Majorities in both houses of the Illinois General Assembly recently flunked the kind of science test that used to be given to grammar school students. The question, which just a few years ago was not controversial, was “can a man become a woman?” “Can a woman become a man?”

Earlier this month, the Weizmann Institute in Israel released a study and posted an article about it under this headline: “Researchers Identify 6,500 Genes That Are Expressed Differently in Men and Women.”

This (un)shocking study was also reported on by Liberty Counsel:

“This recent study from Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science further proves that you cannot fool Mother Nature,” said Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel.

“The saying, ‘I think, therefore, I am’ is best left to philosophy and not science. Gender confusion is mental, not physical or biological. God made male and female and no amount of protestation will change the natural created order. The fiction that a person can chose their gender does not help those who are confused” said Staver.

Changing the sex listed on a birth certificate also does not help a person suffering from gender confusion.

Yet on May 31st, HB 1785 passed in the Illinois State Senate by a vote of 32-22, and on May 25th it passed in the House by a vote of 63-32. That bill allows gender-dysphoric persons to falsify their birth certificates, which are both legal and historical documents.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.

Simply put, biologically intact men will have legal access to women’s restrooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms, shelters, semi-private hospital rooms, nursing home rooms, and prisons.

The state of Illinois has no duty or right to be complicit in fraud by making it easier for men and women who wish they were the opposite sex to falsify their birth certificates, nor should Illinois public policy affirm deceit.

Now that it has passed in both chambers, it will be sent to Governor Bruce Rauner. Once he receives it, he will have 60 days to veto or sign it. If he does nothing, it automatically becomes law.

Take ACTION: Click Here to email Governor Bruce Rauner. Urge him to veto HB 1785 (and get an ‘A’ on this grammar school science test!). 

Please continue to call the governor’s public comment line every day until this is resolved: (217) 782-0244 and (312) 814-2121.  Also ask him to veto HB 40 – taxpayer funding of abortion while you are at it!

And let us not grow weary of doing good, 
for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.
~Galatians 6:9

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Galileo Galilei was an advocate of Copernicanism when Copernicanism wasn’t cool. Galileo, the father of experimental physics, was an early advocate for the scientific idea that the earth revolves around the sun, not the other way around.

Church authorities, however, at first claimed the theory to be “philosophically [that is, scientifically] foolish and absurd, and is considered official heresy because it explicitly contradicts the meaning of Scripture in many places.”

Now there’s a lot more to the Galileo story, which became a mistold part of the “religion-opposes-science” trope ever since. But today I want to ask, who is opposing science these days?

Take the case of Paul McHugh, the Henry Phipps Professor and Director of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Psychiatrist-in-Chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital from 1975 to 2001.

Today, McHugh has been labeled a heretic of psychiatry. What did he do to deserve that label?  Well, in 1979 he ended “sex reassignment surgeries” at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, saying that “producing a ‘satisfied’ but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for surgically amputating normal organs.”

Later, in an influential essay in The Wall Street Journal, McHugh pointed to a study from Sweden showing suicide rates in those who had undergone such procedures to be 20-fold higher than in the “non-transgender population.”

He also cited a study showing that 70 to 80 percent of children with transgender feelings who received no medical or surgical treatment spontaneously lost those feelings. McHugh writes, “Given that close to 80% of such children would abandon their confusion and grow naturally into adult life if untreated, these medical interventions come close to child abuse.”

And for this, he’s been labeled a “transphobe.” And worse.

According to the Human Rights Campaign, the world’s largest homosexual-transgender lobby organization, McHugh “has used his platform as a psychiatrist affiliated with Johns Hopkins University to peddle myths about transgender people—not just in his writings, but in courtrooms and state legislatures across the country. … [McHugh] has no expertise in gender or sexuality,” they write.

That’s hilarious. Over his illustrious career McHugh has received the Paul Hoch Award of the American Psychopathological Association, the Joseph Zubin Award of the American Psychopathological Association, and the highest award of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences’ Institutes of Medicine.

And now he’s being called a peddler of “junk science” because he disagrees with the Human Rights Campaign. So, you can be an internationally renowned expert in your field, but if you tick off the cultural power players, suddenly you’re a hack.

Galileo once wrote to Johannes Kepler, “My dear Kepler, what would you say of the learned here, who, replete with the pertinacity of the asp, have steadfastly refused to cast a glance through the telescope? What shall we make of this? Shall we laugh, or shall we cry?”

Now McHugh could write something similar of the new obscurantism, but he seems optimistic that science eventually will win out, telling LifeSite News that the “fad” of transgenderism will fade away, even though Johns Hopkins has resumed the surgeries. “I keep telling them that they will come to regret it someday,” McHugh says. “This craze is going to come apart, as crazes always do.”

And like McHugh, we too can hope for a Copernican-type revolution in which science—not to mention common sense—wins out over ideology. In the meantime, however, there are too many lives, including young ones, being sold false hope and false salvation.

They’re the victims of bad ideas, and that clarifies our Christian responsibility. Christians are always at their best, not only when they stand for truth, but when they care for victims. And this time will be no different.

This article was originally posted at Breakpoint.org

By now, most people have heard tall tales about “pregnant men.” “Pregnant men,” as non-delusional or honest people acknowledge, are fictitious. They don’t exist except in the fertile or deceitful imaginations of “progressives” who live and move in a science-denying unreality the likes of which we find only in primitive civilizations.

Let’s take a closer look at the most recent “pregnant man” to pop up on the pop scene—which, it seems, is the only scene that matters to most Americans anymore.

This “pregnant man” is Trystan Reese, who is now and always has been a woman. As of this writing Trystan is about 8 months pregnant with her male partner John Chaplow’s (aka “Biff”) baby. Since Trystan has retained all of her female body parts, she and husband John got pregnant the old-fashioned way.

In the video in which Trystan explains that she has all her female body parts, she also explains that she has never hated her female body as some men who identify as “trans” do. One thing that is notable in the video is that Trystan has feminine mannerisms. If she were actually a man, some might describe her as effeminate. Trystan claims to be “gay” despite the fact that she is a woman and her spouse is a man, and John claims to be “gay” despite the fact that he is a man, his spouse is a woman, and she has all her woman parts. Apparently, “sexual orientation” is not quite as fixed as homosexual activists have long claimed.

Homo-activists have long claimed the following:

1.)  Homosexuality (i.e., the romantic and erotic attraction to persons of the same sex) is immutable (i.e., Homosexuals were “born that way”).

2.)  Since homosexuality is immutable, acting on such feelings is both intrinsically moral. (Only sociopaths actually believe the implicit claim that it is morally legitimate to act upon feelings that are seemingly intractable.)

Homo- and “trans”-activists make generous use of proverbial bait and switch tactics used by unsavory salesmen from time immemorial. While homosexual scholars have claimed that homosexuality is not fixed, homo-activists have been saying it is as fixed as skin color. Now, however, “trans”-activists and even homo-activists are telling us that physical embodiment has nothing whatsoever to do with homosexual attraction, which puts the lie to claims that homosexuals are attracted only to persons of the same sex. In fact, homo-activist Zack Ford, senior editor of Think Progress says that anyone who thinks body parts matter when it comes to sexual attraction is “transphobic.”

Homo- and “trans”-activists are now telling us that body parts, reproduction, clothing styles, hairstyles, makeup, mannerisms, and interests (e.g., dolls vs. trucks, hunting vs. scrapbooking) have nothing whatsoever to do with maleness or femaleness. If that’s the case, if there is nothing differentiating maleness from femaleness, they don’t exist. And if they don’t exist, then there is no reason for all those nonsensical sex-segregated restrooms, locker rooms, showers, dressing rooms, shelters, jails, dorm rooms, nursing home rooms, and semi-private hospital rooms for anyone. There’s no sensible reason to permit them these sex-segregated spaces for even those delusional people who yet believe in the myth of male and female humans. Well, that’s how it goes once you step through the looking glass.

And that’s where “progressives” are leading us baby-step by baby-step.

There is something even more notable in a video Trystan and her parents made 6 ½ years ago for Dan Savage’s “It Gets Better” campaign.  Trystan’s adoring foster sister, who is 9 years older, explains that Tristan was a very happy, much loved little girl until about 4^th grade when she started being bullied. The bullying intensified and became relentless throughout middle school. Trystan shared part of her painful story—a story to which many children can relate and which parents like me who were unable to protect a bullied child will find difficult to hear:

“Kids see weakness and they move right in. And I was pretty weak. People stole my backpack. My jacket got flushed down the toilet. My stuff got thrown over fences. People used to hock lugies into my locker, so my stuff was covered in spit and stuff. I was humiliated on a daily basis in public schools…. I didn’t know what to say or do. I didn’t know how to stand up for myself. And I don’t know that I thought I was worthy of being stood up for.”

