Governor Rauner and his like-minded colleagues in the General Assembly made Illinois one of a handful of states to ban counseling that steers children away from same-sex attraction. Licensed therapists are even prohibited from offering such counseling to young people who seek it.
An expert on the topic says the law amounts to “child abuse” but his Christ-centered ministry and others like it, could help fill the counseling gap in Illinois…
The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) announced Wednesday that it will start admitting girls to its Cub Scouts program, and eventually will create a parallel program that allows older girls to rise to the level of Eagle Scout.
In a statement, the BSA said its decision was in line with its “core values” and was driven by changes in the American family and busy parents desiring a Scouts-like program for their daughters.
“Starting in the 2018 program year, families can choose to sign up their sons and daughters for Cub Scouts,” the statement said. “Existing packs may choose to establish a new girl pack, establish a pack that consists of girl dens and boy dens or remain an all-boy pack. Cub Scout dens will be single-gender — all boys or all girls.”
It continues: “Using the same curriculum as the Boy Scouts program, the organization will also deliver a program for older girls, which will be announced in 2018 and projected to be available in 2019, that will enable them to earn the Eagle Scout rank. This unique approach allows the organization to maintain the integrity of the single gender model while also meeting the needs of today’s families.”
Conservative critics like Christian talk show host Janet Mefferd pounced on the BSA’s gender-neutral decision.
“When you have the Boy Scouts accepting girls (and gender-confused girls who think they’re boys), then the next logical step is for the Girl Scouts to accept boys. What does gender even mean anymore? You might as well join forces and become the ‘Zir Scouts’,” Mefferd told LifeSiteNews.
(“Zir” and “Ze” is a genderless pronoun created by “transgender” activists to replace “her” or “his,” and “he” or “she.” Another variation spells it as “Xir.”)
Conservative activist and Eagle Scout Charlie Kirk, founder and executive director of Turning Point USA, tweeted in response to the BSA announcement:
I am an Eagle Scout
Only boys should be in Boy Scouts
Only girls should be in Girl Scouts
Don’t change things that work
The BSA — whose membership is declining — said its “historic decision comes after years of receiving requests from families and girls, the organization evaluated the results of numerous research efforts, gaining input from current members and leaders, as well as parents and girls who’ve never been involved in Scouting – to understand how to offer families an important additional choice in meeting the character development needs of all their children.”
Randall Stephenson, the BSA’s national board chairman, was effusive about the new girls policy: “The BSA’s record of producing leaders with high character and integrity is amazing,” he said in the BSA release. “I’ve seen nothing that develops leadership skills and discipline like this organization. It is time to make these outstanding leadership development programs available to girls.”
The ATT CEO has presided over some liberal social changes in the Scouts organization that have outraged many former Scouts and pro-family, faith-based advocates like Franklin Graham, who has urged Christians to pull their sons out of the Scouts.
Beginning in 2013, the Boy Scouts moved to end their “morally straight” policy of excluding homosexual boy members, a policy that they had successfully defended in court going all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2000. Then in 2015 the BSA decided to allow to adult homosexual men as leaders, despite the BSA’s history of adult male scoutmasters homosexually molesting boys in their care — the extent of which has still not been revealed to the public.
Earlier this year, the BSA waded into transgender controversies by saying it will allow severely gender-confused, biological girls (who identify as “boys” and want to live as “males”) to become Boy Scouts.
The Scouts’ politically correct moves appear to be taking a toll on membership, as new groups like the Christian-based Trail Life USA have been formed in response to the BSA’s liberal shift, while major church bodies like the Mormon Church have pulled away from the BSA. Perhaps this explains the opening to girls. The New York Post reports on the BSA’s plummeting numbers:
“Current participation in the Boy Scouts, which was founded in 1910, is down from 2.6 million in 2013 and more than 4 million in earlier years. The announcement comes as the organization and other youth service groups have seen dips in membership. The Girl Scouts, meanwhile, reported 1,566,671 youth members as of March, down from just over 2 million in 2014.”
“Just when you thought the Scout leadership could not be any more clueless about the actual purpose of the organization – raising boys to become responsible, masculine men – they come up with this,” said Robert Knight, a senior fellow with the American Civil Rights Union and an Eagle Scout.
“This is organizational vandalism and another sign that the current Scout executives care more about what the clinically insane Left and their media allies think than what is best for boys. The only good to come out of this will be a further exodus toward Trail Life USA, the genuine heirs to the Boy Scout legacy.”
This article was originally posted at LifeSiteNews.com
These days government (“public”) schools prefer to teach from Howard Zinn’s text book rather than fact based American history. Mobs want to tear down monuments to everyone from Columbus to Lincoln, Wikipedia hasn’t gotten up to speed. Leftists want history erased, not recorded.
For all its flaws, Wikipedia has been chronicling many years of evolution in the use of language when it comes to moral standards regarding sexual behavior.
Note the opening of this paragraph from Wikipedia’s “Paraphilia” page which we have excerpted before:
Paraphilia (previously known as sexual perversion and sexual deviation) is the experience of intense sexual arousal to atypical objects, situations, fantasies, behaviors, or individuals. Such attraction may be labeled sexual fetishism. No consensus has been found for any precise border between unusual sexual interests and paraphilic ones. There is debate over which, if any, of the paraphilias should be listed in diagnostic manuals, such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) or the International Classification of Diseases (ICD).
For the sake of space, let me encourage you to re-read that, focusing on what each sentence is saying. “Previously known as…” “No consensus has been found…” “There is a debate over…”
One might expect a “91 percent of scientists agree” line as we falsely hear about man-made climate change, but no, Wikipedia admits there is, indeed, disagreement.
What also stands out is their use of the DSM (mental disorders!) and even their mentioning of diseases (a no-no as it undercuts the “gay” happy narrative).
Here is the opening sentence of Wikipedia’s next paragraph: “The number and taxonomy of paraphilia is under debate; one source lists as many as 549 types of paraphilia.”
To learn more about that number of “unusual sexual practices,” here is the book to read: Forensic and Medico-legal Aspects of Sexual Crimes and Unusual Sexual Practices by Anil Aggrawal (here is an excerpt at Google Books).
Not to get too far into the weeds, but researchers have now created several paraphilia classifications. Why?
There is scientific and political controversy regarding the continued inclusion of sex-related diagnoses such as the paraphilias in the DSM, due to the stigma of being classified as a mental illness.
Of course. And:
Some groups, seeking greater understanding and acceptance of sexual diversity, have lobbied for changes to the legal and medical status of unusual sexual interests and practices.
One way some divide up the paraphilias is between the “typical” and “atypical.” I could find no reference to the dividing line between the two. I assume some Leftist researcher is on the hunt for one. Or maybe not.
Again, note the “formerly known as sexual perversion…” Later, in the page, the word “Perversion” is linked to its very own page. It opens: “Perversion is a type of human behavior that deviates from that which is understood to be orthodox or normal.”
The Wikipedia editors included this paragraph:
One view is that the concept of perversion is subjective, and its application varies depending on the individual. Another view considers that perversion is a degradation of an objectively true morality.
The “perversion” page links to the “Permissive Society” Wikipedia page:
With the sexual revolution of the later twentieth century, much that Freud had argued for became part of a new, wide-ranging liberal consensus, a quasi-normative belief that “everyone’s entitled to his own sex life…”
The old “imposed morality” began to be seen as too “restricting” — it “took very little account of the complexity of human emotional connections…”
The permissive society page links to the Wikipedia page for “Deviance.” To review, we’ve gone from Paraphilia to Perversion to Permissive Society and have arrived at Deviance.
Our list of basic definitions continues with the opening of the “deviance” page:
In sociology, deviance describes an action or behavior that violates social norms, including a formally enacted rule (e.g., crime), as well as informal violations of social norms (e.g., rejecting folkways and mores).
Of course, norms are relative:
Deviance can be relative to place and time because what is considered deviant in one social context may be non-deviant in another (e.g., fighting in a nursing home vs. fighting during a hockey game). Killing another human is considered wrong, except when governments permit it during warfare or for self defense.
And so, society — and morality — evolves. Leftists call it progressive. Those who support the West’s Judeo-Christian foundation call it a return to paganism.
