Many readers here may know the name Joshua Harris, the former pastor of Covenant Life Church in Maryland, and author of the popular 1997 book, “I Kissed Dating Goodbye,” which has sold over 1.2 million copies.

Christians throughout America were shocked this week to learn that Harris has divorced his wife and renounced his faith in Jesus Christ. “I have undergone a massive shift in regard to my faith in Jesus,” Harris wrote in an Instagram post over the weekend.  “By all the measurements that I have for defining a Christian. . . I am not a Christian.”   Harris “apologized” for his views on sexual purity making sure to place emphasis on his regret for supporting natural marriage with an apology to the LGBTQ community.

As it turned out, the night before I read about Harris, I had just watched a PBS documentary called “Jeremiah” about war hero and Viet Nam POW, Jeremiah Denton. His book was, “When Hell Was in Session” which was made into a 1979 TV movie.  It led to Denton’s election to the U.S. Senate in 1980.

In his nearly eight years in a Hanoi prison camp, Denton was brutally tortured. He was also mocked as he was marched through the streets of Hanoi and pummeled with rocks. Admiral Denton was held in solitary confinement in a three-foot cell for over 2,500 days. After his release, Denton noted that there was one thing he held to which the Viet Cong could not take away – his Christian beliefs. His faith inspired other POW’s in his camp and kept them holding on during some of their darkest hours.

You may recall that Denton was interviewed by members of the Japanese press as a PR stunt by the Communist forces. He was beaten afterwards for expressing his support for America, which he knew would happen. Incredibly, the emaciated, almost unrecognizable, Denton also answered questions while repeatedly blinking the word “torture” in Morse Code as a message to our military leaders and human rights advocates.

It is striking how our pro-gay, anti-Christian culture seems to have so easily taken away from a prosperous, successful Josh Harris, what beatings, starvation, emotional abuse and deprivation could never take from Admiral Denton. Harris has chosen to conform to his captors. Jeremiah Denton never did.

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.

Illinois Family Institute is urging our readers to watch and share this critically important conversation between Pastor Doug Wilson and Pastor Derek Buikema on the science-denying, anti-Christian “trans”-ideology. Doug Wilson is the pastor of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho; theologian; prolific author; and blogger extraordinaire. Derek Buikema is the lead pastor at Orland Park Christian Reformed Church in Orland Park, Illinois who has master’s degrees from Wheaton College, Westminster Seminary, and Calvin Seminary.

Their discussion includes the issues of Christian worldview, church discipline, the biblical view of a welcoming church, and the increasing persecution of the church in America.

Both pastors are theologically orthodox, wise, winsome, courageous, and whipsmart—a combination of characteristics increasingly rare among Christians—including Christian leaders.

As the “trans”-ideology takes root in the toxic soil of American anti-culture, we desperately need Pastor Wilson’s insights and example. We’re rapidly heading to a cultural place in which all public recognition and valuation of sex differences will be eradicated. There will remain no sex-segregated spaces or activities. Our children and grandchildren will be taught that they are ignorant, hateful bigots if they refuse to share restrooms, locker rooms, dorm rooms, or semi-private hospital rooms with persons of the opposite sex.

There will remain no single-sex high schools or colleges, no women’s athletics, no sex-segregated prisons or shelters. Women will no longer be able to count on mammograms being administered by women. Small mom and pop businesses—including businesses that cater to children—will not be free to refuse to hire cross-dressing men. Child welfare agencies will place children in the care of adults who pretend to be the sex they are not and never can be. Christians who refuse to use incorrect pronouns when referring to those who seek to pass as the opposite sex will lose their jobs and be fined or jailed.

Parents, watch and discuss this with your middle school and older children. IFI subscribers, share this with your friends and church leaders—or better yet, invite them over to watch and discuss it together. You will be edified, enlightened, emboldened, and inspired.

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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

Written by Peter Heck

This may be my favorite story of the year.

It may just be my own personal observation, but for years I’ve felt that conservatives and liberals have two very different, but equally debilitating challenges.  Who wins at the ballot box almost unfailingly hinges upon which can overcome their respective dilemma.

For conservatives, it’s being able to effectively articulate the ideals of conservatism in the face of a hostile and unfairly antagonistic media climate.

For liberals, it’s being able to effectively untether themselves from the historical calamities of left-wing policy and convince voters this time it will be different.

Though Donald Trump is hardly a conservative, his ability to campaign aggressively against the media itself, combatively swatting all the standard tactics it employs against Republican candidates obviously paid huge dividends.  Can he do it again?

That may depend largely upon how well he can tie the utter buffoonery of left-wing state and municipal leadership to his eventual opponent.  For instance, one of the most notoriously left-wing areas of the country is Berkeley – a city on the east shore of San Francisco Bay.  Recently, the liberals leading that city took action to…well, here, you read it yourself:

Berkeley, California, has adopted an ordinance to replace some terms with gender-neutral words in the city code.  The San Francisco Chronicle reports Wednesday that “she” and “he” will be replaced by “they.” The words “manpower” and “manhole” will become “workforce” and “maintenance hole.”  The City Council on Tuesday unanimously passed the measure to replace more than two dozen commonly used terms. There will be no more “craftsmen” in city code, only “craftspeople” or “artisans.”

That’s plenty annoying enough.  But when you consider this is the same region of the country that has this:

It’s an empirical fact: San Francisco is a crappier place to live these days. Sightings of human feces on the sidewalks are now a regular occurrence; over the past 10 years, complaints about human waste have increased 400%. People now call the city 65 times a day to report poop, and there have been 14,597 calls in 2018 alone. Last year, software engineer Jenn Wong even created a poop map of San Francisco, showing the concentration of incidents across the city. New mayor London Breed said: “There is more feces on the sidewalks than I’ve ever seen growing up here.” In a revolting recent incident, a 20lb bag of fecal waste showed up on a street in the city’s Tenderloin district.

And this:

While city statistics show a dramatic reduction in large tent encampments around San Francisco and a significant increase in shelter beds in the past six months, people like [homeless man John] Constantine still find themselves scattering into neighborhoods like the Castro looking for refuge. And the citywide improvements have done little to ease the problem for residents and merchants, who say they remain frustrated with homeless people sleeping outside their stores and homes. 

Tent cities, human feces in the streets, homeless people sleeping in people’s doorways or business entryways, and liberal leaders are taking action to what?  To make a policy where everyone has to say “maintenance hole” instead of “manhole.”

If clarity is the right’s biggest problem, competence is the left’s.

This article was originally published at PeterHeck.com.

Former Illinois state senator Daniel Biss recently guest-hosted a culturally regressive radio program titled “Live, Local & Progressive” in which he sought to draw attention to yet another God-forsaken executive order (2019-11) from Illinois’ morally bankrupt governor, J.B. Pritzker, which was signed “shortly before the Pride parade.” The executive order establishes a 25-member “Affirming and Inclusive Task Force,” essentially to use government schools to advance the ideology and goals of the “trans” cult.

Lest anyone think the task force will be ideologically balanced between those who believe biological sex matters when it comes to, for example, private spaces and athletics and those who believe it doesn’t matter, here’s what Pritzker’s order dictates:

The Task Force shall consist of at least one representative from the Office of the Governor and no more than twenty-five (25) members, selected by the Governor, who have experience or expertise related to supporting transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming students in schools including, but not limited to, students, parents or guardians, teachers, school administrators, lawyers, medical professionals, and representatives from community-based organizations.

Note that members must have “experience or expertise” related to “supporting” students who embrace “trans”-cultism. The word “supporting” has nothing to do with assisting students in ways that move them toward accepting their immutable biological sex. It means facilitating their reality-denying feelings, their invasion of the privacy of their peers, their tyrannical linguistic demands of others, and the hijacking of hard-won girls’ athletic opportunities by objectively male students.

Any guesses which community-based organizations Pritzker will include? Could it be the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance? Equality Illinois? The Center on Halsted?

The order took effect on July 1, 2019 and its recommendations are due on the governor’s desk by Jan. 1, 2020.

Biss’ guests were the following:

Nat Duran, a young woman who pretends to be a man and works for the  “LGBTQ”-indoctrinating organization the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance.

Nicki Bazer, an attorney “who represents school districts in her day job, and also does pro bono work on behalf of transgender youth.”

Juliet Berger-White, Deputy General Counsel in the Office of the Governor and another activist for all things “trans”—particularly school issues—who helped craft Pritzker’s executive order.

Nat Duran exposed the lie that “gender identity” is fixed and immutable—a lie that some “trans” ideologues have tried to pass off to a gullible public:

[W]hen folks often think of trans and gender expansive young folks in school systems, they immediately go to restroom and locker room usage, right? Anyone who’s been in a public space and used these facilities know that they are really gendered, and so how do we make sure that students who maybe are exploring different aspects of their identity are able to use these spaces in a way that feels safe and supportive to them…. [E]specially as you think of younger grades, I think especially around middle school, students who are really just figuring out a lot of things about their lives, like allowing room for fluidity as well. I think sometimes… even if a school in the best of intentions enforces a really supportive practice, is it so rigid that it doesn’t allow for a student who’s like, “Well, I think I might be trans, or maybe I’m non binary, but I’m still figuring it out, and so I don’t know what restroom feels best to me right now.