Fighting back tears, her sister, who had been abused in foster care and group homes, says, “I never really knew the details of what was going on for him [sic] at school, but I knew it was unbearable.”

It was after these years of bullying that Trystan concluded she—who had been a happy little girl and never hated her female body—was a he. Is it possible that the little bullied girl, who viewed herself as weak and unworthy, may have thought if only she were a boy, she would no longer be weak?

Some of the former “trans” men and women about whom I wrote in March explain that they had mistakenly thought they were “trans” when in reality, they were confused. The causes of their confusion included sexual molestation and tragic family deaths. Might another cause be relentless bullying? Might a bullied little girl come to believe that boys are stronger, so if she were a boy, she would no longer be weak?

Some years ago a friend with two young children confided that her husband struggled with a powerful desire to become a woman. Later she told me that when her husband was very young, he had been told to watch his younger 5-year-old-sister while his parents were occupied. He became distracted, and there was a tragic accident that resulted in his sister’s death, overwhelming familial grief, professional repercussions for his father, and terrible social consequences for his family. Her husband continued to blame himself for the accident. It was sometime after the accident that his desire to become a girl began. Neither she nor her husband had ever thought his guilt over his sister’s death might be connected to his subsequent desire to become a girl.

Not all women who wish they were men or men who wish they were women were bullied, suffered tragic losses, or were molested, but some were. “Progressives” fight tenaciously for the right of delusional men and women to obtain falsified birth certificates. They fight to sexually integrate private spaces (thereby violating the privacy of all). They fight for boys to play on girls athletic teams (thereby rendering Title IX impotent). And they fight to prohibit by law counseling that might result in a decrease in suffering in men and women who reject their sex. In so doing, “progressives” never consider that they just may be standing in the way of healing and wholeness.

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Always tolerant, liberty-loving, diversity-desiring “progressives” are fuming about a Texas bill that would prevent child welfare services providers, foster families, and adoptive families from being penalized for their faith. While Leftists claim the intent of the bill, titled “The Freedom to Serve Children Act,” is to discriminate against non-Christians, homosexuals, and unmarried couples in child placement, it’s really about stopping discrimination against Christians for exercising their First Amendment rights.

Leftists who view the shifting sands of social science as their sacred texts for determining virtue and parental wisdom hold in contempt those who look instead to Scripture for guidance. Moreover, “progressives” are either ignorant, delusional, or deceitful when it comes to both the content and reliability of their sacred texts, including social science research that compares children raised by heterosexual parents to those raised by homosexual parents.

Heidi Stevens, who writes the “Balancing Act” column in the Chicago Tribune, which focuses on “work-life balance, relationships and parenting from a feminist perspective” provides a perfect exemplar of such “progressives.” Stevens issued a full-throated unequivocal condemnation of the Texas law that if passed would allow Christian foster care and adoption agencies to refuse to place babies and children in non-Christian homes and homes headed by homosexuals.

And what was her justification for this condemnation?

With startling certainty, absolutist Stevens proclaims that “the science is clear: Children raised by same-sex parents fare just as well as children raised by opposite-sex parents.” To prove that the science is clear, Stevens pointed to a review of studies conducted by Columbia Law School researchers that found that 75 of the 79 studies–that they selected–some dating back over 30 years, “concluded that kids whose parents are gay face no disadvantages.” According to the researchers Stevens cites, “‘Taken together, this research forms an overwhelming scholarly consensus, based on over three decades of peer-reviewed research, that having a gay or lesbian parent does not harm children.’”

Whoa, Nelly.

Based on analysis provided by Leftist researchers at Leftist Columbia Law School, Leftist Stevens proclaims that social science—as distinct from hard science—proves conclusively that no harm comes to children raised by homosexuals.

In addition to her absolute certainty based on woefully unstable social science that being deprived of either a mother or father has no effect on children, Stevens fails to define “harm.” For example, one of the studies cited found that “those [young adults] who had grown up in a lesbian family were more likely to consider the possibility of having lesbian or gay relationships, and to actually do so” than those who grew up with a mother and a father. Whether the increased likelihood of experimenting with homoerotic activity constitutes harm depends on one’s definition of harm.  Stevens seems to arrogate to herself the right to define harm for everyone.

So, let’s spend a moment looking at the one study that Stevens specifically singles out for the conclusiveness of its conclusions: the “US National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study: Psychological Adjustment of 17-Year-Old Adolescents”  (NLLFS) published in 2010 in the journal Pediatrics.

Stevens wrote that the study “found that children raised by two lesbian mothers actually scored higher by social and academic measures than kids raised by opposite-sex parents. And they scored significantly lower in social problems, rule-breaking and aggressive behaviors.”

Curiously, Stevens omitted even a cursory description of the study, so here’s a bit about the study that may help illuminate whether Steven’s absolute confidence in the current state of research is warranted [emphases added]:

Between 1986 and 1992, 154 prospective lesbian mothers volunteered for a study that was designed to follow planned lesbian families from the index children’s conception until they reached adulthood. Data for the current report were gathered through… interviews and Child Behavior Checklists that were completed by their mothers at corresponding times.

According to their mothers’ reports, the 17-year-old daughters and sons of lesbian mothers were rated significantly higher in social, school/academic, and total competence and significantly lower in social problems, rule-breaking, aggressive, and externalizing problem behavior than their age-matched counterparts in Achenbach’s normative sample of American youth.

…

Between 1986 and 1992, prospective lesbian mothers…were recruited via announcements that were distributed at lesbian events, in women’s bookstores, and in lesbian newspapers throughout the metropolitan areas of Boston, Washington, DC, and San Francisco.

The study’s own authors point to several study limitations that undermine Stevens’ claim that the research is conclusive:

1.)  It was a non-random sample.

2.)  “[S]ome…participants expressed fears that legislation could be enacted to rescind the parenting rights of lesbian mothers.” In other words, participants may be motivated to skew their answers out of fear they may lose their children.

3.)  “[T]he data did not include the Achenbach Youth Self Report or Teacher’s Report Form. A more comprehensive assessment would have included reports from all 3 sources.”

4.)  The study participants and the representatives from the “normative” group “are neither matched nor controlled for race/ethnicity or region of residence.”

If Stevens had bothered to read some of the comments following the study, she may have been surprised to learn that this study isn’t quite as conclusive as she assumes. Or perhaps she did read the comments, but for political reasons, chose to ignore the inconvenient ones. Here are two comments from physicians:

“The conclusions…that children of lesbian mothers demonstrate superior psychological adjustment compared to children of traditional families, even when the parents separate before the children are fully grown, are, on their face, a bit fantastic. Is the implication, that fathers are an undesirable component of the family, to be taken at face value? Such a conclusion, notwithstanding the caveats acknowledged by the authors in their discussion, begs for a better study with randomly selected subjects, objective measurement and followup, and appropriate control groups” (Robert P. Sundel, Pediatric Rheumatologist).

“I must take issue with the interpretation and conclusions of the authors as well as the decision by Pediatrics to publish the article. The study conclusions were based solely on the parental responses to the Child Behavior Checklist. Parents who complete CBCL’s on their own children for a study that could potentially report negative findings on the outcomes of children raised in lesbian homes have a clear, self-serving bias. The fact that the study chose not to include the self reported CBCL or the teacher CBCL is mentioned, but it begs the point? Why? Were the results contradictory? On the surface it appears that the study authors are only reporting data that supports a specific, predetermined view-point. I will not be referencing this article or results as valid until ALL of the data is made public for review” (Daniel Trementozzi, Pediatrician).

This study included an alarming statistic that Stevens didn’t mention: By 2009 when the study concluded, 56 percent of the lesbian couples were no longer together. While the study didn’t include divorce statistics for the traditional families, research shows that in 2009 the divorce rate in the United States was  somewhere between 3.5 percent – 16.9 percent. The average age of the lesbians at the conclusion of the NLLF study was 52. The divorce statistic for women ages 50-59 in 2009 was 41.1 percent. It appears that lesbian relationships are really, really  unstable.

Whenever studies emerge that undermine the sacred tenets of the homosexuality-affirming ideology, Leftists point to the organizations that funded the research to cast doubt on undesirable conclusions. So, who funded this particular study that Stevens finds as unassailable as evidence that Earth is round?  Here’s who:

1.)  The Gill Foundation: Tim Gill is the infamous multi-millionaire founder of QuarkXPress and homosexual activist who pours money into state legislative races around the country to transform state legislatures into pro-homosexual political machines.

2.)  The Lesbian Health Fund of the Gay Lesbian Medical Association

3.)  Horizons Foundation: A San Francisco grant-making organization whose motto is “Fueling the LGBTQ Movement.”

