Are you ready for the “greatest cultural revolution in history?”

IFI’s Laurie Higgins was recently interviewed by both John Mauck of Mauck & Baker, LLC, and by Mark Elfstand on his “Let’s Talk” show.  Both programs are on WYLL radio (1160 AM), and can be heard throughout most of the state.

Lawyers for Jesus

In the first interview for a recording of “Lawyers for Jesus Radio,” attorney John Mauck discussed governmental policies regarding LGBTQIA ideology. The conversation began with a discussion of Higgins’ article The “Trans” Ideology Damages Children. In it, Higgins writes:

Social conventions reflect and reinforce the good architecture of sexually differentiated human life. Social conventions for men and women were not created out of whole cloth or manufactured from the fertile imaginations of patriarchal oppressors. They emerged from human nature.

The conversation covers topics such as the mental and physical health risks of hormone therapy or surgery to help a person pretend he’s a she, or she’s a he.

Also discussed is HB 1785, that will make it legal to falsify a birth certificate. That bill is currently on Governor Bruce Rauner’s desk. The interview gave time to the topic of the absurdity of “gender fluidity,” the end game of those pushing for gender ideology, and a call to action.  Listen to it here:

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Let’s Talk!

In the most recent interview by Mark Elfstand, he deftly covered a variety of issues in about ten minutes.

He began by asking about the article Higgins penned Christians Must Exit Government Schools where she writes:

Christian parents charged by God to train up their children in the way they should go have no biblical warrant for placing their children all day, all year in schools that refuse to recognize the immutability and profound meaning of sexual differentiation, particularly as it relates to modesty and privacy.

Since few Christian parents or teachers are doing anything to counter the advance of Leftist gender ideology, Higgins said, parents have to get their kids out of schools that “teach them that to be loving, compassionate, and inclusive, they must lie by calling gender-pretending peers by opposite-sex pronouns, and they must be willing to relinquish their privacy.”

Other topics and articles discussed include the reaction to the above article, including an exchange Laurie Higgins had with people at the Chicago Tribune. Also touched on was the morally bankrupt Southern Poverty Law Center including IFI among its list of “hate groups.”

Check it out:

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Anyone who doubts that “LGBTQQAP” activists and their “allies” are pursuing the hearts and minds of other people’s children should watch this sweet, well-crafted, animated short film about an adorable, red-headed, closeted middle school boy whose secret crush on another boy is exposed when his anthropomorphized heart leaps from his chest and pursues the boy with whom the main character is besotted.

The award-winning film titled “In a Heartbeat” was posted on YouTube less than a month ago and already has well over 27 million views.

The middle-school boy, literally and figuratively hiding, sees his beloved walking into school reading a book by homosexual writer Oscar Wilde and absent-mindedly tossing and catching an apple. (Is this an intentional allusion to grade school innocence or an inadvertent allusion to the forbidden fruit, the eating of which constituted rebellion against God and resulted in the fall of man?)

The freckle-faced, red-haired boy’s pulsing, panting, love-struck heart bursts forth and soars after the object of his affection, pausing momentarily to stroke the hair of the beloved, and in so doing exposes his crush to the disapproving faces of censorious peers. The freckly boy grabs his heart which splits in two, and he flees the schoolhouse, seeking refuge again in the shrubs—his metaphorical closet—all accompanied by heartstring-tugging music. Not to worry, though! All ends well when his love interest suddenly shows up, bringing the other half of his broken heart to him, restoring it to wholeness. And there in anti-Eden, homoerotic love blooms.

To better comprehend the troubling effects of this video, imagine that instead of a classmate the object of the main character’s secret crush were his brother. Leftists would likely be offended at such a morally repellent suggestion, but why should they be? If, as the Left has countless times proclaimed, “love is love♥,” what could possibly be offensive about erotic love between two brothers?

Of course, only the fringiest of the fringy Left think there are no distinctions between types of love. If pushed for clarification, even most “progressives” will admit they don’t really believe all types of loving relationships are identical. They don’t really believe that erotic activity can legitimately play a part in all types of loving relationships. Only the wholly amoral among us believe that “love is love.”

The Left uses this silly slogan to promote without proving the moral proposition that it is as morally legitimate for two people of the same sex to engage in erotic activity as it is for two people of opposite sexes to engage in it.  The film’s creators are making the implicit argument that the biological sex of humans is irrelevant to the morality of sexual activity. Leftists use the adolescent slogan “love is love” to distract the public from the central issue—which pertains not to love but to sex. The central issue concerns sexual morality and sexual boundaries. The Left seeks to skirt that issue by dangling an anthropomorphized heart in front of vulnerable and manipulable children.

The Left does not want to discuss the different forms of love: erotic (i.e., romantic love), philia (i.e., friendship), agape (i.e., the love of God for man and man for God, sacrificial love), and storge (i.e., familial or kinship love). After years of proclaiming that “love is love,” Leftists will have a difficult time explaining to children why erotic pleasures have no place in relationships constituted by storge or platonic love. They don’t want to discuss how we determine which types of relationships ought not include erotic activity. They don’t want to discuss whether the experience alone of romantic love—i.e., the attraction to and deep longing for union with another person—automatically renders sexual interaction moral.

And those who believe in a solely materialistic universe are going to have a really hard time explaining the source of their moral beliefs about whichever types of sexual activity they deem immoral.

But none of these thorny moral inconsistencies matter to those so irrational and corrupt that they no longer recognize or respect the reality and meaning of male-female differentiation.

And none of these profoundly important questions about sexual morality matter in a culture where cartoons shape feelings—nothing more than feelings. In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman warned that “Americans no longer talk to each other. They entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.” And even with cartoons for children.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:
https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/In-a-Heartbeat-Propaganda-for-Children.mp3

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Target’s dangerous policy of allowing men into women’s dressing rooms has claimed another innocent victim of sexual voyeurism.

According to NBC10 News, a 36-year-old man secretly filmed women trying on clothes in the dressing room of a New Jersey Target store. The news report stated that as many as 100 victims could have been spied on.

A victim told police she saw a man’s hand creep under her fitting room wall inside the store. The hand was holding a cell phone, she said. The victim attempted to confront the voyeur, but he ran out of the store.

The police were able to catch him, and they also caught onto the fact that he may have been performing this crude, invasive, and illegal behavior for some time.

“It’s frightening,” a local Target shopper told NBC10, “when you run into a store, you don’t expect to be targeted or stalked and it’s frightening.”

Target’s policy purposely places employees in a position of allowing men to enter a dressing room when they know very well that innocent women are at risk.

In effect, Target employees who work in clothing departments (most often women) are to turn a blind eye and allow potentially illegal activity to occur in their very presence without raising any objection to stop it.

As long as Target continues to allow men free and unrestricted access into women’s dressing rooms and restrooms, these sexual violations against women and little girls will continue to occur.

TAKE ACTION

There are still women who are unfamiliar with Target’s dangerous policy. Will you help spread the warning and let your family and friends know about the Target boycott?

1. Forward this information to friends and family. Invite them to sign the boycott pledge at www.afa.net/target.

2. Call Target headquarters at 612-304-6073 and personally let them know you are boycotting their stores.

3. Support our ongoing efforts to promote the Target boycott. Make your tax-deductible donation today!

Earlier this week, I mentioned that I had submitted a commentary on the “trans” ideology to the Chicago Tribune on July 31 that was rejected. I noted this only because several days after I submitted this commentary, Trib reporter Kim Janssen wrote an article about my article that urges Christians to exit public schools in part because public schools promote the irrational, incoherent, and destructive “trans” ideology. Here is my commentary that the Trib rejected:

Progressives refer to the “right side of history” a lot, always in reference to their own views and usually in reference to the newest sexuality fad. Currently, they’re using the phrase to ridicule those who believe that biological sex per se is intrinsically and profoundly meaningful. Progressives believe that “gender identity”—that is, one’s subjective, internal feelings about one’s sex—trumps sex in every context, including those in which persons engage in private activities.