Point of correction: restrooms and locker rooms aren’t “gendered.” They’re “sexed.” They correspond to objective, immutable biological sex.

Duran didn’t explain exactly why private spaces should correspond to “gender identity” as opposed to biological sex. Nor did she explain why it’s hateful for normal students to refuse to use restrooms with opposite-sex peers, but it’s not hateful for cross-sex passers to refuse to use restrooms with opposite-“gendered” peers.

And if, as “trans”-cultists assert, it’s impossible to know the authentic “gender identity” of a person by their clothing, hairstyles, or anatomy, “trans”-identifying students can’t possibly know whether their same-sex peers are male or female. Therefore, they shouldn’t care where they change their clothes or shower. Imagine a boy who identifies as a girl filing an expensive lawsuit to access the girls’ locker room only to discover all the girls identify as boys.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive—particularly when we do it based on an incoherent ideology.

Duran’s discussion of identity exploration and fluidity points to the end goal of the “trans” revolution. The end goal is the eradication of public recognition of sex differences everywhere. Identity exploration, gender expansiveness, and gender fluidity preclude the existence of anything other than the wholesale sexual integration of every space, activity, and context. No more sex-segregated anything for anyone. Even school practices that are “really supportive” of opposite-sex-identifying students is insufficient. Duran and most other “trans” activists seek locker room and restroom free-for-alls—literally, restrooms and locker rooms Free. For. All.

It is critically important to understand that if society is legally prohibited from “discriminating” based on both sex and “gender identity,” there remains no legal way to prohibit what leftists call “cisgender” persons (i.e., persons who accept their sex) from using opposite sex private spaces. If a public school allows biological male Bob who pretends to be Mary to use the girls’ locker room, there would be no way to prevent biological male Tom who accepts his sex from using it. The school couldn’t prevent him from using it based on his sex because they’ve already allowed another male access to it. And they couldn’t prevent Tom from using it based on his “cisgender” identity, because they can’t discriminate based on “gender identity.” Abracadabra, all private spaces become co-ed.

Duran’s discussion also reveals how young the children are whom cultural regressives seek to inculcate with the “trans” ideology.

Duran also longs for government schools to be complicit in concealing information from parents about their own children:

[H]ow do we think through parental communications? If I’m calling home to talk to a parent, [is the student] out, or safe and supported, at home? Am I going to be using a different name or set of pronouns when I do that?”

In the view of “trans” dogmatists, those parents who reject the unproven, arguable, doctrinaire assumptions of the “trans” cult are unsafe and unsupportive and, therefore, deserve to lose parental rights.

Attorney/activist Nicki Bazer deceived Biss’ audience by omission. Here’s what she said:

[T]he rights of transgender, gender expansive, non-binary students are already protected in Illinois…. [U]nder the Illinois school code, all students have a right to equal opportunity to all educational programs and services. And under the regulations that the state board of education has issued, they have defined that, and made clear that you cannot discriminate or exclude or segregate students based on their gender identity. [T]hat applies to all schools within Illinois that are public schools. The Illinois human rights act also touches all non-sectarian K12 schools, or pre-K12 schools, and that also prohibits discrimination in all schools on the basis of sex and sexual orientation. And under the Illinois Human Rights Act, sexual orientation, sex, is defined as including gender identity.

Interestingly, Bazer did not share these relevant words from the Illinois Human Rights Act, which is state law:

The Act permits schools to maintain single-sex facilities that are distinctly private in nature, e.g., restrooms and locker rooms.

Nor did she share this from the 2016 Transgender Students in School  guidelines posted by the Illinois Association of School Boards:

[F]ederal courts in non-school cases have recognized a fundamental right to privacy or acknowledged the legitimacy of safety concerns in cases involving individuals undressing, using the restroom, or showering in an area to which a member of the opposite birth sex has access. Moreover, a federal district court recently asked the question whether a university engages in unlawful discrimination in violation of Title IX or the Constitution when it prohibits a transgender male student from using restrooms and locker rooms designated for men on campus. The court concluded: “The simple answer is no.”

Juliet Berger-White inadvertently exposes the hypocrisy of cultural regressives who claim to value diversity:

The goal of the executive order is to ensure that we are bringing together a crucial group of stakeholders who have great experience on the ground…. These stakeholders have been doing this work on an ongoing basis, but the benefit of doing it from the perspective of a governor-appointed task force is that it can help these private stakeholders collaborate with the government, and the Illinois State Board of Education, to figure out what next steps should be, and what that looks like.”

In other words, outside “progressive” activists are going to collude with the government to advance their sexuality dogma. Who are these “crucial stakeholders”? Are any lesbians who object to the sexual integration of women’s private spaces included? Will the task force include members of the professional mental health and medical communities who in increasing numbers are concerned about “adolescent-onset gender dysphoria,” the effects of puberty blockers like Lupron, and how social “transitioning” at young ages may effect brain development? What about Muslims, Orthodox Jews, or theologically orthodox Christians who are taxpayers and have children in public schools? Are parents and students who object to the sexual integration of private spaces and athletics crucial stakeholders?

The name Berger-White may sound familiar to long-time IFI readers. Her husband, Jeff Berger-White, is a former colleague of mine from the years I worked full-time in Deerfield High School’s writing center on Chicago’s North Shore. He was at the center of a huge community controversy over his decision to teach the egregiously obscene play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.

The play revolves around two couples: married Mormon couple Harper and Joe whose marriage is disintegrating in large measure due to Joe’s repressed homosexuality, which he eventually acts upon; and a homosexual couple, Louis and Prior. Louis leaves Prior when he finds out Prior has AIDS, and then has a month-long affair with Harper’s husband Joe.

There’s the black, homosexual, ex-drag queen nurse with the heart of gold, Belize; and the Angel with “eight vaginae” whose visits prompt sexual arousal and orgasm. The play is replete with references to orgasms, fellatio, semen, ejaculation, and f***ing. It includes the line “Suck my ****, Mother Theresa.”

In the heat of the controversy, Mr. Berger-White sent a letter to our local press asserting that it is the responsibility of English teachers to “challenge the emotions and morals” of their students—a belief clearly shared by his wife. His assertion raises some questions:

• Is it really the responsibility of high school English teachers (or government lawyers) to challenge the emotions and morals of students (or other people’s children)?

• Who decided that and when?

• How does the pedagogical goal of challenging the emotions and morals of students square with “progressive” commitments to ensuring students feel “safe”?

• If society agrees that challenging the emotions and morals of students is the responsibility of high school English teachers, why do we never hear about materials being presented that challenge the emotions and morals of “progressive”/”LBGTQQAP” students?

In the Biss interview, Juliet Berger-White asserted that “the law sets the floor,” but that when it comes to government schools affirming “trans” dogma, “there’s no ceiling.” Echoing her husband’s sentiments, she acknowledges the moral implications of promoting the “trans” ideology and policies in government schools, arguing that taxpayer-funded schools should abandon respect for biological sex “not just because we’re legally obligated to do so, but because we’re morally obligated to do so.”

The presumptuous Berger-Whites are using their taxpayer-funded jobs to indoctrinate other people’s children with their sexuality ideology. Their views are premised on arguable assumptions that are rarely addressed and never proved. Neither compassion nor “inclusivity” requires the affirmation of arguable assumptions that deny reality or that deem subjective feelings of greater importance than biological reality, especially if those assumptions result in the sexual integration of private spaces and speech mandates.

Teachers, leave those kids alone.

Conservatives, teach your children well, which can’t be done in places where foolish adults don’t respect physical embodiment as male or female or by cowardly adults who passively acquiesce because they care more about themselves than the children who have been entrusted to them.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/trans-schools_audio.mp3

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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

The “trans” cult argues that biological sex is unimportant and always, in every context and activity, subordinate to “gender identity,” which is constituted by subjective, internal feelings about one’s “maleness” or “femaleness.” In the “trans” mythology, “gender identity” has nothing to do with biological sex. Therefore, a human with XY chromosomes and a natal penis can be a woman if he so conceives himself to be. If he dreams it, he is she. No need to get rid of any appendages because women can have penises.

One of these mythological women–“Jessica” Yaniv (sometimes Jonathan) emailed esthetician Marcia da Silva, owner of a home-based salon in Canada who provides Brazilian waxes for real women. The mythological woman–complete with the anatomical accouterments of real men–requested a Brazilian wax around said accouterments. The owner of the salon refused because she was neither comfortable depilating nor trained to depilate hirsute dojiggers. You probably know what happened next.

Yaniv, the mythological woman, pirouetted right down to the Human Rights Tribunal in his stilettos to file a complaint against this woman for discriminating against him based on “gender identity.” This is the 16th female esthetician–“almost all of whom come from minority backgrounds”–against whom he has filed a complaint. He managed to extort $2,500 from one young, single mother who paid him to have the complaint dropped.  According to the Post Millennial, “Fighting JY’s discrimination complaint all the way through to a hearing would cost each esthetician between $20,000-30,000 or more.” But isn’t it sexual assault when a man forces a woman against her will to touch his dojigger? What does the #MeToo movement think about this?