Now to our Paraphilias of the Day, which is really a follow-up to our post about Body Integrity Identity Disorder: Acrotomophilia and Apotemnophilia:
Acrotomophilia (from the Greek ákron [extremity], tómos [a cut] and philía [love]), refers to a paraphilia in which an individual expresses strong sexual interest in amputees. It is a counterpart to apotemnophilia, the sexual interest in being an amputee.
Follow the links to learn a lot more (though I understand completely if you prefer not to).
The number of letters following LGBT continues to grow, and I have yet to see any Leftist attempting to stop the addition of letters. Thus, as we continue with this series, it’s important to understand that all those letters represent groups which are claiming that they are being denied rights (or something) and, of course, wide acceptance because of bigotry. Regarding the latter, it’s not a matter of bigotry but of a differing view of morality.
Remember when Wikipedia wasn’t needed to keep up on all the definitions of common words? Back then, perversion was perversion, period.
Read more: Series: Identity Politics & Paraphilias
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There are myriad reasons why young people are abandoning conservative principles, one of which is that our publicly funded schools are run by and our children are taught by fools who revile truth. Neil Rigler, an English teacher at Deerfield High School in Deerfield, Illinois, is one such teacher.
Last week, Rigler posted a link to an article from the far Left website PinkNews that criticized President Trump’s appearance at the Values Voter Summit, which is sponsored by the Family Research Council. Rigler added this comment:
Why isn’t this the lead story on national news? [Trump] endorses this hate group and supports legalized discrimination. Horrific. (Yet again).
Evidently Rigler is a disciple of the ethically impoverished, anti-Christian hate group known euphemistically as the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has deemed the Family Research Council (and IFI) “hate groups.”
But why such a designation for organizations that actually denounce hatred?
The SPLC and Rigler hurl the epithet “hate group” at organizations that hold theologically orthodox views on the moral status of volitional homosexual activity and biological-sex rejection. The SPLC and Rigler evidently believe that moral positions with which they disagree constitute hatred of persons.
Of course, it’s unlikely they apply their underlying principle consistently. It’s unlikely they believe that all moral disapproval of volitional acts constitutes hatred of persons. It’s unlikely they would hurl the epithet “hater” at someone who believes homoerotic love between two consenting brothers is immoral or at someone who opposes the legal recognition of poly-marriages.
Foolish inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little Leftist minds.
Government employee Rigler posted his feckless, pernicious comment on his Facebook page where anyone with a Facebook account can see it, including former, current, and future students. Presumably some of them are theologically orthodox young people.
And Rigler fancies himself “inclusive.”
Unfortunately, Rigler is not alone among our taxpayer-subsidized propagandists who identify as educators and who accuse those who hold values and beliefs with which they disagree of being hateful. Rigler’s comment is emblematic of the openly contemptuous attitude many of our public school teachers have toward those who hold conservative beliefs and values.
There’s Jason Spoor-Harvey, former Fremd High School social studies teacher and current history department chair at Oak Park and River Forest High School. Spoor-Harvey is “married” to a man and has posted pictures on his Facebook page of his faux-marriage as well as his hearty support for Planned Parenthood. When he was a teacher at Fremd, he posted pictures of Che Guevara and Karl Marx on his official school web page along with this image titled “Evolutionary Theory”:
Rigler and Spoor-Harvey have every right to express their foolish beliefs and values on their Facebook pages, and parents have every right to say these men are poor role models for their children and refuse to place their children under the their tutelage. The mere fact that Spoor-Harvey is legally “married”—though not in reality married—to a man teaches young people a harmful, untruthful lesson and renders him an unfit role model.
But Rigler and Spoor-Harvey don’t restrict expressions of their political and moral views to their Facebook pages. They express their views in the classroom both through their comments and the materials they choose, like homosexual writer Tony Kushner’s essay titled “American Things,” which Rigler has taught. In this essay, Kushner compares the homosexuality-affirming revolution to the Civil Rights Movement and calls moral disapproval of homosexuality a “social evil.”
There are countless teachers like Rigler and Spoor-Harvey who see themselves as “change agents” and view it as their right and responsibility to use their publicly funded positions to transform the political and moral views of other people’s children. Sometimes they do so by bringing in representatives from partisan organizations to disseminate destructive ideas to children as unassailable truths.
Just last month, Public School District 150 in Peoria, Illinois invited the Central Illinois Pride Health Center (CIPHC) to teach eighth-graders a lesson on “Sexual Orientation and Gender Stereotypes.”
The executive director and founder of the CIPHC is Len Meyer (on the left below), a lesbian who masquerades as a man and is “married” to a woman.
In March 2017, Meyer partnered with Illinois State University for its 19th annual drag show charity fundraiser with proceeds going this year to CIPHC. Meyer said, “I have always been a supporter of the drag show…as a person of the community. I think it is a great opportunity to give students a chance to get involved and get exposure of the cause.”
Do PSD 150 administrators, teachers, and school board members really believe this is the kind of person who should be teaching 13-year-olds? Do they really believe this is the kind of person most parents in their community want to teach their children about sexuality?
The troubling and very hard-to-find “Sexual Orientation and Gender Stereotypes” lesson on the PSD 150 website lists a handout titled the “Genderbread Person,” as a “needed” material for this class. This infamous handout teaches children to sever the connection between one’s sex and gender, or in the words of the Genderbread Person, to break through the “binary.” The lesson outline includes teaching students the meaning of “key terms” like “cisgender,” “queer,” and “intersex,” which is defined as “actually quite common!”
What is never discussed in the lesson is whether the beliefs of the “LGBTQ” community are objectively true or good. No dissenting views are included.
Christian parents should not allow their children to be trained up by men and women who view Scripture as hate-filled, ignorant bigotry.
Christians should not allow their children to be trained up by men and women who do not recognize the intrinsic value of all human lives—and all means all—including those yet in their mothers’ wombs.
Christian parents should not allow their children to be trained up by adults who don’t recognize and respect the immutability and profound meaning of sexual differentiation.
Christian parents should not allow their children to be trained up by adults who believe that inclusivity and compassion demand the affirmation of sexual perversion or confusion or the relinquishment of physical privacy.
Christians parents should not allow their children to be trained up by those who cannot see that marriage has a nature central to which is sexual complementarity and without which a union is not in reality a marriage.
Churches must begin today to create affordable schools for their church families. For diverse reasons, many families are unable to homeschool and unable to afford Christian private schools. Churches should view the education of children in their flocks as a mission field, with mission funds going toward making disciples of them. No matter how nice they are, people like Neil Rigler, Jason Spoor-Harvey, and Len Meyer cannot properly educate children.
Thomas More College of Liberal Arts professor Anthony Esolen offers this parable to illustrate where we are culturally:
Imagine a scene of wholesale destruction. Every old and venerable structure has been reduced to rubble. People relieve themselves in the street. Sometimes they copulate there, too. Their “music” is little more than grunting and groaning. Their rulers are on the take. There are hundreds of thousands of old books in the mountain of stone and mortar that used to be the library. Most of those books are far beyond the capacity of the people to read. They sneer and snort at Shakespeare, because they can’t understand him. They’ve never even heard of Virgil. A lot of these people have taken to cannibalism.
Now then—you have retained some vague memory of a more noble way of life. You have therefore arrived at a great truth. It’s perfectly obscure to most of your fellow rubble-pickers, who mock you and call you a prude, a Neanderthal, a medieval monk, a madman, a hater of the hungry, and so forth. Your precious truth is simply this: it is wrong to eat human flesh.
Well, that is no great burst of enlightenment, but it is a beginning. So what do you do? Will you be content to say, “My children will do everything that everyone else is doing, but they will not eat human flesh?” They will be subhuman and subcultural, but their taste in dining will be restricted just a little? Is that all?
Will you say, “Our family is not anthropophagous, but we will send our children to be taught by the same fellow that all the other parents use,” the one with the squalid leer, dabbling in excrement, contemptuous of any wisdom from the past?
…
What do you do, then? Turn back, O man. It’s time to recover and rebuild.
Churches should start the recovery and rebuilding project now. We’re very late. Some of our children are cannibals.
Listen to this article read by Laurie:
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“boldly bring a biblical perspective to public policy” in Illinois.
The above title was used as a subheading in this article by Elizabeth Kantor at The Federalist: “Donald Trump Isn’t Fighting a Culture War but A Cultural Revolution.”