Progressives believe that segregating humans by sex in spaces where undressing, showering, and engaging in bodily functions take place constitutes not only being on the wrong side of history but also reflects hatred, lack of compassion, ignorance, bigotry and unjustifiable exclusion.

The “trans” community argues that maleness and femaleness have nothing to do with anatomy, biology, interests, abilities, or the “arbitrary, socially constructed expectations or behaviors that society assigns, imposes, or associates with males or females (e.g., types of toys, clothing styles, hairstyles, make-up).”

 The “trans” ideology rejects the idea that the human species is binary.

And the “trans” community believes that since maleness and femaleness have no intrinsic connection to anatomy, physiology or arbitrary socially constructed phenomena, there is no need for those who identify as “trans” to take cross-sex hormones, have surgery, or cross-dress.

The end game for the “trans” community is not permission for a few gender-dysphoric men and women to have unfettered access to the private spaces of opposite-sex persons. Their end game is the eradication of public recognition of and respect for sexual differentiation. This means allowing objectively male persons with all their bodily accouterments intact in women’s private spaces and vice versa based merely on their claim that they identify as the opposite sex.

“Trans”-identified men and women seek unrestricted access to the restrooms, locker rooms, showers, shelters, semi-private hospital rooms, nursing home rooms, and sports teams of persons of the opposite sex. They seek to impose hefty fines on citizens who refuse to refer to them by pronouns that correspond to the sex they are not. They seek to force all citizens to pretend that men can menstruate, become pregnant, and “chest-feed” infants.

Minnesota has adopted school guidelines that permit the “segregation” of students who object to sharing private spaces with classmates of the opposite sex unless such accommodations result “in stigmatizing the transgender and gender nonconforming student.” So, what happens if a “trans” student feels stigmatized? Will school administrations force objecting students to share locker rooms and restrooms with opposite-sex peers?

Some questions remain unanswered:

How does the “trans” community define maleness and femaleness? If, for example, maleness has nothing to do with biology, anatomy, clothes, make-up, hairstyles, interests, or behaviors, what is it?

If in the “trans” ideology, maleness and femaleness have nothing to do with biology, anatomy, make-up, hairstyles, interests or behaviors, how do they know that maleness and femaleness are different?

Which private spaces do “progressives” think “gender fluid,” “gender-questioning,” “bi-gender,” and “tri-gender” persons should be allowed to use?

Either the objective, immutable sex of humans matters or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t matter, then all sex-segregated spaces, contexts, and activities should be eradicated. Everything should be co-ed for everyone everywhere. If objective, immutable biological sex has no intrinsic and profound meaning, then there should exist no single-sex restrooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms, showers, shelters, semi-private hospital rooms, nursing home rooms, athletic teams, jails, or prisons. If objective biological sex has no more meaning than hair color, then sex-segregation should end.

And this would constitute being on the most perverse side of history—a side of history no civilization has ever before witnessed.

These seem like reasonable issues to explore before news “reporters” assert that “trans”-identifying persons have the “right” to access the private spaces of opposite-sex persons. Apparently the Trib believes that winning a debate through demagoguery masquerading as objective news reporting is easier than winning through reason. Didn’t Neil Postman kind of warn us about this in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death?

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The Army recently released a new training presentation for troops regarding their interactions with transgender soldiers, and guidelines regarding gender transition in the military. The policy favors the needs and feelings of the individual over the well being of the unit, a practice that is formerly foreign to military protocol. In the Christian Post, James Hasson, a former Army captain, shed some light on the PowerPoint presentation containing the new procedures:

“For a soldier to officially change gender requires only some paperwork. A military doctor or civilian medical professional must certify that the transgender person has achieved ‘stability in the preferred gender’ and the soldier must change the gender designation on the soldier’s passport or birth certificate,” Hasson wrote. “From that point on, the transgender soldier is ‘expected to adhere to all military standards associated with their gender,’ and ‘use the billeting, bathroom and shower facilities’ of their new gender.”

Since no sex-reassignment surgery is required, this means that, among other things, female soldiers will have to shower alongside “transitioned females” (with male genitalia), and male soldiers will be forced to shower with “transitioned males” (with female genitalia). This practice does nothing to improve combat readiness, but rather contributes to making the normal 30-some person shower that soldiers are routinely subjected to an even more unpleasant and violating experience.

Further, The Federalist points out that:

The changes also affect drug-testing procedures. DoD Instruction 1010.16 requires urine specimens to be “collected under the direct observation of a designated individual of the same sex as the Service member providing the specimen.” To be blunt, “observers” must watch the urine sample leave the tested soldier’s body and enter the collection cup.

Practically, this means that biologically born females may be forced into very exposed and uncomfortable one-on-one situations such as the one described above with “transitioned females,” who may still have male genitalia. Rather than protesting this blatant breach of privacy and social boundaries, biologically born female and male soldiers must simply accept these new policies and their implications, for the sake of their transgender peers.

Obama-era military policies like these continue to haunt and hinder the Armed Forces, placing emphasis on and favoring a minority group and social platform rather than building service members up to be stronger, more lethal, unified, and ready to protect America from danger. A One News Now contributor highlights this well:

“The social extremism that characterized the last eight years still haunts the Defense Department at a time when the military can least afford it,” FRC President Tony Perkins warned. “With ISIS torching its way across the Middle East, our troops shouldn’t be torn between its role securing America and securing the Left’s radical social agenda.”

Thankfully, President Trump has expressed a desire to further strengthen our military. If these new policies take effect, may their detrimental consequences quickly be brought to attention, so that the military’s focus can shift from coddling a small group of people at the expense and privacy of many, to ensure our military is a force to be feared and reckoned with.

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Christians who hold to historic and traditional teachings of the Bible believe that God created us from the beginning “male and female” (Genesis 5:2; Matthew 19:4; Mark 10:6). Biology and physiology empirically affirm that there are only two genders. Christians who hold to this theologically orthodox and scientific view believe that “gender-confirmation” surgery, hormone-blockers and cross-dressing damage human beings. We do not believe that medical intervention changes the fact that God created us “fearfully and wonderfully” in His image as either male or female (Psalm 139:13-16). That truth simply cannot be changed.

Leftists believe that “gender” is fluid and changeable. In fact, some on the far left believe that there are more than fifty “gender” options.

Leftist in the media, academia and the entertainment industry reject the orthodox beliefs of Christians (as well as Jews and Muslims) and label these beliefs hateful, while accepting the controversial and science-denying, evolving beliefs of Leftist activists.

Why are Leftist beliefs considered sound and compassionate while historical beliefs are rejected as illegitimate and intolerable? While few Leftists would likely admit it, I believe the reason they reject biological reality is that they hate God. More specifically, they reject His standards of righteousness and choose to openly rebel against those standards. They shake their fists at God and loudly proclaim with their lives that God has no authority over them.

Those who suffer from gender dysphoria are discontented with how God created them, so they choose to recreate themselves. It is the same for those who embrace their same-sex attraction or other paraphilias. It is a rejection of God’s design and purpose for the gift of sexuality.

They have exchanged the truth of God for a lie. They have become filled with unrighteous, evil, covetous and malicious thoughts, and approve of those who do the same (Romans 1:18-32).

At the heart of all this is the sin of rebellion, and unbelief, the sin from which there is no dispensation or reprieve (1 John 5:16-17).

The importance of exposing these lies (Ephesians 5:11) and opposing this agenda is critical if we hope to protect young, vulnerable and/or impressionable family members, neighbors from the snares and lures of today’s culture (Psalm 124:7; Proverbs 29:6).