But there’s more. The perverse Yaniv who fancies himself a woman and wants to force women against their will to wax his private parts also wants to help minor girls with their menstrual pads and tampons and wants to rent a public pool for a topless pool party for “LGBTQ” persons between the ages of 12-24. His request to appear before a Township Council asks for,

permission for LGBTQ2s+ organizations to be allowed to host an ‘All-Bodies Swim’ at… civic pools… for all people aged 12+ where these events will be restricted to LGBTQ2S, and individuals will be permitted to be topless (at their leisure), in compliance with the laws of Canada and where parents and caretakers will be prohibited from attending these events as it’s considered safe and inclusive.

Wait, the event is “inclusive,” but he wants to exclude parents? Hmmm…

As Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon has written about Yaniv’s complaint, “This will be compulsory in the U.S. if the “Equality Act” (so-called) is signed into law.” The Equality Act would change the definition of “sex” in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include “gender identity,” thereby legally prohibiting recognition of sex differences anywhere and everywhere. Further, it explicitly nullifies religious liberty protections.

I wonder, will those who claim Christian bakers should be forced to bake cakes for homosexual anti-weddings argue that Muslim estheticians should be forced to wax the nether regions of mythological women?

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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

As many have heard, Planned Feticide (known euphemistically as Planned Parenthood) just gave the heave-ho to Dr. Leana Wen as its president. One of the reasons for the unceremonious dumping of Wen after only 8 months on the job is reportedly that she was disinclined to use politically correct language for people who pretend to be the sex they are not and never can be. Perhaps recently elected member of the Planned Parenthood National Board of Directors “Meghan” Stabler—who was elected six months after Wen’s appointment—had a little sumpin’ sumpin’ to do with that.

Stabler is, in reality, a man. He was born 56 years ago in England when his sex was correctly identified as male and he was named Mark. Stabler was once married to a woman and is the father of a 26-year-old daughter named Hannah (who is a lifestyle blogger in Austin, Texas). He and his former wife moved to the U.S. in 1990. In about 2002, he started cross-dressing and taking cross-sex hormones, after which he and his wife divorced. Then in 2007, he was castrated in an effort to masquerade convincingly as the woman he wishes he were.

After his marriage failed, he began another relationship with lesbian Erin Abernathy in 2005. They wanted to have a child, but since Stabler had rendered himself a eunuch, they procured a child by soliciting sperm to fertilize Abernathy’s eggs. One child was born from that procedure in 2012. Stabler’s relationship with Abernathy ended, and for the past 18 months, he’s been in a relationship with lesbian Sal Stow.

Stabler’s professional life reflects his obsession with normalizing the science-denying “trans” ideology in which he lives and moves and has his being. According to the homosexual magazine The Advocate, Stabler, whom The Advocate named as one of the 2019 “Champions of Pride,” has spent “the last eight years on the Human Rights Campaign National Board of Directors.” The Human Rights Campaign is America’s leading homosexual and “trans” activist organization that in 2018 spent $910, 000 on lobbying.

And now Stabler sits on the board of directors of Planned Parenthood—a purported defender of women’s rights. Yep, nothing says “women’s rights” quite like a man invading their restrooms and locker rooms through an elaborate deception. I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that an organization that profits from the killing of thousands of girls every year would support the deception of girls and women in their private spaces.

But I thought men weren’t allowed to have an opinion on abortion. Weird.

Or is it?

Why might Planned Parenthood want a pretend-woman on its board? The answer might be that Planned Parenthood leaders have been watching those greenbacks fly out the door. Gotta replace lost lucre somehow. The “trans” cult came like an answer to unholy prayers offered to the gods of eros and mammon at just the right moment. Planned Parenthood now offers cross-sex hormones to anyone over 18—male or female—at 200 affiliates across the country, which represents a “150 percent increase from 2016.” Human sacrifice remains Planned Parenthood’s modus operandi.

The “trans” cult may do what “second wave” feminism couldn’t do: Turn me into a feminist.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/planned-parenthood-and-the-trans-cult_audio.mp3

A bold voice for pro-family values in Illinois!

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

More abortion, more gambling, super weed and higher taxes… all courtesy of the Illinois legislature… but wait… there may be more.

Billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein socialized with the rich and powerful, harboring a sordid hidden life that came to light in 2008, landing him in prison for the solicitation of underage girls for sex.  Epstein was infamous for his private Boeing 727 airliner nicknamed the “Lolita Express,” which ferried guests including Bill Clinton and a bevy of young girls allegedly pressed into prostitution at his Caribbean estate dubbed “Orgy Island.”

His laughable 13-month sentence after being accused by more than 40 minor girls of sexual abuse is a testament to his connections in high places.  Those guests included the aforementioned former President Bill Clinton, who reportedly ditched his Secret Service detail to travel to the island.  On July 8, Clinton issued a statement claiming that he “knows nothing about the terrible crimes Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to in Florida some years ago, or those with which he has been recently charged in New York.”  The former president stated that he took “a total of four trips on Jeffrey Epstein’s airplane.” Flight logs, however, reveal that he had been on the plane as many as 26 times.

The list of prominent names alleged to have partaken of the pleasures of the flesh aboard the Lolita Express en route to Orgy Island include former national security adviser Sandy Berger, Naomi Campbell, former Harvard president Larry Summers, actor Kevin Spacey and comedian Chris Tucker.

Justice may yet be served.  This week Epstein was served with a federal indictment charged with the sexual trafficking of minors and one count of conspiracy to engage in sex trafficking of minor.  The indictment alleges that he “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls,” some as young as 14, describing the victims as “particularly vulnerable to exploitation.”  Miami Herald journalist Julie K. Brown, who helped break the story, believes that Epstein may have also been providing young girls to others as “sex slaves.”

These are serious charges, which according to renowned legal scholar and attorney Jonathan Turley, could “produce a sentence of 45 years in prison if Epstein were convicted.”

It’s important to keep in mind that people are not convicted in the “court of public opinion,” neither does our legal system allow for “guilt by association.”  Yet if true, the charges raise questions about how much Epstein’s associates knew about his sexual exploitation of young girls – and whether they chose to turn a blind eye.

Courtney Wild states that she was 14 when Epstein’s abuse began, and stated after his arrest:  “I have fought so long to finally see Epstein brought to justice. I didn’t believe the news that he was arrested until I saw him in custody with my own eyes. I want my voice to encourage others to come forward,” she said. “We are stronger together.”

Not a few lamented that Epstein’s initial sweetheart plea deal back in 2008 was evidence of the “elite” escaping having to pay for their crimes.  This week’s arrest and indictment give hope that the wheels of justice, while sometimes turning painfully slow, do continue to spin to their inexorable conclusion.  Doubtlessly more famous names will surface in the days and weeks to come. Let the chips fall where they may and let us hope and pray that this scourge of the sexual abuse of minors will be uprooted from our society.

IFI Fall Banquet with Franklin Graham!
We are excited to announce that at this year’s IFI banquet, our keynote speaker will be none other than Rev. Franklin Graham, President & CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Christian evangelist & missionary. This year’s event will be at the Tinley Park Convention Center on Nov. 1st.

Learn more HERE.

Written by Dr. John A. Sparks

Among recent actions by the U.S. Supreme Court, a four-sentence order may set the stage for the court to eventually address the collision between free speech and religious freedom on one hand and gay rights on the other. The order voided a judgment by the state of Oregon that had imposed a $135,000 fine on Portland-area bakery owners—the Kleins—for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a lesbian couple. Oregon maintained that its anti-discrimination law condemned such a rebuff even when the bakery owners’ religious convictions run counter to participating in a same-sex wedding.

Besides vacating the fine, the court sent the case back to the Oregon Court of Appeals to be reconsidered in light of the Masterpiece Cakeshop decision. Masterpiece involved a similar situation in Colorado for Christian baker, Jack Phillips, when he refused, on religious grounds, to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple’s marriage. In Masterpiece, Colorado’s case against Phillips had relied on language in an earlier case, Employment Division v. Smith (1990), which said that religious liberty claims could not be used as a defense against “generally applicable” laws that were “neutrally” enforced. However, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the Colorado proceedings against Phillips were far from “neutral.” In fact, they were rife with religious hostility toward him. Besides that, the court found that Colorado had selectively enforced its anti-discrimination laws, making them less than “generally applicable.”  Now the court is ordering the Oregon court to review the Klein case looking for the same examples of unfairness it had discovered in Masterpiece.

Klein is the second case of this type that the U.S. Supreme Court has sent back to the courts below for reconsideration in light of the Masterpiece decision. Earlier, the Washington Supreme Court was ordered to make such a review in a case involving a florist, Barronelle Stutzman, and her business, Arlene Flowers. Stutzman had refused to provide wedding flowers for a gay couple’s ceremony. Just recently (June 6, 2019), the Washington court found that proceedings were not conducted with “religious animus.” The Washington court closed that review by repeating its conclusions that neither free speech, free exercise, nor freedom of expression were infringed upon by the anti-discrimination law in question.