4.)  Roy Scrivner Fund of the American Psychological Foundation (which is a grant-making foundation associated with the American Psychological Association). To be eligible for a grant from this fund, one must “Demonstrate commitment to LGBT family issues” and provide a “description of” the “proposed work’s…expected outcomes.” This grant is named in honor of Roy Scrivner, a homosexual activist and the founder of “the APA division of Family Psychology’s Committee on Lesbian and Gay Family Issues.”

5.)  Special thanks were offered to Dr. Ellen Perrin, an activist in support of all things homosexual whom I mentioned in a recent article on the AAP; UCLA’s Williams Institute, an “LGBT” advocacy think tank; lesbian professor Esther Rothblum; and lesbian researcher Heidi Peyser who is raising twin sons with her partner. Peyser “holds a degree in LGBTQQ psychology, and has been a reviewer for the Journal of Lesbian Studies.”

Stevens dismisses research indicating that children raised by homosexuals suffer negative consequences and seems untroubled by the fact that some of the studies she cavalierly dismisses have fewer methodological flaws than studies she and her ideological compeers at Columbia Law School favor. As one would expect, Leftists critique research whose conclusions they don’t like with a vigor and rigor they don’t apply to research whose conclusions they do like.

For those who care about diversity and critical thinking, click here, here , here and here for more information.

Stevens, presumably a defender of diversity, is offended that theologically orthodox Christian foster care and adoption agencies might want to place children with families that affirm theological orthodoxy and that don’t affirm homoerotic behavior—behavior that is clearly condemned in both the Old and New Testaments:

As for the non-Christian part of the bill: We could take a look around the world, where Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and atheists have been successfully raising children for centuries. We could take a look around our country, where the same is true…. Christians don’t have a monopoly on kindness, understanding, commitment or unconditional love — all things children need from their parents. Neither do heterosexuals.

The problem with Stevens’ claim is that no one argues that Christians or heterosexuals “have a monopoly on kindness, understanding, commitment or unconditional love” or that homosexuals, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews or atheists are incapable of loving children. This is a quintessential straw man argument.

What theologically orthodox Christian child care organizations believe is that proper parenting requires more. Here again, we first need to define “successful.” Just as Stevens may believe that the successful raising of children includes more than just teaching them about kindness, understanding, commitment, or unconditional love, so too do many Christians (and Jews and Muslims). Many Christians believe that the successful raising of children includes teaching them about Jesus and teaching them moral virtues including virtues that pertain to sexuality.

Parents from the aforementioned groups will likely not raise up children in the way they should go with regard to faith in Christ as the only way to salvation and eternal life. And homosexuals will surely not teach children that homoerotic activity jeopardizes eternal life. Does it shock Stevens or anyone else that people who follow a faith tradition believe in its precepts?

Christians believe that great harm—indeed, the greatest harm imaginable—comes to those who do not accept the substitutionary work of Christ on the cross. Those in homosexual relationships will not teach children about the need of all to repent of sins articulated in Scripture.

Stevens believes that “there’s a problem with accepting state funding while discriminating against members of the public.” There is no problem with some child placement agencies helping children (and the state) by placing children in good homes. If Leftists really cared about the needs and welfare of children, they would not force organizations like Catholic Charities to stop serving children. How does increasing the burden on other agencies and making fewer homes available for children serve the needs of already suffering children? Once again, Leftists put the desires of homosexual adults above the needs of children.

The more serious constitutional issue pertains to the violation of First Amendment religious Free Exercise protections that Leftists pursue with an unholy passion. Denying state monies to only theologically orthodox Christian child placement organizations would be unconstitutional in that it would represent favoring either non-religious organizations over religious or favoring some religious organizations (e.g., “progressive” Christian organizations) over others. All child placement agencies “discriminate.” That is, they make distinctions about what criteria best serve the needs and rights of children. “Progressives” want the unilateral right to determine what those criteria are.

Stevens quotes from a 2013 statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) that says—and I paraphrase—while the number of parents is important (i.e., the magic number 2), parental sexual differentiation is not. Maybe Stevens could write a column “libsplaining” why either mothers or fathers are dispensable but having two parents is important.

Because AAP leaders are water carriers for “progressivism,” AAP statements have no credibility on matters homosexual and “trans.” As I wrote in April, fewer than two dozen AAP members create and vote on policy, and the vast majority of members see policy statements for the first time when the public sees them via press releases.

Stevens concludes with this amusing Deep Thought: “Children deserve devotion, not dogma.” Once more for the road, some definitions:

Dogma: A principle, belief, or statement of idea or opinion, esp. one authoritatively considered to be absolute truth.

Dogmatism: Unfounded positiveness in matters of opinion; arrogant assertion of opinions as truth.

Stevens looks to Columbia Law School researchers as the authoritative arbiters of truth. Others look to the Bible.

Children deserve devotion to Scripture, not “progressive” dogmatism.

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A new study has found that government cuts to spending for sex education courses and contraception have contributed to Britain’s lowest teen pregnancy rate in nearly 50 years, the Catholic Herald reported.

Researchers David Paton of the Nottingham University Business School and Liam Wright of the University of Sheffield discovered that pregnancy rates for women under 16 have seen the sharpest decline in local authority areas that drastically cut funding for “preventative” programs.

After observing trends in 149 local authorities between 2009 and 2014, Paton and Wright concluded that central and local government cuts to sex education and contraceptive services coincided with teenage pregnancy rates falling by 42.6 percent between 2008 and 2013 — the lowest they’ve been since 1969. And by 2014, 4,160 girls under 16 became pregnant, marking a 10 percent decrease from the previous year.

Speaking with The Times, Wright said that he and his colleagues were surprised by their initial findings, and decided to test for possible alternative explanations before concluding that decades of sex education and easy access to contraception have led to an increase in teen pregnancies.

After doing so, however, the researchers deduced that these methods — which took off during the Sexual Revolution of the 1970s, gained even more traction with the AIDS epidemic of the 80s, and have continued into the present day — have not only failed to reduce teen pregnancies, but have in fact led to even more unwanted pregnancies, and subsequently more abortions and teenage parenthood.

“There are arguments to suggest that the impact [of the budget cuts] on teenage pregnancy may be not as bad as feared and, indeed, that spending on projects relating to teenage pregnancy [i.e. sex education and contraception] may even be counterproductive,” Wright and Paton wrote in the Journal of Health Economics.

These recent findings are deserving of the descriptor “groundbreaking,” especially when one considers the seemingly universal, half-century-long consensus among researchers and policymakers regarding sexual health. By contrast, programs and policies that promote chastity have been all but dismissed from the public conversation, yielding devastating consequences.

In our secular society, abstinence education carries the same connotations as so-called “gay conversion therapy”: cruel, ineffective, and contrary to “nature.” Programs that encourage youths to not act on certain desires for the sake of preserving their own moral and physical health have earned the labels “bigoted” and “antiquated.”

But what if every human’s true nature is to live virtuously and not to entertain our every passion and appetite? The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle based the bulk of his career on a single ethical question: “What is the good life?” In asking this, he wasn’t trying to discern which acts or material goods bring immediate satisfaction to humans, but rather, which practices and habits are capable of rendering lasting joy, health, and flourishing for society as a whole.

If the social scientists of the 1970s and beyond had applied that basic question to the study of sexual practices, they would have learned exactly what we are learning 50 years hence.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report on teen health and sexuality released last year found that teens who abstain from sexual intercourse are much less likely to engage in “risky” or unhealthy behavior (e.g. get into a car with a drunk driver, experience physical abuse from someone they are dating, smoke, binge drink, inject illegal drugs, be depressed or suicidal, try tanning beds, etc.) than their sexually active peers.

Based on this report and others like it, it would seem as though the “best life” is that in which teens are made to confront the destructive consequences of premarital sex and weigh the costs on their own. Instead, however, sex-ed programs that teach “safe sex” have grossly underestimated the moral faculties of youths, lowering their standards and normalizing deviant behavior.

Thankfully, despite the deliberate spread of misinformation regarding abstinence, modern teens have successfully employed their trademark tactic: rebellion. Since 1991, the percentage of teens in the U.S. who are sexually active has decreased by 8 percent. The truth about abstinence is resonating with young people, whether the public acknowledges it or not.

Studies like the one recently released by the Journal of Health Economics are further reminders that educators and public officials who truly care about the sexual health of teens need to seriously consider replacing failed sexual education policies with ones that truly contribute to societal flourishing.

This article was originally posted at FaithWire.com

A recent federal court ruling gives pastors in Illinois the go-ahead to counsel children about their unwanted same-sex attraction, but the state’s ban on counseling youths regarding their same-sex attraction is still a roadblock to licensed mental health professionals.

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HB 1785 passed in the Illinois State Senate by a vote of 32-22.
Please call the governor!

HB 1785 passed last week in the House by a vote of 63-32 and late Wednesday it passed in the Illinois Senate by a vote of 32-22.