We have to recognize that the lures of the world are very real and can be very strong. There is a reason why the Apostle Paul tells us to “walk circumspectly” or look carefully how we live, “not as fools but as wise…because the days are evil,” and to “understand what the will of the Lord is” (Ephesians 5:15–17).

As such, we must be aware of the godless worldviews and lies that are constantly being presented to us. Moreover, we must identify them as lies or deception for ourselves and our for our family members and friends. If we do nothing, others may assume we think the Christian worldview is just one option among many–just one way to find fulfillment.

The Christian faith must offer truth to a dark and decaying culture. We cannot affirm the lies of the culture with our silence or misplaced compassion. The Christian message exposes false beliefs and practices, illuminates the best way (Psalm 119:15), and points to eternal hope in Jesus (Matthew 11:28).

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-and, please-

We recently alerted you to two pending pieces of legislation that Governor Bruce Rauner will soon have to grapple with. If you have not yet responded to this call-to-action, or even if you have, it is imperative that his office hears from us emphatically and frequently.

1.)  This is our top priority during the summer: HB 1785 must be vetoed!  This careless legislation would allow gender-dysphoric persons to falsify their birth certificates, which are both legal and historical documents. This will have consequences with regard to the relentless cultural assault on physical privacy through the sexual integration of previously sex-segregated spaces.

Governor Rauner must act to veto this nonsense
by August 28, 2017 or it will automatically become law.

2.)  The other item of great concern remains to be HB 40, a bill that would remove all restrictions on taxpayer funding of abortion. A procedural motion has delayed it from being sent to the Governor’s desk, but he needs to continue to hear from pro-life and responsible taxpayers.

Take ACTION:  Click Here to send an email or a fax to Governor Rauner’s office to urge him to veto both HB 1785 and HB 40.  Ask him to reject transgender birth certificates and taxpayer funding for abortion.

ALSO: please call the public comment lines in the Governor’s office in Springfield: (217) 782-0244 and Chicago (312) 814-2121.

No to taxpayer funding of abortion!
No to fraudulent birth certificates!

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One of the movements in our movement-cluttered, chaotic world is the “period-positive movement” which seeks to destigmatize menstruation. And one of the ways period-positivists seek to destigmatize menstruation is to make it more “inclusive.”

Menstru-philes bristle at the idea that “menstruation is equated with femininity and womanhood.” They argue that  “Menstruation stigma is definitely rooted, but that doesn’t mean it only affects women.” Menstru-philes argue that “if we frame menstruation as only a woman’s issue, we imply that trans men and non-binary people who happen to menstruate are actually women.” They recommend that when referring to “those who menstruate,” we not call them “women and girls.” Instead, refer to them as “people” or “people who menstruate.”

Into the period-positive movement has marched Cass Clemmer, a young woman, reproductive health “educator,” and artist who identifies as “trans” and “queer” and wants to be referred to by the plural pronouns “they” and “them.”

Clemmer argues that “A lot of us are taught to keep periods to ourselves, to the point that even having a wrapped tampon outside the confines of the bathroom can feel inappropriate.” She also claims that the “deeply conservative community” in which she was raised “taught everyone to be ashamed of their periods.”

That must have been some weird community. I’ve never met any woman who was raised to be ashamed of her period or any woman who is or was ashamed of her period. Perhaps Clemmer mistakes modesty and the concomitant desire for privacy for certain activities with shame.

Let’s hope Clemmer doesn’t start an excretion-positive movement to destigmatize urinating and defecating by bringing those activities out into the open.

Clemmer believes that tampons should not only be brought out into the open but also that they shouldn’t be associated with women.

She recently posted an Instagram photo of herself themself (themselves?), “manspreading” in light-colored men’s trousers on a park bench with menstrual blood soaked through her pants crotch and holding a sign that says, “PERIODS AREN’T JUST FOR WOMEN #bleedingwhiletrans.” Of course, she is objectively a woman, so the sign is silly.

In the service of destigmatizing menstruation, Clemmer created a coloring book for little girls—er, I mean, young humans with breasts and vaginas that will one day menstruate. The coloring book, titled The Adventures of Toni the Tampon, features Toni, “magnificent Marina the menstrual cup,” Patrice the pad, and Sebastian the menstrual sponge. Clemmer wanted a male character because in her science-denying world, “yes, men do get periods.”

Clemmer dreams that one day her coloring book will “inspire” menstruators of all genders “to walk to bathrooms with tampons outside of their shirtsleeves.” I wonder why Clemmer thinks menstruators with tampons dangling from shirtsleeves should bother walking into bathrooms at all? Doesn’t that stigmatize menstruators? Why not use them out in the open?

According to the website Mashable, “Clemmer admits the decision to include genderqueer and transgender characters undoubtedly makes the coloring book harder to market in a world that largely believes only women get periods. But risking profits and popularity in the name of inclusivity and accurate depiction was more important to the artist.”

Clemmer said, “‘I’d rather help just one genderqueer or trans menstruator feel like they were seen, than sell a thousand copies only to reinforce the boundaries society draws by gendering periods in the first place.’”

I’m pretty sure it wasn’t society that “gendered” periods.

How very unselfish of Clemmer to sacrifice profit in order to deceive children. Too bad there aren’t more conservatives willing to sacrifice profit in order to protect children and promulgate truth.

Clemmer wrote a “poem” about her period that reveals her pathological response to her own biology:

[L]et me take you back, To the details that I can still recall, Of the day I gained my first period, And the day that I lost it all…. Everyone told me my hips would grow, I looked at them and couldn’t stop crying, “What’s wrong with you? You’ll be a woman!” They kept celebrating a child dying. See my body had betrayed me, That red dot, the wax seal, On a contract left there broken, A gender identity that wasn’t real. Most people deal with blood and tissue, And yet my body forces me to surrender, Cause every time I get my cycle, Is another day I shed my gender. My boobs betray me first, I feel them stretching out my binder, I send up questions, “am I cursed?” And wish to god that she was kinder. The five days it flows, I try to breathe, I dissociate, While my body rips outs parts of me, Leaving nothing but a shell of hate. The blood drips from an open wound, Of a war waging deep inside my corpse, The battle between mind and body,

If there is a mismatch or battle between mind and body, how does Clemmer know that the problem resides in her healthy, normally functioning body and not with her mind that causes her to see her breasts as a betrayal and curse? Why does she not view her mind which  dissociates from her hated female body as the traitorous and disordered enemy of health and truth?

Period-positivists who see that properly functioning menstruating bodies are something to be valued and seek to help young girls view their menstrual cycles positively don’t see the irony in supporting the “trans” ideology that promotes the chemical and surgical mutilation of healthy female and male bodies.

Period-positivists like Clemmer see negative views of menstruation as a problem within the minds of young girls and yet tragically don’t see negative views of breasts, vaginas, or penises as problems in the minds of “trans”-identified persons of all ages.

In order to have pregnant and chest-feeding men, you must first have menstruating boys. They all live in the state of Confusion on Flat Earth where they futilely practice human alchemy and speak Newspeak.

And destroy lives.

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“When you pull up your anchor and you have no moral compass that says true north, then increasingly you lose the ability to understand what’s normal,” warns Dr. Richard Land, who leads Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Land is commenting about so-called “bathroom bills” and transgendered people, a cultural battle in which some state governments have reacted to the relatively new controversy of mentally ill men stating they are women and demanding access to women’s restrooms and locker rooms.

The most infamous political fight took place in North Carolina, where then-Gov. Pat McCrory and legislators took action with bill HB2 after a Charlotte ordinance forced business owners to allow men to use women’s restrooms or be fined for refusing to do so.

Homosexual activists reacted as expected: McCrory was denounced as “transphobic” and a hater (and narrowly lost re-election); the Department of Justice announced it would sue; and LBGT-supporting companies were pressured to pressure state officials with a threat of fleeing corporations and lost jobs.