Underneath that subheading, Kantor writes:
[T]he genius and the miracle of America was that our identity as Americans was once inextricably tied to abstract principles about the rights of all human beings. To identify as an American was to believe in the Bill of Rights. To be an American patriot was to defend the God-given equality of all men as articulated in the Declaration of Independence.
The rights the American revolutionaries fought for were an inherent part of themselves, always referred to as “the rights of Englishmen.” It was identity politics, but fought for an identity bound up in natural rights, one that could eventually be adopted by every American of every national origin, ethnicity, and race.
That American identity is what the cultural revolutionaries are determined to replace with their very different identity politics.
Kantor asks two questions without answering them:
“Is there a way out of the newly gelling mutually hostile tribal identities that are replacing it? Can we ever climb back into an e pluribus unum identification with all Americans as members of one tribe?”
She closes with this: “[R]eforging that American identity seems to be what Trump is trying for: “We are all Americans first.”
Let’s look at two other articles where the writers partially answer Kantor’s question, expressing doubt that the Leftists’ use of identity politics can succeed. First, is Dr. Michael Brown, focusing on the identity of the hour, “transgenderism.”
In his article, “Why Transgender Activism Will Not Succeed in Changing America,” Brown writes:
Transgender activism will never succeed in reshaping our society for one simple reason: It is not natural. Biological differences are too deeply instilled in the human race. Male-female distinctives are too obvious and real. It is futile to declare war on gender.
It is one thing to be asked to empathize with those who struggle with gender identity confusion. It is another thing to declare that biological categories do not determine reality.
It is one thing to recognize that some people do not fall within the normal, male-female spectrum due to genetic abnormalities. It is another thing to claim that gender is whatever you perceive it to be.
After listing examples where people and organizations are sticking to common sense over this new identity of the day fad, Brown writes, “Will the whole world be turned upside down because of the confusion and sensitivities of less than 1 percent of the population?” “Watch and see,” he says, “The pushback against transgender activism will continue.”
Our last article is from Linda Harvey. In her post, “Is Gender Confusion Insanity Finally Beginning to Wane?,” she asks, “Do we dare hope that a new era of sanity is dawning?” Regarding the growing trend towards the reversal of sex “reassignment” surgery, Linda Harvey writes:
Such an option still offends many on the left, who dig in their heels and continue to push unisex bathroom laws and bans on therapy to overcome “transgender” delusions and same-sex attraction.
An increase in people seeking a return to their birth gender is reported in Europe. A renowned “sex change” surgeon in Serbia noted more requests for complicated and expensive reversal surgery.
A young boy in Australia recently received international publicity for wanting to be a boy. After several years of estrogen, he no longer wants to pretend to be a girl.
Why is this controversial? The default response of every human should be a longing to be that woman or man as nature intended.
Harvey asks another question: “Aren’t liberals supposed to be flexible?” “But a rigid adherence to identity politics,” Harvey notes, “ties the typical leftist in notes”:
Secretly, a social liberal is often a mess, exhausted from the convoluted mental and spiritual energy needed to reconcile the nonsense of pretense.
Ouch. Linda Harvey gives examples where Leftists are unwilling to give up on their goal of doing away with the reality of biological sex, but then writes:
And yet promising glimmers of truth keep emerging. In Miami-Dade County, a measure to prohibit counseling of minors to overcome same-sex attractions was just defeated after hard work by the Christian Family Coalition and other pro-family advocates.
. . .
This victory comes as good news after a long series of defeats for common sense on this issue. Numerous cities and states have passed laws limiting counseling for minors who want to embrace the natural design of their heterosexual bodies as male or female.
Since “Attorney General Sessions ended the Eric Holder/Obama imaginary application of Title VII sex discrimination law to those with gender confusion, Harvey writes, “Activist groups are expressing fury that their fascist fantasy is ending.” Ouch again.
Read more: Series: Identity Politics & Paraphilias
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Every so often, there is a moment of sanity that pushes back against transgender activism in the sports world, although the reaction to the sane decision is often anything but sane. And so it happened in Australia, where, “A male-female transgender athlete has been blocked from taking part in next year’s Australian Rules Football professional women’s league,” according to the BBC.
“Callum Mouncey, who calls himself ‘Hannah,’ stands 6ft 2in and weighs 15st 8lb [= 218 lbs]. And wears size 15 shoes, according to his Twitter account.”
Did you get that? A biological male, who identifies as a female, will not be able to play for the female branch of Australian Rules Football. As the league explained, it took into consideration “transgender strength, stamina, physique, along with the specific nature of the AFLW.”
Good decision! After all, this is not rocket science. Football is a dangerous, physical sport (not just the NFL, but Australian Rules Football too). Just look at some of these collisions and hits in the men’s league, as well as these hits and fights in the women’s league. Is it fair or safe to allow a 218 lb male to play side by side with these ladies?
Obviously not, and thankfully, this time around, sanity and reality prevailed. But that is not always the case.
In the last few years, a male weightlifter who identifies as a woman has broken records in women’s weightlifting, a teenage boy who identifies as a girl has been winning girls’ races, and a man who identifies as a woman has mauled female opponents in MMA.
While some have been critical, others have celebrated these accomplishments, which are anything but praiseworthy. What is there to celebrate when a biological male is stronger or faster than a female peer? How is this a breakthrough for equality? To the contrary, it is a breakthrough for inequality, penalizing the other female athletes and making for unfair competitions.
And the more physical the sport, the greater the danger to the female competitors. That’s why there was no small outcry when Fallon Fox, an MTF (male-to-female) athlete, began to fight in the very dangerous sport of Mixed Martial Arts.
Yet, despite the obvious threat to the health and safety of the other female competitors, there were those who defended Fox’s right to fight, stating, “MMA Fighter Fallon Fox Is a Woman, Get Over It.” The medical claim is that “male to female transsexuals have significantly less muscle strength and bone density, and higher fat mass, than males.” Consequently, it’s not unfair for an MTF athlete to compete with other women.
Why, then, is the aforementioned MTF weightlifter smashing records? And why, then, did a female fighter defeated by Fox say she never encountered such strength in a female before? And what if a 7’ 2” NBA player felt that he was really a woman, transitioning to female and wanting to play for the WNBA? Would anyone really care if, after hormone treatments for several years, he no longer had his full male strength? Would it be fair for a 7’ 2” biological male to compete with other women?
As always, I’m not attacking these trans-identified athletes as if they were evil people. And God alone knows the ultimate reasons for their gender confusion.
I’m simply saying that: 1) it’s not “transphobic” to argue that biological males should not compete against biological females; 2) it’s not fair to the female athletes; 3) it’s sometimes dangerous to the female athletes, and 4) this is nothing to celebrate.
Not surprisingly, there has been an outcry of protest that Callum Mouncey cannot play football with the ladies. As Bill Muehlenberg notes, “Sadly, the reaction from the loony left was as predictable as it was pathetic. Many are calling this an outrage and are demanding that the decision be overturned.”
Specifically, “One opinion piece actually had this headline ‘AFL’s shameful fear of Hannah.’ The commentator wrote: ‘Inclusion it seems is not for everyone and frankly that is a disgrace. It is a confusing and sad situation because Mouncey has basic human rights. You have to feel for her. She doesn’t want to be the face for transgender people. All she wants to do is play footy.’”
Really now? The football league has a “shameful fear of Hannah”? Perhaps it is a healthy fear of Callum?
On a different but related front, Georgia Love, an Australian celebrity, has spoken out against gender-neutral birth certificates, saying, “I have absolutely no issue with people who become transgender or don’t associate with a particular gender as they grow up and become the human adult that they are. But I think on a birth certificate, this is going way too far.”
She added, “You are born with genitalia of a female or a male, that’s how you’re born.”
So, even someone like Love who has no problem with an adult “transitioning” has a problem with saying that a child clearly born male or female can somehow be labeled “gender-neutral.” Yes, “this is going way too far,” just as it’s going way too far when a man who identifies as a woman wants to play women’s football.
Once again, sanity has prevailed, at least for the moment.