HB 1785 will 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. Simply put, biologically intact men will have legal access to women’s restrooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms, shelters, semi-private hospital rooms, nursing home rooms, and prisons.

Thirty votes are needed for passage in the Illinois Senate. This bill was passed along party lines without one Republican vote, and four Democrats not voting on this controversial proposal.  See the full roll-call below.

Now that it has passed in both chambers, it will be sent to Governor Bruce Rauner. Once he receives it, he will have 60 days to veto or sign it. If he does nothing, it automatically becomes law.

Take ACTION: Click Here to email Governor Bruce Rauner to urge him to veto HB 1785 and uphold birth certificates as the historical legal documents they were intended to be.

PLEASE ALSO CALL THE GOVERNOR’S OFFICE at (217) 782-0244 and/or (312) 814-2121.

The state of Illinois has no duty or right to be complicit in fraud by making it easier for men and women who wish they were the opposite sex to falsify their birth certificates, nor should Illinois public policy affirm deceit.

“Thou shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”
~Exodus 20:16~

How Did They Vote?

The Left, drifting further and further into unreality, insists on denying that conservative Christians are being persecuted in America despite unequivocal evidence to the contrary. But I guess if they’re able to deny that persons with congenital penises are male, anything is possible.

Leftists, so busy celebrating the emperor’s new gown, may not have noticed that a Catholic family smack dab in the heartland of America is being persecuted for their belief that marriage has a nature that the state cannot change.

Steven and Bridget Tennes, both military veterans and Catholic parents of five children who own the Country Mill Orchard and Cider Mill in Charlotte, Michigan, are suing the city of East Lansing, Michigan for banning them from selling fruit at a farmers’ market where they have had a booth for the past six years. The city banned Country Mill because the owners will not rent out their cider mill for same-sex “weddings.”

The Tennes’ do sell their products to homosexuals and employ homosexuals, so Leftists cannot argue that they refuse to serve homosexuals or that their refusal to host faux-weddings grows out of hatred for homosexuals.

East Lansing claims that in order for vendors to sell their wares in its farmers’ market, they must abide by East Lansing’s non-discrimination ordinance even if their businesses are not located in East Lansing. Vendors from areas that respect the constitutionally protected right of people of theologically orthodox faith to run their businesses in accordance with their faith are not welcome at the East Lansing farmers’ market.

The issue is not whether business owners should be able to discriminate—that is, make distinctions—when it comes to the type of events they will serve or products they will make. All businesses do that.

The issue is on which criteria is it permissible for business owners to base their decisions.  Many would argue that business owners should be able to take into account the content of the event for which their services are solicited. Business owners should not be able to refuse to serve an event because of non-behavioral attributes of potential customers. They should, however, be able to refuse to serve events that celebrate behavior they view as immoral.

The controversy started in 2014 when lesbian Caitlyn (Martin) Ortis inquired about having her same-sex faux-wedding at Country Mill and was turned down by Steve Tennes. Ortis then took to social media posting this, “‘When choosing a cider mill to go to, please remember that The Country Mill… refused to let Liane and I have our wedding there because of how we identify. Please support a local cider mill that does not discriminate against LGBTQIA+ folks or any folks for that matter,’”

My suggestion to East Lansingans (East Lansingians?) is to boycott this farmers’ market, which discriminates based on religion, a clear violation of the First Amendment of the Constitution.

Despite homosexual New York Times writer Frank Bruni’s claim that people of faith must restrict their free exercise of religion to “pews, homes and hearts,” the Constitution guarantees the right to freely exercise one’s religion—no qualifications, no geographic limitations. That’s why Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. felt free to urge moderate white Christians to take their sorry arses off their pews and into the public square to fight for just laws. And so there’s no confusion about what constitutes a just law, Dr. King told us in “Letter from Birmingham Jail”: “A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God.”

The Tennes family rightly believes that marriage has an immutable, intrinsic nature that no tinkering of man can change. In other words, marriage is something. It has an ontology. Man does not create marriage out of whole cloth. Societies recognize and regulate a specific type of relationship that exists and we call “marriage.” Marriage is the union of one man and one woman. No law can change that reality. The law can no more change what marriage is than a new birth certificate can change the sex of Bruce Jenner.

The Bible is clear that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. Biblically illiterate Leftists often claim that since Christians eat shellfish or wear clothing of mixed fabrics—both proscribed in the Old Testament—they should have no problem serving homosexual anti-weddings. These biblically illiterate Leftists don’t understand that the Old Testament contains three types of codes or laws, two types of which (i.e., holiness codes and civil codes) do not apply since Jesus appeared on the historical scene. The universal moral code, however, appertains still.

Theologically orthodox Christians understand and value marriage as a public institution that affects the public good in profound ways, but it is not the word “marriage” that magically confers public meaning and value on a relationship. It is the nature of an intrinsically marital union that renders it valuable as a public good.

For Christians, marriage is a picture of Christ and his church. Christ is the bridegroom and his bride is the church. The marital partners are of different natures. To suggest that marriage can be composed of two partners of the same sex means there is no difference in nature or role between Christ and his church. This constitutes a heresy of the first order. For the government  to command that Christians serve in any way a ceremony that embodies such an abominable heresy is profoundly troubling and should not be tolerated.

As Jesus tells us in Scripture, marriage is a sexually differentiated union composed of one man and one woman, and as Paul tells us, homosexual activity separates man from God eternally. Atheists and cafeteria Christians are free to reject the tenets of theologically orthodox Christianity, but they are not free to prohibit theologically orthodox Christian Americans from freely exercising their religion. Atheists and cafeteria Christians are not free to force theologically orthodox Christian Americans to provide products and services for a ceremony that the God they serve abhors even as he loves those who debase themselves through homoerotic activity and mock-marriage.

The Left understands the political importance of incrementalism. They chip away at truth like a sculptor at a piece of marble. And while they chip away bit by bit, creating their ugly post-modern travesties, cowardly conservatives rationalize their capitulation by saying, “It’s just a small change.”

Well, look where conservative capitulation to incremental change has landed us with regard to all matters “trans.” We’re on the cusp of a sexual revolution unheard of in the history of man: the planned obsolescence of the public recognition and accommodation of sex differences everywhere.

“Progressives” and cowardly conservatives should be ashamed to hear these words from Steve Tennes:

My wife Bridget and I volunteered to serve our country in the military to protect freedom, and that is why we feel we have to fight for freedom now, whether it’s Muslims’, Jews’, or Christians’ right to believe and live out those beliefs.

So, fellow conservatives, IFI pleads again for you to find those dusty spines in the attic where you’ve stored them with other unused cultural artifacts. Or if you’ve been walking around all Gumby-like with bendy spines, stiffen them up. Take some calcium supplements.  Then do what I’ve done: Cook up some thick skin in your basement laboratory to slip over your spanking new spines and DO SOMETHING!

• Become educated so you know how to debate these issues.
• Encourage your spineless, thin-skinned church leaders to preach and teach boldly on marriage, homosexuality, and “trans” issues—all of which are biblical issues.
• Find a new church if your church leaders are embracing homosexuality-affirming heresy.
• Teach your children well.
• Write letters to editors.
• Post your views on social media.
• Discuss these issues with friends, family, and colleagues.
• Contact your lawmakers to urge them to vote rightly on issues related to homosexuality and gender confusion.
• Hold your lawmakers accountable for bad votes.
• Don’t use opposite-sex pronouns when referring to biological-sex rejecting persons—and that means you, public school teachers.
• Become a precinct committeeman.
• Run for office.

Did I miss anything?

Listen to this as a podcast HERE.

Illinois is making national news again, and again for destructive public policy.

In an act of stunningly brazen wickedness, foolishness, and hubris, the Illinois Department of Children & Family Services (DCFS) has made radical revisions to policies regarding children who experience homoerotic attraction and/or gender dysphoria.

The DCFS, controlled—like every other government agency in Illinois—by ignorant “progressives,” has declared war on children and potential foster and adoptive families by changing rules to make affirmation of children’s homoerotic attraction and/or sexual confusion an absolute condition for employment, fostering or adopting, volunteering, or contracting with the DCFS.

Last night, DCFS director George Sheldon–Rauner’s pick in 2015–resigned, becoming the 8th director or acting director to leave the DCFS in the past five years. Sheldon leaves while still a subject of an ethics investigation and while the DCFS faces sustained and intensifying criticism for actions that have resulted in incomprehensible suffering for and even deaths of children under their care. In the midst of this turmoil, DCFS bureaucrats see fit to make radical rules changes that will further harm children.

If you can stomach it, read Appendix K of the DCFS procedures document titled “Support and Well-Being of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning (LGBTQ) Children and Youth.” It promotes every doctrinaire and arguable assumption of the far Left’s sacred sexuality ideology and even includes a Leftist lexicon for use in their indoctrination efforts.