A year later, Texas lawmakers are currently in a special session dealing with the issue of bathroom policy. One of two bills submitted in the House would require people to use the bathroom, showers and other private facilities based on their born gender. Another bill deals strictly with schools.

Land says progressives, meanwhile, are increasingly unable to state what is moral and normal.

“And if nothing is normal,” he says “then everything is normal.”

OneNewsNow has reported how the American Psyschiatric Association softened the term “gender identify disorder” to “gender dysphoria” in 2013 under pressure from homosexual activists.

Beyond the issue of men identifying as women, there is also a left-wing demand to identify people according to their preferred gender, with supposed gender pronouns such as “ze” and “zir” used in place of “him” and “her.”

There is also an ongoing demand to address people by their self-identified gender identities, now numbering more than 50, such as “agender,” “pangender,” and “gender fluid.”

Much like the Charlotte ordinance, New York City is threatening to fine business owners who cite the wrong pronoun to transgendered customers.

The newest boundaries being pushed include a grown man who identifies as a little girl and a man-turned-woman who identifies as a dragon, and even a woman who identifies as blind after pouring drain cleaner in her eyes with the help of a psychologist.

Texans don’t agree with such loony demands, says Land, pointing to polling that suggests a majority of husbands and fathers oppose a biological male using the shower and restroom with their wives and daughters.

“Frankly, I’ll be very honest with you, I don’t really care who goes to the bathroom with me,” Land says. “I do care a great deal about who goes to the bathroom with my wife and my two daughters.”

This article was originally posted at OneNewsNow.com

* WARNING: READER DISCRETION ADVISED*

A recent article in Teen Vogue magazine titled “Anal Sex; What You Need to Know” has justifiably generated outrage among decent people and generated outrage at the outrage among indecent people. Perverse sex writer, sex educator, blogger, and podcaster 26-year-old Gigi Engle offered a detailed explanation for teens on how to engage in sodomy in a decidedly pro-sodomy essay. Here is an excerpt that omits the step-by-step instructions for boys and girls, whom Engle refers to as “prostate-owners” and “non-prostate-owners,” presumably so as not to offend the “transgirls” with prostates and penises or the “transboys” with vaginas:

This is anal 101, for teens, beginners, and all inquisitive folk.

…

Anal sex, though often stigmatized, is a perfectly natural way to engage in sexual activity. People have been having anal sex since the dawn of humanity…. So if you’re a little worried about trying it or are having trouble understanding the appeal, just know that it isn’t weird or gross.

The anus is full of nerve endings that, for some, feel awesome when stimulated.

…

The anus is very tight, and the feeling of having something in your rectal area is unique. It is often described as a feeling of fullness, which can be delightful.

…

Forgive me for waiting until the very end of this piece to get to this burning question, but I wanted you to know the benefits and positives when it comes to anal. Because there are many!

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.

Anal sex and anal stimulation can be awesome, and if you want to give it a go, you do that. More power to you.

Yes, teens, sodomy is ancient, appealing, unique, delightful, positive, empowering, beneficial, and downright awesome!

Weeell, except for the pooping on your partner part—oh, and the other things Engle omitted in her eagerness to cheerlead for anal intercourse, things like pain during sodomy, anal fissures, anal abscesses, anal fistulas, anal incontinence, increased risk for anal cancer; increased risk for incurable viral diseases like hepatitis, genital herpes, genital warts, and HIV; increased risk for parasitic diseases like giardiasis and amoebiasis; increased risk for bacterial infections like gonorrhea, campylobacter, chlamydia, shigella, chancroid, granuloma inguinale, syphilis (btw, untreated gonorrhea and chlamydia can lead to sterility in women and men “non-prostate-owners” and in “prostate-owners”).

The CDC warns that “Anal sex is the riskiest sexual behavior for getting and transmitting HIV for men and women.”

Unlike vaginas, rectums are not designed for penetrative sex. They are not elastic, they don’t produce lubrication, and the tissue lining is thinner and more easily torn, which is why sodomy is both unnatural and rife with health risks.

But other than that, sodomy’s swell.

Many may not realize how cool sodomy has become or that it’s been on the rise among heterosexual couples for the past 25 years, especially among younger women—including even high school girls—who are being pressured by their male partners who have drunk deeply from the polluted well of pornography.

According to Pornhub, the “largest pornography website on the Internet,” searches in the United States for pornography that depicts anal sex “increased 120 percent between 2009 and 2015.”

A decade ago, an article in GQ magazine titled “Is Anal Sex the New Deal-Breaker,” explored the reasons for this increase:

Now that anal sex has been propelled higher on the mainstream menu by a hypersexualized culture and the proliferation of porn… some men can’t help but order it. And some women feel the need to offer it.

How unfortunate that now a woman, Gigi Engle, actively seeks to normalize a sexual practice promoted by the business that profits from the degradation of women.

Perhaps a closer look at the person Teen Vogue finds a fit “educator” for adolescents is in order.

On her blog, Engle shares a lot about her promiscuous sex life (e.g., sex on first dates, sex on 4^th dates, casual hook-ups, and sex with men who have girlfriends), and in one entry, she shared her “5 Essential Dating Deal Breakers”  one of which is this:

If the sex is bad, even once, I’m out. This may be a harsh judgment and I do give second chances, but not on this one. I’m immediately put off the entire situation. Doing something weird mid-coitus also falls under this umbrella….I don’t know you very well. If you want to get weird, let’s wait until we’re actually dating or at least until I’ve had another glass of wine.

Just a few days ago, on the Brides magazine website, Engle proved her pervert bona fides by provided a tutorial on “How to Successfully Pull Off Sex in Public”:

Admit it: So many of us want to have sex in public but don’t know how…. Sex in public is an art form, and pulling it off successfully is no joke. It takes skill and cunning to make it happen, but isn’t the planning (and then getting away with it) half the fun? 

Here is everything you need to know about having sex in public. Happy hunting!

…Having sex in public is technically illegal, so therefore having a plan in place will help you follow through without incident (read: arrest).

…

Don’t choose a time that coincides with heavy foot traffic or the unforgiving stare of the sun…. If you creep into a park at 7 p.m. on a summer evening, less people will be out strolling around or picnicking.

…A playground in the dead of night may sound like a good idea, but it is not. If you get caught having sex on a playground, you might wind up on a sex-offender list. Yes, that is a thing.

Don’t choose places that are anywhere near where children roam, even if said children are not currently there.

Go for elevators (assuming you can press the “stop” button without setting off an alarm), stairwells, forests, parks, and airplane bathrooms. You want to avoid places that have lots of people.

…[S]kip underwear. Both you and your partner can do without it for this particular outing. Underwear of any variety creates an unnecessary barrier that will only be an annoying hindrance to your public sex…. The key to pulling off exhibitionism: simplicity.

In another article for Brides on ways to have the “Best Newlywed Sex of Your Life,” Engle recommends sharing sexual fantasies, watching porn, using sex toys, and trying “some kinky stuff.”

Maybe someone should tell know-it-all sexpert Engle that, although everyone poops, not everyone poops on the person they love most in the world—the person for whom they would lay down their life, the person whom they view as created in the image and likeness of God and, therefore, of infinite dignity and worth.

Apparently when Engle uses the word “natural,” she means “occurring in nature,” as in some humans do it. Is that how she determines the fitness or morality of an action? If so, then bestiality, incest, voyeurism, and necrophilia are “natural.” Also, like sodomy, bestiality, incest, voyeurism, and necrophilia have been around “since the dawn of humanity.”

