We Have Slavery in our Midst – Here’s What You Can Do to Help End It

The following are all true stories. No names have been changed:

• Edie was four when her father died. When Bill moved in, she thought he would be her new Daddy. Instead, he started molesting when she was ten. Bill and her mother owned a butcher shop, and when she was twelve, he started selling her for sex out of the store. On any given day, she might be getting raped in a cooler in the back while customers were buying their dinner out front. If anyone ever noticed the signs of what was happening to her, they never took action.

• Lexie grew up in church. She was coerced into sex at age ten by a seventeen-year-old boy who was a friend of her uncle’s. With divorced parents and a distant father, she craved love and affection. She thought he loved her and that she was his girlfriend. He and her uncle then started selling her for sex to their high school friends at a neighbor’s house. She told her parents what was happening, but they didn’t believe her. She also told her youth pastor, but nothing came out of that either. Her situation continued until the two boys moved on. No one helped her.

• Brook was badly raped at age eleven. She and a friend, who had also been raped, ran away. Before long, they ended up dirty, disheveled, and hungry in a public area. A kindly, clean-cut couple approached them, bought them a meal, and then offered to take them back to their apartment for clean clothes. “We want to help you,” they said. The girls went with them, and before the night was over, Brook had been beaten, threatened, and taken out onto the street as a prostitute.

These are not outlying scenarios. This is the new face of human trafficking – also called modern slavery – in America. It’s happening in our cities, in our suburbs, and even in our schools during lunch and after school hours. And the children involved are getting younger and younger. Sometimes they’re physically held against their will (as in literal chains). Other times they are coerced under threat of harm to themselves or to someone they love. Lexie’s handlers, for example, told her if she didn’t cooperate, they would have her six-year-old sister take her place.

Often the trafficker is known to the child, as in the case of Edie and Lexie. Other times, it’s a predator who knows how to spot a vulnerable target and lure her into his net, the way Brook and her friend were easily eyed and ensnared. Social media has become a veritable hunting ground for children, as grown men posing as “friends” are continually casting for relationships with them online, gradually gaining trust until an opportunity arises to make a move. Another means of entry is the offer of a modeling or acting contract. (Believe it or not, adults fall for this on behalf of their children.) Boys are trafficked too. Studies vary, but estimates say 10-15 percent of trafficked children are boys. And as you can see, women can be complicit or actively involved as perpetrators.

Note also that these things are happening in America, not just “somewhere else.” In 2016, the U.S. led the world as a consumer of commercial sex. Massage parlors, dance clubs, and large-scale gatherings, such as major sporting events or conventions, are supply and demand breeding grounds, and it’s important to know that women of adult age working in legal sex establishments may not be there of their own volition. Some have been trafficked in and are being held under coercion or threat, and of those who weren’t, many still feel trapped because they see no way out. For those whose eyes have been trained to see it, America has become a nation of distributed red-light districts.

Geoffrey Rogers saw it, and in 2011, he left an executive position at IBM to take it on. Together with former major league baseball manager Kevin Malone, he co-founded the U.S. Institute Against Human Trafficking. He is also president of Ships of Tarshish Films, and Edie’s, Lexie’s, and Brooke’s stories are told in his film, Blind Eyes Opened: The Truth about Sex Trafficking in America. As the title implies, part of its purpose is to help us learn to see the signs of trafficking. That alone makes it important viewing, but it goes well beyond that. Six years in the making, Blind Eyes Opened is packed with information: preventive measures we all can take, what to do in the event we suspect someone is being trafficked, and how we in churches and communities can minister to those who’ve been entangled in this web, past or present.

Although the subject matter is difficult, it’s a beautiful and hopeful film – a full-throated call to the church to engage in this spiritual battle, minister to the wounded, and put an end to this evil in our midst. Blind Eyes Opened will be showing in theaters, one night only, on January 23^rd. Click here to see the trailer, or here for theaters and showtimes. If you can’t make a showing, click here to learn more about how you can join this fight.

IFI depends on the support of concerned-citizens like you. Donate now

-and, please-

School leaders who sexually integrate restrooms and locker rooms know what they’re doing is based on a lie. Why do I say that? First, let’s take a quick look at what’s happening in those schools that choose to sexually integrate private spaces to accommodate the wishes of students who feel they are or wish they were the sex they are not.

In addition to allowing “trans”-identifying students unrestricted access to opposite-sex locker rooms, these schools provide private changing cubicles for students who don’t want to undress in the presence of opposite-sex students or be in the presence of opposite-sex students who are undressing. For example, schools like the five high schools in Illinois’ District 211 provide what are essentially teeny tiny locker rooms within girls’ locker rooms for girls who don’t want to undress in front of the biological boys who are now allowed unrestricted access to the larger girls’ locker rooms.

Now set that information aside for a moment to look at the analogy on which cultural regressives ground their assertion that restrooms and locker rooms should be sexually integrated: They ground it on the claim that basing private space usage on biological sex is equivalent to racial discrimination. My online debate in September with Alan Mills, executive director of the Uptown People’s Law Center, clearly exposes that common “progressive” position. (As an aside, I highly recommend reading and discussing this debate with your children ages 12 and up.)

Mills (falsely) claimed this about my opposition to the sexual integration of private spaces:

[Y]ou are demanding that women who do not conform to your notion of what a woman should look like should be segregated, because it would make women who look different uncomfortable. This is exactly the argument used for segregated neighborhoods, separate drinking fountains, public accommodations, etc.

Mills was wrong. I said nothing about what women “should look like.” And if by “notion,” Mills means a “belief” or a “fanciful impulse,” he’s wrong again. That women have vaginas, uteruses, and breasts is not a “notion,” nor is it a fanciful impulse about what women “should look like”; it’s a scientific fact. The scientific fact that humans born with penises are male is not a “notion” either. Women are not uncomfortable sharing locker rooms with women “who look different.” Many women are uncomfortable sharing locker rooms with men. And men aren’t different-looking women.

Nor did I say that some women should be segregated from other women in private spaces. I said, biological men (or boys) should not be allowed in the private spaces of women (or girls).

But more important, note that Mills, like countless other self-identifying “progressives,” says that segregating biological men who wish they were women from biological women is analogous or equivalent to separate drinking fountains, lunch counters, or bus seating for blacks and whites.

This common leftist analogy is intellectually vacuous and constitutes the kind of sophistry that smart people with bad ideas use to confuse and deceive others. Mills and his ideological collaborators ignore the fact that while skin color differences have no meaning relative to eating, drinking, or riding buses, sex differences have profound meaning relative to undressing. In fact, sex differences are the very reason we have sex-separated private spaces for men and women. (This points to another lie from leftists. They implicitly claim that the desire for sex segregation when undressing or going to the bathroom has nothing whatsoever to do with sex differences, which raises the question for leftists, how and why did sex-segregated private spaces ever come into existence in the first place?)

I wonder how Mills and his collaborators explain the fact that there are many women of color who don’t want to undress in the presence of biological men. Are those women discriminatory bigots? Are they unable to see the equivalence between separate lunch counters for people of different races and separate showers for people of different sexes?

Now back to public schools’ provision of teeny tiny, private changing cubicles within girls’ locker rooms for girls who don’t want to undress in front of biological boys who wish they were girls.

Let’s employ the leftist analogy that separate private spaces based on biological differences between the sexes is unjustly discriminatory. If girls’ opposition to undressing in the presence of boys who identify as girls is equivalent to racism, why should schools provide private changing cubicles for those girls? Don’t those private cubicles signify the accommodation of egregious bigotry? If white girls said they were uncomfortable undressing in front of black girls, would schools ever provide private cubicles to accommodate their bigotry? In other words, if we apply the leftist analogy consistently, schools are now providing accommodations for “notions” that the advocates of sex-integrated privates spaces say are intrinsically evil.

I asked Mills the following questions four times, and, tellingly, four times he refused to answer:

If you believe sexual “segregation” is as intrinsically evil as racial segregation, are you fighting for the end of all sexual “segregation”? How do you justify leaving some sexually segregated spaces? Would you allow some racial segregation to remain legal? Using your deeply flawed analogy, would you allow some “whites only” spaces to remain?

Schools are being hoist with their own petard. If unwillingness to undress in front of “trans”-identifying, opposite-sex students is analogous to racism, then schools must get rid of private changing cubicles for “bigots.” If they don’t get rid of private changing cubicles, then they are either complicit in hateful bigotry or implicitly admitting that unwillingness to undress in front of “trans”-identifying, opposite-sex students is not analogous to bigoted discrimination.

School leaders who sexually integrate locker rooms either don’t really believe that sex-segregation in private spaces is bigoted and unjustly discriminatory, or they do believe it is and these tiny, private changing cubicles are just an interim step—a sop to conservative bigots—on the “progressive” path to the total eradication of sex-segregation everywhere for everyone. Community members need to find out which it is.

And while community members are at it, they should ask school leaders if it’s legitimate for girls to want to be free of the presence of boys in spaces where they—the girls—undress. If such a desire is legitimate, do the feelings of boys about their maleness or their ability to conceal their sex delegitimize the girls’ wishes? If, however, the desire of girls to be free of the presence of boys in spaces where they undress is not legitimate, then why have any sex-segregated spaces anywhere for anyone?

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Sexually-Integrate-School-Locker-Rooms.mp3

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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

On Friday, December 13, 2019, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported that construction had just begun on a Navy ship named the United States Naval Ship Harvey Milk (USNS Harvey Milk) after the pederast Harvey Milk. You read that right. The U.S. government is honoring an “ephebophile”—that is, an adult male who is sexually attracted to pubescent boys—whose only claims to fame are having had sex with teen boys and men and having been murdered by a disgruntled co-worker. While national memorials to historical figures who engaged in racism are torn down, and the #MeToo movement grows, leftists promote multiple government-funded memorials to a promiscuous homosexual pederast.

Openly homosexual journalist Randy Shilts, author of The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk, wrote about Milk’s sexual relationship with 16-year-old runaway John “Jack” Galen McKinley when Milk was 33 and living in New York City:

Within a few weeks [of his arrival from Maryland], McKinley moved into Milk’s Upper West Side apartment. … Milk kept his sexuality a closely guarded secret at work. Only one person managed to break the barriers between Harvey’s personal and professional life, and it wasn’t by Milk’s own choice. Jim Bruton, a Bache vice-president, met Milk when Harvey approached him for authorization to open an investment account as a guardian for a younger man who was his ward. Bruton … looked Milk sternly in the eye.