Appendix K includes the following:

1.)  A statement of purpose which mandates that everyone who works directly or indirectly with or for the DCFS—including all staff, volunteers, potential foster or adoptive families, and private agencies that contract with the DCFS—must affirm the homoerotic desires and/or biological sex-rejection of children under the care of DCFS (and I use the word “care” loosely).

2.)  Directives on how the DCFS will impose Leftist beliefs about homoeroticism and biological sex-rejection,  including through “mandatory training in LGBTQ competency. Specifically, LGBTQ training will be part of the retraining Child Welfare license, will be included as part of PRIDE training, and will be included in DCFS core training. DCFS and POS staff must complete additional, mandatory standalone LGBTQ training at least once per year. Agencies must include LGBTQ training in their training of volunteers. Annual training in LGBTQ competent care is required for all child welfare providers; whether or not they believe they have care for [sic] or currently care for any LGBTQ child/youth.”

3.)  Dictionary of Leftist sacred sexuality Newspeak, including the terms asexuality, bisexual, cisgender, coming out, culturally competent, gay, gender expansive, gender expression, gender identity, lesbian, LGBTQ, “preferred gender pronoun (PGP),” queer, “sex assigned at birth,” and transgender.

4.)  A directive on child placement which emphasizes in boldface that “In no instance should LGBTQ children/youth be placed with a non-affirming caregiver who is opposed to sexual orientations that differ from the caregiver’s own. Nor should LGBTQ children and youth be placed with caregivers who are unwilling/unable to support children and youth whose gender identity or gender expression differs from traditional expectation.”

5.)  A directive for caregivers on “choice of clothes, make-up, hairstyle, friends, and activities within appropriate boundaries (e.g., if a caregiver permits a cisgender heterosexual child/youth to date at a certain age, the caregiver may not prohibit a gay or transgender child/youth from dating). The child/youth’s chosen name and preferred gender pronoun (including gender-neutral pronouns such as “they” or “ze/hir”) must be respected.”

6.)  Advice regarding school restroom and locker room usage: “[T]ransgender students have the right to use the gendered school facilities (e.g., restrooms and locker rooms) that correspond to the student’s gender identity. Caseworkers and caregivers should assist children/youth in obtaining their school’s permission to use these facilities.” To help caregivers force schools to allow gender-dysphoric students into opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms, the DCFS refers them to two of Illinois’ most vigorous promoters of sexual deviance: the ACLU and Illinois Safe Schools Alliance.

7.) A directive on body searches that states that “If a DCFS child/youth is to be body searched, cross-gender searches of transgender youth are prohibited. The child/youth most be searched by someone of the same gender as the child/youth’s gender identity unless the child/youth requests otherwise.” To clarify, this means that if a girl who identifies as a boy must be body-searched, the search must be conducted by a man—unless she objects because, you know, she’s actually a girl.

These changes are rationalized by the DCFS as serving the welfare of self-identified “LGBTQ” children. In the view of DCFS, these children cannot flourish unless their homoerotic desires or rejection of their sex is affirmed. In the view of DCFS, safety requires non-judgmentalism—well, except for their judgmentalism that permeates these changes and which, like arsenic in a cup of tea, is undetectable and lethal.

This is a government experiment based on Leftist theories being performed on children who can neither understand what is being done to them nor offer informed consent. And we taxpayers are footing the bill for an experiment that harms children.

The DCFS evidently doesn’t see the irony in its command that “Staff may not impose personal, organizational or religious beliefs on LGBTQ children, youth and families, and in no way should personal beliefs impact the way individual needs of children/youth or families are met.”

The entirety of the DCFS changes constitutes the imposition of arguable, leftist “personal and organizational beliefs” on children, youth, and families that will “impact the way the individual needs of children and youth are met.” The fact that the DCFS is imposing a set of beliefs through policy is revealed in its absurd, reality-denying reference to a “child/youth’s sex assigned at birth.” That is Leftist language. No child is “assigned” a sex at birth. The objective sex of children is identified at birth, and that sex can never change.

There is no research proving that children are best served by having gender dysphoria affirmed. The best research to date suggests that if gender dysphoria is not affirmed in young children, it diminishes over time. Do the omniscient powers that be at the DCFS believe it’s better for children to endure castration or double mastectomies, a lifetime of cross-sex hormone-doping with its unknown health risks, and social struggles than to accept their immutable sex? And do these government bureaucrats know with absolute certainty that when children experience a mismatch between their bodies and their subjective, internal sense of being male or female that the error rests with their healthy bodies?

Quite obviously, these changes preclude people of theologically orthodox Christian faith from fostering or adopting children who experience same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria. Denying people of theologically orthodox faith the opportunity to foster or adopt these children constitutes the antithesis of a commitment to diversity and puts the lie to DCFS’s claim to care about the needs of children. The number of available foster and adoptive families for these children who are in desperate need of love, guidance, and wisdom, will decrease. Children will be deprived of truly good families, families with mothers and fathers who can distinguish truth from falsehood. Through these changes, the DCFS has proven that the desires of adults supersede the needs of suffering children.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to contact Governor Rauner, your state senator, and state representative to express your opposition to the outrageous revisions made by the DCFS, which impose a far left-wing sexuality ideology under the cover of a purported effort to help children. In reality, these revisions harm children and families who would otherwise be willing and able to foster and adopt children who struggle with issues related to sexuality.

Listen to this as a podcast HERE.

Recent articles by Laurie Higgins:

Birth Certificates and the Cultural Extinction of Biological Sex

Questions About Restrooms and Locker Rooms Leftists Must Answer

“Trans”-Cultism and Sex-Selection Abortions

Dove Ad Features Real Dad Pretending to Be Real Mom

Download the IFI App!

We now have an IFI mobile app that enables us to deliver great content based on the “Tracks” you choose, including timely legislative alerts, cultural commentaries, upcoming event notifications, links to our podcasts, video reports, and even daily Bible verses to encourage you. This great app is available for Android and iPhones.

Key Features:

• It’s FREE!
• Specific content for serious Christians
• Performs a spiritual assessment
• Sends you daily Scriptures to encourage and equip you
• You determine when and how much content you get

The famous, specialty ice cream company, Ben and Jerry’s, has unintentionally given us further evidence that same-sex “marriage” is not marriage. How so?

The ice cream experts, who have long been known for participating in left-wing activism, went one step farther [last] week. As a headline in the Daily Mail announced, “Ben & Jerry’s BAN customers from ordering two scoops of the same ice cream until Australia legalizes gay marriage.”

That’s right. If you want two scoops of New York Super Fudge Chocolate on your ice cream cone, you can’t have it. You’ll have to settle for just one scoop or mix in another flavor.

This is Ben and Jerry’s way of sending a message: “we believe that love comes in all flavors.”

The company explained on its website: “Imagine heading down to your local Scoop Shop to order your favorite two scoops of Cookie Dough in a waffle cone,” the company wrote.

“But you find out you are not allowed… you’d be furious!

“This doesn’t even begin to compare to how furious you would be if you were told you were not allowed to marry the person you love.”

“So, we are banning two scoops of the same flavour and encouraging our fans to contact their MPs to tell them that the time has come- make same sex marriage legal! Love comes in all flavors!”

You might say, “Well, this sounds somewhat stupid, but how does it prove that same-sex marriage is not marriage?”

I’ll explain in a moment, but first, Ben and Jerry’s should realize they are heading down a slippery slope.

Will they ban three-scoop cones of any flavor until Australia legalizes throuples? Love comes in many colors, right? Will they ban one scoop of one flavor plus two scoops of another flavor until Australia legalizes polygamy? Hey, love is love, right? And if I have the right to marry the one I love, how about the ones I love? Why not?

The absurdities go on and on.

As my assistant Dylan asked after reading the Daily Mail article, “And perhaps there’s a current loophole (and bigotry) to their current position. What if some chocolate ice cream identifies as vanilla? (I mean, who are they to be so primitive as to label all chocolate ice cream chocolate just because that’s what society has done through the ages.) Can you then go ahead and get a scoop of chocolate and a scoop of trans-flavored (chocolate to vanilla) ice cream?”

In all seriousness, I understand that Ben and Jerry’s is not comparing human beings to scoops of ice cream. The company is making a point and showing solidarity. They believe they are standing up for justice and equality. I get all that.

Still, the nature of their protest is self-refuting, demonstrating the point that same-sex “marriage” is not marriage at all.

This article was originally posted at Townhall.com

Passing: when a person is objectively one sex but pretends to be a person of the opposite sex;
self-identification or acceptance as a member of the opposite sex.

