And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.
~2 Corinthians 11:14~

The United States was founded by people of faith, people who espoused a biblical worldview. That worldview, bolstered by a conscience that yearns for justice, compelled the writing of the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The Declaration defined the nature and source of human rights; the United States Constitution detailed those rights, protecting them from government transgress.

The Founders secured the very impetus for the colonies in America with the First Amendment to the Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Notice no reference to a wall of “separation of church and state?” Early settlers desired to live out their faith, to worship according to personal understanding of the scriptures, not by compulsion of a state run and controlled church akin to the Church of England. Government was seen as a necessary evil to provide for national defense and some infrastructure; the U.S. Constitution was clearly written to free the citizen and robustly constrain government.

Our history as an independent people, individually responsible for our own actions and consequences, but keenly aware of rights and justice infuses our national DNA. Rights and justice are not, in and of themselves, evil.

The key is WHO is the author of the rights?

The Founders believed the Bible and that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel created men (ie. all men and all women) in His image. Life was precious, sacred, because the Lord God was its author.

But not all rights are true rights or even good. The idea of “human rights” sounds aspirational, lofty.

The Apostle Paul warned early followers of Jesus and the church at Corinth:

And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.

Masquerading as an angel of light, gay rights activist Stephen Robert “Steve” Endean founded the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) in 1980. The mission of the organization:

The Human Rights Campaign and the Human Rights Campaign Foundation together serve as America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve LGBTQ equality. By inspiring and engaging individuals and communities, HRC strives to end discrimination against LGBTQ people and realize a world that achieves fundamental fairness and equality for all.

The Human Rights Campaign envisions a world where lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people are ensured equality and embraced as full members of society at home, at work and in every community.

Ah ha! The crux of the matter is not “human rights” but rather “LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning) rights.” Why the disguise (aka masquerade)?

Steve Endean knew full well that the average American in 1980 would not wholly endorse “alternative lifestyles.” Had he named the organization “Queer Rights Campaign” or “Lesbian Rights Campaign” Endean would have offended millions of families. But “Human Rights Campaign” sounded righteous and compassionate.

That is until we compare the mission statement with the foundation of America, a biblical worldview which undergirds our founding documents. What does the Bible have to say about those lifestyles?

Earlier in 1 Corinthians:

Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. — 1 Corinthians 6:9-10

And in Romans 1:

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

. . .

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

Now, having unmasked the true intent and nature of the “Human Rights Campaign,” it should come as no surprise that Endean’s unholy organization seeks to vilify those proclaiming truth and businesses not cowering to the HRC mandates. Since 2002, “HRC’s Corporate Equality Index report, released each fall, provides an in-depth analysis and rating of large U.S. employers and their policies and practices pertinent to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees. Businesses rated 100 percent are recognized in their ‘Best Places to Work’ list. All consumer-oriented businesses are included in their ‘Buying for Equality‘ guide.” [see below]

Businesses in America are rated according to their accommodation and celebration of “alternative lifestyles,” also known as sinful lifestyles. HRC President Chad Griffin writes:

In this 15th edition of the Corporate Equality Index we have seen the largest increase in top-rated businesses in the history of our survey with 517 employers earning perfect 100 percent scores. In addition, this year saw the CEI’s largest jump ever in businesses offering transgender-inclusive healthcare coverage — from 511 last year to 647 this year.

While there is much to do and many key civil rights fights ahead, thanks to these private sector leaders, the march towards greater equality is not slowing down. The LGBTQ community and the 887 businesses in the CEI will keep moving forward every day.

The HRC employs a carrot and stick tactic: CEI as carrot praises those businesses which affirm the LGBTQ agenda; HRC’s “The Export of Hate” as stick castigates any individuals or organizations who decry the same perverse agenda. Written at “The Export of Hate” site:

These individuals are spreading venomous rhetoric, outrageous theories and discredited science.