This article was originally posted at Townhall.com
Occasionally IFI publishes discussions we’ve had with someone on our Facebook page in the hope that these discussions will help our readers better understand some of the fallacious arguments Leftists use to normalize homosexuality or the “trans” ideology. Here is one such discussion I had with Alex Deal on Tuesday. Mr. Deal left his initial comment in response to a comment left by an IFI supporter on our Facebook page that said no one is “born a homosexual” and that referred to homosexuality as “sexual perversion”—claims with which Mr. Deal took issue:
Deal:
I would caution you against lumping all people into one group. Some people are indeed born homosexual and it is not a choice.
As far as your statement regarding homosexuality being sexual perversion, that’s an extremely unfair and hateful idea to spew, I’ll be thinking of you.
Laurie Higgins:
What do you mean when you say that some people are born homosexual, and what is your evidence for that claim?
If homosexual activity is, indeed, a deviation from what is normal and good (i.e., a “perversion”), then it is neither unfair nor hateful to say so. Similarly, if it is a deviation from what is normal or good to have sex with one’s close relative, or with multiple people at the same time, or to include forms of violence in one’s sexual relationship, it is neither unfair nor hateful to say so.
And if your belief that homosexual activity is moral, normative, and good is wrong, then is it hateful of you to express it?
Deal:
1) I am the evidence that supports that claim [i.e., that people are born homosexual]. I have never once been sexually attracted to a female since I can remember. It’s the way I was born, I’ve tried changing my views and having a heterosexual relationship but it did not work, hence my logic of homosexuality not being a choice. Not to say my situation is a universal truth, every situation is different.
2) Referring to something as a “perversion” implies that it is a deviation from what is normal, it implies that it is wrong and should be avoided. That is an opinion, there is no moral universal truth regarding homosexuality and thus, implying that it is wrong or perversion is hateful to those that are indeed homosexual.
Laurie Higgins:
Well, now you’ve changed the argument. You have changed “born homosexual” to “not being a choice,” thereby positing a false dichotomy. A feeling, desire, or impulse could be unchosen but not biologically determined.
So, is it your position that all unchosen, powerful, intractable feelings, desires, and impulses are biologically determined?
And is your position that all unchosen, powerful, intractable feelings, desires, and impulses are automatically and intrinsically moral to act upon?
Your claim that there is no universal moral truth regarding homosexuality is itself an opinion. There may, indeed, be a universal truth about the moral status of homosexual activity.
But assuming for purposes of discussion that the belief that homosexual activity is immoral is merely an opinion, is the expression of all moral beliefs “hateful” or just moral beliefs with which you disagree. For example, if someone were to say that consensual incest between two adult brothers is perverse, would she be “unfair” and “hateful”? Or would it be hateful if someone were to express the view that polygamy or polyamory is wrong? Would it be “hateful” to say that sadomasochistic acts are wrong? Would it be hateful to say that porn use is immoral and perverse?
Deal:
If I was born homosexual then it obviously isn’t a choice…
There is no moral truth in anything, you do realize that right? What one person perceives as a moral truth the other could perceive as the opposite.
Laurie Higgins:
I’ve never claimed that your homoerotic attraction is a choice. I don’t believe it is. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that your feelings are biologically determined. There may be causes other than biochemistry that cause homoerotic attraction.
Moreover, even if biochemistry were found to be a causative factor in the development of homoerotic attraction, it would not mean that acting on those feelings is automatically moral.
You do know that your claim that there is no moral truth means that your moral beliefs are not true. It also means that your belief that the expression of moral positions that you don’t like is “hateful” is not true.
The fact that there is no consensus on which moral claims are true does not mean that no moral truths exist. Do you think that during the slave era the absence of consensus on the moral status of slavery meant that neither position were objectively true?
To that last response by me, Mr. Deal posted a laughing emoji. And so, on that childish note, our discussion ended.
My central goal in having this discussion with Mr. Deal was not to convince him that homoerotic acts are morally wrong. My central goal was to persuade him that expressing moral claims about volitional behavior—including his moral claims—is neither unfair nor hateful.
My central goal in publishing this discussion is to expose the incoherence of Leftist propositions. It is my hope that this discussion may help IFI readers become more comfortable challenging the fallacious propositions of friends, colleagues, and family members.
Listen to this article read by Laurie:
https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Facebook-Discussion-with-a-Homosexual.mp3
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Like Medusa, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) has reared its chthonic head again, and this time it’s wearing a silly pink hat over all those snakes.
Here’s what the ERA actually says:
Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Since the ERA says precisely nothing about women, why do feminists continue to claim that it’s all about women’s rights? In fact, the harm the ERA will cause will redound primarily to women.
What the ERA will do is prohibit the public recognition of sexual differentiation, and we all know who really wants to pretend that biological sex has no meaning.
Moreover, of which basic rights are women now deprived? The right to vote, assemble, associate, speak, petition their government, exercise their religion? Nope, we’ve got all those.
So, let’s peek under those pink hats and see what snakes are writhing about, restive and eager to emerge and strike:
A New Mexico Supreme Court judge wrote that “there is no comparable restriction on medically necessary services relating to physical characteristics or conditions that are unique to men. Indeed, we can find no provision in the Department’s regulations that disfavor any comparable, medically necessary procedure unique to the male anatomy… [the restriction on funding abortions] undoubtedly singles out for less favorable treatment a gender-linked condition that is unique to women.” This judge neglected to mention the inconvenient presence of preborn babies that render abortion wholly different from any “medical procedure unique to the male anatomy.” Treating different conditions differently does not violate any commitment to equality, fairness, or justice.
Ratification history
To ratify this proposed amendment, “progressives” are attempting to circumvent deadlines that expired over three decades ago on the supposedly moribund ERA. The ERA, first introduced in 1972, had a seven-year deadline for ratification, which, by a congressional resolution was extended another three years.
The proposed Equal Rights Amendment needs 38 states for passage. By its final deadline in 1982, it had the approval of only 35 states, so supporters developed the “three-state strategy” which seeks to avoid returning the issue to all 50 states. In effect, Leftist lawmakers claim that since the ERA was extended once, deadlines can be extended in perpetuity. In other words, to Leftists legal deadlines, like other laws, can be ignored at their whim.
Leftist lawmakers defend their strategy to pass the ERA by comparing it to the passage of the Twenty-seventh amendment to the U.S. Constitution 203 years after it was proposed. They fail to mention, however, that the Twenty-seventh Amendment, unlike the ERA, did not have a ratification deadline.
Proponents of the ERA also argue that because the ERA ratification deadline was in the preamble rather than the body of the ERA, it’s essentially irrelevant and non-binding. But the Congressional Research Service explains the following:
In the case of the 18th, 20th, 21st, and 22nd Amendments, the “sunset” ratification provision was incorporated in the body of the amendment itself. For subsequent amendments, however, Congress determined that inclusion of the time limit within its body “cluttered up” the proposal. Consequently, all but one of the subsequently proposed amendments proposed later (the 23rd, 24th, 25th and 26th, and the ERA) placed the limit in the preamble, rather than in the body of the amendment itself.
It’s important to note that prior to the ratification deadline, five states had sought to rescind their approval of the ERA. The Supreme Court of the United States was poised to take up their cases when the deadline took effect at which point the Court held that their cases were moot. If the deadline is now rendered moot by liberal lawmakers, one would assume that those states that sought to rescind their approval would be able to proceed with their pursuit of “rescission of acts of ratification.” In other words, it would seem that those states that wished to rescind their approval of the ERA would be able to pursue that effort because their pursuit ended based on the legal legitimacy of the ratification deadline.
Leftists have yet another effective weapon in their arsenal to crush culture: Just add the word “rights” to any legislation they want and presto change-o, they’ve got themselves a go-to soundbite.
Anyone who opposes co-ed restrooms becomes “anti-‘trans’ rights.” Just ignore the fact that objectively immutably biologically male persons have no right to access women’s private facilities.
Anyone who believes marriage has a nature central to which is sexual differentiation becomes “anti-‘gay’ rights.” Just ignore the fact that those who are erotically attracted to persons of their same sex have no intrinsic right to unilaterally redefine marriage by stripping it of its central constituent and most enduring, cross-cultural feature.
And anyone who opposes a wholly unnecessary amendment to the Constitution becomes “anti-women’s rights.” Just ignore the facts that the amendment doesn’t mention women and that there is not a single right of which women are deprived. Oh, and please ignore those snakes writhing under Medusa’s silly pink hat.
Take ACTION: Click HERE to email your state senator to urge him/her to oppose the ERA, SJRCA 4.