It seems likely that the Oregon court will make similar findings of the absence of religious hostility. Once the Oregon court has spoken on the matter in the way it is expected to rule, the questions of religiously hostile proceedings and selective enforcement will have been disposed of. That will leave the central constitutional questions of free speech and free exercise of religion for the U.S. Supreme Court to face which it effectively avoided in Masterpiece. The arguments on those issues made by the Kleins and Mrs. Stutzman in their existing court filings will be brought up again.

What are the Constitutional claims supporting the positions of faith-guided commercial providers who are asked to set aside their religious beliefs by customers who ask them to offer services contrary to their convictions?

The first basis for relief from the reach of the anti-discrimination laws is the claim that such laws violate the freedom of speech of the providers. At first blush, it may seem a stretch to regard baking a cake or arranging flowers as “speech.” However, federal Constitutional cases have long recognized that protecting speech is not limited to “the spoken or written word.” Engaging in conduct that expresses a point of view or idea is speech, and that expressive conduct is protected by the First Amendment.

In addition, and important for these cases, citizens cannot be forced to deliver a message provided by the government or another person. The oldest and best-known case recognizing this idea—called the “compelled speech doctrine”—is W. Va. State Board of Education v. Barnett. There the court said that public school children could not be required to salute the American flag or say the pledge of allegiance when to do so was against their religion’s teaching. The case, though it involved religious convictions, is usually viewed as a free speech case in which the court forbade the government from making citizens express a message contrary to their beliefs. Both wedding providers—the Kleins and Stutzman—maintain that Washington and Oregon laws are, in effect, requiring them to use their artistic expression to further a conjugal union against which they have serious religious reservations, or face a legal penalty. When their only other choice is to abandon the means to make a livelihood that they have chosen, the burden placed upon them is unconstitutional.

The second constitutional claim asserted by the two wedding providers is that their religious liberty under the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment has been denied to them by the anti-discrimination laws. Employment Division v. Smith, as already mentioned above, makes that claim more difficult. The Smith defendants consumed an illegal drug—peyote—as part of a Native American religious ceremony. They were dismissed from their jobs with a drug rehabilitation organization and lost a claim for unemployment compensation. They argued that their free exercise of religion was being infringed upon by Oregon.

The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed, maintaining that “neutral” and “generally applicable” regulations could not be avoided by religious liberty claims. The result was probably right: religious ceremonies do not give participants the right to use controlled substances. But, unfortunately, the court’s opinion needlessly swept away an almost three-decades-old case which had established a sensible legal formula for addressing those instances in which religious convictions clash with existing legislation. That formula, called the Sherbert test after Sherbert v. Verner (1963), protected religious believers when the court found that a law or regulation “substantially burdened” their “free exercise of religion,” and that the government had no “compelling interest” at stake, or that it overlooked a “less restrictive” way to further its interest. Congress vigorously sought to counter the Smith decision by passing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which required the restoration of the Sherbert test. However, the RFRA was ruled as only applicable to federal laws and regulations and not to the states and therefore does not help the Kleins and Stutzman.

Given the clear facts of these cases, and the uncertainty that remains for religious providers, it is high time for the court to hear and decide them. For the most part, the reasoning of Smith should be discarded and Sherbert reinstated. The court should not avoid these fundamental questions of free speech and free exercise of religion any longer. Rather, it must courageously set the cases for oral argument and address these key issues head on.

This article was originally published by The Institute for Faith & Freedom.

***UPDATED with new information***

“Impedimenta: objects, as provisions or baggage, that impede or encumber”

No one with an iota of integrity, a morsel of morality, or a pittance of professionalism should ever cite the American Psychological Association (APA) again. Why not, you may be wondering. Well, the APA has a special area called Division 44 (kind of like Nevada’s Area 51). Division 44 is also called “The Society for the Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity (SPSOGD).” Division 44 was founded “in 1985 by a group of pioneering LGB psychologists and their allies,” and one of its primary purposes is to “promote the development and delivery of affirmative psychological services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender and gender nonconforming and queer people.” In the service of this purpose, last year Division 44

formed a task force on consensual non-monogamy (CNM), in recognition of relationship diversity, which intersects with sexual/gender identities in interesting ways. 

“Consensual non-monogamy” is a euphemism for adultery, sexual infidelity, or polyamory. Leftists must paint sexual immorality with a glossy finish if they’re going to deceive people and advance their socially destructive ideology.

And make no mistake, the CNM Task Force is hell-bent on advancing their ideology using precisely the same tactics that homo-activists and “trans”-activists use. They are portraying polyamorists and other sexually unfaithful persons as victims and cultural disapproval as an unmitigated evil, known in the dystopian “progressive” world as “discrimination”:

[T]here is clearly a stigma attached to practicing consensual non-monogamies. Forthcoming research by Ryan Witherspoon, PhD, a project lead of the CNM task force, indicates that more than half of CNM-identified individuals have experienced anti-CNM discrimination in some form, despite frequently concealing their CNM practices. 

To Leftists, there is nothing shameful but shame itself—oh, and conservative moral positions on sexuality. Those are totally shameworthy and to be stowed away in closets.

According to the APA,

Division 44’s Consensual Non-Monogamy Task Force promotes awareness and inclusivity about consensual non-monogamy and diverse expressions of intimate relationships. These include but are not limited to: people who practice polyamory, open relationships, swinging, relationship anarchy and other types of ethical non-monogamous relationships.

The Consensual Non-Monogamy Task Force is co-chaired by perversion advocate and University of California, Berkeley licensed counseling psychologist Heath Schechinger and perversion advocate Amy Moors, who is an associate professor of psychology at Chapman University where she “examines diverse expressions of sexuality, including how stigma affects well-being among sexual minorities and people engaged in consensually non-monogamous relationships.”

She and Schechinger are both connected to the Kinsey Institute, she as a research fellow and Schechinger as an advisor to the Kinsey Institute’s Kenneth R. Haslam Collection on Polyamory, named after Dr. Kenneth Haslam who self-identifies as a “Golden Age polyamory activist. Long retired anesthesiologist. Gadfly. Troublemaker. Heretic. Single but not alone. Sex positive. Unitarian Universalist.”

Schechinger is particularly excited about a letter he co-wrote asking the task force to “be inclusive of non-monogamy and kink.” In the letter, there is a link to a petition which includes a request to  include “consensual non-monogamy as a protected class.” (No one can honestly say they weren’t warned about the dangers of adding “sexual orientation” to anti-discrimination policies and laws.)

The Consensual Non-Monogamy Task Force’s Advisory Board includes the following:

• Cunning Minx, “a poly and kinky sex-positive educator and activist” and a “kinky boobiesexual.”

• Alan MacRobert, publisher of Polyamory in the News

• Charles Moser, Ph.D. M.D., a “sex educator, sex researcher, clinical sexologist, and sexual medicine physician, who practices in San Francisco” and focuses on those “who identify as a sexual or gender minority, those who practice (or hope to practice) an alternative sexual or relationship lifestyle, and those who engage in nonconforming sexual or gender behaviors.”

• Dave Doleshal, Ph.D., who serves on the International Organizing Committee for the “3^rd Non-Monogamies and Contemporary Intimacies Conference”

• Dossie Easton, a California marriage and family therapist who says this on her website: “Since 1969, I have lived and worked in sexual minority cultures. I am dedicated to feminist, polyamorous, BDSM [Bondage, Discipline, Sadism, Masochism], spiritual, gender-diverse, and LGBTQ individuals and communities. I explore, with my clients and in my own life, new paradigms of gender, sexuality, and relationships.”

• Elisabeth Sheff, PhD., “an expert on polyamory and sexual minority families with children” who writes a blog on Psychology Today’s website titled, “The Polyamorists Next Door: Exploring the world of consensual non-monogamy”

• Jes Matsick, PhD., Penn State U. “Assistant Professor of Psychology and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies,” Matsick’s “research program is at the intersection of gender, sexuality, and prejudice…. Her… approaches to research often prioritize the perspectives and experiences of stigmatized groups (e.g., … people in nontraditional relationships).”

• John Sakaluk, Ph.D. associate professor of psychology at the University of Victoria in Canada, and co-accomplice author (along with Schechinger and Moors) of a paper titled “Harmful and helpful therapy practices with consensually non-monogamous clients: Toward an inclusive framework.” Any guesses as to what constitutes harmful, “inappropriate” therapy practices”? Yep, therapies that are not “affirming” of “consensual non-monogamy” are deemed harmful and inappropriate, while those that affirm sexual profligacy are deemed “exemplary.”

• Justin Lehmiller, Ph.D., social psychologist, prolific writer on sex, and research fellow at the Kinsey Institute who offers lectures and workshops that provide “science-backed tips for maintaining happy and healthy relationships, whether you want to be monogamous, polyamorous, or something in between.”