Anal intercourse is wildly unnatural in that it violates the design of human bodies. Asking a sexual partner to engage in such an act is an affront to their dignity. Engaging in sodomy defiles both partners. Despite what the culture says, some sexual acts are shameful. There are moral boundaries around our sexual lives, and they are constituted by more than just consent.

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In our mad, mad, mad, mad world, Canadian mother Kori Doty hopes to raise her child, named Searyl Atli but called Sea, in such a way that baby Sea’s objective biological sex will have no meaning relative to Sea’s “gender identity.” Doty’s dream for her child is that he or she be free to “self determine their own gender” at some undetermined time in the future. And by “they” Doty means Sea. Although, Doty can’t yet obtain a genderless birth certificate for her baby, she was able to obtain a genderless national health ID card.

In the service of Doty’s twisted dream, she refers to Sea using the pronoun “they,” refuses to share Sea’s sex publicly, is trying to obtain a birth certificate that doesn’t record any sex, and dresses Sea in clothing that is either gender neutral or associated specifically with either boys or girls.

Doty describes herself as a “non-binary genderqueer trans person” whose history offers a troubling glimpse into her clearly troubled mind:

I grew up in a fairly conservative Protestant church…. When I was 17, I left home for a year on an international exchange, started reading and exploring outside the small world I had come from. I learned to drink, kiss girls, and question authority. Within a few years of that I…had my first group sex experience, started exploring psychedelics and was on my way towards the words I would later mind [sic] comfort and identity in. Words like trans, genderqueer, queer, pansexual, polyamorous, butch, femme, nonbinary, gender rebel, psychonaut, and witch were just around the next bend…. I’ve struggled with mental illness, explored gender transitions, [and] explored fertility + pregnancy….”

Doty now makes her living as a “community educator and personal coach”—I kid you not. Her coaching focuses on “gender, sexuality, healing, political work, and substance use, including harm reduction and psychedelic support.” She also facilitates discussions at “adult sex-ed parties” on sex toys, “kink,” threesomes, gender exploration, swinging and sex parties.

On her blog, Doty extols http://koridoty.com/?p=547 the fluid, transient relationships she views as family—relationships that don’t include a father for Sea:

 I am incredibly grateful to feel supported as a single parent. The extended rings of our family include room mates, dates (and kids of those who have some), dear friends/exes turned aunties and uncles, space cousins and their parents (space cousins is a term invented to explain the relationship between Sea and the other kid(s) who share a sperm origin, without sharing parents.)

Doty’s description of one of her podcast topics reveals that she has lost any sense of right and wrong and so cannot distinguish what types of behavior should be considered shameful:

In an effort to stimulate healthy conversations about sexuality in the wake of stigmatizing distractions…the upcoming episode of Sex, Drugs and How We Roll will be about piss play. Cause there doesn’t need to be anything shameful about getting off on the mostly sterile fluids excreted from consenting adults.

Do you like to get wet + wild? Wanna come on the air and talk about consensual involvement of urine in sex and/or kink?…. This is how we diffuse the distractions to see the truth underneath.

#goldenshowers #watersportsgate #sexpositiveresistancetofascism

While discussing degrading sex acts or drug use, Doty claims to oppose moral judgment—except, that is, when she implicitly condemns those who condemn degrading sex acts. Just as Leftists condemn all forms of intolerance except for their own, they also condemn all moral judgments except for their own.

Ontario recently passed a law (similar to a policy change made by the DCFS in Illinois) that makes it possible for the government to refuse to place children with foster or adoptive families that reject the body- and soul-destroying, science-denying “trans”-affirmative ideology and perhaps even remove children from homes in which parents or guardians reject such an ideology. Meanwhile a cross-sex-hormone-doping, bearded woman who endorses sexual perversion can purchase human genetic material (i.e., sperm) and raise a child whose sex the mother refuses to affirm as not only immutable but profoundly meaningful and good.

In an interview, Piers Morgan asks the “non-binary trans,” mustached-mother with the hormone-induced, male-ish voice, Doty, what she will do if her child at some point identifies as a monkey. With a look dripping with derision, Doty responded that her child is a human. Apparently, she believes that it is patently absurd to suggest her child is a species he or she is not but perfectly reasonable to believe that her child may be a sex he or she is not.

In a recent editorial, Leonard Pitts, far Left syndicated columnist and supporter of virtually every doctrinaire and destructive far left dogma including co-ed restrooms, described Doty’s parenting decision as a “bridge too far.” He asserts that it’s “just silly” to believe that it’s “a sin against enlightenment” to identify a baby’s sex.

Well, kudos to Pitts for his courage, but it’s no sillier than allowing men and women to obtain falsified birth certificates, passports, and drivers’ licenses. It’s no sillier than allowing men who pretend to be women in women’s locker rooms, restrooms, and shelters. It’s no sillier than allowing boys and men to play on girls’ or women’s athletic teams. And it’s no sillier than demanding that teachers refer to boys by female pronouns or vice versa.

Unfortunately, Doty is not alone in her delusionary belief in the unimportance of sex differences.

In 2011 Canadians David and Kathy Stocker-Witterick made headlines when they announced they were not sharing publicly the sex of their third child Storm. They dismissed Storm’s sex while awaiting the day when Storm would reveal his or her “gender identity” and which pronoun he or she preferred.

Well, 6 ½-year-old Storm’s sex is still unclear, but Storm has chosen to be referred to as “she.” Storm’s oldest sibling 11-year-old Jazz is a boy who identifies as ‘trans” (not to be confused with the other boy called Jazz who pretends to be a girl on the TLC show “I am Jazz”). Jazz has chosen to use the plural pronoun “they.” Jazz and Storm have another sibling, 8-year-old Kio who identifies as “non-binary” and uses the plural pronoun “they.” Mother Kathy too uses the pronoun “they,” and dad David goes by “he” or “they.” Proving they’ve moved beyond the binary, dad David has been known to dye his hair pink and mom Kathy shaves half of her hair while wearing the other half in long, flowing tresses. Yes, nothing says moving beyond the binary quite like donning both male and female hairstyles.

It’s not just a few misguided (or rebellious) parents who are adopting the “trans” cult ideology. Sweden, once again proving what a collectively foolish nation it has become, jumped on the speeding “trans” train long ago. Slate Magazine exposed how deeply invested in eradicating public recognition of sex differences Sweden is. Here’s what Slate found in 2012:

• Activists were lobbying to eradicate gender-specific proper names, encouraging parents to name girls Jack and boys Lisa.

• “A Swedish children’s clothes company had removed the ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ sections.”

• A Swedish toy catalogue showed “a boy in a Spider-Man costume pushing a pink pram.”

• Sweden has national curriculum guidelines for preschools that mandate that “preschools should ‘counteract traditional gender patterns and gender roles.’”

• Several preschools “banished references to pupils’ genders, instead referring to children by their first names or as ‘buddies.’”

• In addition to he (han) and she (hon), Sweden now has a gender-neutral pronoun: hen.

• A Swedish school “got rid of its toy cars because boys ‘gender-coded’ them and ascribed the cars higher status than other toys.”

• One preschool “removed ‘free playtime’ from its schedule because…when children play freely ‘stereotypical gender patterns are born and cemented.’”

So much for freedom and autonomy.

Foolish people like these Swedish biological sex-rejecters and Doty bristle at social conventions associated with males and females, thus denying that such conventions emerge from, reflect, and reinforce anthropological truths. Humans in every society throughout history have recognized that men and women are different. Even homosexuals acknowledge that truth. When homosexual men and women claim they are romantically and erotically attracted only to members of their same sex, they are implicitly acknowledging that men and women are inherently and significantly different and that those differences are not only anatomical.

Social conventions reflect and reinforce the good architecture of sexually differentiated human life. Social conventions for men and women were not created out of whole cloth or manufactured from the fertile imaginations of patriarchal oppressors. They emerged from human nature.