Passer: one who passes

It’s clear from the number and nature of Facebook responses to IFI’s update on the passage of Illinois HB 1785 that many Illinoisans are passionately opposed to this bill which now moves to the Illinois Senate. HB 1785 is the bill that will make it even easier-peasier for men and women who seek to “pass” as the opposite sex to obtain fraudulent birth certificates

Illinois—so often on the cutting edge of all things feckless—was one of the earliest states in the country to allow sexual “passers” to obtain new birth certificates that certify a factual error.

For over 40 years now, sexual passers in Illinois have been able to have their birth certificates, which are historical documents, changed to certify that at birth they were identified as the sex they were never identified as. The sex that doctors identified them as at birth remains their sex forever. It may come as an unpleasant surprise to many, but there are only four states that do not permit sexual passers to change their birth certificates: Idaho, Kansas, Ohio, and Tennessee.

Ask a passer what his or her sex is. Don’t ask what their “gender” is. Don’t ask what they identify as. Don’t ask if they feel male or female. Ask what their objective sex is. I guarantee they know what it is, and they know it will never change.  “Caitlyn” Jenner, “Chaz” Bono, and “Jazz” Jennings know they have a sex, they know what it is, and they know it will never change. At birth, doctors identified their sex. Doctors do not “assign” or “designate” a baby’s “gender marker.” And except in the rare cases of babies born with intersex disorders, the sex identified at birth is correct.

As stated, at birth doctors identify the sex of babies, and birth certificates record it. Like “Newspeakers” in the dystopian novel 1984, passers exploit language to alter thought. Since they know their sex can never change, passers—who deem objective biological sex irrelevant—seek to erase any public acknowledgement of it everywhere. To get around that pesky problem of reality and science that make clear that humans have a sex and it cannot change, passers want to change the language on birth certificates from “sex” to “gender marker.”

In the service of compassion, inclusivity, justice, and intellectual consistency, we’re going to need to make several other reality-denying changes:

1.) We must allow those who identify as an age different from their objective age to have the birth-date marker on their birth certificate changed to reflect their internally felt age. We should allow those people who take youth-enhancing hormones, have cosmetic surgical procedures, and cross-age dress to change their birth-date markers to identify accurately their authentic age. Who would be harmed by allowing an 80-year-old woman to change the birth-date marker on her birth certificate to correspond to her authentic felt-age of 50? If society can affirm sexual passing, why not age passing?

2.) We must also affirm racial passing. It’s not merely irrational to permit sexual passing while prohibiting racial passing; It’s unjust. Poor Rachel Dolezal who identified and passed as black for years was publicly eviscerated for engaging in this far less radical form of passing than the form in which Bruce Jenner engages. Many “progressives” argue that race is a social construct as opposed to a biological reality, but either way, if Jenner is permitted to pass as a woman and have his legal documents changed to certify that factual error, then surely Dolezal and others of Northern European descent can do likewise. If all it takes for men to pass as women is a dab of lipstick, some hair extensions, an evening gown, and a proclamation about their internal authentic “gender” identity, then surely a spray tan, jheri-curl, a dashiki, and a proclamation about their internal, authentic racial identity should be sufficient for Caucasians to pass as blacks and have all legal documents attest to that falsehood. And if Jenner is allowed in women’s locker rooms, then surely Dolezal should be able to join the National Council of Negro Women.

3.) We must be inclusive too of those who experience Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID), which is a mismatch between their objective fully functioning healthy bodies and their internal self-identification as, usually, amputees. “Transabled” persons should be able to obtain driver’s licenses that identify them as disabled and should be able to access all accommodations limited to use by disabled persons, including disabled parking permits. In addition, the medical community should be treating them appropriately, which means providing surgery to bring their bodies into alignment with their internal authentic sense of self. That is to say, disability passers should be able to access medical help in amputating limbs. Interestingly, after such amputations, they will in reality be amputees, unlike sexual passers who can never become the opposite sex. Finally, laws should be passed prohibiting the mental health community from engaging in any form of counseling other than “transable”-affirming counseling.

4.)Last but not least are the dimensional passers in our midst who are routinely marginalized. Since sexual passers can legally obtain falsified driver’s licenses, why are we not allowing those who identify internally as a height and/or weight different from their actual, factual height and weight to change the “dimensional markers” on their driver’s licenses? Objectively short high school girls who identify as tall girls should not be discriminated against based on their actual height. For example, why should girls who are 5’1” but identify as 5’10” be prohibited from applying for college scholarships from the Tall Club Foundation?

My hope and prayer is that conservatives will not allow their passion over this imbecilic and destructive bill to wane as they so often do. Some may think that because it’s already legal in Illinois for sexual passers to obtain falsified birth certificates, making it even easier is unimportant. They would be mistaken. To understand how important every little step in the march toward the cultural extinction of biological sex and the normalization of deviance is, just imagine how the community of sexual passers would respond if this bill were to fail.

Imagine Rumpelstiltskin on steroids.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send an email message to your state senator to ask him/her to reject HB 1785 and to uphold birth certificates as legal documents.  (Read more about this legislation HERE.)

Simply put, the state of Illinois has no duty or right to make it easier for men and women who wish they were the opposite sex to falsify their birth certificates. Vote NO to HB 1785!

Recent articles by Laurie Higgins:

Questions About Restrooms and Locker Rooms Leftists Must Answer

“Trans”-Cultism and Sex-Selection Abortions

Dove Ad Features Real Dad Pretending to Be Real Mom

Download the IFI App!

We now have an IFI mobile app that enables us to deliver great content based on the “Tracks” you choose, including timely legislative alerts, cultural commentaries, upcoming event notifications, links to our podcasts, video reports, and even daily Bible verses to encourage you. This great app is available for Android and iPhones.

Key Features:

• It’s FREE!
• Specific content for serious Christians
• Performs a spiritual assessment
• Sends you daily Scriptures to encourage and equip you
• You determine when and how much content you get

Pray for our nation’s little ones. If they manage to survive the womb and are lucky enough to have both a mommy and a daddy, they may end up at their local library or bookstore for story time with drag queens. I kid you not. A widely circulated Associate Press (AP) news video exposes the repugnant spectacle.

To the occasional titters of foolish mothers, glittery drag queen Lil Miss Hot Mess (henceforth referred to as Mr. Mess) read the picture book Worm Loves Worm, illustrated by homosexual children’s book author and illustrator Mike Curato who dedicates the book to his faux-husband Dan with these words, “To the worm of my dreams.”

In Worm Loves Worm, two earthworms fall in love and claim they can both be the brides and they can both be the grooms, to which Spider responds, “Amazing!” The AP video shows a closeup of the enraptured faces of children too young to think critically but old enough to be indoctrinated with lies by deceitful and feckless adults.

Worm Loves Worm was written by J.J. Austrian who explains in an interview with a mom and her two very young daughters his motivation for writing it:

The idea came about when my son who’s now almost 13 wasn’t quite 5 years old, and we lived in the Hudson Valley and we had the most wonderful neighbors Pam and Lenore who are like aunts to my children. And one night I was tucking Joe in and he looked at me and said, “Pam and Lenore are married like you and Mommy,” and at the time women couldn’t marry women in New York, and I told Joe that. And he looked at me and said, “Why not?” And I didn’t want to say, “Well, some people think it’s wrong,” because that’s such a strong word.

“Wrong” is too strong a word to be used with almost-5-year-olds? At what age does Austrian believe children should be taught right from wrong using the terms right and wrong?

Austrian then expressed some philosophically and scientifically dubious Deep Thoughts:

So, I fumbled the answer. I said, “Some people don’t think that’s natural.” And Joe looked right at me and said, “That’s dumb. They love each other.” I said, “You’re right, Joe, and your mommy and I think that, and Pam and Lenore think that, and we’re gonna change that.” And I got to thinking about that awful answer “It’s not natural,” and I thought about nature, and I thought about worms. And I thought, you see, nature doesn’t care. Nature just cares about love.

If, when thinking about his “awful answer,” Austrian thought “nature doesn’t care,” perhaps he’s been writing children’s books too long. What is this anthropomorphized “Nature” of which he speaks? About what does Nature not care?

And when he thinks about worms, he thinks “Nature just cares about love”? Really? Well then, since some critters show their “love” through infanticide, filial cannibalism, and incest, perhaps Austrian could write a picture book about bears, felines, canids, primates, rodents, insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds who kill and devour their own babies or mate with relatives (after all, love is love). And then, in the service of diversity, the Brooklyn Public Library can have a drag queen—or maybe an infantilist, drag queens are so yesterday—read it to toddlers.

Austrian (who claims to be a Christian) missed an opportunity to tell his son that there are different types of love, and some are not marital love. And he missed the opportunity to tell his son that marriage is a very particular type of relationship that is for a man and a woman. It is the type of relationship that produces children and connects mommies and daddies to each other and to the children that God may give to them. He missed an opportunity to tell Joe that children not only want but need and deserve to be raised by their mommies and daddies.