• Susan Wright, M.A., “founded the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom in 1997, a national advocacy organization for the BDSM, swing and polyamory communities, and currently serves as spokesperson for the organization. She chaired the successful DSM-5 Revision Project, and coordinated the [Sadomasochism] Policy Reform Project for the National Organization for Women (NOW) which resulted in rescinding their anti-BDSM policy at their national conference in 1999. Susan has published over 30 books including kinky romance novels.”

• Richard A. Sprott Ph.D., a lecturer in the Department of Human Development and Women’s Studies at California State University, East Bay, who views BDSM as a “sexual orientation” and cultural disapproval of sexual perversion as unhealthy stigmatization. Sprott has more than an academic interest in BDSM. He’s also a practitioner. This past April Sprott led a workshop titled “Scat: Beyond Brown” at a homosexual BDSM convention in Cleveland. “Scat” refer to “feces play.” (In what world is playing with feces [i.e., coprophilia] psychologically healthy?) He’s also the chair of the Children, Youth and Families Committee of Division 44.

Kind of an ideologically non-diverse task force, wouldn’t you say? I guess ideological diversity would fly in the faces of devotees of diversity. Can’t have that, say the tolerant among us.

We should expect nothing other than ideological uniformity, confirmation bias, and moral vacuity from this task force.

In the Great Awokening that really got churning in the late 20^th Century, woke people increasingly abandoned Scripture, common sense, and even hard science as arbiters of morality, truth, and reality. Village wokesters filled the knowledge gap with ideological impedimenta from the pseudosciences, also known as the soft sciences.

“Progressives,” impelled by a self-centered obsession with sexual autonomy and absent a commitment to objective truth or the notion of a public good, have long abused the woefully unstable social sciences to advance their libertine goals. They will exploit methodologically flawed pseudoscience and hijack mental health organizations to defend and promulgate their subversive sexual philosophy. When exploited research is exposed as deeply flawed, the foolish but powerful among us just move on knowing that Americans have short memories and atrophying powers of coherent thinking, and that the mainstream media are loathe to expose anything that undermines the continuing sexual revolution.

The American Psychological Association’s sexual bias and ignorance are showing. The APA is a tool for sexual deviance advocacy. Time for the morally and intellectually slumbering masses who’ve been massively duped by wokesters to wake up.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Div44.mp3

IFI Fall Banquet with Franklin Graham!
We are excited to announce that at this year’s IFI banquet, our keynote speaker will be none other than Rev. Franklin Graham, President & CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Christian evangelist & missionary. This year’s event will be at the Tinley Park Convention Center on Nov. 1st.

Learn more HERE.

The more you look into the “gay but celibate” movement advancing rapidly into once theologically orthodox Christian churches, the more disheartened you become by church leaders who have been slow to counter it, or worse, are embracing it.

The conservative Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), a small but influential denomination that separated from liberal mainline Presbyterianism in the early 1970s, is at a tipping point because of Revoice, a ministry that claims to be “observing the historic Christian doctrine of marriage and sexuality” but whose inaugural conference last summer included workshop titles like “Redeeming Queer Culture: An Adventure.” An ecumenical effort that’s primarily Protestant but open to Catholics, Revoice was not organized by the PCA, but Revoice leaders and supporters include pastors and others in the PCA.

While disavowing homoerotic acts, Revoice leaders sound like secular LGBT activists in portraying “gay Christians” as oppressed minorities who deserve the right to define themselves on their own terms, no matter how bizarre or disruptive to the larger Christian community. In defiance of logic, they celebrate “gay” identity and aspects of “gay” culture while promising never to engage in homoerotic sex.

Revoice conference speaker Eve Tushnet, a Catholic, has written approvingly of celibate “gay Christians” joining the festivities at homosexual pride parades. Her Twitter bio says her “hobbies include sin, confession, and ecstasy.” Even Episcopalians might find it tacky to name sin as a hobby, but apparently, it’s to be cheered as harmless fun by evangelicals if they want to appear sensitive to those struggling with homosexual attraction.

While Revoice primarily promotes “gay but celibate,” some involved in Revoice are in what they call “mixed-orientation marriages.” They are married to someone of the opposite sex, but continue to publicly identify as gay and talk openly about their persistent homosexual desires. In the world of Revoice, this is vulnerability worthy of praise. For others, it is a sickening disregard for marital vows and the respect owed one’s spouse.

Revoice held its second annual conference in early June. So far, the PCA has not disciplined PCA leaders and promoters of Revoice for their role in perversely trying to blend traditional Christian teachings with a worldly LGBT mindset. At its annual general assembly June 25-28 in Dallas, the PCA approved the Nashville Statement as a document of biblical fidelity to share as a discipleship tool. But the statement, released by an evangelical coalition in 2017 to bolster orthodoxy on sexual matters, will likely not be binding within PCA church courts. The PCA at its general assembly also approved a study committee to examine its own confessions as they pertain to sexuality. The Chicago Metro Presbytery was among those asking for a study committee.

If the words “study committee” sound familiar, that’s because the mainline denominations set up study committees when they were hit with debilitating brain fogs about their long-held beliefs related to sex, marriage, and family. They went on to approve homosexual “marriage” and help the culture usher in transgender pronouns and drag queens as children’s entertainment. It’s also noteworthy that on their way to giving full approval to homosexuality and homosexual “marriage,” mainline denominations endorsed “gay but celibate,” including among clergy.

The storm in the PCA has become especially fierce because one of its pastors has come out as a celibate “gay Christian.” Greg Johnson hosted the first Revoice conference at his St. Louis church last year but didn’t publicly wear the “gay” label himself until May when he wrote a revealing piece for Christianity Today. At the denomination’s recent general assembly, Johnson took to the floor to deliver a speech, both self-pitying and self-glorifying, in which he denounced Article 7 of the Nashville Statement, which says, “We deny that adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception is consistent with God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption.” Johnson, who likened people with homosexual desires to paraplegics and infertile women, said Article 7 “hurts” him. While Johnson has at times described homosexual desires as sinful, these comparisons in his speech underscore a profound lack of consistency and clarity in doing so.

Johnson’s speech was applauded by many at the general assembly and praised by others on social media. Even Denny Burk, a Southern Baptist academic critical of Revoice who overall has written commendably on sexuality from an orthodox perspective, wrote that Johnson “spoke powerfully of his own experience, and I was genuinely moved by what he said.” One thing that has slowed the gears in addressing the “gay but celibate” movement is the insistence of leaders in the evangelical world to give credit where it’s not due. Johnson’s speech was disturbing. It’s genuinely moving when someone fighting unwanted homosexual attraction, or any sinful desire, humbly seeks help at his church to walk closer with God. It’s deeply troubling when a pastor pleads at his church body’s annual meeting for recognition of a sinful identity as part of a divisive movement that threatens a denominational split.

To his credit, Burk identifies where Johnson goes wrong in his interpretation of Article 7:

Adopt means to embrace or endorse. The point of the article is simply to say that it is out of bounds to embrace an understanding of oneself or one’s sin that is at odds with God’s design in creation and redemption. This is not a controversial point, or at least it shouldn’t be among Christians.

Johnson’s own presbytery in Missouri investigated Revoice and released a report shortly before the PCA general assembly with words of caution for the “gay but celibate” ministry. But the report had sharper words for critics for supposedly making snap judgments about Revoice leaders and failing to appreciate the “nuance and complexity” of the issues they raise. The Missouri Presbytery, like the Chicago Metro Presbytery, asked for a denominational study committee. As onlookers wait to see if the PCA will take meaningful action to stamp out the contributions of its leaders to the “gay but celibate” movement, activists with Revoice and similar efforts will undoubtedly march on, pushing into more conservative churches of various affiliations to further desensitize believers to “queer” culture with a Christian spin.

Revoice conference speaker Pieter Valk, an Anglican, is the founder of EQUIP, a Nashville advocacy group whose mission is to “equip the church to better love sexual minorities.” EQUIP wants to remove any shame associated with homosexual lusts and is adamant that homosexual orientation is fixed, holding out no hope for Christians who want to be rid of homosexual desires. On the “Beliefs” page of its website, EQUIP says that “while we affirm and teach from a traditional sexual ethic, we respect all people’s right to follow their own paths.” Not exactly a robust statement of Christian orthodoxy. But it’s in keeping with what others in the “gay but celibate” movement sometimes say. They insist they are against homoerotic sex. But unlike Christians who believe such acts are categorically wrong, they make it sound like this belief is something to be subjectively determined based on the intensity of one’s religious sentiments.