Historically, societies have believed that the fact of biologically determined sexual differentiation was a good thing and should be cultivated.  Societies recognized what self-proclaimed homosexuals recognize: men and women are different. Cultures developed patterns of behavior and societal roles that reflected, codified, encouraged, reinforced, and sustained sexual differentiation, which is mostly a good thing. That said, though social conventions emerge from, reflect, and reinforce truths about men and women, they don’t dictate our lives or reflect the totality of any individual person.

Of course, humans, being fallen creatures, err. Men and women have deformed their roles and responsibilities and corrupted their natures in myriad destructive ways. Through pride, fear, and selfishness, they have variously abused and abdicated their natures and their roles; and unthinking societies have at times become too restrictive regarding what roles men and women could or should assume or behavioral expectations.

But errors in how to evaluate and facilitate the good of sexual differentiation should not lead to jettisoning recognition of sexual differentiation. Sometimes encouraging conformity—including conformity to what the Left views as wholly arbitrary social conventions—can be not merely a harmless thing, but a good thing.

It is good for societies to encourage sexual differentiation through some expectations regarding dress and behavior. Of course, what that looks like will change over time and across cultures.

It is, at minimum, benign to paint the nursery walls of a baby girl pink and baby boy blue. It is profoundly harmful for boys to dress and act like girls or vice versa. It is harmful for women to don beards and men wear lipstick. And it is harmful to suggest to children that their objective, immutable biological sex is subordinate to their subjective feelings when it comes to their maleness or femaleness.

But the Left does not seek to work at ensuring reasonable gender expectations but, rather, to eradicate all gender differences. Even the liberal Slate Magazine writer knows where the “trans” ideology is heading:

[F]or many Swedes, gender equality is not enough. Many are pushing for the Nordic nation to be not simply gender-equal but gender-neutral. The idea is that the government and society should tolerate no distinctions at all between the sexes. 

That’s where America is heading as well. “Trans” cultists and their ideological allies seek to eradicate all public recognition of and respect for sexual differentiation in all contexts for everyone. An 18-year-old “trans”-identifying young man who pretends to be a woman called me last week. He shared that he hopes for a day when there are no more single-sex facilities anywhere for anyone. To him, neither feelings of modesty nor the desire for privacy are linked to objective, immutable biological sex. The science-denying “trans” ideology, buttressed by the convergence of pseudo-science, Gnosticism, and radical subjectivism (bordering on solipsism) is destroying lives and creating moral, social, and political anarchy.

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Recently Ben Shapiro, writing for National Review, exposed a serious failure of lawmakers that partisan debates conceal. Partisan debates conceal that fundamental, first-principle policy arguments about governance are avoided like the proverbial plague by politicians of all political stripes.

Shapiro uses comments about health care from three prominent political figures, President Donald Trump, Senator Bernie Sanders, and Governor John Kasich, to illustrate that there is little principled difference between their positions:

President Trump wants to re-enshrine Obamacare’s two central premises: that it is the government’s job to make sure everyone has health insurance, and that health-insurance companies should therefore be forced to cover pre-existing conditions. Sanders wants to spend more money on the same two principles — or do away with the second principle altogether in favor of a direct government program. Kasich expanded Obamacare in his own state, saying that St. Peter would want government health-care spending expanded, and he mirrors both Trump and Obama in his central contention that there is a government-guaranteed “right” to health insurance.

What are these three fighting over? Whether to spend an insane amount of money on Medicaid or simply a crazy amount of money on Medicaid; whether to pay for everyone’s insurance through taxes later or today; whether to force insurance companies to cover services that are unnecessary or allow them to pare such services back to a moderate extent; whether to mandate that healthy people buy health insurance or whether to coax them into gradual single-payer acceptance via back-door fines. All of this matters, of course. But to suggest that this is a cataclysmic conflict over principles is idiotic. Democrats and Republicans apparently agree on health care’s central principles, they just argue over how best to implement them.

In other words, these are tales full of sound and fury signifying almost nothing.

Lawmakers avoid discussions of fundamental policies and principles

Shapiro elucidates what kinds of discussions politicians avoid and why:

[O]ur politicians generally elide the most important policy questions of the day — the ones that would implicate central principles. That’s because so long as they stick to the center of the road and then act as though they’re facing threats for doing so, they don’t have to alienate anyone — and they can rake in money.

Then Shapiro reveals the central conflict facing our republic now and the one from which our lawmakers flee with all due haste:

[O]n the hot-button issue of whether religious Americans ought to be protected from government intervention when they operate their businesses according to religious dictates — the single most important cultural issue in America today — politicians have been largely silent. What’s Trump’s perspective on the issue? We have no idea. Bernie Sanders doesn’t spend a good deal of time talking about it either. And John Kasich couldn’t be more vague. When politicians do have to sound off on such issues, they often run from the fray.

The next revolution

I would add another hot-button issue which implicates first principles and on which politicians remain largely silent: That is the Left’s reality-denying attack on the public’s recognition of and respect for sexual differentiation.

Never in the history of the world has there been a sustained attack on a proper understanding and recognition of sexual differentiation. What we are witnessing now is a cultural revolution the likes of which no society in history has encountered.

Because of the obsession lawmakers have with raking in money in the service of securing their re-elections, because of their cowardice, because of their intellectual incuriosity, and because of their ignorance, they are failing to address this radical and destructive revolution. And for all these reasons, our political leaders have no sense of the end game.

What is the end game of “trans” cultists? It is nothing less than the eradication of public recognition of sex differences everywhere for everyone.

While Leftists pursue their end game via strategic incrementalism, naïve, ignorant, and cowardly Americans incrementally capitulate. Some conservatives argue that if men who pretend to be women have been castrated, it’s okay if they invade women’s restrooms and locker rooms. It’s as if these conservatives believe that an elaborate disguise effaces the meaning of sex. Or that being unaware that an objectively male person is present where girls and women are undressing legitimizes their presence.

If that’s the case, then these same women should be comfortable with peeping Toms peeping as long as women are unaware of the peeping. Don’t misunderstand, I’m not suggesting those who experience the disordered desire to be the opposite sex are voyeurs. Rather, I’m suggesting that if being deceived about the presence of men in private spaces legitimizes their presence, then surely being deceived about the presence of peepers should legitimize peeping.

No efforts to masquerade—not surgical, chemical, or sartorial—can change the sex of humans. So, no matter how convincing a gender-pretender’s disguise, he or she should not be permitted in opposite-sex private spaces.

Our politicians need to know what the “trans” cult end game is and once they understand that, they need to have the courage to address it. If they are stubbornly committed either to ignorance or cowardice, then they have no business serving the people in elected office.

“Trans” cult beliefs

So, here’s what our politicians and the people they serve need to know about the “trans” ideology:

• “Trans” cultists do not believe surgery, cross-sex hormone-doping, cross-dressing, a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, or even the experience of gender dysphoria is necessary to “identify” as “trans” or to access opposite-sex locker rooms, restrooms, dressing rooms, showers, shelters, semi-private hospital rooms, nursing home rooms, or any other historically sex-segregated spaces.

• They believe all that’s required to “identify” as “trans” and to access opposite-sex private facilities is their word.

• They believe that one’s “gender identity” can change day to day.

• They believe that genitalia have no connection to maleness or femaleness.

• They believe that those who care about the genitalia of their romantic/sexual partners are “transphobic.” That is to say, any man who wants his sexual partner to be an objectively female person with female anatomy is “transphobic.” And any homosexual man who wants his sexual partner to be objectively male with male anatomy is “transphobic.” (This is getting “trans” cultists in hot water with the homosexual community.)

• They believe that sex-segregated private spaces are intrinsically and unjustly discriminatory. They believe that they should have unrestricted access to opposite-sex private facilities. In their view, requiring them to use privacy stalls is unjust and discriminatory.