Austrian continued:

I thought about worms because worms…are hermaphrodites, meaning they’re both boys and girls, and I always thought that is just amazing! And like I said, that is very natural. It shows that nature doesn’t care if you’re a boy or you’re a girl. It just cares about you loving each other. And I thought that would be a wonderful way to talk about love being love.

(Where’s an eyeroll emoji when you need one.) Why is it that sexual revolutionaries when looking to lower forms of life as exemplars of moral virtue avert their gaze from the truly icky things critters do to one another with nary a hint of a moral qualm?

Here’s another question about that pesky ole Nature: How does Austrian know that Nature doesn’t care whether humans are boys or girls, does care that they love each other, and evidently makes no distinctions between types of love?

This points to why conservatives retreat from calling sexual revolutionaries “progressive.” There is nothing progressive about looking to lower life forms for moral direction.

The interviewer’s 4-year-old daughter then asks Austrian, “Why was the boy wearing girls’ stuff and why was the girl wearing boys’ stuff?”

Austrian responds by asking his young interlocutor to point to the book cover which shows the two worms and tell him, “Which one’s the boy and which one’s the girl?” Of course, she can’t, and Austrian uses a 4-year-old’s inability to distinguish the sex of hermaphroditic cartoon earthworms in a romantic (and, one assumes, erotic) relationship to make a point about the irrelevance of the sex of humans:

You know what? It doesn’t matter. Could boys wear dresses if they really wanted to? Should girls never wear pants? Should girls only have to wear skirts?…Boys can wear skirts. Girls can wear pants. I’m not a cowboy but sometimes I wear a cowboy hat. Is that okay?

Austrian is unwittingly treading on dangerous PC territory here. In referring to “boys” and “girls,” he affirms the dreaded—and to many trannies, mythical—sexual binary. Worse still, when he said that he wears a cowboy hat despite not being a cowboy, he implies that boys who wear skirts are not actually girls. He inadvertently face-planted onto the concrete truth.

Last November, the New Yorker published a short piece about the lesbian mother behind Drag Queen Story Hour:

On a recent Saturday morning, about two dozen small children and their parents gathered in the Park Slope branch of the Brooklyn Public Library for a new reading series…. The event was hosted by Michelle Tea, a writer from Los Angeles, who started attending library story hours after becoming a mom. She’d brought her partner, Dashiell Lippman, and their two-year-old son, Atticus…. “He is pretty butch—we call him Fratticus,” Tea said. “I’m always pushing a tutu on him, but he’s, like, ‘No.’”

Tea’s solution, called Drag Queen Story Hour, introduces elements of gender bending and camp. “I have long thought that drag queens need to be the performers at children’s parties, rather than magicians or clowns,” she said. “Drag has become more mainstream. Kids might have seen one on a billboard or on TV.”

…

At eleven o’clock, Tea made her way to the front of the room. “Do you all know what a drag queen is?” she asked the children. “Drag queens are amazing. They get to do fun things like dance and sing and travel and play dress-up with their drag-queen friends. And they’re all feminists.” The parents chuckled politely.

The drag queen Lil Miss Hot Mess came out, wearing a white sequinned tunic dress and matching heels, bright-pink tights, and a curly auburn wig…. She [sic] put on black owlish reading glasses, sat on a folding chair, and addressed her [sic] audience: “Can everyone say, ‘When I grow up, I want to be a drag queen’?”

This is not my first unpleasant virtual encounter with Tea and her lesbian partner Dashiell. I wrote about them last fall in Salvo Magazine:

In a buzzy Buzzfeed video, two gender-nonconforming lesbians, Dashiell and Michelle, discuss their efforts to raise their toddler son Atticus to be free of the constraints of gender. Mom Michelle, who became pregnant via a sperm donor, has concluded that gender “ultimately doesn’t mean anything.” Michelle tries to “queer” her “relationship with” 17-month-old Atticus, which includes attempting to “get him to a wear tutu.” Michelle admits Atticus “hates it.” Atticus calls Dashiell, the “gender-queer” parent, “Baba,” which Michelle explains is a name that “more masculine female people and even some transmen [i.e., women pretending to be men] who are parents are going by.”

Michelle frets that Atticus has a book with pictures of girls and boys identified as girls and boys. While reading it, she replaces the offending nouns, explaining, “I’m like ‘child, child.’” Michelle explains why she bowdlerizes the text: “This is where he’s learning what things are, and…I hate the idea that he’s getting imprinted on him, the idea that people who look like this are boys and people who look like that are girls…. Sometimes the best thing to do is to be constantly challenging, and sometimes it’s…just to ignore gender completely.” Michelle expresses relief that because Atticus is being raised by gender-non-conforming, masculine-looking Dashiell, he will learn about the “reality of what gender is or isn’t.”

And this brings me back to the morally challenged child-man Mr. Mess. During the recent Drag Queen Story Hour, he not only exposed children to deviant ideas but led them in a perverse performance of the Hokey Pokey in which he sang, “The hips on the drag queen go swish, swish, swish…swish, swish swish…swish, swish, swish,” all to the delight of mothers and fathers.

Mom Sarah Ortiz thought the spectacle was “great” because “there was so much energy,” and mom Kesa Huey said, “It’s what I’m looking for in all of our outings is to present different ways of being in the world and make that fun and available to my kid.”

Who needs discernment when you’ve got energy and fun.

Librarian Kat Savage believes Drag Queen Story Hour, which the library hopes to export to other branches, is “fantastic, because it addresses all these issues of genderfluidity and self-acceptance and all of these topics that are, um, real, are very, very real.”

So, does Savage hope to expose toddlers to every very, very real phenomenon in the world? And does she hope to affirm to children every very, very real phenomenon in the world? If not, who will decide which very, very real phenomenon the library will present in glittery, attractive ways to emotionally and intellectually malleable toddlers?

This cancer has already metastasized to Chicago. The ironically named feminist bookstore in Andersonville, Women & Children First, has hosted two Drag Queen Story Times for toddlers: one last December during which “Chicago’s greatest Queens”—including the obscenely named  Muffy Fishbasket—read Christmas stories, and one this past February when they read love stories in honor of Valentine’s Day.

Don’t worry, it’s not too late. You can catch one of their toddler-exploiting events at several Chicago Public Library branches, Navy Pier, or  the Center on Halsted (an “LGBTQ” organization that has received millions of dollars from our bankrupt state).

At the conclusion of the video, AP reporter Ted Schaffrey makes an embarrassing attempt to redeem the irredeemable by painting the tawdry propagandistic event with a patina of pedagogy, pronouncing solemnly, “Engaging young hearts and minds through sights and sounds.”

I would change “engaging” to “manipulating.”

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Last Thursday afternoon, the Illinois House debated and passed HB 1785 – a highly controversial proposal that would make it significantly easier for gender-dysphoric persons to obtain fraudulent birth certificates. This bill passed by a vote of 63-32. See the full roll-call vote below.

Six Republican lawmakers voted with fifty-seven Democrats to approve deceptive birth certificates: Steve Andersson (Geneva), “Leader” Jim Durkin (Burr Ridge), Sara Jimenez (Springfield), David Olsen (Downers Grove), Bob Pritchard (Sycamore), & Grant Wehrli (Naperville).  If one of these lawmakers represent you and your family, you may want to ask him/her why he/she voted in favor of this kind of deception.

I guess truth doesn’t matter for legal documents in Illinois.

This bill now moves to the Illinois Senate for consideration.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send an email message to your state senator to ask him/her to reject HB 1785 and to uphold birth certificates as legal documents.

Simply put, the state of Illinois has no duty or right to make it easier for men and women who wish they were the opposite sex to falsify their birth certificates. Vote NO to HB 1785!

Background

IFI’s Laurie Higgins wrote an article earlier this year about HB 1785. Here is a quick summary of Laurie’s take:

The absurdity and unscientific nature of the content of [H.B.—–] reveals the absurdity of the law it seeks to amend. This bill proposes to change a reference in the law from “sex change” to “change of sex designation.”

First, this change implicitly acknowledges the true fact that no one’s sex can change. Second, it demonstrates that birth certificates are being rendered meaningless. Birth certificates were intended as legal documents identifying objective birth facts. Gender-dysphoric men who were male at birth remain male. Gender-dysphoric women who were female at birth remain in perpetuity female.

“This is what our elected representatives waste their time and our taxes on,” Higgins writes, “making it ever easier for gender-dysphoric persons to pretend they are the opposite sex.”

There are many more issues related to this effort, and you can read more from Laurie Higgins here and here, and a fact-sheet titled “The Face of Gender Radicalism” here.

Again, legislators can be swamped with information — especially at this time of the year when more bills come to the floor for a vote. But your voice and action may be absolutely vital in persuading him/her to vote NO on Birth Certificate Fraud!