While this vicious brand of bigotry is currently finding little traction in the United States, public opinion in many other nations makes their words and work much more dangerous. In fact, their actions pose a fundamental threat to the safety of LGBT people around the world, and that threat is growing.

“The Export of Hate” lists familiar names of godly people and God-honoring organizations: attorney and pastor Scott Lively, ADF Chief Counsel Benjamin Bull, ACLJ Director of International Operations Jordan Sekulow, and even our good friend Peter LaBarbera. [See below]

The Bible instructs us to be wise as serpents, harmless as doves. Comparing the Bible and its principles and commands to the Human Rights Campaign mission, Corporate Equality Index, and HRC’s Export of Hate report reveals an unavoidable conclusion. The HRC is an unbiblical and evil entity.

The prophet Isaiah wrote:

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! — Isaiah 5:20

There could not be a more stark picture of that verse than the Human Rights Campaign, and believers in America must hold fast to biblical truth and wisdom and unmask ungodly evildoers “masquerading as angels of light.”

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Written by Chris Freund

In case you haven’t heard, apparently, despite nearly a year’s worth of scoffing denials by the retailer’s officials, Target isn’t doing so well.

Paint me shocked!

Plummeting sales and stock can be blamed on the weather only so many times before any thinking person starts to suspect that perhaps there’s more here than we’re being told.

Now comes a story in the Wall Street Journal where sources with Target claim that the announcement about a policy allowing men in women’s restrooms in the name of tolerance was never actually approved by the boss.  It was just a blog post that got a little out of hand.  And, oh, the CEO now claims he wouldn’t have approved the announcement because he thought, well, just maybe, there might be a backlash.

Ya think?

Of course, the CEO and others, along with the media and even many market “experts” claimed for the past year that there has been no backlash and that Target’s plummeting sales and stocks are due to the weather or other unusual market forces.  Weather and market forces that weren’t, however, having any effect on Target’s biggest competitor, Walmart.  Odd.

And that $20 million plan to add private restrooms to stores had nothing at all to do with the backlash that wasn’t really happening.  Just move along…

Now, I’m not a big fan of “boycotts” in general, and measuring their impact is pretty near impossible.  But you have to admit that when 1.5 million people say they aren’t going to shop someplace anymore, it might have a bit of an impact.  And that doesn’t include those who may have decided to not shop there but never signed any petition or pledge.  Regardless, the fact that the retailer’s sales have dropped in every quarter since the announcement can’t be simple coincidence.  Apparently, now, a year later, officials are starting to admit it.

Target’s biggest worry?  Those who figured out they never needed Target in the first place, and discovered online shopping at Amazon.  Not sure there’s a blog post correction that can fix that.

This article was originally posted at The Family Foundation blog.

There is an excellent article from John Stonestreet, the president of the Colson Center for Worldview, detailing a surprisingly honest article in the liberal publication, The Huffington Post.    Stonestreet comments on a homosexual male who wrote an article expressing his despair in his lifestyle and explaining that so many “gay” men in his community share this despair.   The cultural, legal and political affirmation of homosexuality in America is not filling the emptiness many feel or reducing the many risks of their lifestyle.

Stonestreet writes in An Unspoken Epidemic: The Silent Suffering of Gay Men:

“For years,” he begins, “I’ve noticed the divergence between my straight friends and my gay friends. While one half of my social circle has disappeared into relationships, kids and suburbs, the other has struggled through isolation and anxiety, hard drugs and risky (behavior).”

Through story after story and mountains of statistics, Hobbes then documents a consistent and chilling trend among those who share his lifestyle. “Gay men everywhere, at every age,” he writes, are two-to-ten-times more likely than heterosexual men to commit suicide.

And that’s just the beginning. Homosexual males also suffer from higher rates of cardiovascular disease, cancer, allergies, asthma, and a whole host of behavior-related infections and dysfunctions. They’re twice as likely to experience major depressive episodes, report having fewer close friends, and abuse drugs at an alarming rate.