Listen to Laurie read this article in this podcast:
https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Medusas-Pink-Hat-the-ERA.mp3
Read more here, here and here.
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“boldly bring a biblical perspective to public policy” in Illinois.
Over the years there have been many articles outlining the “insanity” of transgenderism. No one should forget that the “LGB…T” movement willingly locked arms with those troubled souls. The more we learn about the “lifestyle” that is reflected by all of those letters — LGBTQIA(etc.) — the more people will understand that it is quite appropriate that all of the odd and unnatural paraphilias should be lopped together.
As has been noted previously, there is one man/one woman sex according to its natural design, and then there is everything else.
Wikipedia tells us that one researcher, Anil Aggrawal, compiled a list of over 540 terms “describing paraphilic sexual interests.” Today, in what is clearly a prime example of mass deception, the political left has convinced a lot of people that one group of paraphiliac interests should be elevated to the level of race. Through their unrelenting propaganda they would have us believe that the fight for paraphilia rights is akin to the fight for civil rights for racial minorities.
In other words, there are men, women, and then a growing list of other “identities” based upon an individual’s subjective feelings (which are, by the way, subject to change). Just as there are whites, blacks, Hispanics, etc., there are men, women, lesbians, gays, etc.
This is pure silliness. A few years ago, IFI’s Laurie Higgins addressed this faulty thinking in her article “The Left’s Problem With Logic“:
The Left’s troubling relationship with analogical thinking is also demonstrated in their absurd comparison of homosexuality per se to race per se, a comparison for which they provide no evidence. But no evidence is no problem for those who live and move and have their being in a non-rational world where everyone is expected to worship at the altar of the subjective feelings of the exalted autonomous self.
The purpose of this series is to keep the focus on the reality of what it is we’re talking about when it comes to the issue of LGBT (etc.) so-called “rights.” We will never effectively protect our God-given right of religious liberty, let alone common sense, unless more Americans wake up to reality and escape the pop culture and left-wing media-driven delusion regarding the nature of homosexuality and all of its compatriot paraphilias.
To our paraphilia of the day:
Gerontophilia is the sexual preference for the elderly. The word gerontophilia derives from Greek: geron, meaning “old man or woman” and philie, meaning “love.” A person who has a sexual preference for the elderly is a gerontophile. Specialised terms are alphamegamia for the attraction to an older man and anililagnia for the attraction to an older woman.
We encourage you to follow all of the links to learn more about what, no doubt, is a persecuted sexual minority.
Please join us next when we’ll take a look at another paraphilia. If America is to be truly free, shouldn’t all sex-centric-identified individuals be treated equally under the law?
Read more: Series: Identity Politics & Paraphilias
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We have stood firm for 25 years, working to boldly bring a biblical perspective to public policy.
“At the length, the truth will out”
Illinois Republican governor Bruce Rauner campaigned on having “no social agenda.” To paraphrase Dr. Seuss, he said, and said, and said those words. He said them. But he lied them.
“No-Social-Agenda” Rauner believes justice demands that it be as easy-peasy for poor women to slaughter their babies as it is for wealthy women, and, therefore, taxpayers should pay for their abortions. Oh, and taxpayers should also pay for the deaths of state employees’ children though I’m not sure his reasons for that.
“No-Social-Agenda” Rauner also believes minor children should be legally prohibited from accessing medical help in rejecting their unwanted gender confusion, even as they are permitted access to medical help in rejecting their unwanted but immutable sex.
America, it seems, is hell-bent on destroying children. Adults are seeing to it that children who escape poisoning and dismemberment in the womb will not see adulthood in one piece—not emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, intellectually, or physically.
To add insult to often barbarous injury, deceitful and deceived adults obscenely call the destructive ideologies, policies, practices, and laws they promote humane, wise, and compassionate. And so the victimization of children grows. Their bodies are assaulted, and Leftists call these assaults humane affirmations of their dignity.
The epidemic of children and teens being diagnosed as “gender dysphoric” is exploding. The Guardian reported that “The Tavistock clinic, the only centre for children and adolescents in England, has seen referral increases of about 50% a year since 2010-11. In the past year it has had an unexpected and unprecedented increase of 100%, up from 697 to 1,398 referrals,” and that “Referrals of children and adolescents to the Sandyford clinic in Glasgow also doubled in a year, from 90 in 2014 to 178 in 2015.”
“Trans” cultists argue that this astonishing increase in gender dysphoria diagnoses is due to an increase in social acceptance and awareness that enable children to identify experiences they’ve long had but had no framework or language for expressing.
Others see the rise as a troubling result of the ideological corruption and politicization of the mental health community and an indicator of the suggestibility of children and teens who experience gender dysphoria for myriad reasons, including discomfort with the bodily changes of puberty; discomfort with opposite-sex attention that often attends puberty; discomfort from perceiving themselves as insufficiently male or female; abuse; family dysfunction; trauma; or chronic physical or mental illness. Children’s understanding or interpretation of their gender dysphoria is being distorted by the “trans” lens through which all of society is forced to view “gender.”
The emergence of what is being called “rapid onset gender dysphoria” suggests that social contagion exacerbated by social media also contributes to the meteoric rise in “trans” diagnoses.
At the same time, there is a burgeoning “detransitioning” movement. Detransitioners are men and women—often young adults—who, after spending some time “identifying” as “trans” and trying through chemical and/or surgical alterations to conceal their sex, decide to accept it. Tragically, some of the effects of cross-sex hormones—like voice changes; sterility; and in the cases of boys on estrogen, the development of breast tissue—as well as castrations and mastectomies are irreversible.
Further, some of the effects of long-term cross-sex hormone-doping are unknown. Medical professionals believe that cross-sex hormones may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, blood clots, and cancer. And they believe puberty-blockers, which are administered between ages 10-11 and delay the development of secondary sex characteristics, increase the risk of bone density loss.
A recent article on Lupron, one of the primary puberty-blockers prescribed to gender-dysphoric children, warns that it may cause serious, debilitating long-term health risks, including osteopenia, osteoporosis, and degenerative disc disease. Oddly, the article, appearing on the Kaiser Health News website in February 2017, mentioned only two conditions for which Lupron is used: to halt “precocious puberty” and to help children grow taller. The article never mentions that Lupron is one of the primary puberty-suppressing chemicals given to children diagnosed with gender dysphoria. UnitedHealthcare provides this information regarding the use of Lupron in treating gender dysphoria:
Lupron Depot is unproven and not medically necessary for puberty suppression in patients with gender identity disorder due to the lack of long-term safety data. Statistically robust randomized controlled trials are needed to address the issue of whether the benefits outweigh the substantial inherent clinical risk in its use…. Hayes compiled a Medical Technology Directory on hormone therapy for the treatment of gender dysphoria dated May 19, 2014. Hayes assigned a rating of D2, no proven benefit and/or not safe, for pubertal suppression therapy in adolescents.
Hayes Inc. analyzes and rates the “safety and efficacy” and “impact on health outcomes” of, among other things, drugs.
Parents of all political and philosophical stripes are grasping to find help for their children who suddenly announce they are “trans.” The professional mental health community is largely unhelpful and often even hostile to parents who resist filling their children’s bodies with risky puberty-blockers and cross-sex hormones. It appears the mental health community has fallen once again under the spell of a destructive fad like it did in the 1980’s and 1990’s with the “recovered memory syndrome.”
On websites like 4thWaveNow, Transgender Trend, and The Jung Soul, however, parents who are troubled by their children’s sudden claim to be “trans” are able to find information that the heavily politicized mental health community won’t provide:
It would behoove school administrators, faculty, and board members to think more deeply about the harm to children to which they may be contributing by allowing co-ed restrooms and locker rooms and mandating speech codes that require teachers to use incorrect pronouns. Anecdotal evidence suggests that “Teens with rapid onset gender dysphoria who have desisted from a trans identity seem to share at least a few of the following traits or experiences…”:
The “trans” ideology is not merely false, it’s also destructive and evil. It will eventually collapse from the weight of its incoherence. Theologian and church historian Carl Trueman writes that the “Transgender ideology depends upon a distinction between the male and female genders, even while denying the only grounds for maintaining that distinction: genetic and physiological difference.” Tragically, in the wake of this collapse will be left men and women with surgically mutilated and chemically sterilized bodies. When will Americans snap out of the intellectual and moral fog in which they’ve been wandering, leaving behind the crushed, poisoned bodies of children?