“What’s this guardian crap?” he asked. “What you’re really talking about is opening an account for the boy you’ve got living with you. Right?”

… Bruton was surprised to learn that his gregarious colleague had few close friends, lavishing virtually all his affection on his lover, Jack McKinley.

Milk violated New York’s age of consent law with a teenage boy, which constituted a Class E Felony, and our military is honoring him.

Milk, long-deified by the left as a homosexual hero, was the first openly homosexual San Francisco Board Supervisor who, along with Mayor George Moscone, was murdered by colleague Dan White after an unremarkable 10 months in office. Milk was not a martyr for the cause of normalizing sexual deviance—as Hollywood and homosexual activists would have America believe—and Dan White did not murder him because he—White—harbored anti-homosexual bigotry.

Journalist Daniel J. Flynn has been exposing the real Harvey Milk for years, most comprehensively in his 2018 book Cult City: Jim Jones, Harvey Milk, and Ten Days That Shook San Francisco for City Journal, Flynn shares some details about Dan White’s motives for killing Milk that the leftist press likely won’t cover because this information disrupts the deceitful leftist hagiographic Milk mythology:

White, a San Francisco Democrat like Pelosi and his two murder victims, resembled neither a “New Right” figure nor a raging homophobe. Politically, he resembled Dianne Feinstein, who served as White’s mentor on the board of supervisors. … All these years later, Feinstein—not Bill Dannemeyer or Bob Dornan—possesses Dan White’s diary. The association between the two figures upends the narrative portraying White as a right-winger out to settle ideological scores.

White delivered the keynote address at the California Coalition for Handgun Control’s 1977 annual meeting. Like Feinstein, he supported gun control. … As a supervisor, he voted for an aggressive affirmative-action policy that evaluated those in city management by how many minorities advanced under their leadership. On the board, the former cop and fireman essentially served as the representative of the city’s public-employees’ unions. …

The first person White hired in politics was a gay man, who served as his campaign manager and later his chief of staff and business partner. “That was never an issue,” Ray Sloan told me in an interview for Cult City: Jim Jones, Harvey Milk, and 10 Days That Shook San Francisco. “In coordinating his campaign, I don’t think anyone knew or cared if I was gay. … I sort of lived my own life. As time went on, it was clear that he knew. It just didn’t make any difference to him.”

Milk often joined White for coffee or lunch. Unlike other colleagues on the board, Milk attended the christening of White’s son. When Milk introduced the sole legislation authored by him to become law—a sensible ordinance requiring dog owners to clean up after their pets—White seconded it. But after Milk reversed his support for White’s efforts to keep a home for troubled youth from opening in his district, the troubled White reversed his support for a gay-rights measure important to Milk. Milk perhaps never saw White as an ally, but White clearly saw Milk as such, which led to feelings of betrayal.

During White’s brief time in politics, he sided with Milk on the most important issue involving gay rights. He endorsed “No” on Proposition 6, a ballot measure sponsored by California state senator John Briggs seeking to empower local school boards to fire openly gay teachers. White attended the largest gay-rights fundraiser in the history of U.S. politics at the time to mobilize support against Briggs. …

About a week after Prop. 6 went down to defeat, White abruptly offered his resignation from the board of supervisors. Then the public employees who had worked hard to elect him let him know, at times angrily, that they objected to his sudden decision. Just as suddenly, the mercurial politician asked for his job back. Moscone initially welcomed White back on the board, but the mayor changed his mind after Milk lobbied him to seat someone else and encouraged political players in White’s district to jettison his attempt to regain his seat.

White felt betrayed. More important, he felt as though he had betrayed those loyal to him. A petty man nursing a petty grievance over a petty office murdered Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.

“I know why Dan White killed Milk,” board colleague Quentin Kopp explained in an interview for Cult City. “Because Milk was lobbying Moscone not to weaken and not reappoint White to the board. That got around.” Dianne Feinstein, a fellow Democrat who nevertheless disagreed with Kopp on much, agrees with him here. “This had nothing to do with anybody’s sexual orientation,” she reflected ten years ago. “It had to do with getting back his position.” (emphasis added)

The federal government, the state of California, public schools, and now the military have all been duped by Big “Gay” into honoring a deeply dishonorable man. As with Matthew Shephard’s murder, homosexual activists have misrepresented the murder of Milk in order to exploit it for their pernicious political and social purposes.

Navy ships are named by the Secretary of the Navy, who is a political appointee. The blackguard who named the USNS Harvey Milk, Raymond Edmund Mabus Jr., was an Obama appointee with no military background who named another Navy ship the USNS Cesar Chavez.

In 2009, Barack Obama posthumously awarded pederast Milk the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is awarded for “especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.” Then beginning in 2010, the state of California began observing Harvey Milk Day on his birthday, May 22. In 2014, the United States Postal Service honored Milk with a commemorative postage stamp. But, for leftists, that’s not nearly enough recognition for Milk’s meritorious contribution to the normalization of sodomy.

In 2016, when the Navy first announced that a ship would be named after Milk, his homosexual nephew Stuart Milk said that naming a ship after his uncle “will further send a green light to all the brave men and women who serve our nation that honesty, acceptance and authenticity are held up among the highest ideals of our military.”

Is “authenticity” really one of the highest ideals of the military, and what exactly does such a claim mean? What if a 13-year-old authentically identifies as a 20-year-old? Would she be permitted to enlist in the Navy?

Is “acceptance” one of the military’s highest ideals? Acceptance of what? Everything? Every sexual desire? What if an admiral authentically loves his brother and is in a committed erotic relationship with him? Should the military accept that? After all, love is love.

This same ubiquitous nephew, spoke at a 2012 “ceremonial unveiling of the first street in the nation” named after a known pederast, saying his uncle “fell in love with the beautiful boys here.” Is that what our military now honors?

With his customary stoicism but this time tinged with a barely discernible melancholy, my Navy veteran father John Blackburn who served on the USS Ulvert M. Moore during WWII said, “This isn’t the country I fought for.”

No, it’s not. Our government now praises the perverse, celebrates the corrupt, and decorates the depraved.

Why aren’t Americans beating down the doors of their U.S. Senators and Representatives, demanding that no military vessel be named after an adult man who had sex with minors? I’d like to hear members of Congress defend naming a ship after a pederast. And if the Navy won’t put the brakes on this offensive project, then, in the service of authenticity, the ship should be renamed the USNS Harvey Milk—Pederast.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to express to your federal officials how offensive it is to name a Navy ship after a man who engaged in felonious sexual acts with a minor boy.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Harvey-Milk.mp3

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

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C. has a special holiday treat for the kiddies this year: My Fair Lady. Austin Ruse, President of the Center for Family & Human Rights, and his wife Cathy Ruse, Senior Fellow for Legal Studies at the Family Research Council, took their 14- and 11-year-old daughters to see it, and here is an excerpt from his review  published in the Washington Examiner:

Act 2, Scene 4: Alfred P. Doolittle is about to get married. … And what do we see …? Men dressed as can-can dancers singing and dancing to Alfred P. Doolittle’s joyous swansong Get Me to the Church on Time. It appeared that Drag Queen Story Hour had come to the Kennedy Center. …

[W]e were not prepared for the act to devolve into a staged orgy with simulated sex acts performed by and on a man dressed as a garish bride, the focal point of the choreography.

At one point, the “bride,” whose low-cut wedding dress repeatedly falls down to expose “breasts,” jumps on the top of a piano and leans back while another man exaggeratedly fondles his “breasts.” Then the “bride” spreads his legs in the air while another man pumps his face into the “bride’s” crotch, quite obviously simulating oral sex. This in front of my daughters and every other child unlucky enough to be there.

But there is more. The “bride” jumps down, dances across the stage, and bends over while Alfred P. Doolittle lifts his dress and simulates sex “doggy-style” for the gentle audience.

At the end of his number, there was rousing applause.

Nothing like simulated oral sex between a cross-dressing man and another man to celebrate the holidays.

Before the perverse, anti-family creepers got their grimy mitts on it, My Fair Lady was a family-friendly affair, but every inch of the public square must be sullied before the deviant among us are sated.

The inclusion of scenes of sexuality in plays that historically might have only alluded to sexuality is not new. Ten years ago, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre’s production of Macbeth included these scenes:

• Just after Lady Macbeth has read the letter from Macbeth in which he describes the witches’ prophecy, the actress playing Lady Macbeth removed her top and performed topless. When Macbeth arrived home, she mounted him and they simulated sex while the actor playing Macbeth fondled the actress’ bare breasts.
• After Macbeth becomes undone by the vision of Banquo’s bloody head, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth retreated to their bedchambers where she knelt down in front of Macbeth and simulated an act of oral sex.
• Three scenes were set in a strip club. There was no nudity, but one of the witches wore a buttocks-baring thong and gyrated like a professional stripper.

Despite what “progressives” claim, objections to vulgarity like this do not constitute provincial philistinism, and the performances of actresses who perform nude or topless are not “brave” performances. Except for exhibitionists, it takes nerve to exhibit publicly those parts of the human anatomy that are sexual or excretory in nature, but the nerve needed to entertain a theater audience through nudity is different from the bravery needed to risk suffering or death in the service of a noble cause.

The actress, Karen Aldridge, was degraded and objectified. Her exhibition of her body and her willingness to be publicly fondled was disgraceful and distracting. It added nothing of value to our understanding of Macbeth and pulled audience attention out of the story.

If it is brave and justifiable to publicly exhibit and exploit one’s body, then we should stop telling our children that the parts of their anatomy that are inherently sexual are “private parts.”

For an actress to be willing to bare her breasts in front of hundreds of strangers night after night and allow a man who is not her husband to fondle them suggests a heretical Gnostic view of the human person—a view that separates the physical body from the internal “spiritual” self. This is a troubling and false dualistic view of the human person, which denies the reality that our physical, material bodies are inseparable from our immaterial spiritual selves and are sacred.

Despite what many within our “artistic” communities may claim, “art,” or rather some contemporary misconception of art, is not an ultimate value. It does not transcend or supersede the objective truth that our naked bodies are not for public display or public consumption.

