will identify the father—the biological man whose sperm united with Myles’ egg and then implanted in Myles’ womb—as the “mother.”

According to the Chicago Tribune, Myles-the-real-mother “never even thought the birth certificate would have to misgender us.” Yeah, riiight. She never thought a legal document would include the objective fact that she is the mother.

The Tribune writer, Nara Schoenberg, evidently a propagandist for the “trans” cult who identifies as a news reporter, described the possible identification on the birth certificate of the biological father as the father as making “matters worse.”

Propagandist Schoenberg also wrote this nonsensical sentence:

To have biological children, they had to go off their gender-reinforcing hormones.

Schoenberg needs to take classes in both biology and leftist sexuality ideology. Does she know what hormones are? Does she know what “gender” is in the “trans” world she seeks to suck up to? Gender—according to “progressives”—is the aggregate of arbitrary, socially constructed conventions associated with maleness or femaleness. Hormones are chemical substances produced in the body that control and regulate the activity of certain cells or organs. Hormones can’t and don’t reinforce “gender.”

The website Mommyish—which claims to “take parenting seriously”—has an article about the self-glorifying, “trans”-cultist power couple titled “Trans Couple’s God-Like Pregnancy Photos Defy Stereotypes” which includes this photo from Myles-the-real-mother’s Instagram account:

A better title would be “Trans Couple’s Frankenstein-Like Photos Defy God.”

Word to Mommyish, while Myles’ cross-dressing and cross-sex hormone-doping is clearly an effort to conceal her sex (or as Mommyish calls it, “defy stereotype”), the photo of a mother heavy with child is the anti-thesis of a “stereotype.”

“Trans”-cultists use the fact that language changes over time to try to compel others to use their redefinitions of words and the neologisms they invent to advance their strange, science-denying, metaphysical ideology. Now they want to redefine the words “mother” and “father.” They no longer want those terms to be linked to biological sex. Instead, they want “mother” to denote humans who wish they were women and “father” to denote humans who wish they were men.

Well then, why not redefine the word “teenager”? Henceforth, it will no longer denote a human whose objective age is between 13-19 but, instead, denote humans who feel like, wish they were, or identify as teens?

What about “Latinx,” the neologism that refers to “people of Latin American cultural or ethnic identity in the United States”? Why not redefine “Latinx” to denote anyone who wishes they were or self-identifies as a person of Latin American cultural or ethnic identity—including those whose Puritan ancestors came over on the Mayflower?

While we’re thinking about language, let’s remember what George Orwell said about the abuses of language for oppressive political ends (i.e., Newspeak), which points to the importance of resistance to such abuses:

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….

[W]ords which had once borne a heretical meaning were sometimes retained for the sake of convenience, but only with the undesirable meanings purged out of them. (emphasis added)

So, “trans”-cultists have struck another blow against science and reality. Illinois birth certificates will no longer “misgender” “trans”-cultists. They will now mis-sex them. (As an aside, the long-ridiculed flat-earthers must be so jealous.)

Some of us remember the good old days when teachers asked elementary school children to scour the newspaper for current events. If we want children to learn about reality, teachers better not ask them to do that anymore.

It’s remarkable that seemingly rational, sane people in academia, the professional medical and mental health communities, the arts, faith communities, and the press pretend to believe the emperor in a gown is an empress. We should no longer be baffled by the ignorant and destructive ideas people believed or, because of their cowardice, pretended to believe in days gone by.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Chicago-Trans-Power-Couple-Birth-New-Birth-Certificates.mp3

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