Listen to Laurie read this article in this podcast:
https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/The-Trans-Ideology-Harms-Children.mp3
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We’ve stood firm for 25 years, work diligently to accomplish our mission to
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Written by Trevor Thomas
A timely and stunning statistic befitting the recent death of America’s patriarch of pornography: a shocking 110 million Americans — over one-third of our population — are saddled with a sexually transmitted disease. According to the New York Times,
The incidence of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis is increasing, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An estimated 110 million Americans now are infected with a sexually transmitted disease.
Chlamydia is the most common S.T.D., and the number of cases rose 4.7 percent from 2015 to 2016… Adolescents and young adult women have the highest rates of chlamydia: one survey found that 9.2 percent of girls aged 15 to 19 were infected… The rate of primary and secondary syphilis in 2016 is the highest it has been since 1993, and it increased among both men and women from 2015 to 2016. Men account for almost 90 percent of cases, and most are among men who have sex with men.
Rates of syphilis increased in every age group and all races, and they were highest among people in their twenties.
Additionally, more than one out of every six people aged 14 to 49 has genital herpes. (Thus the rise of all of the Valtrex commercials on TV.) Among many other tragic outcomes, the rampant rate of STDs in America is the real legacy of notorious sexual provocateur, Hugh Hefner. Thanks to the desire to make our own rules when it comes to sex, following the lead of Hefner and his like-minded moral deviants, we find ourselves with STD rates in the U.S. at an all-time high. According to the CDC, there are more than 20 million new cases of STDs in the United States every year. As CNN recently reported,
“STDs are out of control with enormous health implications for Americans,” said David Harvey, executive director of the National Coalition of STD Directors. The coalition represents state, local and territorial health departments who focus on preventing STDs.
“If not treated, gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis can have serious consequences, such as infertility, neurological issues, and an increased risk for HIV,” said Harvey.
Also among the “serious consequences” of many of these STDs: cancer. In addition to cervical cancer, which is caused by certain types of the STD, Human Papilloma Virus, just days ago, the Los Angeles Times reported on (surprise!) the “anal cancer epidemic” that exists among homosexual and bisexual men. The article notes that men who engage in homosexual activity are 100 times more likely to contract anal cancer than HIV-negative men “who exclusively have sex with women.” The article also declares that, “Some in the medical community have identified anal cancer as the next big crisis among HIV-infected gay and bisexual men.” I have breaking news for the medical community: there will always be a “next big crisis” looming for men who treat the human septic canal as a vagina.
Nevertheless, and no-doubt taking their cues from perverts like Hefner, this past July, Teen Vogue — a magazine whose target audience is teenage girls — took it upon themselves to instruct their young readers on the finer points of sodomy. The article, entitled “Anal Sex: What You Need to Know” and subtitled, “How to do it the RIGHT way,” declares itself to be “anal 101, for teens, beginners, and all inquisitive folk.” The garbage piece ends with this shocking admission:
That being said, yes, you will come in contact with some fecal matter. You are entering a butthole. It is where poop comes out. Expecting to do anal play and see zero poop isn’t particularly realistic. It’s NOT a big deal. Everyone poops. Everyone has a butt.
This, from a member of the “party of science.” Forgetting to floss one’s teeth every now and then is “NOT a big deal.” Hillary’s choice of pant suits is “NOT a big deal.” Global climate change is “NOT a big deal.” Choosing to engage in sodomy — even once — can have horrific life-changing — even deadly — consequences. Of course, “anal 101” neglects to mention the rampant disease associated with such disgusting behavior. In other words, like Hefner’s Playboy magazine, Teen Vogue is an accomplice in the shocking rise of STDs among America’s youth.
In a sick attempt to justify promoting evil and dangerous sexual activity, just as they have with killing children in the womb, the left has now stooped to “normalizing” (an STD is “pretty bad*ss; it’s like a sex wound”) and even celebrating (with a “#ShoutYourStatus”) STDs. The perverse gotta pervert, I suppose. As Matt Barber concluded, political correctness needs to be declared an STD.
Of course, one need not contract an STD to suffer as a result of the plague of pornography. A 2015 UK Telegraph article on porn use among British youth contains a shocking revelation from a general practitioner (Sue):
“I’m afraid things are much worse than people suspect.” In recent years, Sue had treated growing numbers of teenage girls with internal injuries caused by frequent anal sex; not, as Sue found out, because she wanted to, or because she enjoyed it — on the contrary — but because a boy expected her to. “I’ll spare you the gruesome details,” said Sue, “but these girls are very young and slight and their bodies are simply not designed for that.”
No one’s body is “designed for that.” The boys were “expecting” such from their young girlfriends because they had bought into one of the many lies of porn. Instead of worrying over the condition of their skin or what earrings went with their new outfit, many of the young girls Sue was treating found themselves battling incontinence. Imagine the shame of a youth — because they bought a favorite and common lie of the left (sex without consequences), the muscles of their rectum are stretched out such that they must live in daily fear of soiling themselves.
Furthermore, the porn saturation of America, along with most of the rest of the Western world, has resulted in longtime and widespread devastation that extends far beyond the physical. If you think “saturation” too strong, consider:
People watched 4,392,486,580 hours of porn on PornHub in 2015. Just to put that in perspective, that means that in one year, people around the world spent 501,425 years watching pornography — on one porn site.
On PornHub, people watched 87,849,731,608 porn videos. As the porn site hastened to point out, that’s 12 porn videos viewed for every single person on the planet.
That, my friends, is the sad math of porn addiction. As a result, tens of millions of teens and adults worldwide have little to no idea what is a healthy sexual relationship, or, in many cases, how to have any type of a healthy relationship with those who share the gender of the objects of their sexual fantasies. Any notion of self-sacrifice and service to another is abandoned, and sex becomes an end unto itself. Regular porn consumers (especially men) literally lust after pornlike encounters in order to be sexually satisfied. In the minds of many men, porn has reduced women to a commodity to be consumed and an object to be abused (e.g., 50 Shades of Grey Dismay).
Breaking the bonds of trust between husbands and wives, porn has destroyed millions of American marriages. Porn use within a marriage leads to a long list of troubling issues. A recent study revealed that once porn enters a marriage, the chances of divorce double. Driven by lust that was born of porn consumption, millions of young adult Americans are shunning marriage in favor of the hook-up culture.
Thus, whether born out of wedlock, killed in the womb, or forced to witness the destruction of the most important human relationship in their lives, over the last six-plus decades, tens of millions of American children have suffered because of their parents’ selfish sexual desires. As I’ve noted before, if these children survive the womb, they face a wide array of difficulties.
Hugh Hefner was prince of the pimps. He was a destroyer of lives and cultures. The level of his destruction is so wide and deep that it will only be fully known in the light of eternity. If you are trapped in his world, turn and flee now. There is hope and healing, and there are those who can help.
Article originally posted at TheAmericanThinker.com.
Here is a recent headline from the Independent Journal Review: “Salon: Identity Politics Is ‘Dragging the Progressive Agenda Down.’” IJR’s Pardes Seleha explains that yes, indeed, a “far-left publication” [Salon] is “finally denouncing its long-embraced identity politics…”
Salon isn’t the only place on the political left to find critics of I.D. politics. Last November, Mark Lilla, a professor at Columbia wrote an op ed that ran in the New York Times titled, “The End of Identity Liberalism.” Here was his opening:
It is a truism that America has become a more diverse country. It is also a beautiful thing to watch. Visitors from other countries, particularly those having trouble incorporating different ethnic groups and faiths, are amazed that we manage to pull it off. Not perfectly, of course, but certainly better than any European or Asian nation today. It’s an extraordinary success story.
But how should this diversity shape our politics? The standard liberal answer for nearly a generation now has been that we should become aware of and “celebrate” our differences. Which is a splendid principle of moral pedagogy — but disastrous as a foundation for democratic politics in our ideological age. In recent years American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing.
So, Lilla writes, “the age of identity liberalism must be brought to an end.”
The “fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups,” he adds. Ouch. Trigger alert!
At the level of electoral politics, Lilla says, “identity liberalism has failed most spectacularly, as we have just seen. National politics in healthy periods is not about ‘difference,’ it is about commonality.”