As with the Ruse family, no warning was provided to my family that the production was R-rated. Clearly, the artistic staff at Chicago Shakespeare was not concerned about offending audience members, including those who brought their middle or high school-age children to the play as my husband and I did. Nor did they seem to consider the possibility that there may be people who struggle with an all too common, family-destroying porn addiction and consciously avoid graphic sexual imagery.

After IFI posted a short warning about the play, we received this email from a woman who objected to my objections:

Your evaluation of Macbeth made me chuckle. I am going to see the production tonight. My daughter, who works at the theatre, has seen it and was quite impressed with the production. I will reserve my comments to you until after I have seen it. However, I must be upfront and tell you I have little, if any, respect for your organization, so, naturally, your opinion is of no importance. However, I did want to share with you this funny (sad?) anecdote. One parent that came into the theatre worried about the sexual overtones of the show was quite accepting of the violence. No problem there! We can maim people, carry guns, annihilate anyone with whom we disagree, but show people having sex???? Blasphemy!! What a mixed-up set of values …

I’m not sure she knew what an “overtone” is. An overtone is “a subtle or elusive quality or implication.” There was nothing remotely subtle in the sexuality depicted in the Macbeth production. If the sexuality had been subtle, elusive, or implied, I wouldn’t have objected.

Her comparison of depictions of violence to actual nudity is flawed. Even a comparison of depictions of violence to depictions of sex acts is flawed. Many people, perhaps most, believe that sexual acts (and excretory acts) though perfectly normal are intimate, private acts that are not for public consumption. Violence is quite different. While violent acts are always unpleasant and often abhorrent or repugnant—even when necessary and justifiable—they are not thought of as intrinsically private, intimate acts.

Violent acts may be moral or immoral depending on the context, just as sexual acts may be moral or immoral depending on the context. But sexual acts are always intended to be private acts. And for many, actual nudity is appropriate in only very limited contexts. Opposition to seeing such displays of nudity does not grow out of prudery. Rather, such opposition grows out of a profound respect for the human body and a recognition of its inextricable connection to our spiritual natures.

Nudity, actual erotic acts (e.g., fondling breasts), simulated erotic and sexual acts (e.g., oral “sex” and intercourse), and perversion (e.g., drag queens telling stories to and twerking with toddlers in public libraries) are not new in the “arts” and entertainment world. The perverse, pagan, and hedonistic elites who control our culturally essential storytelling mechanisms have slowly, incrementally pushed decency out to make space for indecency. What still shocks is the brazenness and glee with which elites now introduce perversion to children, calling such exposure “education” and “inclusivity.” They include indecent ideas and images—not to condemn them through art—but to celebrate them—as all pagan societies have done and do. Make no mistake: They want the hearts, minds, and bodies of your children. Storytelling is one of the most effective means by which to capture first hearts, then minds, and finally bodies.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre 
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

W.B. Yeats

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Holiday-Depravity-and-Arrogance-from-Theater-Community_audio.mp3

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

As most breathing people now know, the Hallmark Channel, known for airing movies that families with intact moral compasses can watch with their children, upset its apple cart last week by secretly tossing in a poisoned apple for the kiddies to feast on. The apple came in the form of a commercial for the wedding planning website Zola that depicted a couple standing together at a glittering, Hallmark-worthy wedding altar at which they say their I do’s and then kiss. The poison was the smoochers were two women.

To be clear, I am not arguing that homosexual persons per se are poisonous. I am arguing that a glossy, prettified image of a deeply sinful type of union is poisonous to the minds and hearts of children who are especially vulnerable to propaganda.

Not surprisingly, parents and grandparents with intact moral compasses were shocked and angry. They felt blindsided and betrayed by a channel they had, heretofore, been able to trust. They expressed their anger and disappointment to Hallmark, many via a petition started by One Million Moms, a division of the American Family Association, which asked that Hallmark “reconsider airing commercials with same-sex relationships” and to refrain from adding “LGBTQ movies to the Hallmark Channel.” Hallmark removed the ad, and then the “LGBT” lobby took aim. Somehow, in just two days, those oppressed, silenced, marginalized, persecuted, powerless homosexuals we hear so much about were able to persuade Hallmark that it owes more to them than it does to conservatives.

On Sunday, Hallmark reversed course again and issued a sycophantic apology to men and women who mock the institution that God created to represent Christ and his bride, the church; who engage in erotic acts that the creator of the universe abhors; who indoctrinate children with a perverse sexual ideology; who seek to wash the public square clean of moral cleanliness; and who seek to punish those who hold fast to truth.

In a statement Mike Perry, Hallmark Cards president and CEO, said,

We are truly sorry for the hurt and disappointment this has caused. … We have LGBTQ greeting cards and feature LGBTQ couples in commercials. We have been recognized as one of the Human Rights Campaigns Best Places to Work. … Hallmark will be working with [the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation] to better represent the LGBTQ community across our portfolio of brands.

Note, there was no apology to theologically orthodox Christians whose identity is found in Christ and who are striving mightily to protect their children from ideas and images that violate what Scripture teaches.

This is what happens when people without an intact moral compass lead. They are buffeted about by the cultural winds and their own love of money.

After Hallmark (momentarily) pulled the ad, foolish people lost in spiritual darkness said and tweeted dumb stuff.  For example, California governor Gavin Newsome tweeted, “Same-sex marriage is the law of the land. There is no one way to love and be loved.” There is a kernel of truth in his tweet. There is not one way to love and be loved, and some of the ways to love and be loved should not include erotic acts.

Chicago mayor and lesbian Lori Lightfoot tweeted,

The holidays are a time of family, generosity and decency. @hallmarkchannel should reconsider their misguided decision to ban an ad featuring a same-sex couple. Representation is important in all forms of media—even advertising.

Lots of nonsense to unpack.

First, referring to same-sex couples as decent is indecent and, therefore, ironic. While each person in the couple may possess admirable qualities, the erotic aspect of the relationship is intrinsically indecent. Whatever love the partners feel for each other is corrupted by the misuse of their bodies.

Second, commitments to generosity do not require humans to affirm everything that other humans feel, desire, think, and do. In the spirit of generosity, would Lightfoot affirm the feelings and beliefs of theologically orthodox Christians on matters related to sexuality? In the spirit of generosity, would she agree to allowing even one streaming service to decline to show ads or programming that depict images of homoerotic relationships?

Third, Lightfoot does not really mean that all human phenomena or even all types of relationships should be represented in all forms of media. What she means is all phenomena or all types of relationships that she has concluded are morally acceptable should be represented in all forms of media.

The perpetually ignorant Chicago Tribune “lifestyle expert,” Heidi Stevens, wrote,

Movies and commercials are family-friendly when they include all sorts of families and when they acknowledge that love isn’t reserved for straight people.

Does Stevens think that in order for movies and commercials to be family-friendly, they should include polyamorous and polygamous families? What about families where the parents are two brothers who experience Genetic Sexual Attraction?

Stevens really ought to give wide berth to strawmen. No one argues that love is reserved for straight people. Many people, however, believe that sex is not only reserved for male-female relationships, but it can only occur within a male-female relationship, and they also believe that erotic acts should be reserved for only male-female relationships. Further, the source of that belief is not self-serving desire. The source of that belief is God’s holy word. And God’s word is no less legitimate than Steven’s self-originating blather.

Without defining love or proving that “love is love,” homosexual activists and their regressive allies either intentionally or ignorantly fail to distinguish between types of love. Those types are philia love (i.e., friendship), agape love (i.e., the love of God for man and man for God), storge love (i.e., familial love), and erotic love. While Stevens, GLAAD, Gavin Newsome, and all the entertainers squawking about “homophobia” last week may believe that sexual differentiation is irrelevant to erotic love, their views carry no more moral weight than the dissenting views of conservatives. What these oppressors carry is political power that they wield with gleeful abandon to stigmatize and “other” others.

In every society, some group will be oppressed. Some beliefs will be deemed anathema. Some actions will be viewed as immoral and stigmatized. There will never be a time or place when “judgmentalism”—that is, making distinctions about the rightness or wrongness of ideas and acts—will cease. Now, as faith in the one true God wanes in America, increasing numbers of people walk in the counsel of the wicked, stand in the way of sinners, and sit in the seat of scoffers.

Let’s see how Hallmark fares in the next year or so with only the “LGBT” crowd and its allies to support it. Oh wait, Hallmark is going to start offering family-friendly homosexual fare (now there’s an oxymoron if ever I heard one). With assistance from the “LGBT” division of Hallmark Cards, the Hallmark Channel shouldn’t find such brown-nosing too difficult.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Hallmark-Channel-Lesbians.mp3

IFI depends on the support of Christians like you. Donate now

-and, please-

It’s always nice to be able to point to the polls when they support your position. But polling, when done accurately, does nothing more than tell you what other people think. And just because you have the majority on your side doesn’t mean you are right. In fact, when it comes to morality, the majority is often at odds with the Bible, which sets the standard of morality for practicing Christians.

But this should come as no surprise.

After all, Jesus famously said, “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).

As the related saying goes, the road to destruction is broad.

Ironically, a Gallup article from June, 2018 indicated that, “Forty-nine percent of Americans say the state of moral values in the U.S. is ‘poor’ — the highest percentage in Gallup’s trend on this measure since its inception in 2002. Meanwhile, 37 percent of U.S. adults say moral values are ‘only fair,’ and 14 percent say they are ‘excellent’ or ‘good.’”

So, almost half of the country thinks that the moral values of the country are “poor,” leading to an obvious question: Are we right about our morals being wrong? If so, then why are so many of us immoral?

Gallup reported in May of this year that, “A majority of Americans (63 percent) continue to say same-sex “marriage” should be legal, on par with the 64 percent to 67 percent Gallup has recorded since 2017.”

As recently as 1996, however, only 27 percent of Americans believed same-sex “marriage” should be legal.

As for same-sex relationships in general (outside of marriage), Gallup reports that in 1987, 57 percent of Americans said that consenting, adult relationships between gays or lesbians should not be legal while only 32 percent said they should be legal. By 2019, those numbers had more than flipped, with only 26 percent saying those relationships should not be illegal and 73 percent saying they should.

The Gallup chart is quite graphic, with the numbers crisscrossing somewhat through 2004 and then becoming an ever-widening gap from roughly 2005.

Are these numbers significant? Absolutely.

Do they point to major social shifts? Obviously, they do.

Are they great news for LGBT activists? Without a doubt.