In fact, living in so-called “gay neighborhoods” is a predictor of more frequent, risky behaviors and methamphetamine use. And, Hobbes adds, the community itself is brutal and degrading to its members. Smart-phone hookup apps drive a culture of exploitation and casual encounters that one young man he interviewed said made him feel like “a piece of meat.”

We often hear these disastrous statistics and stories attributed to homophobia, bullying, and shame. Having been treated horribly since childhood, men like this author—the oft-repeated myth goes—are forced to live a lie. They’re depressed because they’ve been oppressed and repressed.

But here’s the problem with the bullying hypothesis. In countries like the Netherlands and Sweden where same-sex “marriage” has been the law of the land for years, gay men remain three times more susceptible to mood disorders and three- to ten-times more likely to engage in “suicidal self-harm.”

What Stonestreet points to in regard to the high risks of homosexuality are not unknowns in the “gay” community.  While they are often overlooked in school curriculum, news reports, and pop culture, the dangers of homosexuality are documented in mainstream sources, including those supportive of homosexual advocacy.

For example, the federal government’s Centers for Disease Control, which devotes numerous web pages to the particular health disparities connected with homosexual behaviors, notes “LGBT people smoke cigarettes at rates that are nearly 70% higher than the general population.”   They also note that alcohol abuse is much higher among LGBT lifestyles than the general population.

A 2016 study published by the American Medical Association’s Internal Medicine publication observed, compared to heterosexuals:

• Gay men were more likely to report severe psychological distress, heavy drinking and moderate smoking.

• Bisexual men were more likely to report severe psychological distress, heavy drinking and heavy smoking.

• Lesbian women were more likely to report moderate psychological distress, poor or fair health, multiple chronic conditions, heavy drinking and heavy smoking.

• Bisexual women were more likely to report multiple chronic conditions, severe psychological distress, heavy drinking and moderate smoking.

Homosexual activists and many of those reporting on the disproportionately high behavioral risks are quick to dismiss the disparities as a result of cultural opposition to homosexuality or a lack of legal status goals in America.

Yet, the same disparities appear in liberal societies that embrace every sexual desire under the sun and have almost no religious cultural influences.  Mortality rates, drug abuse, disease and suicide still pose dramatically higher risks for the LGBT lifestyle in different cultures around the world. For example, a study in Denmark conducted twelve years after same-sex marriage was legalized found:

“ . . . the age-adjusted suicide rate for same sex RDP [registered domestic partners] men was eight times the rate for men in heterosexual marriages, and nearly twice the rate for men who had never married.”

This info just barely scratches the surface of medical and psychological data. It is hardly a picture of health and happiness.

A few weeks ago, junior high students in Plymouth, Indiana, were subjected to political indoctrination lessons in, of all places, health class. The video and lesson instructed kids how to “come out” as homosexual and how to support homosexuality individually, organizationally and politically without any mention of the medical risks that lifestyle includes.    This type of rallying for gay activism is rampant in schools, movies, music, and pop culture.

Teachers, principles, parents and grandparents would do well to read the Stonestreet article before embracing homosexuality as just another lifestyle choice or political cause HERE.

I’ve read umpteen times that the 66,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) supports the use of opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms in schools by gender-dysphoric students. Wowzer! 66,000? That’s a lot of pediatricians.

A few weeks ago I got to ruminating on that mind-boggling claim. It seemed implausible that all 66,000 pediatricians could believe something so radical. So, I set off on a quest to dig into this claim, and what I learned is surprising.

Fortunately for me and my quest, there’s another medical organization that has sprung up precisely because of the radical positions taken by the AAP: the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds). You may have heard of ACPeds because the very name sends shivers of revulsion (or is it fear) up the spines of liberals everywhere. Why? Is it because ACPeds is composed of charlatans and snake oil salespersons who received their medical degrees from Rufus T. Firefly’s University of Freedonia?

Nope.