EQUIP has little to say about sin and repentance, except in its shaming of the church for alleged past mistreatment of homosexuals. Its website even suggests a prayer for the church to pray in which the church repents of “destructive theology”:

Most merciful God, we, Christians, confess that we have sinned against you and LGBT+ people in our homophobia, with our destructive theology, and by treating LGBT+ people as problems – by the ways we have actively mistreated LGBT+ people, and by doing nothing to make the Church better for LGBT+ people as ourselves. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved LGBT+ people as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent that our sin has led many LGBT+ people to lose their faith or commit suicide. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that LGBT+ people may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your name. Amen

Even more troubling is the participation of Revoice speakers in LOVEboldly, a Kentucky-based group that reaches out to church staff, including youth pastors, on behalf of both celibate gays and those who see nothing wrong with homoerotic acts. The group promotes “reconciliation and healing” between homosexuals and Christians with traditional beliefs.  The LOVEboldly website explains, “We are deeply persuaded that agreement with one another’s political and theological perspectives on sexuality is not essential for moving towards loving one another boldly.” Imagine if Christian marriage counselors were to partner with an organization that believes adultery and open marriages are acceptable. The sympathy Christians feel for people in difficult marriages would not be seen as justification for linking arms with advocates of views so strikingly at odds with orthodox Christian beliefs.

That the “gay but celibate” movement has made so many inroads with such a morally compromised agenda reflects the degree to which far too many conservative Christians have been emotionally manipulated to see LGBT people as victims who must be treated with special sensitivity, even if that means giving celibate “gay Christians” exemptions to biblical teachings about personal holiness. Well-meaning Christian leaders have wanted to assume that activists have good intentions when they should have been more concerned about protecting their flocks from wolves.

Revoice leaders would have you believe that if it weren’t for them, there would be no one to help Christians with homosexual desires. But that’s far from the truth. Organizations and individuals sympathetic to the challenges posed by homosexual attraction have been around for years to help such Christians. But their message of leaving “gay” identity and culture behind is one many in Revoice want to silence. At the recent Revoice conference, a speaker mocked Rosaria Butterfield, a Christian writer and former lesbian now married to a man. (After getting pushback from some at the conference, the speaker later apologized.) Butterfield is controversial among many Revoice leaders and supporters because she doesn’t believe Christians should embrace a homosexual identity. As Butterfield puts it, “How can any of us fight a sin that we don’t hate?”

The insidious “gay but celibate” movement has started to drown out voices like Butterfield’s because activists have deftly exploited the fears of Christians who don’t want to be called haters. The message of Revoice and similar efforts is tailor-made for people-pleasers who want to be Christian and LGBT-friendly in a way that might lessen cultural pressure to go along with LGBT pride and delay or make unnecessary the taking of a costly stand in defense of orthodox convictions. But going along with the drift in the church on this critical issue is cowardly and unloving. True love rejoices in the truth and the time to stand for truth is now.

IFI Fall Banquet with Franklin Graham!
We are excited to announce that at this year’s IFI banquet, our keynote speaker will be none other than Rev. Franklin Graham, President & CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Christian evangelist & missionary. This year’s event will be at the Tinley Park Convention Center on Nov. 1st.

Learn more HERE.

You’ve probably heard homosexual activists and “trans”-cultists mock the idea that Christians in First World countries are or ever will be persecuted. Well, here’s a news item direct from the expanding “That is NOT persecution” file: Catholic clinical psychologist Dr. Joseph Nicolosi Sr.’s books on reparative therapy for those who experience unwanted same-sex attraction are now banned from Amazon.

Since deliberately deceitful homo-activists relentlessly conflate “aversion” therapies, which can include the administration of pain, and reparative therapies, it’s important to clarify that Nicolosi’s counseling practice and underlying theories never included “aversion” therapy treatments, nor were they coercive. His treatment protocol was “talk therapy” intended to help clients better understand the environmental factors that may have contributed to the development of same-sex attraction in the hope of reducing such feelings. Nicolosi, who died in 2017, promised no particular outcome, engaged in no “aversion” therapies, and counseled no one who opposed counseling.

Whether one accepts or rejects his theories about the possible effects of childhood trauma on the development of same-sex attraction is irrelevant to an assessment of the ethical implications of and danger posed by Amazon’s de facto censorship. Many would argue that “born gay” or “born-‘trans’” theories are both devoid of conclusive proof and are destructive, and yet Amazon doesn’t ban the sale of books that promulgate those doctrinaire theories.

This remarkable political feat of getting e-commerce colossus Amazon to ban the sale of a book was achieved by British homosexual Rojo Alan who doesn’t like Nicolosi’s theories and set out on a campaign to undermine liberty by making it far more difficult for people around the world to access ideas Alan doesn’t like. He joined a petition drive, contacted Amazon, and through Reddit and Twitter encouraged people who hadn’t read Nicolosi’s books to leave bad reviews.

Here’s an excerpt from Rojo Alan’s jubilant July 2 Facebook post:

Our hard work finally fucking paid off!! We got the homophobic books pulled from Amazon!!! Thank you all for the help!!!!

On the 31st of May, I made a post on Facebook, asking all of you to help me in getting a number of homophobic books pulled from Wordery and Amazon.

The main book in question was one called, ‘A parents guide to preventing homosexuality’ by Joseph Nicolosi.

I asked for people to go to each website and leave a bad review and also contact the providers if possible.

After I had messaged Wordery, they took down the said book from their website within 24 hours.

However, Amazon did not as they said these books didn’t go against their rules. I wasn’t willing to let this be. So since then, I had been working on getting these books pulled. I contacted Amazon regularly to speak to them about the books, about how unethical they are.

For the most part, it felt I wasn’t getting anywhere. They would say to me “we will pass it onto the relevant team to look into.” and that was it. I was constantly checking Amazon to see if the books were still there, and they were.

It was frustrating. So I make a plan of attack. I realised me saying to them “these books are bad” wasn’t getting anywhere. So I started by posting on other social media websites, like Reddit and twitter – to get people to leave negative reives [sic] on these books. Someone on Reddit also pointed me to a petition that was created to have these books removed.

It took a couple of weeks but the rating on Amazon dropped from a 4 star to a 2 star. I was finally getting somewhere.

I then started to look deeper into things. I looked into the “rules of publishing” on Amazon, to see what sort of things they allow and don’t allow. Once I wrapped my head around that I started to look into the laws of conversion therapy. The legal side of things.

Once I gathered everything I went back to Amazon and I threw all the information I had at them in several conversations….

My last conversation with Amazon was 6 days ago on the 26th June.

As of today ALL THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE BOOKS BY JOSEPH NICOLOSI, HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM THE UK AND US AMAZON STORE!!!

…

This is such a huge fucking step in the right direction. Getting such a huge retailer to remove something like this.

Note Rojo Alan’s use of the term “homophobic.” The term means irrational fear or hatred of homosexuals, but that’s not what homo-activists mean when they use it. Even those who were counseled by Nicolosi and reject his theories have not accused him of being hateful. What Alan means by “homophobic” is ideas that dissent from the dogmatic theories and moral assumptions of the homosexuality-affirming community.

Apparently, the politically biased Amazon owned by the bigoted Jeff Bezos was only too happy to comply with a book-banning request—a decision rationalized by an appeal to Amazon’s elastic principles.

Amazon does, indeed, prohibit materials that are

libelous, defamatory, harassing, threatening, or inflammatory. For example, don’t…express hatred or intolerance for people on the basis of… gender or gender identity, religion, [or] sexual orientation.

But moral and ontological assumptions with which homosexual activists disagree do not constitute either hatred of or intolerance for persons. If they did, however, then any book that espouses Leftist moral and ontological assumptions about homosexuality should be banned as well because they conflict with theologically orthodox religious beliefs and, therefore, violate Amazon’s prohibition of materials that “express hatred or intolerance for people on the basis of religion.”

Rod Dreher, senior editor of the American Conservative, writes that Amazon still carries Mein Kampf by Adolph Hitler, Communism with the Mask Off and Bolshevism in Theory and Practice by Joseph Goebbels, multiple books by pro-Stalin apologist Grover Furr, and a “highly influential text by the Islamist radical Sayyid Qutb, Milestones, which calls on Muslims to wage relentless global jihad against non-Muslims and insufficiently radical Muslims, until the entire world is under radical Islamic rule.”

So many contradictions, so little time.

I guess Rojo Alan (and Amazon) missed these Amazon rules:

As a bookseller, we provide our customers with access to a variety of viewpoints, including books that some customers may find objectionable. 

and:

Don’t attempt to drown out other people’s opinions, including by posting from multiple accounts or coordinating with others.

By ignoring the drop from four stars to two stars in a two-week period of a book published years ago, Amazon also ignored its own product review guidelines that prohibit

[P]osting content… on behalf of anyone else.

How long will it be before Amazon bans the sale of other books that espouse ideas homo-activists and “trans”-cultists hate? And at what point will Leftists be forced to admit that Christians are, indeed, being persecuted?

• When a federal law is passed requiring all citizens to use incorrect pronouns when referring to men and women who masquerade as the opposite sex?

• When Christian colleges lose their accreditation for refusing to pretend that biological males are women?

• When all private spaces are sexually integrated, including all restrooms, locker rooms, dorm rooms, nursing home rooms, semi-private hospital rooms, jails and prisons, and women’s shelters?

• When all previously all-women activities are forced to include men?

• When parents who oppose the chemical sterilization and surgical mutilation of their children lose custody to Big Brother?

• When it becomes illegal for pastors and priests to preach the whole counsel of God, including those parts of Scripture that homo-activists and “trans”-cultists don’t like?