Do they prove anything when it comes to determining what is moral? No, they do not.

During the time period from 2003 to 2017, support for polygamy in America rose from 7 percent to 17 percent, an even more dramatic shift from a statistical point of view. And it’s up to 18 percent in 2019.

Gallup noted that this “may simply be the result of the broader leftward shift on moral issues Americans have exhibited in recent years. Or, as conservative columnist Ross Douthat notes in his New York Times blog, ‘Polygamy is bobbing forward in social liberalism’s wake …’ To Douthat and other social conservatives, warming attitudes toward polygamy is a logical consequence of changing social norms — that values underpinning social liberalism offer ‘no compelling grounds for limiting the number of people who might wish to marry.’”

Gallup also observed that, “It is certainly true that moral perceptions have significantly, fundamentally changed on a number of social issues or behaviors since 2001 — most notably, gay/lesbian relations, having a baby outside of wedlock, sex between unmarried men and women, and divorce.”

Interestingly, Gallup also noted that there were social reasons that help to explain some of this larger leftward shift (including the rise in divorce and changes in laws; another obvious reason is that people have friends and family members who identify as gay or lesbian).

In contrast, “there is little reason to believe that Americans are more likely to know or be polygamists now than at any other time in the past. But there is one way Americans may feel more familiar with or sympathetic to polygamy: television.”

Written by Peter Heck

Get the popcorn ready because they don’t even see it coming — at least most of them don’t.

Gay and lesbian activists, along with their bisexual allies, are about to be clobbered. They’re about to be decked. But not by those enemy evangelicals they have long resented and demonized.

For decades the LGB’s have mastered the Saul Alinsky method in dealing with orthodox Christians and all those holding to traditional morality – “pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” The bigot label has been applied to Bible believers with such precision that only a fool would confuse who has won the hearts and minds of the culture on the issue of sexuality.

No, the imminent blindside coming for LGBs won’t be originating from the religious boogeymen they’ve soundly defeated in the courtroom of public opinion. It will be coming from their fellow sexual revolutionaries – the Ts.

It has long been a political axiom that revolutionaries will eventually turn on one another. It’s the nature of a revolutionary after all. There’s always a new cause, a new victim, a new enemy. And while the vanquishing of the Bible bangers and street preachers have brought these wildly divergent sexual lobbies together to unite in a common cause, anyone paying attention can see what’s coming.

Take this video clip from the 2019 gay pride documentary, “Are You Proud?” and listen closely to what the transgender activist says at the very end.

In 2019 documentary about gay pride ‘Are You Proud?’ someone proposes that in future lesbians and gays shouldn’t exist. A far right politician? No, a trans activist. pic.twitter.com/I6866Q6Nv5

— Malcolm Clark (@TwisterFilm) December 10, 2019

If you didn’t get all that, she says (quite presciently and logically I might add):

“It’s quite challenging to LGB people, because if gender is on a spectrum, then homosexuality doesn’t really exist cause it can only exist in a binary. So when it comes down to it, it’s really just two people, or maybe three, or whatever, loving each other. It has nothing to do with sexuality.”

If you listen closely, you can hear the transgender jackhammer busting a gaping hole in the foundation of everything this movement has claimed for the last three decades. The very nature of lesbianism, gayness, and bisexuality rests on the presupposition that there exists a so-called “gender binary.” That is, there are boys and there are girls.

• A lesbian is a female who has romantic and sexual attractions to other females.
• To be a gay man is to be a male who has romantic and sexual attractions to other males.
• Bisexuals are those who are either male or female, but who experience romantic and sexual attractions to both males and females.

Meanwhile, the entire premise of transgenderism is the belief that there is no “male” nor “female.” Instead, all beings exist on a sliding scale of gender identity, which makes any appeal to a male/female gender reality oppressive.

In transgenderism, lesbianism is a ruse because you can’t really be female, and what you’re attracted to can’t really be female either. Ditto that for gayness and bisexuality. They don’t really exist; they can’t exist if transgender theory is to be accepted as viable, legitimate, and true. In other words, as the activist in the video states, “homosexuality doesn’t really exist.”

It’s kind of funny to think that not long ago gay crusaders were standing in solidarity with transgender culture warriors in demanding that society not “erase” trans identity. Seeking to erase lesbian and gay identity is a most peculiar way of saying “thank you,” it would seem.

This article was originally published at Disrn.com.

Written by Peter Heck

Let’s stop the pretense. Let’s break down the façade. Let’s retire the con.

Whatever it once was, the current LGBT political lobby has nothing to do with equal rights, has nothing to do with basic legal protections, and has nothing to do with the advancement and normalization of so-called “sexual minorities.” Instead, it has devolved into a fanatical fascist sect intent on wielding the gun of government to compel the cultural adulation and glorification of every aspect of their lives.

Any reticence and you will be bullied. Any resistance and you will be harassed. Any refusal and you will be punished.

Even if you’re gay.

Anyone who reads my work knows that I’m not one to defend South Bend Mayor and Democrat presidential candidate, Pete Buttigieg. His politics are regrettable, and his galling effort to co-opt the language of Christianity to feign justification for those politics is repugnant.

Still, it’s merely a statement of obvious fact that his ascension to the presidency would represent a jaw-dropping affirmation of gay normalization and acceptance in mainstream American society. Anyone whose primary motivation was the advancement of the LGBT experience would be elated at such a prospect. Pete Buttigieg, in the realest sense, is the embodiment of everything such a person could desire: he is young, in a committed gay marriage, articulate, is disarming and mild-mannered, boasting a high quotient of electability.

But he’s not gay enough.

Don’t misunderstand – no one is accusing Mayor Pete of being a closet heterosexual. But remember, this modern LGBT political movement, one that liberal comedian Bill Maher once dubbed the “gay mafia,” isn’t impressed that a person checks even a majority of the boxes. You’re either all-in with their demands, or you’re out. That’s why this just happened:

2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg was rebuked by LGBT advocates after a two-year-old photo surfaced of the South Bend mayor volunteering as a Salvation Army Christmas Kettle bell-ringer to collect money for the needy.

The LGBT website Out published the photo Tuesday, along with some angry reactions.

And those angry reactions spanned anywhere from “you ought to be ashamed of yourself” to “you’re dead to me.” So here you have an absolutely viable, openly gay presidential candidate, and yet the gay political lobby wants to destroy him because he doesn’t hate the Salvation Army enough? That’s crazy. Scary crazy, to be precise.

It defies logic until you understand that what drives this movement is not tolerance. It’s hate. Atlantic columnist Andrew Sullivan, a gay man who married his male partner over a decade ago, put it succinctly:

There’s no doubting the fact that Sullivan is right. And here’s why that should be so alarming to the sane among us. In 1932, the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini outlined his doctrine of fascism, stating,

“The Fascist conception of the state is all-embracing; outside of it, no human or spiritual values can exist…the Fascist State…interprets, develops, and potentates the whole life of a people.”

In modern parlance that means they will determine where you can eat a chicken sandwich, what companies you’re allowed to patronize, whom you’re allowed to help raise money for, and whom you’re not allowed to associate with, even in goodwill. It means that there is no more goodwill.

In its place there is only force and intimidation, and a nefarious, painfully transparent attempt to harness the power of the state to demand we all think, act and believe like them. Even if, as in the case of Pete Buttigieg, we literally are them.

This article was originally published at Disrn.com.

With the kids home for Thanksgiving we were watching a movie and during one of the commercial breaks, a cosmetic company promoted its products with a slick, high-gloss advertisement. Inserted with the burst of dramatic head shots showing beautiful young women wearing lipstick, rouge and eyeliner was a quick shot of a man doing the same.

Because it passed so quickly, it took a second to register and I asked, “Was that a guy?” My daughter responded with, “Yeah. I don’t know why you have to make such a big deal about it.”

That moment was instructive for a couple of reasons. First, when I asked my daughter if she was okay with a man wearing make-up, she said that that’s just the way the world is, and wonders why I’m surprised.

She has a point. We’ve been force-fed the LGBTQ+ agenda for years, and it’s seeped into every conceivable corner of life. The rapid collapse of historical sexual norms since Obergefell has felt like a dam giving way under the weight of the floodwaters behind it, unleashing a swollen cascade that submerges everything in its path.

Transsexuals now grace the covers of lifestyle magazines that cater to women. They displace women and girls in competitive sports. Drag queens read to children at libraries across the country. Starting in kindergarten, the next generations of children are being taught that what was once considered perverted and shameful is to be affirmed and celebrated.

Businesses adopt policies and practices that provide benefits to same-sex couples. They aspire to achieve a “100” rating from the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index, billed as “the national benchmarking tool on corporate policies and practices pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer employees.”

Why should I be surprised that this is the world we live in now?

But I am surprised and that leads me to the second reason it was an instructive moment. The fact that my daughter didn’t react with aversion tells me that men wearing make-up has become normalized at a much faster rate than I expected.

Do we really need to be reminded that biological males cannot be female? Men in make-up are play-acting—they’re pretending to be women (and mostly ugly women, at that).

No matter how much lipstick, rouge, or eyeliner they wear; no matter how much they mutilate their bodies or how much estrogen they consume; no matter how much they sashay, flounce or pose in satin dresses—they remain biologically male.

It’s the science, stupid. Transsexuals either know they’re lying about their biology, in which case they need to be called out for the frauds they are; or they don’t know they’re lying about their biology, in which case they have a serious mental condition and need to be institutionalized. But in either case, why should the larger society accommodate them, much less on their terms?

I won’t. I won’t, first and foremost, because it denies God’s created order. He “created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.” (Gen. 1:27) I realize that most, perhaps even all, transsexuals don’t believe that. But I do and so does God and I won’t compromise my convictions.

I also won’t do it because it is irrational and I won’t betray logic or common sense to accommodate their absurdities. It makes me an accessory to their delusions and makes them codependents in a dysfunctional relationship. I’m not playing that game.

And I won’t do it because I was born at the end of the baby boom after World War II. I am part of a passing generation that held to traditional cultural norms, rational beliefs and American patriotism. It may be that my generation is one of the last to escape the full indoctrination of the decades-long “march through the institutions” of Western—specifically, American—civilization developed by Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci more than 80 years ago. I won’t be party to the overthrow of that civilization.