ACPeds is ridiculed because it holds different positions on the treatment of gender-dysphoria in minors. Leftists are reluctant to discredit ACPeds based solely on disagreement about treatment protocols because that argument becomes circular: “You can’t trust ACPeds because it doesn’t support ‘gender affirmative’ protocols, and we all know ‘gender affirmative’ protocols are right.”

So, how do liberals attempt to discredit ACPeds which was founded just fifteen years ago? They do so by citing the fact that the membership numbers are lower than are the membership numbers in the AAP which was founded 87 years ago. Still a fallacious argument (i.e., appeal to popularity), but it works as a soundbite and it works for ignorant school board members.

In addition to being a fallacious appeal to popularity, it also implies a factual error—or is it an alternative fact? It implies without stating that 66,000 pediatricians support co-ed locker rooms.

How many AAP members support the AAP’s policy on co-ed restrooms/locker rooms?

The truth is we have no idea how many AAP members support co-ed restroom and locker room policies (or puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone-doping, or double mastectomies for minors) because they’ve never been polled. All we do know is the approximate number of members who created and voted on the AAP’s policy on gender-dysphoric students.

Well, more accurately some people know the approximate number of AAP members who imposed this policy on the AAP. I hope to change that.

Dr. Michelle Cretella, a board-certified pediatrician who serves as the president of ACPeds shared this illuminating information about the AAP policy:

AAP Policy is created by fewer than 30 pediatricians without general member input.

Dr. Joseph Zanga, who serves “as Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the Medical College of Georgia” and Emeritus  Professor of Pediatrics at Mercer University School of Medicine,  and is a past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics further clarified the policy-making process that liberals would likely prefer concealed:

• Policy Statements are produced by 10-12 member Committees or Councils, or Section (e.g., School Health, Adolescence, or Bioethics) or more commonly by Section Executive Committees, whose members are nominated by their AAP State Chapter Committees (or members of the Section) and selected by Committees of the AAP Board. Confirmation is by the Board of Directors. Section Executive Committees are elected by the Section members.

• The 10 members of the AAP Board of Directors are elected by the AAP members of their district (elections never garner votes from even 40% of members) and the Executive Committee consisting of the president, president-elect, immediate past-president (elected by the AAP members nationally with equally small numbers voting), and the paid executive director (hired by the Board)

• Statements are sent to the board for review and vote. Often there is discussion at a board meeting. Rarely is there outside opinion sought, and there is never a minority report. 

• AAP members often don’t even see the report until after it appears in the media. They have no direct input.

In contrast, here’s a description of the process by which ACPeds develops policy:

The ACPeds has our entire membership (500 pediatric health professionals) comment and vote upon our statements prior to release. If 25% of our members object to the statement, it will not be released.

In addition, ACPeds partners with other organizations to promote views different from the views for which two dozen AAP members voted:

The 4 physician groups representing over 20K [physicians and other health experts] who affirm that transgender beliefs are a problem of the mind include the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, ACPeds, the Catholic Medical Association, and the Christian Medical & Dental Associations.

Commit this information to memory so that the next time a feckless “progressive” school board member or lawmaker proclaims from on high that the “66,000-member AAP” is in favor of co-ed restrooms and locker rooms, you can clarify that all we know is that fewer than two dozen of the 66,000 members of the AAP created and voted in favor of co-ed restrooms and locker rooms in public schools.

The Executive Committee that wrote the AAP’s “gender affirmative” “trans” policy

According to Dr. Manga, while “there are dozens of AAP Sections” only a “few write policy statements” as the “LGBT Section” did. Below are the names of the seven members of the Executive Committee for the “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Health and Wellness,” Section, which has only 342 members (who were unlikely to have voted on the policy).