• They believe spaces in which undressing and bodily functions are engaged in should not be permitted to “discriminate” based on either sex or “gender identity.”

If lawmakers don’t believe me, maybe they could scrounge up 30 minutes to watch this video of a young man who “identifies” as a “transwoman.” He spells it all out:

“Trans” cult end game

So, now that we’re clearer about what the “trans” cult believes, let’s see what their peculiar and doctrinaire beliefs will look like in practice. In other words, here’s a glimpse into their desired gender-free, co-ed-everything, dystopian world:

• The sexual integration of private spaces will not be restricted to “trans”-identified persons: 1.) Schools and all other places of public accommodation—including places like Disney World and health clubs—that permit one objectively male “trans” person access to women’s facilities will have no rational grounds to prohibit other objectively male persons (i.e., normal men) from accessing women’s facilities because that would constitute discrimination based on “gender identity.” 2.) If genitalia are as irrelevant to physical privacy as say, hair color, then sex-segregated restrooms and locker rooms no longer make sense. 3.) There’s no rational reason for women to be more comfortable undressing in front of men who wish they were women than undressing in front of men who are content being men.

• Men who claim to be “transwomen” but choose not to be castrated will have unrestricted access to all previously women-only private spaces. And if women are permitted to walk naked in a locker room, so too will men with penises who claim to be women. So too will men with penises who have had breast implants.

• Women who claim to be men and who have birth certificates that identify them as male but have forgone “top surgery” will be exempt from laws and ordinances that prohibit women from going topless in public. These pretend-men with congenital breasts will be able to play topless frisbee in the park along with breastless, topless actual men.

• Objectively male persons with falsified birth certificates identifying them as women will be assigned semi-private hospital rooms with actual women.

• When entering a nursing home, elderly men who pretend to be women will be assigned rooms with actual women. Bill SB 219 is pending in California right now that if passed will require that long-term care facilities must assign “transgender” residents rooms in accordance with their “gender identity” rather than their sex. Further, it would make it illegal to reassign “transgender” residents to a new room if their roommates complain about their “gender identity.”

• Women’s athletics are doomed.

Despite the dire portents that no one should be able to miss, lawmakers who claim to want to lead and serve say virtually nothing and probably know less.

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Some readers may be blissfully unaware of DOJ Pride, the “Association of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Employees of the U.S. Department of Justice and Their Allies.” According to its website, “DOJ Pride is the recognized organization for all Lesbian, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgend employees and allies in all DOJ Offices, Boards, and Divisions; the ATF, BOP, DEA, FBI, USMS, OJP, and USAO; and contractors in any of these components.”

In celebration of “pride” month, DOJ Pride is hosting its annual event on June 28, 2017 in the “in the Great Hall of the department’s main building on Pennsylvania Avenue, in between the Capitol and the White House.”

At this event, DOJ Pride will award its Gerald B. Roemer Community Service Award to “Gavin” Grimm, the girl who masquerades as a boy and who filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against her Virginia high school for prohibiting her from using the boys’ restrooms.

Her case made it to the U.S. Supreme Court and would have been heard this month had Attorney General Jeff Sessions not rescinded Obama’s edict to public schools, which threatened loss of federal funds to schools that prohibited co-ed restrooms and locker rooms.

Unfortunately, Sessions really mucked things up a couple of days ago. When asked about the upcoming DOJ Pride event, Sessions said this:

We are going to have a pride group, in this very room… so that’s perfectly appropriate, and we will protect and defend and celebrate that — and protect the rights of all transgender persons…. [W]e are not going to allow persons in this country to be discriminated against or attacked in any way for their sexual orientation—”

What the heck does that mean? Is he saying it’s “perfectly appropriate” for the government to celebrate homoeroticism? Or it’s perfectly appropriate for the government to celebrate the “trans” cult ideology? Or it’s perfectly appropriate for the government to protect and celebrate the non-existent right of pretend-boys and pretend-girls to force their way into opposite-sex restrooms? Is he suggesting that subjective homoerotic feelings and volitional homoerotic activity (i.e., “sexual orientation”) should constitute the basis for a protected class? Is he suggesting that, for example, those who refuse to provide goods or services for celebrations of faux-marriages are guilty of unjust discrimination or attacking homosexuals?

No one should be mistreated or attacked. Neither Gavin Grimm, nor any other person who rejects her or his sex, nor any person who identifies as homosexual should be mistreated. But opposition to bullying or other forms of abuse does not require humans to relinquish their privacy. And opposition to bullying or other forms of abuse certainly does not require the government to celebrate homoeroticism or gender-rejection.

Homosexuals and people who reject their sex are no more or less deserving of celebration than any other person, but the reasons to celebrate them do not include their homoerotic desires, their sex-rejection, or their efforts to sexually integrate restrooms, locker rooms, showers, and shelters.

Session’s statement is the kind of ambiguous statement born of foolishness, cowardice, and political correctness run amok that sows confusion and helps advance the social, political, and moral agenda of Leftists. Many conservative Americans expect more of Sessions.

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Written by Tom Gilson

Quick quiz: According to statements published by the U.S. government, where was the shot fired that was “heard round the world”? Lexington and Concord, you say?

Good answer — but you’re only halfway there. There was another “shot heard round the world,” says the National Park Service. That one was in June 1969, at the Stonewall Inn in New York City, where two nights of rioting “led to the development of the modern LGBT civil rights movement.”

The Gay-Rights “Shot Heard Round the World”

You read that right. The U.S. government has co-opted Ralph Waldo Emerson’s deeply symbolic phrase to make the birth of the gay rights movement symbolically equal to the birth of our own country. To fill in the rest of the quotation:

The riots inspired LGBT people throughout the country to organize and within two years of Stonewall, LGBT rights groups had been started in nearly every major city in the U.S. Stonewall was, as historian Lillian Faderman wrote, “the shot heard round the world … crucial because it sounded the rally for the movement.”

There’s history at Stonewall, to be sure. And its reach was indeed global. The month of June is now designated “Pride Month,” and almost 150 gay pride festivals are scheduled in cities around the world.

But what does this mean for true freedom?

The Depth of Our National Confusion

It’s worth noting that Lillian Faderman’s full quote read, “to many homosexuals, male and female alike, the Stonewall Rebellion was the shot heard round the world” (emphasis added).

I give her credit for identifying the group who might have seen it that way. The Park Service’s version leaves that out, making it a statement for us all.

I shudder to think of how celebrations in 2017 would have turned out if Stonewall had happened a week later that year, on July 4. As far as I can tell, the White House has never been lit up in red, white, and blue. We’ve all got images seared on our brains, though, of it lit up in the six rainbow colors of the gay rights movement.

This isn’t just happening on some obscure web page, in other words. The gay rights movement has become America’s new freedom movement. It perfectly depicts the depth of our national confusion.

Freedom Based in the Image of God

For there is “freedom,” and there is freedom.

There is the freedom for which our forefathers fought at Lexington, Concord and beyond. It was a view of liberty rooted in a biblical understanding of what it means to be human.

They knew that humans are made in the image of God. We’re not just today’s snapshot in some ever-changing course of evolution. Instead human nature is a stable, enduring, real. We have a moral nature based in God’s own character. We have a well-designed sexual nature, based in God’s plan for us as individuals, couples and families who build communities and cultures together. We have a destiny based on how we relate to God in Christ and to each other in accordance with God’s design for us.

Argue all you want about whether America was founded as a Christian nation, there’s no denying that our founders’ view of human nature that was deeply influenced by the Bible’s view of humanity. Even Thomas Jefferson, who was no Christian, knew at our inalienable rights come from our Creator. Not government, not courts, not even (later on) our Constitution.