Unfortunately the church has not escaped the boots of cultural Marxism marching through its sanctuaries, either. As Jude told his original readers, “certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.” (verse 4)

Instead of holding firm to scriptural teaching, some church leaders have sought to accommodate the alphabet mob in the cause of “winning the lost.” Just love everyone always, they say. They’ve lost their nerve to stand against the popular demands of the world and have compromised their faith. In their compassion they have forgotten that even Jesus declared that he did not come to bring peace on earth, but division. (Luke 12:51)

The church needs to regain its courage, stand for righteousness, and let God sort out the winners and losers. Parents need to take charge of their children and pull them out of public schools. Business owners need to take hits to their bottom line. Employees need to risk getting fired for refusing to toe the line on the Human Rights Campaign’s index.

When a man shows up in a cosmetics commercial peddling the latest beauty products, I express surprise, yes, but also revulsion and dismay over what our society has become. It’s getting late and we are likely past the point of no return. But we don’t need to succumb without resistance to the end.

IFI depends on the support of Christians like you. Donate now

-and, please-

While theologians Dr. Denny Burk, Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon, Dr. John Piper, and Pastor Douglas Wilson say Christians should not use incorrect pronouns when referring to people who pretend to be the sex they aren’t, increasing numbers of purportedly theologically orthodox Christians believe Christians should use them. They believe that refusing to use “preferred pronouns” will result in “trans”-identifying persons severing relationships. And to “woke” theologians and pastors, maintaining relationships supersedes truth.

Christian capitulation to sin will always be accompanied by theological rationalizations that will sound superficially reasonable. In a recent episode of his “Ask Me Anything” podcast, JD Greear, president of the Southern Baptist Convention, proffered such rationalizations as he revealed that he uses incorrect pronouns when referring to “trans”-identifying persons. He argued that his complicity with the false and destructive “trans” ideology constitutes “generosity of spirit,” which he contrasts with “truth-telling.” Greear also claimed that Preston Sprinkle, president of the Center for Faith, Sexuality & Gender, does likewise.

Before going further, I want to note that several of the quotes cited by Greear and to which I will be responding appear to be wrongly attributed by Greear to Sprinkle. These incorrectly attributed quotes come instead from a paper by Gregory Coles who identifies as a “celibate, gay Christian” and is part of the celibate, “gay” Christian movement criticized by many, including Denny Burk who wrote this about Coles’ memoir:

Coles seems to equate differences about homosexual immorality with differences that Christians have about second order doctrines. But how can homosexual immorality be treated in this way when the Bible says that those who commit such deeds do not inherit the kingdom of God.

Coles doesn’t merely say Christians may use incorrect pronouns. In his paper titled, “What Pronouns Should Christians Use for Transgender People,” which is littered with PC language created by the “LGBTQ” community to advance its ideology, Coles argues Christians should use incorrect pronouns:

… [T]he most biblical response to transgender people’s pronouns is a posture of unequivocal pronoun hospitality. That is, I believe that all Christians can and should use pronouns that reflect the expressed gender identities of transgender people, regardless of our views about gender identity ethics. If a person identifies herself to you as “she,” I hope you will consider it an act of Christ-like love to call her “she” out of respect, whether or not you believe that the way she expresses her gender identity is honoring to God.

Astonishingly, Coles grounds his defense of appeasement “Christ-like pronoun hospitality” in this passage from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians:

Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

Coles applies this passage to the current pronoun mandates, appealing also to “respect” to justify appeasement:

When we apply Paul’s linguistic approach to the pronouns we use about transgender people, I believe we arrive at a posture of pronoun hospitality: a willingness to accommodate the pronouns of our transgender neighbors regardless of our own views about the Christian ethics of gender identity. That is, when we order our language toward making sure that the truth of the gospel can be heard in an understandable way by those around us, we are compelled to use pronouns in a way that effectively communicates our respect for transgender people, even if we still believe that followers of Jesus are called to express their gender identity in accordance with their appointed sex.

If, instead of referring to “our own views about the Christian ethics of gender identity,” Coles had referred to “the truth of Christian ethics regarding gender identity,” the problem with his worldview would become clearer. Imagine a Christian saying, “We should be willing to use the pronouns of our transgender neighbors regardless of the truth of Christian ethics regarding gender identity.”

Does the anger of “trans”-cultists toward Christians who refuse to mis-sex people signify lack of understanding or does it signal rebellion? Is it an act of respect to concede to demands to call someone something that is an integral part of an ideology that denies reality, affirms sin as good, and grievously harms both individuals and society?  Can true respect—like true biblical love—ever entail denial or even the appearance of denial of another person’s embodiment as male or female?

Coles’ interpretation of the passage in Corinthians is at odds with that of theologian Thomas Schreiner:

Cultural flexibility, however, is not infinitely elastic. For instance, Paul does not compromise on moral norms or on fundamental truths of the gospel.

Theologian Paul E. Garland shares a similar understanding:

[Paul] does not think that fundamental and distinctive Christian demands are negotiable depending on the circumstances. He did not eat idol food in order to become “as one  without the law to those without the law.” He did not tone down his assault on idolatry to avoid offending idolaters or curry favor with them. His accommodation has nothing to do with watering down the gospel message, soft-pedaling its ethical demands.

Evidently, Coles doesn’t view Genesis 1:27 (“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”) or Deuteronomy 22:5 (“A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.) as fundamental, distinctive, and non-negotiable.

It should trouble Coles, Greear, and Sprinkle that they are participants in what New Testament scholar N.T. Wright describes as a new and damaging incarnation of the heresy of Gnosticism:

The confusion about gender identity is a modern, and now internet-fueled, form of the ancient philosophy of Gnosticism. The Gnostic, one who “knows”, has discovered the secret of “who I really am”, behind the deceptive outward appearance. … This involves denying the goodness, or even the ultimate reality, of the natural world. Nature, however, tends to strike back, with the likely victims in this case being vulnerable and impressionable youngsters who, as confused adults, will pay the price for their elders’ fashionable fantasies.

To bolster his position, Coles points to Christianity Today (CT), which has now regrettably adopted secular journalistic practices, using incorrect pronouns for cross-sex passers.

A 2015 article by Dr. Mark Yarhouse in CT provides evidence that both CT and Yarhouse have capitulated to the wicked and deceitful “trans” ideology. Yarhouse writes,

I still recall one of my first meetings with Sara. Sara is a Christian who was born male and named Sawyer by her [sic] parents. As an adult, Sawyer transitioned to female.

Sara would say transitioning—adopting a cross-gender identity—took 25 years. It began with facing the conflict she [sic] experienced between her [sic] biology and anatomy as male, and her [sic] inward experience as female.

With absolute certainty, Sprinkle offers this dire warning about refusal to participate in the “trans” lie:

“If you want to immediately cut off a relationship with somebody, which is ending all opportunity to embody and share Jesus with the person, then don’t use the pronouns they want you to use. It is an immediate relational killer.”

He is saying that if unbelievers lost in spiritual darkness will become so angry at the refusal of Christians to participate in their reality-denying, body- and soul-destroying fiction that they sever relationships, Christians should capitulate. This position will result in an enfeebled relinquishment of culture-making to sinners lost in darkness.

The homosexual and “trans” communities use language as a tool to transform culture. They redefine words, emptying them of their former meanings, and invent new words that embody subversive and false assumptions. They become enraged at anyone who refuses to yield to their language diktats, and then some faith leaders say, “If we refuse to use their language, we kill relationships thereby killing our ability to witness.” What a diminished view of God’s sovereignty such a position reveals.

Moreover, enraged responses to encounters with truth sometimes signify the pricking of a conscience. Sometimes a respectful demurral from participating in serious sin is a seed planted. The ethics of speech are not determined by the subjective response of hearers of that speech. The ethics are determined by the content (i.e., is it true) and the delivery (i.e., is it civil).

Coles repeatedly appeals to the feelings of “trans”-identifying persons as determinative of the terms Christians should use. If, Coles argues, “trans”-identifying persons feel—or claim to feel—“shamed, invisible, sidelined, defiled, invalidated, microaggressed, disappeared, or leprous,” Christians should use whatever pronouns these people prefer, or we destroy our witness.

Is there any evidence that Jesus engaged in such “relational/missional” evangelism or fretted about how sinners would feel if he refused to affirm the sin they engaged in or placed at the center of their identities? When he encountered the rich, young ruler; the woman caught in adultery; or Zacchaeus, the tax collector, how long did Jesus dally in relationships before he told them to repent of their sins?

If refusing to concede through our language that a biological man is a woman makes such a man feel “defiled” or “microaggressed,” imagine if he had been part of the multitude that John the Baptist called a brood of vipers.

Dr. Gagnon, author of The Bible and Homosexual Practice: Text and Hermeneutics, makes clear what Greear’s, Coles’, and Sprinkle’s purported hospitality and respect signify:

It is not an act of “hospitality” or “respect” to the offender to use fake pronouns and proper names but rather (1) a scandal to the “weak” and young in the church and a rightful violation of conscience for many that will lead many to stumble to their ruin; (2) an accommodation to sin that God finds utterly abhorrent, to say nothing of the fact that it is an egregious lie; and (3) a complicity in the offender’s self-dishonoring, self-degrading, and self-demeaning behavior that does him or her (and the grieving ex-spouse and children, if there are any) no favor because it can get the person in question excluded from the kingdom of God.

What’s next? Treating as a married couple an incestuous union involving a man and his mother, allegedly as a show of hospitality and respect? Is that what Paul would have done at Corinth? Addressing the man and his stepmother as “husband” and “wife” so as to extend “hospitality” and “respect”? What kind of revisionist lunacy is this? Paul would not have taken this approach even for those who don’t profess to be believers.

Attorney, journalist, senior editor at the recently launched political website The Dispatch, and Christian, David French exposes the error in manipulative tactics used to shame Christians into rhetorical concessions to the destructive “trans” ideology:

When I use a male pronoun to describe Chelsea Manning, I’m not trolling. I’m not being a jerk. I’m not trying to make anyone angry. I’m simply telling the truth. I’m reflecting biological reality, and I’m referring to the created order as outlined in Genesis 1 — “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

Nor is this a matter of “manners.” I’ve encountered many well-meaning people who’ve told me that I should acquiesce to new pronouns because it’s the polite thing to do. I want to avoid hurting feelings, don’t I? I want to treat someone the way I’d like to be treated, right? What’s the harm in a little white lie?