How did they vote?

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Almost every day in the op eds it’s there — the secret path to victory for economic and social conservatives. Will they see it?

Fiscal conservatives work to present well thought out policies that work in line with human nature and economics. For example, how to structure the health care system so health care is both accessible and affordable for everyone. Leftists, on the other hand, ignore economics and seek “fairness” for aggrieved groups and create a mess like Obamacare.

Social conservatives seek to preserve things that have been proved throughout history to work best for a healthy civilization — the protection of innocent life and the societal building block of marriage and the natural family. Leftists prefer to grant everyone “rights” based upon their feelings. Not even biological sex is recognized as reality.

The secret path to victory for conservatives isn’t a secret at all — it’s in plain view: Leftists push identity politics — and conservatives should draw the contrast using bold colors.

Within weeks, three writers at Front Page Magazine discussed the phenomenon of identity politics and here are a few quotes from them. First, Michelle Malkin:

• “When all is said and done, one of the most important cultural accomplishments of Donald Trump’s bid will be the platform he created for Americans of all colors, ethnicities, political affiliations, and socioeconomic backgrounds to defy soul-draining identity politics.”

• “I too often take for granted my own personal awakening about the entrenched tribalism of identity politics at a crazy liberal arts college in the early 1990s. The liberation from collectivist ideology is profound and lasting. Witnessing so many outspoken newcomers arrive at this enlightenment, however circuitous the route, has been the most encouraging and underappreciated phenomenon of the 2016 campaign.”

Next, David Horowitz:

• “Identity politics are the anti-American way, erasing the individual in favor of the collective.”

• “Progressive identity politics fix individuals in racial and gender hierarchies, with so-called oppressors — white males — at the bottom. American universities are dedicated to this sinister agenda and have been for decades, and it is now embedded in the attitudes of the cultural elites.”

• “The totalitarian goal of identity politics is to force everyone into the politically correct mold.”

Lastly, Daniel Greenfield:

• “[This is] the big problem the Democrats face. Identity politics with its hysterical outbursts of rage and specialized vocabulary of victimhood (privilege, victim-blaming, microaggressions) is toxic nationally, but dominates the academic and big city political populations that are its base.”

• “Democrats have to choose between identity politics and the working class. Abandoning identity politics would be a painful process while abandoning the working class has proven to be painless and disastrous. But identity politics without mass migration and social transformation is unworkable.”

Identity politics doesn’t solve problems. It  creates them.

On to our focus on the identity politics category of paraphilias. Today we’ll define both (#1) Urolagnia and  (#2) Coprophilia, since they’re obviously related. Here are their Wikipedia entries:

Urolagnia (also urophilia, undinism, golden shower and watersports) is a form of salirophilia (which is a form of paraphilia) in which sexual excitement is associated with the sight or thought of urine or urination. The term has origins in the Greek language (from ouron — urine, and lagneia — lust).

Coprophilia (from Greek κόπρος, kópros—excrement and φιλία, philía—liking, fondness), also called scatophilia or scat (Greek: σκατά, skatá-feces), is the paraphilia involving sexual arousal and pleasure from feces. In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association, it is classified under 302.89 — Paraphilia NOS (Not Otherwise Specified) and has no diagnostic criteria other than a general statement about paraphilias that says “the diagnosis is made if the behavior, sexual urges, or fantasies cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning”. Furthermore, the DSM-IV-TR notes, “Fantasies, behaviors, or objects are paraphilic only when they lead to clinically significant distress or impairment (e.g. are obligatory, result in sexual dysfunction, require participation of nonconsenting individuals, lead to legal complications, interfere with social relationships)”.

Let’s get out of here and close with our question of the day: Will we see prime time television programs and movies with lovable Urolagnia and Coprophilia “oriented” characters? If not, that is clear discrimination.

Up next…

The legal recognition of homoerotic unions as marriages goes by many names. Professor Anthony Esolen calls it “pseudogamy,” and Pastor Doug Wilson calls it “same-sex mirage.” Whatever you call it, don’t call it marriage because it ain’t.

Before same-sex faux-marriage was inflicted on the nation by five black-robed miscreants, cultural regressives insisted the legal recognition of intrinsically non-marital unions as marriages would affect no one, no way, no how. Everyone with an ounce of commonsense and a dollop of intelligence knew that was yet another lie. Once society formally ceases to recognize that marriage is something by jettisoning the central, most enduring constituent feature of marriage, it ceases to be anything. Or rather, it becomes an amorphous malleable blob that can be squished into any meaningless semi-form spiritualists, libertines, and narcissists can create.

And so, we now have “self-marriages.” Oprah, goddess and CEO of the self-love cult, must be in—er, well, somewhere warm and cozy.

For those who have been too busy serving the needs of others to have read about self-marriage, it is the newest anti-marriage fad. It entails all the trappings of a wedding without the central ingredient that gives marriage its salt, light, and beauty: a sexually complementary couple. Self-marriage is an oxymoronic, moronic ontological cipher.

Self-weddings include all the accouterments of real weddings: invitations, wedding attire, rings, vows, bouquets, floral arrangements, food, and celebrations—that is self-celebrations. I can only guess what happens on the wedding night.

Rather than committing oneself sacrificially to another who is “other,” celebrants commit themselves to idolatrous self-service and self-celebration. Whereas true marriage has both personal and public meaning, self-marriage has neither.

Erika Anderson is a 2^nd-time bride. This time ‘round, she married herself. Cosmopolitan Magazine describes Anderson’s special day:

On the rooftop of her Brooklyn apartment building this past spring, Erika Anderson put on a vintage-style white wedding dress, stood before a circle of her closest friends, and committed herself — to herself.

“I choose you today,” she said. Later she tossed the bouquet to friends and downed two shots of whiskey, one for herself and one for herself. She had planned the event for weeks, sending invitations, finding the perfect dress, writing her vows, buying rosé and fresh baguettes and fruit tarts from a French bakery. For the decor: an array of shot glasses emblazoned with the words “You and Me.” In each one, a red rose.

“It wasn’t an easy decision,” she’d noted on the wedding invitations. “I had cold feet for 35 years. But then I decided it was time to settle down. To get myself a whole damn apartment. To celebrate birthday #36 by wearing an engagement ring and saying: YES TO ME. I even made a registry, because this is America.”

Anderson was married before but divorced when she was 30 because she and her husband “grew apart” after college. I wonder what will happen if she and herself have a similarly tenuous commitment to their marriage vows.

For those brides and their beloveds who can’t manage together to plan their wedding, there are websites to help. One such website is Self-Marriage Ceremonies where self-lovers can sign up to receive premarital counseling in the form of pre-recorded inspirational messages, questionnaires, and vow-writing guidance all for a mere $200.

For those who need additional guidance, Self-Marriage Ceremonies’ founder Dominique Youkhehpaz is available for private sessions at the discounted rate of $50 per 2-hour session (usually $75).

Youkhehpaz started her business in 2011 during Burning Man, an annual event that bills itself as dedicated to “community, art self-expression, and self-reliance.” I think they forgot “self-love.”

Burning Man’s motto is “a culture of possibility. A network of dreamers and doers.” Someone should tell dreamer Youkhehpaz that it’s actually not possible to marry oneself.

It’s fitting that Self-Marriage Ceremonies got its start at Burning Man. While Burning Man was the brainchild of Larry Evans and was initially held in San Francisco, it was moved to its current location in in Black Rock Desert in Nevada by John Law, who conceived of it as “Dadaist temporary autonomous zone.” Dadaism was a post WWI rebellious, irreverent art movement that rejected aesthetically pleasing imagery, convention, logic, and reason. Instead, Dadaist artists valued “nonsense, irrationality, and anti-bourgeois protest.”

Though the self-marriage movement is utterly nonsensical and irrational, a visit to the I Married Me website would make Dadaists and Jack Handy cringe. Here are some of the deep thoughts Marcel Duchamp and Jack Handy would find:

• You Should Totally Marry Yourself
• Choose Love
• Hell Yeah I’m Awesome
• To Honor Myself Is To Understand And Acknowledge That I Am Worthy
• You Are A Reason to Celebrate

Self-lovers can get the entire self-wedding kit and caboodle for the amazing bargain-basement price of $230! Imagine that. All it costs to celebrate your solemn commitment to and celebration of yourself is 230 smackers. Forget those starving children in Sudan. You’ll be contributing so much more to the world if you spend $230 (plus the cost of the actual ceremony and reception) if you marry yourself.

Dada artist Francis Picabia offered this description of Dadaism: “DADA…smells of nothing, it is nothing, nothing, nothing.”

The same could be said of self-marriage.

While these non-marriages are intended to exalt the self, in reality engaging in such empty, nonsensical  rituals that mock true marriage reflect the irrational and self-abasing nature of our anti-culture.

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