Why is this series about identity politics running at the Illinois Family Institute’s website? Because those who have been running up the white flag of surrender in the “culture war” should pull down that flag immediately.
Another name for that culture war is identity politics. Aggrieved groups demand their rights. Women are to be treated to taxpayer funded abortion. The LGBT(etc.) crowd are to be treated as if their sex-centric identity is legitimate. College campus snowflakes are to be treated as if they were grown-ups.
Professor Lilla’s article attracted a good bit of attention on both the left and the right.
Here was Rich Lowry writing at the National Review:
A recent essay in the New York Times elegantly diagnosed the problem and inadvertently illustrated it. Mark Lilla, a professor at Columbia and highly respected intellectual historian, wrote that “American liberalism has slipped into a kind of moral panic about racial, gender, and sexual identity that has distorted liberalism’s message and prevented it from becoming a unifying force capable of governing.”
His piece itself occasioned a moral panic, focused overwhelmingly on how Lilla is, in fact, himself a white male. His op-ed was denounced from the left as “the whitest thing I’ve ever read,” and part of an “unconscionable” assault on “the very people who just put the most energy into defeating Trumpism, coming from those who will be made least vulnerable by Trump’s ascension.”
Lilla was so undeterred by the criticism from his fellow Leftists that he decided to turn the topic into a 160 page book, The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics.
Beverly Gage, writing at the New York Times, wasn’t completely happy with the effort.
Still gobsmacked by the 2016 election, many liberals may be yearning for a thoughtful, generous and well-informed book to put it all in perspective, a strategic account of where they’ve been, where they are now and where they ought to go. In “The Once and Future Liberal,” Mark Lilla, a professor of the humanities at Columbia and a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, says his aim is to unify today’s fractured liberals around an agenda “emphasizing what we all share and owe one another as citizens, not what differentiates us.” Unfortunately, he does this in a way guaranteed to alienate vast swaths of his audience, and to deepen left-of-center divisions. Rather than engage in good faith with movements like Black Lives Matter, Lilla chooses to mock them, reserving a particularly mean-spirited sneer for today’s campus left. “Elections are not prayer meetings, and no one is interested in your personal testimony,” he instructs “identity” activists, urging them to shut up, stop marching and “get real.”
You can see why I included that entire paragraph. It was too much fun not to.
So, it’s clear that not everyone on the political left wants to move past identity politics — and that is very good news for those of us on the political right. Again, here is Beverly Gage:
This is not, of course, a work of historical scholarship. It is a polemic about the dangers of “identity liberalism,” and a critique of the misguided professors and students who seem so enamored of it.
Beverly in not a fan, either:
Despite his lofty calls for solidarity, Lilla can’t seem to get out of his own way — or even to take his own advice. He urges fellow liberals to focus on “the hard and unglamorous task of persuading people very different from themselves to join a common effort,” then proceeds to insult his own audience…
“The Once and Future Liberal” is a missed opportunity of the highest order, trolling disguised as erudition.
One note of thanks to Ms. Gage: Since I’m not going to read Lilla’s book, I appreciate her including this quote in her review — again, too much fun:
“Elections are not prayer meetings, and no one is interested in your personal testimony,” [Lilla] instructs “identity” activists, urging them to shut up, stop marching and “get real.”
Let me close with Michael Brown, also writing last December partly in response to the Lilla op ed:
[Leftist] radical agendas can only go so far before the people begin to push back, and that it is partly what happened with the recent elections.
Enough with the divisive ways of identity politics. Enough with the attack on traditional American values. Enough with the assault on our religious freedoms. Enough.
So, in that sense, yes, we are witnessing a larger moral and cultural backlash, even if some of these issues were not front and center in the Trump campaign. And to the extent we can make the case for a biblically-based, moral conservatism, one that treats everyone fairly but that recognizes that certain boundaries are healthy and good, we can turn the hearts of the younger generation as well as recapture the hearts of the older generation.
As my close colleagues and I have said for the last 15-plus years, on with the revolution.
Also worth reading on this topic is Kay S. Hymowitz‘s article “Why Identity Politics Are Not All-American,” where she opens with a reference to Mark Lilla’s NYT article.
Read more: Series: Identity Politics & Paraphilias
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We have stood firm for 25 years, working to boldly bring a biblical perspective to public policy.
The cultural war is going to continue to become weirder. Some might reasonably think that nothing stranger can follow the Leftists’ call for everyone to accept transgenderism as normal.
But then there are all those other letters that follow the “T” in LGBT. You may have seen different variations on the list: LGBTQIA is a popular one (Q=queer or questioning/I=intersex/A=Ally). That’s only 3 more letters you say, that’s no big deal. Except that the list continues on — you can read just three of many articles from Leftists here, here and here.
What is learned from those lists is that we’re in for a long haul. Whether it is a distorted view of “gender,” or the many varieties of sexual desires, each group could be in line to get their own letter and join in for “equal justice.” This series — aimed at expounding upon the cultural phenomenon of identity politics, also will be featuring the many “paraphilias,” which is defined by the liberals at Wikipedia this way:
Paraphilia (also known as sexual perversion and sexual deviation) is the experience of intense sexual arousal to atypical objects, fetishes, situations, fantasies, behaviors, or individuals. […] The number and taxonomy of paraphilias is under debate; one source lists as many as 549 types of paraphilias.
If you think things are out of hand now with high school “transgender” boys being able to use the girls’ locker rooms, just wait. That number of “549 types” promises even worse possibilities ahead.
Articles in this series, from oldest to newest:
Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Introducing a Series
Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Incest
Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Body Integrity Identity Disorder
Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Impact & Transgenders
Transgenderism a Choice or Disorder?
Why the Term “Sexual Orientation” is Nonsense
Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Man’s Search for Meaning
Identity Politics and Paraphilias: LGBT Is Not a Color & Fetishism
Identity Politics and Paraphilias: ‘Public Discourse’ Weighs In & Bisexuality
Identity Politics and Paraphilias: More from ‘Public Discourse’ & Autassassinophilia
Identity Politics and Paraphilias: An Ugly Fight & Bestiality/Zoophilia
Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Tribalism & Urolagnia
Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Ideas & Voyeurism
Charlottesville: A Return to the Topic of Identity Politics
Paraphilias of the Day: Pedophilia, Hebephilia, Ephebophilia, and Pederasty
Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Sports & Exhibitionism
Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Normalizing Deviance & Sadomasochism
The Culture War Is Not Over: Leftists Fight Over Identity Politics
Paraphilia of the Day: Gerontophilia
‘Identity Politics Aim for the End of America Itself’
Wikipedia and Our Paraphilias of the Day: Acrotomophilia and Apotemnophilia
Paraphilias of the Day: Frotteurism and Toucherism
Identity Politics in 2018 and Beyond: Are Conservatives Ready?
Peodeiktophilia and Homeovestism
Autovampirism/Vampirism and Auto-haemofetishism
Identity Politics: Is America & the World Running Out of Patience w/LGBTQIA Activism?
Paraphilias of the Day: Abasiophilia, Agalmatophilia, Algolagnia, and Andromimetophilia
PLEASE consider a financial gift to IFI to sustain our work.
We’ve stood firm for 25 years, work diligently to accomplish our mission to
“boldly bring a biblical perspective to public policy” in Illinois.
A hundred major corporations, ranging from Target to American Airlines to Best Buy, have signed on to an LGBTQ activist coalition supporting the “Equality Act,” which would federalize homosexuality and transgenderism as “civil rights” categories in the law.
The homosexual-bisexual-transgender lobby group Human Rights Campaign (HRC) says the bill, HR 2282, is about “letting Americans live their lives without fear of discrimination,” but pro-family organizations counter that the “Inequality Act” (as Family Research Council calls it) would expressly undermine people’s religious freedom to act against homosexuality and extreme gender confusion (transgenderism), e.g., by declining to participate in same-sex “marriages.”
The sweeping legislation, introduced by openly homosexual U.S. Rep. David Cicilline, D-Rhode Island, has 194 Democratic co-sponsors and two Republican co-sponsors. With little action on the bill likely in a GOP-dominated Congress, HRC is taking its campaign for HR 2282 to the corporate world, where its institutional influence and power greatly exceeds that of social conservatives.
HR 2282, as described by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), “amends the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to include sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity among the prohibited categories of discrimination or segregation in places of public accommodation.”