But when your definition of manners requires that I verbally consent to a fundamentally false and important premise, then I dissent. You cannot use my manners to win your culture war. I will speak respectfully, I will never use a pronoun with the intent of causing harm, and if I encounter a person in obvious emotional distress I will choose my words very carefully. But I will not say what I do not believe.

Coles asserts there are two assumptions “about the nature of language” on which Christians who reject “trans” language diktats rely:

Assumption #1: Pronoun gender always and only refers to an individual’s appointed sex.

Assumption #2: When our definitions of words differ from other people’s definitions, “telling the truth” means using our own definitions.

Assumption #2 implicitly rejects the Christian view that objective truth exists. Christians have no obligation to treat assumption #2 as if it’s true. It’s passing strange that a Christian would treat his own definitions of words like “he,” “she,” and “they” as just other assumptions. Coles seems to hold the view that Peter Kreeft disdains when he says the phrase “your truth” is both oxymoronic and moronic.

Burk reveals the sullied underbelly of Coles’ expectation that Christians treat their biblically informed definitions—not as true—but as merely one set of assumptions in the diverse universe of competing assumptions:

So much of the evangelical conversation on these issues has been colonized by secular identity theories. Those theories are premised on an unbiblical anthropology which defines human identity as “what I feel myself to be” rather than “what God designed me to be.” If there is to be a recovery and renewal of Christian conscience on sexuality issues, secular identity theories must give way to God’s design as revealed in nature and scripture.

Coles justifies the redefinition of pronouns by the “trans” cult by arguing—accurately—that language changes, but the reality of linguistic shifts doesn’t mean that Christians should acquiesce to politically driven changes that embody lies and which are increasingly imposed by force.

Greear also quoted conservative theologian Andrew T. Walker’s book God and the Transgender Debate in which Walker says,

“My own position is that if a transgender person comes to your church, it is fine to refer to them by their preferred pronoun.”

Greear failed to include what Walker said in an article published four months after publication of his book:

“Though it is politically incorrect to do so, I will not refer to someone with their desired pronoun in a public venue such as a talk. Those with writing or speaking platforms have an obligation to speak and write truthfully and not kowtow to political correctness or excuse falsehood.”

The abandonment of theological orthodoxy always happens incrementally, as it’s happening today. C. S. Lewis warned of this in The Screwtape Letters in which the senior demon Screwtape writes this to his nephew Wormwood, a Junior Tempter:

My dear Wormwood,

Obviously, you are making excellent progress. My only fear is lest in attempting to hurry the patient you awaken him to a sense of his real position. For you and I, who see that position as it really is, must never forget how totally different it ought to appear to him. We know that we have introduced a change of direction in his course which is already carrying him out of his orbit around the Enemy; but he must be made to imagine that all the choices which have effected this change of course are trivial and revocable. He must not be allowed to suspect that he is now, however slowly, heading right away from the sun on a line which will carry him into the cold and dark of utmost space.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Pronouns_2.mp3

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

Written by Abigail Ruth

I don’t write very often because, frankly, I find it difficult. As a witness to the events of our day, I am often overwhelmed by their significance and stymied by my own inability to put into words any analysis that seems to do justice to the magnitude of moral, spiritual and intellectual disintegration taking place all around us.

The Township High School District 211 school board meeting last Thursday night at Fremd High School was an example of just such an event. Although the results were expected (the school board voted 5-2 to grant special rights to “trans”-identifying students) it was still a surreal experience to witness. The approved policy will allow biological male students unrestricted access to girls’ locker rooms (and vice versa)—meaning that they will not be required to undress behind a privacy curtain. During swim class, everyone out in the locker room will be able to see each other’s genitalia. The new policy also opens the door to male and female students sharing hotel rooms on field trips.  In case you’re wondering, girls’ sports are an apparent non-issue. Male students who identify as female have been playing on the girls’ teams for years.

At the meeting, 25 randomly chosen members of the public were allowed 3 minutes each to address the board.  Many who spoke were in favor of the policy change. It was their comments that most arrested my attention. If insanity can be defined as a disconnect from reality, then surely insanity was on parade Thursday night at Fremd High School.

First and foremost, it must be understood that supporters of the purported “rights” of “trans”-identifying students do not claim that we must affirm such students’ erroneous perception of themselves as the opposite sex. No–and read this next part carefully: These people claim that a male student who perceives himself to be a girl actually is a girl. Chromosomes and genitalia count as nothing. Oh, and by the way, you are not to think of this as a “mental problem.” This is all perfectly “normal.”

Take a deep breath and let that sink in.

Those of us who aren’t quite educated enough to actually believe that males who believe they are females really are females are apparently expected to pretend we do. False gender affirmation was presented over and over again as a moral imperative. In fact, we were told essentially that if our schools fail to affirm gender dysphoric (GD) students as the opposite sex, we will all have blood on our hands. Why? Because, we are told, GD students will commit suicide if their delusion of being the opposite sex is not encouraged and supported. We’re told this in spite of the fact that the link between suicide and social treatment has yet to be scientifically established. Is it just me or does this strike anyone else as a conveniently warped version of emotional blackmail?

Now that we have apparently accepted this dubious claim and capitulated, is there any limit to what “LGBT” activists can demand of us? That is no longer a rhetorical question.

Do I dare point out the obvious? A mentally healthy person doesn’t commit suicide because other people refuse to pretend that he/she is something they are not–especially something as obvious and foundational as male or female. While all students–including students with GD–should be treated with kindness, anyone in their right mind understands that when it comes to biological sex, we are what we are. The best possible outcome for GD kids is to make peace with reality and learn to love and appreciate the healthy, beautiful bodies God gave them. How will they do that if everyone, including their schools are encouraging them in continued delusion?

Demanding that the whole world suspend reality because some people are either unwilling or unable to accept it does not begin to approach a reasonable solution. The whole issue illustrates a degree of intellectual and moral lunacy I had heretofore assumed humanly impossible except among the clinically insane.

And once again, where were the pastors and elders–those who are supposed to be the protectors and bearers of truth? There are over 90 churches in D211, and this was the last of four meetings where extensive public comment was heard on this policy. Apart from three notable exceptions our spiritual leaders were missing in action. If a pastor doesn’t stand up for truth on behalf of children in his own community will he ever?  Unfortunately I think we know the answer.

So, where do we go from here? When the Left eventually gains enough power in Washington D.C., the gloves will come off and “LGBT” activists will wage war against biblical Christianity under the guise of civil rights. This is a certainty. For the most part, it is only God’s people who offer any real resistance to their plans for our dystopian future. They know this. That is why they and their allies at the ACLU criss-cross the country looking for Christian business owners to sue. These actions stand as a warning to any who might dare cross them in the future.

The famous quote attributed to George Orwell seems to have been written for our day: “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” Are we prepared to be revolutionaries? I am not sure that we are. But ready or not, we must be. God’s people are people of the truth. God help us.

IFI depends on the support of concerned-citizens like you. Donate now

-and, please-

In a stunning act of betrayal, Chick-fil-A’s charitable foundation, the Chick-fil-A Foundation, has announced it will no longer donate to the Salvation Army, Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA), or Paul Anderson Youth Home (PAYH). Though Chick-fil-A has not publicly acknowledged the reason for its betrayal, everyone knows what it is. Chick-fil-A is attempting to curry favor with the “LGBTQ+” community that is shredding our social fabric. This policy shift constitutes a cowardly betrayal of Chick-fil-A’s Christian ethos and its Christian customers who have stood by Chick-fil-A through all its trials at the hands of legions of supporters of sexual deviance. #LoveofMoney

Broods of vipers identifying as apostles of justice, equality, tolerance, diversity, inclusivity, and compassion have been protesting and maligning Chick-fil-A since 2012 when Dan Truett Cathy, chairman and chief executive officer, made some public statements in an interview with the Baptist Press supporting true marriage and opposing the legal recognition of homosexual unions as marriages. After homosexuals got wind of Cathy’s theologically orthodox and unremarkable statements, some part of hell broke loose and raged against Chick-fil-A. Fortunately for Cathy and Chick-fil-A, Christians turned out en masse all across the country to show their support with their time and money for Cathy’s stand for truth.

And this is how Cathy and Chick-fil-A repay them.

Chick-fil-A is the wildly popular fast-food franchise started by devout Southern Baptist Truett Cathy in 1967 and known for being closed on Sundays “so that … employees” can “set aside one day to rest and worship if they choose.” Dan Cathy once said that Chick-fil-a’s “corporate purpose” was “to glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us.”

Some feared a crack in Chick-fil-A’s Christian edifice would spread when a year after the 2012 attack by homosexuals, Cathy expressed his regret for his public statements about marriage:

Every leader goes through different phases of maturity, growth and development and it helps by (recognizing) the mistakes that you make. … And you learn from those mistakes. If not, you’re just a fool. I’m thankful that I lived through it and I learned a lot from it.

Does Cathy today believe that ceasing to support fine organizations like the Salvation Army, FCA, and PAYH signifies “maturity” and “growth”? Does he believe the reason for this decision signifies maturity and growth? If so, in what specific ways? What criteria does he use to determine maturity and growth?

A press statement released by Chick-fil-A includes this mealy-mouthed corporate-speak:

Starting in 2020, the Chick-fil-A is introducing a more focused giving approach to provide additional clarity and impact with the causes it supports.

In an interview with Bisnow, Tim Tassopoulos, Chick-fil-A president and chief operation officer doubled down on clarity:

“There’s no question we know that, as we go into new markets, we need to be clear about who we are. … There are lots of articles and newscasts about Chick-fil-A, and we thought we needed to be clear about our message.”

With a degree of irony only a hipster could fully appreciate, Chick-fil-A cloaks the reason for abandoning the Salvation Army, FCA, and PAYH in the rhetoric of “clarity.”

When wealthy and powerful men and women—who should be role models—demonstrate the kind of dishonesty and cowardice Cathy and his board just demonstrated, not only do the little people feel betrayed but also some lose hope. Some will wonder why they—with scant resources—should stand unequivocally for Christ and his kingdom when millionaires who are safe and secure with their buckets of ducats are unwilling to do so.

The betrayal must have been particularly painful for the staff and board of trustees of PAYH, a ministry that strives “to provide a Christ-centered, holistic, and therapeutic approach towards transforming the lives of young men ages 16-21” believing that “There is no single aspect of a young man’s development as important as his spiritual life.”