• When Amazon bans the Bible?

All of these actions will constitute persecution of Christians because all violate theologically orthodox Christian beliefs regarding sexuality and God’s created order.

The persecution of Christians is on our doorstep. Christians need to be prepared, and it’s incumbent upon church leaders to prepare them.

“Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,
while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.”
(1 Timothy 3:12-13)

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Bigot-Bezos-and-Amazon-Ban-Book.mp3

IFI Fall Banquet with Franklin Graham!
We are excited to announce that at this year’s IFI banquet, our keynote speaker will be none other than Rev. Franklin Graham, President & CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Christian evangelist & missionary. This year’s event will be at the Tinley Park Convention Center on Nov. 1st.

Learn more HERE.

Did you know it’s no longer culturally acceptable for girls to say they want to date only boys? And did you know it’s no longer acceptable for young men to say they want to marry only young women? Believing that the biological sex as revealed in anatomy of one’s romantic/sexual partners matters is now deemed hatefully “transphobic.”

The ravenous, pro-“trans” behemoth smells the blood of children in our murky cultural waters and is hurtling toward them with blinding speed aided by the ignorance (perhaps willful) and cowardice of decent people—people who prefer not to hear about the grotesqueries the “trans” cult has in store for our little ones.

Like the dismemberment of living humans in their mothers’ wombs, the most grotesque acts being perpetrated against born children are being committed in sanitized medical establishments by Dr. Mengeles. These deceived or  deceiving doctors amputate the healthy breasts of confused or mentally ill girls as young as 13, chemically sterilize physically healthy teenage girls and boys, and castrate teen boys as young as 18.

Dr. Diane Ehrensaft, chief psychologist at the Child and Adolescent Gender Center Clinic at San Francisco’s Benioff Children’s Hospital, posits that children as young as two can know they aren’t the sex they, in reality, are:

“We expect a 2-year-old to know ‘I am boy. I am girl.’ So why can’t that also apply to transgender children?”

Ehrensaft’s statement implies that toddlers’ subjective, internal feelings about their maleness or femaleness are analogous to their objective, immutable biological sex. But for a boy to know he is a boy constitutes recognizing an immutable and objective fact, like knowing the earth is round. For a boy to think he is a girl is not knowledge; it’s delusion. And research shows that between 80-95% of cases of gender-identity confusion in prepubertal children will resolve on their own.

Further, Ehrensaft believes the subjective, internal feelings of toddlers about their maleness or femaleness supersede in importance and value their biological sex. But such a belief is not an objective fact. It’s a radical, subversive dogmatic assumption spreading like cancer throughout the sickly body of America.

Ehrensaft also claims that “Most people who are born with a penis will be boys, but some of them will be girls. Most people who are born with a vagina will be girls, but some will be boys.” To be clear, Ehrensaft is not referring to those born with intersex disorders of sexual development. She is referring to genetically normal children born with healthy, fully functioning anatomy. It is nonsensical, science-denying sophistry to say babies “will be” boys or girls. They are boys or girls. Their sex will never change.

From this “trans”-affirming, child-destroying theory has emerged a profitable cottage industry for all sorts of mercenaries including gender-identity propagandists; pharmaceutical companies peddling the puberty-blocker Lupron and cross-sex hormones; psychologists, endocrinologists, urologists, and cosmetic surgeons; nonfiction and fiction writers; entrepreneurs hawking costumes to conceal biological sex; and other manifestations of a deeply corrupted culture.

Here are just a few of the countless cultural assaults on the dignity and health of children:

• Etsy, the well-known “e-commerce website focused on handmade or vintage items and craft supplies” offers “transgender tuck buddies,” which are handmade colorful underpants for little boys ages 3-14 who pretend to be girls. “Tuck buddies” are designed to conceal penises and testicles, so little boys can deceive others into believing they’re girls.

• A company called TranZwear makes an “extra-small” silicone penis and testicles called a “packer” for girls under five years old who pretend to be boys and want to deceive others that they are boys.

• Drag queen story hours at public libraries are proliferating, with no comparable proliferation of protests by decent people—including pastors—who should be protesting.

• The number of pre-pubertal boys whose parents exploit them by allowing them to perform in drag to the delight and pleasure of adult homosexual males is increasing. The sexually deviant among us assure us there is nothing—absolutely nothing—sexual about these performances. Of course, that claim, like all other claims made to advance sexual deviance, is a bald-faced lie—a lie exposed by British pedophile Tom O’Carroll who last month wrote this:

Child drag artist Desmond is Amazing is indeed amazing.

And hot!… No wonder 11-year-old Desmond Napoles and other kids daringly diving into drag culture right now have provoked right-wing reactionaries into paroxysms of moral outrage.

Let’s face it, when a pretty young boy tells the world he is gay and dances sensuously in front of grown men, wearing vampish dresses and makeup; when “she” strips off items of clothing or goes on stage scantily clad right from the off; when dollar bills are accepted as “tips” from an audience apparently wild with excitement; when all this is going on we are getting far more than just a celebration of gender diversity or an innocent display of precocious performance talent.

… It is wonderful that a rare niche has been found in the modern, developed world within which at least a few kids can truly be themselves, in ways that deny neither their gender feelings nor their sexuality. Being a drag queen, or a drag princess if you will, puts it right out there, in the open for all to see. It says, loud and proud, “I am a sexy kid, with sexy feelings. It’s totally cool for grown-ups to get turned on by me. I love it. That’s why I do this stuff….”

Drag is not “simply a means of gender play and expression”, though that is obviously a significant aspect of it. Sure, drag can be performed with wholly non-erotic intent and often is: Dame Edna Everage, for instance…. But when a kid declares himself to be gay, as Desmond has, he is talking about sexual feelings: “gay”, after all, refers to a sexual orientation not a gender identity. If his interest in wearing girls’ clothes was an expression only of his gender identity he would see himself as “trans”, not “gay”….

So why all the denial? Why the coy insistence that kids’ drag performance has nothing to do with their sexuality? Hypocrisy, basically. For decades now, gay politics has revolved around respectability, and that has meant aping hetero-normativity: gay couples with committed relationships, marriage, and parenthood, have become the promoted model; the old, carefree “promiscuity” of the gay life is frowned upon (if still a reality for many) and any cross-generational sexual contact with youth is now far more taboo than it ever was in the “bad old days” when homosexuality was a discretely practised underground phenomenon.

Hypocrisy is detestable for its dishonesty; but on the other hand it works. Politically, it makes sense. Denial of the sexual element in kids’ drag performances has recently resulted in them being perceived as on the “respectable” side of the gender revolution….

• With no hard science available demonstrating the effects of “social transitioning” on their brain development, young children from 2 years old on up are being allowed to socially “transition,” which is to say, they are being allowed to pass as the sex they are not by adopting new names, cross-dressing, and being referred to by incorrect pronouns. Neuroplasticity is “the ability of the brain to form and reorganize synaptic connections, especially in response to learning or experience or following injury.” Might adopting new names, being referred to by opposite-sex pronouns, and cross-dressing change the brain’s structure in such a way that children are less likely to eventually accept their biological sex? By promoting “social transitioning,” are gender-identity peddlers dooming children to future bodily mutilation and a lifetime of risky cross-sex-hormone dependence?

• Government schools have bought the “trans” ideology hook, line, and sinker and are promoting it through curricula to other people’s children. Either they’ve bought it or school leaders are such yellow-bellied, spineless cowards that they would rather sacrifice children than confront the evil in their midst, which may be personally costly.

• At the end of May, Vermont proposed a “Health Care Administrative Rules” change that will allow state Medicaid funds to be used for the chemical sterilization and surgical mutilation of children with no minimum age requirement. In addition, the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation issued this statement just a week ago:

Insurance companies, health insurance companies, nonprofit hospital services corporations, nonprofit medical services corporations, non-ERISA employer group plans and managed care organizations…. may not deny coverage of gender affirmation surgery as not medically necessary on the basis of age…. (emphasis added)

Our professional mental health and medical communities are controlled by Leftists who have no hard science supporting the fanciful notion that children of one biological sex can have the brains of the opposite sex.

They have no hard science proving that lifetime, cross-sex-hormone-doping is safe.

They have no hard science proving conclusively that gender dysphoria or cross-sex identification in young children and teens is immutable.

They have no hard science proving that sexual abuse, other forms of trauma, autism, social contagion, or other environmental factors are not factors that can result in gender dysphoria or cross-sex identification.

They have no hard science proving that the suicidal ideation and depression that often accompany gender dysphoria/cross-sex identification are caused by social stigma as opposed to being caused by whatever caused the desire to be the opposite sex.

They have no proof—nor will any proof ever be available—that affirming a child in the rejection of his or her biological sex is good, right, or morally justified.

Leftists believe that the relief cross-sex-identifying children feel when affirmed in their cross-sex identification means that disapproval is intrinsically wrong, but do they apply that principle consistently? Do they, for example, apply it to anatomically whole people who experience Body Integrity Identity Disorder and identify as amputees?