Our founders fought for freedom from political tyranny that kept them from determining their own course. Their fight was never for the “freedom” to do whatever anyone chose, though. Quite the opposite. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” Freedom was not merely the ability to do as one wanted; it was the ability to do as one ought.

Or Freedom Based in Making Ourselves Our Own Creators

With all thought of a Creator cast aside, “freedom” now means being able to create ourselves after our own wills.

That’s the freedom for which the shots were fired at Lexington and Concord. Stonewall’s freedom has almost nothing to do with that. With all thought of a Creator cast aside, “freedom” now means being able to create ourselves after our own wills. Not satisfied with your sex? Create yourself all over again! Not content with the morality that’s held the Western world together – in spite of various wars and injustices – for centuries? Call it off! Re-make marriage while you’re at it!

And why not? The view now is that nothing about us is fixed. We’re evolving, so we can make ourselves whatever we decide to be. The same goes for human purpose and moral standards: There’s nothing there but what’s evolved over the eons, but we can alter that, too, as we will.

Our Choice: Celebrating Freedom or Free Fall

I can’t think of anything else that so clearly shows the depth of our national confusion.

We claim this as a new-found freedom. But we’re like the kite that yearned to fly high and away, free of the string it thought was holding it down. Freedom? No. Free fall.

Yet this is the freedom our own Park Service symbolically equates with Lexington and Concord. The patriotism of red, white and blue is being displaced by the spectrum of the gay rainbow.

America was never perfect. It took us way too long to recognize that human rights belong to everyone. Still we got there in law and (to an obviously lesser, yet still helpful, degree) in practice. The shots fired at Lexington and Concord led ultimately to our country becoming the world’s greatest champion for true freedom. The shot fired at Stonewall is leading us in another direction altogether.

The LGBT crowd will be celebrating their “pride” this month. That’s their choice. Our own Park Service seems to be saying everyone else is obliged to join them. I can’t think of anything else that so clearly shows the depth of our national confusion.

(I owe some of my reflections on this to a conversation this week with John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview.)

This article was originally posted at Stream.org

Another high school graduation has been marred by politically correct fecklessness. This time it wasn’t a controversy over a student’s speech that marred the event but instead an award that tainted what should have been a joyous family affair.

This year Deerfield High School (DHS) on Chicago’s affluent North Shore awarded one of its highest honors, the John F. Kennedy Medal of Honor award to a student who very publicly “identifies” as  “genderqueer and pansexual.” As reported by the Chicago Tribune, “Earning the John F. Kennedy Medal of Honor this year was Sorrel Rosin. Principal Kathryn Anderson said the award is given to a person who demonstrates courage in the pursuit of excellence.”

Former principal Audris Griffith described the JFK Medal of Honor as “an award the high school gives out to students exemplifying personal bravery and responsible action.” What did Rosin do to deserve this award? Apparently, he received this award for identifying as genderqueer, cross-dressing at school, and starting “her [sic] own initiative, called The Gender Neutral Project…. The goal of this project is ultimately to create and distribute stickers that make spaces, such as public bathrooms, safer and inclusive of people of all gender identities.” Rosin explained his motivation for the Gender Neutral Project:

I had a lot of issues this year with being late to class and missing class, because I just had to go to the bathroom, and I think one of the hardest things this year was changing for gym because there’s two locker rooms, neither of which I fit into.

Even though Deerfield High School has two co-ed restrooms, that was not enough for Rosin. In a Change.org petition, he demands more:

*** MY SCHOOL DOES HAVE 2 GENDER NEUTRAL RESTROOMS BUT THEY ARE IN VERY HARD TO ACCESS AREAS AND MOST PEOPLE IN THE SCHOOL DO NOT KNOW ABOUT THEM. THERE IS NO GENDER NEUTRAL LOCKER ROOMS ***

To be clear, these are multi-occupancy co-ed restrooms, available to any boys and girls to use at the same time. These are not single-occupancy restrooms, nor are they single-sex restrooms that only gender-dysphoric students of the opposite sex may use. They are multi-stall, co-ed restrooms. In Rosin’s view, the problem is DHS need more of these restrooms. He wants them more centrally located. And he wants co-ed locker rooms.

But if Rosin is willing to change his clothes around girls who identify as bigender and genderfluid (i.e., sometimes they identify as boys), and around boys who identify as girls, and around boys who identify as genderqueer, genderfluid, bigender, trigender, agender, and gender-nonbinary, why won’t he change in the boys’ locker room? If he’s comfortable changing around all these different manifestations of maleness, why the opposition to changing in the boys’ locker room?

How does he know the gender identity of the boys in the boys’ locker room? Does he know with certainty that none of the boys in the boys’ locker room “identifies” as agender, bigender, trigender, gender fluid, genderqueer, gender-nonbinary, or “trans”? He certainly can’t tell their gender identity by anatomy, hairstyles, or clothing choices (the latter two of which are arbitrary social constructions wholly unrelated to maleness—or so we’re told ad nauseum).

What does this sad event teach about public school leaders who believe the effort to eradicate public recognition of sex differences in restrooms and locker rooms constitutes “courage in the pursuit of excellence” and “responsible action”? It teaches first that they are not equipped to teach and train children. Such leaders are at best ignorant and foolish.

Second, it teaches that parents should not put their children in any context where they will be taught and trained by such fools.

A look at Deerfield High School’s 2015 JFK Medal of Honor recipient offers a glimmer of hope that all is not yet lost. Political correctness and the obsession with using taxpayer-funded schools to advance anarchical Leftist views on sexuality may not have wholly overtaken the hearts and minds of “progressive change agents.” Some may still be able and willing to recognize and honor true excellence and responsible action as they did when they awarded the JFK Medal of Honor to Heath Ogawa:

The son of a Japanese father and American mother, Ogawa…was raised in Japan, went to public school there and was not a very good student before fate catapulted him to the United States.

“On March 11, 2011, my life changed…. With the earthquake, tsunami and possible radiation poisoning my parents made the decision to send me to live with family friends in Highland Park.”

Living in a condominium in Deerfield later on and taking care of himself, Ogawa said some friends were jealous of his independence — but he did not see it that way.

“I was filled with responsibility and loneliness…. There was no dinner waiting for me when I got home, just the breakfast dishes I hadn’t washed. I didn’t learn how important family was until I opened the door to an empty condo.”

Hardly able to speak English and not knowing how to read a word of it, Ogawa told how he embraced his studies, athletics and friendship. Earlier this month he became a state gymnastics champion in the long vault and in March became the thirteenth best diver in Illinois. He will go to Lake Forest College in the fall to dive.

…

“He shows all of that and lifts all of our spirits,” Griffith said. “On snowy days we would see him riding his long skate board because it was the only way he could get to school.”

In his Change.org petition, Rosin shared that he, like so many other children and teens, has been bullied. Bullying is a persistent and tragic reality that grows out of the fallen nature of humans and the immaturity of youth. Teens are able to recognize disordered behavior, but many are unable to control how they respond to it. Adults who ignore the nature of adolescent culture and allow children to cross-dress at school increase the likelihood that these children will be victims of bullying.

Sorrel Rosin deserves compassion, empathy, and prayers because he’s human, confused, and hurting. Neither Rosin nor anyone else deserves an award for efforts to normalize sexual deviance.

A final word about courage: Admirable courage is not merely doing something bold and uncomfortable. It is not overcoming fear in the service of transgressing all boundaries.

Admirable, award-deserving courage demonstrates perseverance, boldness, and discomfort in the service of a worthy goal, and a worthy goal is one that is informed by goodness and truth. Eradicating the public recognition of and respect for sex differences is not a worthy goal, and pursuing it—no matter how difficult the effort—is not worthy of honor. Surely, there was one student in DHS’ 2017 graduating class who demonstrated courage in the service of a goal that all families would view as worthy.

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