The bill prohibits employers with 15 or more employees from “discriminating based on sexual orientation or gender identity, subject to the same exceptions and conditions that currently apply to unlawful employment practices based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin,” according to CRS.
The bill’s far-reaching impact would greatly expand the potential for lawsuits against private individuals who choose not to affirm behaviors they regard as immoral before God. Already, using state and local “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” laws, LGBTQ activists and their allies have made life difficult for people opposing “gay marriage” and “proud” homosexuality and transsexualism — from wedding cake makers and wedding photographers to t-shirt makers and even bar owners.
The CRS summary of HR 2282 states:
“The bill expands the categories of public accommodations to include places or establishments that provide:
— exhibitions, recreation, exercise, amusement, gatherings, or displays;
— goods, services, or programs, including a store, a shopping center, an online retailer or service provider, a salon, a bank, a gas station, a food bank, a service or care center, a shelter, a travel agency, a funeral parlor, or a health care, accounting, or legal service; or
— transportation services.”
Noting the expanded definition of “public accommodation” under the proposed legislation, FRC states: “Thus, if the Inequality Act passes, attorneys will likely be required to represent homosexuals in dissolving their same-sex ‘marriages,’ Christian schools will likely be required to offer transgendered students the bathroom of their choice, and Christian homeless shelters will likely be required to accommodate same-sex couples.”
According to the CRS, HR 2282 defines “gender identity” as “gender-related identity, appearance, mannerisms, or characteristics, regardless of the individual’s designated sex at birth.” The bill states that the Department of Justice (DOJ) “may bring a civil action if it receives a complaint from an individual” who claims to be “denied equal utilization of a public facility … (other than public schools or colleges) on account of sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”
Thus, under HR 2282, a “male-to-female” “transgender” activist could sue an amusement park if it refused to let him, as a biological male, enter the public women’s restrooms (since amusement parks would be covered under the Act as “public accommodations”).
HRC quotes Dow Chemical employee Cory Valente in defense of the “Equality Act”: “No one should be fired, evicted from their home, or denied services because of who they are. Supporting inclusion and equality is the right thing to do – for business and for society.”
But FRC states that by expressly stripping away the protections of federal “Religious Freedom Restoration Act”–designed to protect citizens’ conscience rights–the pro-LGBTQ “Inequality Act” “would force people to affirm homosexuality, same-sex marriage, and transgenderism, despite their religious objections in various situations, including the provision of public accommodations.”
“This is the antithesis of religious freedom,” the pro-family group asserts.
HRC has employed to great effect its skewed “Corporate Equality Index” “scorecard” system to pressure corporations to ratchet up their pro-homosexual and pro-“transgender” policies. Under the ratings system, companies get points for giving money to pro-LGBTQ activities but they potentially lose 25 points if they do anything that HRC considers to be a “large-scale official or public anti-LGBT blemish” (see page 8 here).
Thus, even neutral corporate giving policies — say, if a company’s executives wanted to avoid taking sides by financially supporting both pro-LGBT groups and organizations like the American Family Association — would be boxed out for any corporation seeking a perfect HRC “Equality Index” score.
And under the HRC’s self-serving “Index,” companies must comply with an ever-expanding list of pro-LGBTQ demands to continue receiving a “100 percent” ranking.
The strategy has been immensely successful for HRC, with even once-conservative corporations like Walmart joining its “100 percent” club — which includes paying for “transgender” employees “sex-reassignment surgeries” through company health insurance plans. Walmart now finances “gay pride” events like the annual New York City “pride parade.”
HRC reports the following 100 major corporations as members of its “Coalition for the Equality Act”:
Abercrombie & Fitch Co.
Accenture
Adobe Systems Inc.
Advanced Micro Devices Inc.
Airbnb Inc.
Alcoa Inc.
Amazon.com Inc.
American Airlines
American Eagle Outfitters
American Express Global Business Travel
Apple Inc.
Arconic
Ascena Retail Group Inc.
Automatic Data Processing Inc.
Bain & Co. Inc.
Bank of America
Best Buy Co. Inc.
Biogen
Boehringer Ingelheim USA Corp.
Booz Allen Hamilton Inc.
Boston Scientific Corp.
Broadridge Financial Solutions Inc.
Brown-Forman Corp.
CA Technologies Inc.
Caesars Entertainment Corp.
Capital One Financial Corp.
Cardinal Health Inc.
Cargill Inc.
Chevron Corp.
Choice Hotels International Inc.
Cisco Systems Inc.;
The Coca-Cola Co.
Corning Inc.
Cox Enterprises Inc.
CVS Health Corp.
Darden Restaurants Inc.
Delhaize America Inc.
Diageo North America
The Dow Chemical Co.
Dropbox Inc.
E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. (DuPont)
eBay Inc.
EMC Corp.
Facebook Inc.
Gap Inc.
General Electric Co.
General Mills Inc.
Google Inc.
HERE North America LLC
The Hershey Company
Hewlett Packard Enterprises
Hilton Inc.
HP Inc.; HSN Inc.
Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP
Hyatt Hotels Corp.
IBM Corp.
Intel Corp.
InterContinental Hotels Group Americas
Johnson & Johnson
JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Kaiser Permanente; Kellogg Co.
Kenneth Cole Productions
Levi Strauss & Co.; Macy’s Inc.
Marriott International Inc.
MasterCard Inc.; Microsoft Corp.
Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams
Monsanto Co.
Moody’s Corp.
Nationwide
Navigant Consulting Inc.
Nike Inc.
Northrop Grumman Corp.
Office Depot Inc.
Oracle Corp.
Orbitz Worldwide Inc.
Paul Hastings LLP
PepsiCo Inc.
Procter & Gamble Co.
Pure Storage Inc.
Qualcomm Inc.
Replacements Ltd.
S&P Global Inc.
Salesforce
SAP America Inc.
Sodexo Inc.
Symantec Corp.
Synchrony Financial
T-Mobile USA Inc.
Target Corp.
Tech Data Corp.
TIAA
Twitter Inc.
Uber Technologies Inc
Under Armour Inc
Unilever
Warby Parker
WeddingWire Inc.
Whirlpool Corporation
Williams-Sonoma Inc.
Xerox Corp.
This article was originally published at LifeSiteNews.com
Sociologist Mark Regnerus has a new in-depth study of how our culture’s lack of sexual morality is impacting relationships in ways not seen in previous generations. There was a fascinating, if not disturbing, review of Regnerus’ new book (Cheap Sex) that contained the following section specifically looking at how the culture is impacting Christians. It also mentions how churches are impacted by these changes and the confusion it is causing.
The review states the following:
Long-standing Christian sexual ethics are making less and less sense to the un-churched — a key market for evangelicals. That’s giving church leadership fits over just how “orthodox” they can be or should be on matters of sex and sexuality. “Meeting people where they’re at” becomes challenging. Congregations are coming face to face with questions of just how central sexual ethics are to their religious life and message.
Levels of uncertainty — that is, neither agreeing nor disagreeing — about various sexual practices and attitudes are elevated among Christians. When we asked more than 15,000 Americans about sexual ethics, many who attended religious services at least once a week were on the fence. How many?
- 23 percent are unsure about the wisdom of cohabiting before marriage
- 14 percent are unsure about marriage being outdated
- 21 percent don’t know what they think about no-strings-attached sex
- 25 percent don’t know if viewing pornography is okay or not
- 10 percent are unsure about whether extramarital sex might ever be permissible
- 17 percent don’t know if consensual polyamorous unions are okay
One can interpret those on the fence as movable — open to being convinced. But if trends in sexual norms hold, most who once claimed neutrality eventually drift toward the more permissive position.
Cheap sex, it seems, has a way of deadening religious impulses. It’s able to poke holes in the “sacred canopy” over the erotic instinct, to borrow the late Peter Berger’s term. Perhaps the increasing lack of religious affiliation among young adults is partly a consequence of widening trends in non-marital sexual behavior among young Americans, in the wake of the expansion of pornography and other tech-enhanced sexual behaviors.
Cohabitation has prompted plenty of soul searching over the purpose, definition and hallmarks of marriage. But we haven’t reflected enough on how cohabitation erodes religious belief.
We overestimate how effectively scientific arguments secularize people. It’s not science that’s secularizing Americans — it’s sex.
This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.