The ubiquitous effort by sexual anarchists/reprobates to revolutionize what’s left of American “culture” is no more apparent than in the juggernaut to “trans” children. By “transing” children, I mean the comprehensive effort to destroy their hearts, minds, wills, and bodies. “Trans” activists in league with many homosexuals—though not all—have gained breathtaking institutional power and are propagandizing, grooming, and mutilating children in the service of a science-denying, cultic superstition. And conservatives largely say and do nothing even as these evil things are done in schools where they send their children, in schools where they work, and in their public libraries. They should be ashamed.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Harming-Children-from-Toddlerhood-to-Adulthood_audio.mp3

IFI Fall Banquet with Franklin Graham!
We are excited to announce that at this year’s IFI banquet, our keynote speaker will be none other than Rev. Franklin Graham, President & CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Christian evangelist & missionary. This year’s event will be at the Tinley Park Convention Center on Nov. 1st.

Learn more HERE.

The conceit of our age is that we can alter reality at a whim. We’re really that smart and powerful.

We not only can control the planet’s weather, but we can defy God’s essential design for life, reflected in nature and cultures trillions of times a day.

This being Pride Month, we’re all supposed to take pride in any and all departures from the normal, so it might be worth a look at where that will take us.

Lacking the sheer muscularity of the American reflex toward liberty, Great Britain, along with other Western European nations, is venturing into thought control at a more rapid pace than our own cultural Marxists are steering us.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) of the United Kingdom, for example, has issued guidelines prohibiting ads that “play up roles deemed more feminine or male, as well as derogatory messages around body image.”

Citing an online petition objecting to a subway ad featuring a bikini-clad model asking, “Are you beach body ready?” the ASA came down on the advertiser like Godzilla’s foot on Bambi. It wasn’t the immorality of sexualizing the female body that bothered them.  It was because the ad conveyed inequality.

Gender stereotypes “can contribute to inequality in society with costs for all of us,” explains Guy Parker, the ASA’s chief executive.  ASA’s guidelines, which took effect on June 14, say that “attractive” people can still be featured, but that “ads should avoid mocking people for not conforming to gender stereotypes, including in a context that is intended to be humorous…. [the] “it’s a joke” defence probably won’t be enough to convince the ASA that there isn’t a problem under the new rule.”

“Advertising that links physique and body image to a successful romantic or social life” is also banned, the Washington Post wrote. “As are ads that belittle men for doing stereotypical ‘female’ tasks.”

Well, that would put the kibosh on a lot of American TV ads.  Many show helpless men coming around to their wife or girlfriend’s superior point of view, which centers on buying some product.  Some of those actors are getting really good at smiling sheepishly.

Advertisers could put the shoe on the other foot, showing women cutely failing at “male” tasks only to succeed with the aid of the product being advertised.   But such depictions are now verboten. To make us all the same, men have to be denigrated.

Our cultural masters want to make a religion out of sameness in the name of equality, and it usually comes at the expense of whatever is natural, normal or good.  The hyper-sensitive ASA, for example, issued a notice last week urging companies to promote “gay pride,” which not everyone might appreciate.

During the early 20^th century, G.K. Chesterton lamented “the modern and morbid habit of always sacrificing the normal to the abnormal.”

Which brings us to our modern culture, in which “equality” has morphed into a trump card over all other considerations, including First Amendment liberties.  In the name of equality, utterly unequal situations are dictated that violate truth and fairness. Think of the trans “girls” beating out actual girls in track events, which has, blessedly, triggered lawsuits in Connecticut.

“The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal,” Aristotle wrote In the third century B.C.  Doing so is to lie. But worse is forcing others to lie. As author Jennifer Roback Morse says, “If the government can make you say, ‘Bruce Jenner is a woman,’ they can make you say anything.”

“To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in the original draft of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom.

For years, atheist, racialist and pansexual activists have lied to us about their true goal. They don’t want tolerance. They want to replace our Judeo-Christian culture with a socialist version of Sodom and Gomorrah populated by easily manipulated identity groups.  In the name of “equality” they insist on wiping away any reminders of our country’s family-oriented laws, its historic figures or its religious heritage.  Just this week, an Alaskan town fearing legal action opened its borough assembly meeting with a “prayer” to Satan.

The U.S. Supreme Court, which is supposed to be a bulwark against threats to our constitutional republic, has itself been complicit, opening the floodgates of obscenity, abortion and faux marriage.

But the Court did get it right with the Masterpiece Cakeshop case last year, and partly right in another bakery case last week. On Thursday, the Court rejected an atheist group’s demand to tear down the 40-foot Bladensburg Cross at a Maryland intersection where it was erected in 1925 to honor 49 local soldiers killed in World War I.

If the Court keeps up its rediscovery of common sense, perhaps the concept of “equality” will be restored from enforced “sameness” to its original meaning – without the destructive notion that all behavior and ideas are equally valid.

There are some things so wrong that we cannot allow ourselves to get used to them. We must always be outraged over them. Always grieved over them. We can never accept them as the new status quo. The drag queen assault on our children is one of those things.

I’m talking about the celebration of little children in drag.

I’m talking about drag queens dancing for our children (and reading stories to them).

I’m talking about children posing with naked (or nearly naked) drag queens.

This is unacceptable. This is perverse. This is outrageous.

It was bad enough when this stuff happened at gay pride parades.

It was even worse when it started to happen in our community libraries.

Now it has even entered houses of worship. As a June 24 headline announced, “Drag Queen Reads During Worship Service as Cincinnati Church Celebrates Pride Month.”

As reported, “Following the song ‘God Welcomes All’ by the church choir, [Dad] Davidson [who was dressed up as ‘Spark Leigh’] walked up on stage and read the book Pride: The Story of Harvey Milk and the Rainbow Flag to the audience. The story was intended for children, some of whom sat at Davidson’s feet during the reading.”

Yes, you ought to be outraged.

It wasn’t that long ago that LGBT activists were telling us that drag queens were an entirely separate category, not to be confused with transgenders.

Drag queens were flamboyant gay men who enjoyed dressing up in drag. They were hardly representative of the gay community at large. They were marginal, circus-like characters, on the fringe of the culture as opposed to representing the mainstream.

Now, here they are, front and center, and they are coming after a very specific target audience: your children.

You might ask, “Why do you have to keep bringing these subjects up? Why talk about them so much?”

I can answer that in the words of one of my activist friends: “I’ll stop when they stop.”

When drag queens stop trying to “groom” our kids, I’ll stop.

Yes, those are the words of a drag queen explaining why he wanted to read to toddlers. To quote him exactly, “This is going to be the grooming of the next generation. We are trying to groom the next generation.”

Not on my watch, if I can help it.

You say to me, “But you are a minister of the gospel. You should have compassion on this drag queen and want to reach out to him.”

I do! I care about him as a fellow-human being and want to see him find wholeness with God and with people. Absolutely.

And I want to keep him from “grooming” the next generation to tolerate, let alone celebrate, men dressing as women.

That’s also consistent with being a follower of Jesus and a minister of the gospel.

I care about the drag queens (and their LGBTQ allies). And I care about the children. Stay away from our kids!

Sorry, but I’ve had it with headlines like this: “Nine-year-old drag queen is a hit on Instragram.”

As the story explains, “Meet Kween Kee Kee – the ‘baby drag queen’ who is teaching his own teachers a lesson about gender identities.

“Keegan, 9, lives with his parents and brother in a Christian suburb just outside Austin, Texas. He plays football and video games, and also likes to dress in drag. He usually goes by the pronouns he/his, but his mother Megan describes him as ‘gender creative.’”

This is not healthy. This is not right. This is not good. No amount of LGBTQ spin can make this normal or positive or praiseworthy.

Another article reports, “the dance music is thumping, the audience is giddy and 10-year-old drag artist Queen Lactatia is sashaying up and down a makeshift catwalk in a shimmering metallic dress. The enthusiastic crowd hoots in approval as the diminutive style phenom weaves between tables at the all-ages brunch event, where the Montreal grade-schooler is followed by three more big-haired pre-teen performers, each in varying degrees of glitter, eyelash extensions and rainbow-hued attire.”

You better believe we should be outraged over reports like this. Activists have gone too far when they start messing with our children. (And how terribly misguided are the parents who approve of such stuff.)

I’ve had it with headlines announcing, “Sick All-Ages Drag Show Had Young Kids Handing Bills to Performers.”

I’ve had it with pictures like this (viewer discretion advised), where these “drag kids” are being exploited.

Enough.

That is why I’m going to stay outraged. I will not get used to these perversions. I will not sit back idly when our children are being used and abused.

Earlier this month, the Huffington Post ran a story titled, “Are Pride Parades Kid-Friendly? Parents Say Children Can Handle The Kink.”

And on a recent TED talk, the speaker closed with, “Talk to a kid about sexuality. Teach them about consent. Tell them is it OK for boys to wear dresses. . . . Let’s spread radical queer joy.”

Thanks, but no thanks. There are far better things to teach them and far better things to spread.

So, let the outrage continue, my friend. And let that outrage turn to prayer, compassion, and courage.

This is happening on our watch.

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.