PAYH, which was started by famous weightlifter Paul Anderson and Dan Cathy’s father Truett Cathy in 1961, “exists to help transform the lives of troubled young men and their families” by 1. Planting God’s word in their lives and discipling them through mentoring and modeling, 2. Providing therapeutic counseling and substance abuse treatment, 3. Supplying a fully-accredited college preparatory high school and vocational training, and 4. Supporting our graduates long-term through our transition program.”

Cathy and the company his father founded have abandoned their nearly six decades-long support of PAYH that strives to raise up young men in the way they should go, and they are doing so in deference to the unholy desires of homosexuals whose ideology is destroying the lives of young men.

In just one hour on Monday, conservatives Rod Dreher, Mike Huckabee, Dana Loesch, Allie Stuckey, and Matt Walsh, all tweeted condemnations of Chick-fil-A’s decision. You know who liked it? Zach Stafford, editor-in-chief of the homosexual magazine The Advocate who tweeted, “THE GAYS HAVE WON.” That should tell us everything we need to know.

Add this to the growing list of ways Christians are affected by the “LGBT” ideology—you know, the ideology we were promised repeatedly would affect no one, no how, no way. #LyingLiarsLie.

“LGBTQ+” ideologues and their sycophants are going to see to it that owning a business—including even a teeny tiny business—or having a job will be conditioned on affirming homosexual acts and faux-marriage as good. Wake up, Christians, the persecution is getting real.

Meanwhile as corporations and individuals cave to prideful, despotic homosexuals, cross-sex pretenders, and other assorted “queers,” money going to pernicious pagan ministries like the Human Rights Campaign; the Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network; and GLAAD flows like water in the Ganges River.

Take ACTION: If you would like to express your views on Chick-fil-A’s decision, you can contact them at (866) 232-2040 or leave your feedback on website comment section HERE.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Chick-fil-A-Betrays-Principles-and-Faithful-Customers.mp3

IFI depends on the support of concerned-citizens like you. Donate now

-and, please-

The 2019 Illinois Family Institute Worldview Conference on “Trans” Ideology concluded with a Q&A session moderated by IFI’s cultural affairs writer, Laurie Higgins. During this final session, speakers Dr. Michelle Cretella, Denise Shick, Walt Heyer, and Pastor Doug Wilson field questions from conference attendees.

Higgins begins by addressing the endgame of LGBTQ activists regarding transgenderism, the effect of the transgender agenda on privacy and culture, and the smoke and mirror tactics of the American Academy of Pediatrics in regard to transgender protocols. Topics and questions covered by our speakers include gender confusion and regret; transitioning/detransitioning; calls to lower the age of consent; Planned Parenthood’s evolving business model; an effective Christian approach to government schools; the biology of sex determination; and loving, biblical responses to transgender family members and friends.

IFI depends on the support of concerned-citizens like you. Donate now

-and, please-

On Friday Oct. 8, IFI received this strangely kind email from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) “investigative reporter” Brett Barrouquere (an email similar, I learned, to one sent to Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies, but more on that later):

Hi,

I’m a reporter with The Intelligence Project in Montgomery, Alabama. I hope this finds you well.

Currently, I’m assisting a colleague with a story about Franklin Graham speaking to IFI. Why did IFI choose him as a speaker? What did he tell the group? How was he received during his talk?

And, has Mr. Graham spoken to the group before? If so, when?

We are aiming to produce a story next week. Thank you for your time and assistance.

Sincerely,

Brett

I say “strangely kind” because IFI has been included on the SPLC’s “hate” groups list since 2008, one month after I began working for IFI. At the time, the SPLC had zero criteria for determining which groups or individuals constitute haters, a fact I pointed out in articles and to the unscrupulous, unpleasant Mark Potok and his equally unscrupulous, unpleasant henchperson Heidi Beirich, both of whom headed up the “Intelligence Project” that maligns conservative organizations as “hate groups.”

Both Potok and Beirich have “resigned” in the wake of widespread, bipartisan criticism of the SPLC’s profligate, unjustified labeling of conservative organizations as “hate” groups; the SPLC’s abandonment of its mission to combat racism; its greedy profiteering and fear-mongering; and accusations of sexual misconduct and racism leveled at disgraced and fired founder Morris Dees. You can read more about our history with the moral miscreants at the SPLC in my article “A True Story About the Southern Poverty Law Center.”

Upon receipt of this strangely kind email with strange questions about Franklin Graham, who just a week earlier was IFI’s keynote banquet speaker, I decided to find out a bit about Barrouquere. I discovered he omitted something from his job title. On the website Muck Rack, he identifies as “Investigative Reporter at SPLCenter and @hatewatch.”

The SPLC’s Hatewatch describes its mission as “Exposing hate groups and other extremists throughout the United States since 1981.” In the service of “exposing hate groups and other extremists,” Barrouquere contacted IFI to inquire about Franklin Graham. #Eyeroll

Barrouquere is profiled on the professional journalism website Muck Rack, which derives its name from the term muckrake. Theodore Roosevelt coined the term “muckrakers” to refer to journalists who investigate and expose corruption with the intent of reforming society. But the origin of the term muck-rake is older and more fitting of the SPLC’s dirty work. This is what I wrote to Barrouquere:

Dear Brett,

Surely you jest. You want IFI to help the ethically impoverished SPLC’s risibly named “Intelligence Project” produce what is likely yet another smear of a good person?

Muck-raker is a fitting description for those who do the dirty work of the SPLC. Here is the origin of the term “muck-raker” from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress:

“the Interpreter takes them apart again, and has them first into a room where was a man that could look no way but downwards, with a muck-rake in his hand. There stood also one over his head, with a celestial crown in his hand, and proffered to give him that crown for his muckrake; but the man did neither look up nor regard, but raked to himself the straws, the small sticks, and the dust of the floor…. his muck-rake doth show his worldly mind. And whereas thou seest him rather give heed to rake up straws and sticks, and the dust of the floor, than to do what he says that calls to him from above with the celestial crown in his hand; it is to show that heaven is but a fable to some, and that things here are counted the only things substantial. Now, whereas it was also showed thee that the man could look no way but downwards; it is to let thee know that earthly things, when they are with power upon men’s minds, quite carry their hearts away from God.”

Many don’t know that the SPLC also has a toxic “educational” arm called “Teaching Tolerance” whose de facto goal is to carry the hearts of other people’s children away from God:

Our mission is to help teachers and schools educate children and youth to be active participants in a diverse democracy.

Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators—teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners—who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities….

Our program emphasizes social justice and anti-bias. The anti-bias approach encourages children and young people to challenge prejudice and learn how to be agents of change in their own lives. Our Social Justice Standards show how anti-bias education works through the four domains of identity, diversity, justice and action.

Conservatives should no longer be duped by leftist jargon. Anytime the terms “educate,” “civil,” “inclusive,” “social justice,” “anti-bias,” “challenge prejudice,” “identity,” and “diversity,” appear, you know you’ve entered the Upside Down where the meanings of terms bear little resemblance to their true meanings:

1.) Educate=indoctrinate

2.) Civil=incivility toward conservatives, especially Christians

3.) Inclusive=affirm homosexuality and cross-sex identification, ostracize Christians

4.) Social justice=same as above

5.) Anti-bias=promote anti-Christian bias

6.) Challenge bias=same as above

7.) Identity=treat “progressive” beliefs about sexuality as unassailable moral precepts

8.) Diversity=race/skin color, sex, class, and deviant sexuality

The SPLC’s description of Teaching Tolerance omits mention of the chief goal of the SPLC: the eradication of theological orthodoxy from the public square.

Coincidentally, on National Review’s blog “The Corner,” Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) shared that he received a similar email from another “investigative reporter” with the SPLC at about the time IFI received ours. CIS is part of a lawsuit against the SPLC, which added CIS to its infamous “hate groups” list shortly after Trump’s election.

Krikorian’s email, which he hilariously describes as a “Howdy, Hater!” email, came from senior investigative reporter Michael Edison Hayden, who in late September tweeted out “I’m extremely excited about the team we are assembling @Hatewatch.”

Hayden begins with the kind of warm salutation—the “Howdy” part—one wouldn’t expect from someone who views you as a hater and scourge of society: “I hope you guys are having a good day. If you DC folks are a Nationals fan, congratulations.”

Then, Hayden got down to the nitty-gritty “Hater!” part:

Anyway, I wanted to ask you guys about some stuff I have on my plate here. Someone sent me a rather large volume of Stephen Miller’s emails from the run-up to the 2016 election. There are a lot of newsworthy things in these emails…. I know he gave a keynote for you in 2015, so obviously there is some degree of connection but I didn’t know how much.

Hayden went on to ask five questions about CIS’ involvement with Stephen Miller, Trump’s senior policy advisor, including asking about the degree of “closeness” between CIS and Miller, which is similar to the question Barrouquere asked IFI about Franklin Graham.

Krikorian, who, rather than responding to Hayden, forwarded his email to attorneys handling the lawsuit, noted the bizarre conclusion to Hayden’s email:

The e-mail ends, inscrutably, with “Warm regards”. But either you’re writing to the head of a “hate group” who thinks foreigners are “cockroaches” or you offer “warm regards”—it can’t really be both.

The SPLC has proven repeatedly for decades that it is incapable of intellectual consistency, honesty, or morality. The SPLC hasn’t changed its stripes.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/SPLC.mp3

IFI depends on the support of concerned-citizens like you. Donate now

-and, please-

FROGS! GET OUT OF THE WATER! IT’S BOILING!

A lesbian activist who promotes cultural approval of both the “LGBT” ideology and the legalized slaughter of the unborn was invited to speak to 8-11-year-olds at Longfellow Elementary School in Wheaton, Illinois, home of America’s most prestigious evangelical college, Wheaton College; evangelical Christian publishing company Crossway Books; and approximately 45 churches. If this could happen in Wheaton, Illinois, it could happen anywhere.

The kinda, sorta good news is that the event was canceled the day before it was to take place in early October. The bad news is the school hopes to reschedule it. According to District 200 spokesperson Erica Loiacono,

The day before the author’s visit, a parent contacted Longfellow Administration with concerns about the process we utilize to inform parents about author visits and the contents of the presentation and promotion. It was at that time Administration was informed that the school did not communicate to Longfellow parents information about the content of the book being presented and promoted by the author…. Parents were only informed of the author’s visit, not the content of the book, presentation and promotion…. We look forward to speaking with the author and discussing the possibility of scheduling a visit to our school community in the future.

The author, Robin Stevenson, is on a book tour—you know, the thing authors go on to promote and sell their books. The particular book she is promoting right now is Kid Activists: True Tales of Childhood from Champions of Change, which tells “childhood stories through kid-friendly texts and full-color cartoon illustrations” of activists, including Harvey Milk, the infamous homosexual pederast and friend of murderous cult leader Jim Jones, and “Janet” Mock, a biological man who through cross-sex hormone-doping and extensive surgical body modification successfully passes as a woman.

Stevenson has also written Pride Colors, a colorful board book for children from ages 0-2 that “highlights #LGBTQIA+ families in a positive, glittery light,” and teaches babies the “meaning behind each color in the Pride flag.” And for 9-14-year-olds, she has Pride: Celebrating Diversity & Community, which glossily details the history of the movement to normalize sexual deviance.

Stevenson’s devaluation of the human person extends beyond homosexuality and cross-sex identification. She devalues humans in the womb as well and seeks to indoctrinate children with her twisted views. Stevenson’s book for children ages 12 and up, My Body My Choice: The Fight for Abortion Rights, is about the “long fight for abortion rights” that “is being picked up by a new generation of courageous, creative and passionate activists.” The School Library Journal highly recommends it saying, “Readers will appreciate and find value in the colorful photographs and illustrations, quotes, and comics provided and will finish the guide feeling empowered. Youth will be armed with concrete tips and advice on how they can help fight against abortion stigma.”

Can’t have anyone stigmatizing the slaughter of tiny vulnerable humans. No siree, can’t have that.

Stevenson chastises the superintendent and school board of Wheaton District 200, in an open letter on her website:

[B]eginning next year, Illinois public schools will be required to teach history lessons that include the roles and contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in U.S. history. But schools should not need to be legislated to be inclusive. Many schools are already working hard to provide a safe and supportive environment for students to be themselves and to encourage all students to respect diversity and human rights….

In choosing to cancel the presentation…. You legitimized a concern rooted in homophobia, gave this priority over the wishes of the school administration and staff who had requested the visit.

Six thoughts about Stevenson’s thoughts:

1.) Wheaton parents should ascertain exactly which school administrators and staff requested that Stevenson be invited to speak. The identities of government employees who make these kinds of decisions should not be cloaked in secrecy.

2.) Commitments to “inclusivity” do not require schools to ignore moral precepts. I don’t see “progressives” clamoring to have the roles and contributions of polyamorists, kinksters, or zoophiles included in curricula. Why is that? Have no polyamorists, kinksters, or zoophiles contributed anything of value to society? Leftists believe known-kinkster Alfred Kinsey made significant contributions to society. Maybe in the service of inclusivity, schools should share his kinkster predilections with elementary school students. Or could it be that “progressives” believe only their moral precepts should dictate which sexual predilections must be shared with students?

3.) Assuring the safety of students does not require affirming all their feelings and behavioral choices, nor do school administrators (or likely Stevenson) believe it does.

4.) Regarding schools’ provision of a “supportive” environment for students to be “themselves”: Are government schools really obligated to “support” all the feelings—including all the sexual feelings—of all students or just those feelings approved by “progressives”? What does being “themselves” even mean? Does it mean that all powerful, persistent, seemingly intractable feelings determine both “identity” and morality? If so, the “LGBTQIAP+” community has split wide open a Pandora’s box of trouble.

5.) “Respect for diversity” is a deceitful slogan. “Diversity” per se is neither intrinsically good nor bad. Diversity simply means difference or variety, and not all differences are respect-worthy. What Stevenson really means is that students should be taught to approve of homosexual acts and cross-sex identification, but no government employee—in his or her professional role—has the right to teach other people’s children that.

6.) Christian disapproval of homosexuality and cross-sex identification is no more rooted in fear or hatred of persons than is Christian disapproval of adultery, fornication, or porn use. I wonder how “safe” and “supported” conservative students feel when Stevenson calls them homophobic.

On Saturday, Stevenson tweeted this:

Were parents specifically warned that not all the activists in the book [that she is selling] were cis and straight? No, and this should not be necessary.

There you have it, folks, the arrogance of leftists who refuse to respect the rights of parents who don’t want their young children exposed to leftist views of homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation.

Stevenson is a proselyte for cultural approval of homosexuality, the science-denying “trans” ideology, and the legal right of women to have their offspring slaughtered, but who does the culture deem the bad guys in this scenario? The bad guys are any Wheaton parents who object to Stevenson preaching to their children. “Bigot” and “hater” growl Wheaton leftists on social media in the mellifluous tones of tolerance to which conservatives have become accustomed.

One Wheaton mom posted this on Wheaton Moms & Families Facebook page:

Wheaton doesn’t need to be the bigoted community it was 20-30 years ago. Times are changing, families are evolving but love is the ONLY thing that is remaining consistent. I’d rather my child learn about a gay rights pioneer and activist instead of Christopher Columbus who was a murderer and rapist.

(I’ll set aside her disturbing admiration for Harvey Milk who, as an adult, sexually abused teenage boys.)

Is she suggesting that Christians are bigots and that affirming Scripture is unloving? If so, that raises the question, is she bigoted and unloving for harshly condemning beliefs that are central to the identities of Bible-believing Christians?

As Christians know from Christ’s example, genuine love—as opposed to the treacly stuff that passes for love today—does not entail approval of all feelings, beliefs, and volitional acts of others. Every parent knows this as well.

Genuine love is inseparable from truth. Genuine love requires knowing what is good and true, and desiring that for others even when they desire that which is destructive.

A 2018 Wheaton North High School graduate who currently attends Emerson College wrote this on the Wheaton Moms & Families Facebook page,

PARENTS, by rebuking and establishing that people that live differently from you are dirty and bad and deviant to you children…. You are creating ignorant children, because ignorance is LEARNED.”

She provided no evidence that any parent is telling their children that those who choose to embrace a homosexual or cross-sex identity “are dirty or bad or deviant” people. There is a difference between saying ideas are false or behavioral choices are wrong or deviant, and saying people are “dirty and bad and deviant.” By rebuking people who live differently than this college student does—people like theologically orthodox Christians—is she saying they are “dirty and bad”?

This college student made one point with which I would agree: Ignorance is learned.

Another Wheaton mom responded to the comment, “Thank God [the event] was canceled,” by saying, “you are a horrible hater.” In the upside-down “progressive” world of self-righteous and hollow claims about tolerance, love, and respect for diversity, opposition to a pro-feticide, pro-homosexuality lesbian activist promoting her book to elementary school children is a sign of hatred.

Other “progressive” scolds sniff that Stevenson wasn’t even going to talk about Harvey Milk, but that’s beside the point. First, she was shilling her book—a book the contents of which many parents would find objectionable.

Second, many parents believe that anyone who affirms homoeroticism as intrinsically good and places her homoerotic attraction at the center of her identity is an inappropriate role model for their young children. Government schools have no right to treat those parents’ beliefs and feelings any differently than the beliefs and feelings of leftists.

While culturally regressive parents find conservative beliefs on the nature and morality of volitional homosexual acts and cross-sex impersonation “bigoted” and “hateful,” others find leftist beliefs bigoted and hateful. If leftist ontological and moral assumptions are wrong, promoting them is neither enlightened nor loving. And if government schools may not present conservative moral positions to captive audiences of young children, because leftists view them as false and destructive, then government schools should not present leftist moral positions to young captive audiences, because conservatives view them as false and destructive.

(This is the point in discussions on “LGBT” issues when regressives, rubbing their hands together with a “gotcha” gleam in their eyes, wind up and toss in the manifestly dumb analogy comparing skin color to homosexual attraction and cross-sex identification. So, once more for the analogically challenged: There are zero points of correspondence between skin color per se, which is 100% heritable, immutable in all cases, and has no constituent behavioral features, and homosexual attraction or cross-sex identification, which are constituted by subjective feelings and volitional acts.)

Now back to the umbrage of leftists about the cancellation of Robin Stevenson’s misbegotten visit: Let’s imagine for a moment that Longfellow Elementary School were to invite an author to talk to young children about activism. Some of her books, replete with colorful comics, promote the views of Princeton University bioethicist Peter Singer who favors the legalization of infanticide for defective babies. Some of her books advocate for the “civil right” of polyamorists to marry as many people as they love and for consenting relatives of the same sex to marry each other (love is love, ya know). In another book, she pleads for the right of those who identify as amputees to socially and surgically “transition.”

Or let’s imagine that Longfellow Elementary School were to invite an author who has written books that promote the right of the unborn to be protected from slaughter, the right of girls and women to be free of the presence of biological men in their private spaces, the right of children to be raised by a mother and a father, and that promote the view that marriage has a nature central to which is sexual differentiation? What if this author’s books included profiles of Abby Johnson, former Planned Parenthood director/now pro-life activist; abortion survivor and pro-life activist Gianna Jessen; Walt Heyer, former cross-sex identifier who has now detransitioned; Katy Faust, who was raised by two lesbians and opposes same-sex marriage; and Ryan T. Anderson, an activist for true (i.e., sexually-differentiated) marriage? To be inclusive of diverse perspectives would “progressive” parents approve of their 9-year-old children attending a presentation by such an author? Should conscientious objectors to such a speaker be publicly vilified as bigots and haters?

Christians are commanded by God to train up their children in the way they should go. That cannot happen in institutions that seek to cultivate love for acts that God detests. Conservative parents must exit these bubbling cauldrons of witches’ brew, formerly known as schools, before their children are boiled alive.

Here in Illinois, as in California, New Jersey, and Colorado, it is no longer merely possible that young children with impressionable minds and tender hearts will be exposed to positive images and ideas about sexual deviance. Thanks to the bill passed by regressive lawmakers and signed into law by Illinois’ feckless governor, J.B. Pritzker, it is now mandatory that this indoctrination takes place.

Parents must exit government schools, and churches must facilitate that exit. For those families who, for a variety of reasons, cannot homeschool, churches must either create affordable, distinctly Christian schools, or make funds available to church members who want to send their children to existing Christian schools but can’t afford the often cost-prohibitive tuition.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Longfellow-3.mp3

IFI depends on the support of concerned-citizens like you. Donate now

-and, please-