IFI learned that at least two of these seven Executive Committee members are homosexual, so while homosexuals constitute about 3.5% of the population, they constitute almost 30% (perhaps even 40%) of this AAP committee. And another of the members has an adult homosexual child:

Dr. Lynn Hunt (lesbian)

Dr. Ellen C. Perrin

Dr. Chadwick Taylor Rodgers

Dr. Anne Theresa Gearhart

Dr. David M. Jaffe (homosexual)

Dr. Joseph A. Waters

Anne Gramiak (not a medical doctor)

A Tufts University profile of one of the chief architects of the AAP policy, Dr. Ellen Perrin, reports that for Perrin “pediatrics is more than just medicine; it’s a vehicle for social change.” According to the profile, Perrin is a “leading expert on same-sex parenting, with her research showing that there is no relationship between parents’ sexual orientation and any measure of a child’s emotional, social, or behavioral adjustment.” Further Perrin, who was “chair of Pro Family Pediatricians—a group of pediatricians opposed to the Federal Marriage Amendment,” shared that “[a]dvocacy is one of the things I do.”

In doing research on the “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Health and Wellness” Section of the AAP, I was unpleasantly surprised to learn that one of the members of the AAP’s Committee on Adolescence is none other than Chicago’s own Dr. Robert Garofalo about whom I’ve written. He is the openly homosexual, HIV-positive doctor who is the Division Head of Adolescent Medicine at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. In a May 2015 Chicago Magazine profile of him titled “The Change Agent,”  Garofalo admits that he “has had patients as young as 15 undergo top surgery.” You read that right. Some Mengelian doctors are performing double mastectomies on physically healthy 15-year-old girls.

The AAP: a partisan political arm of the Human Rights Campaign

In terms of policy positions regarding sexuality, the AAP is now formally a partisan political organization. Six months ago, the AAP began partnering with the nation’s largest pro-homosexual/pro-“trans” activist organization: the radical Human Rights Campaign (HRC), thus discrediting it as an impartial, unbiased medical organization.

Here are some HRC recommendations  from its guide for schools:

While this guide focuses primarily on transgender youth who are transitioning from male to female or female to male, it is important to note that a growing number of gender-expansive youth are identifying themselves outside the gender binary, and many use gender-neutral pronouns. While it may be more difficult to adapt to gender-neutral pronouns, it is still important to do so in support of the student.

Another crucial element in supporting a transitioning student is giving them access to sex-separated facilities, activities or programs based on the student’s gender identity [including] [r]estrooms, locker rooms, health and physical education classes, competitive athletics, overnight field trips, [and] homecoming court and prom.

Any student who feels uncomfortable sharing facilities with a transgender student should be allowed to use another more private facility like the bathroom in the nurse’s office, but a transgender student should never be forced to use alternative facilities to make other students comfortable.

Leftists assume that hard science provides all the answers to our ethical questions, and, therefore, we need only defer to our objective scientific organizations to point the way to Shangri-La. But science does not provide answers to moral questions, and our scientific organizations are not objective. As ACPeds correctly points out, even the practice of medicine is informed by one’s worldview:

The debate over how to treat children with [gender dysphoria] is primarily an ethical dispute: one that concerns physician worldview as much as science. Medicine does not occur in a moral vacuum; every therapeutic action or inaction is the result of a moral judgment of some kind that arises from the physician’s philosophical worldview. Medicine also does not occur in a political vacuum and being on the wrong side of sexual politics can have severe consequences for individuals who hold the politically incorrect view.

If the AAP ever decides to poll its members to find out exactly how many support or oppose the radical policy concocted by the gang of 7, they best make it anonymous because there’s nothing quite like the fury of  liberals who’ve had their views scorned. Just ask Dr. Kenneth Zucker.

This version has been updated to reflect minor corrections.

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One of the central tactics used by liberals to impose coercively an incoherent and science-denying “trans” ideology on, well, everyone, is to hurl epithets at dissenters. And if that means adults hurling epithets in the direction of children, so be it. Leftists can’t have children running around our streets even thinking the emperor has no clothes. And they certainly can’t have girls refusing to share restrooms with the emperor.

Two comments left on Illinois Family Action’s Facebook page in response to my article titled “The Enemies of Truth Wage War in Districts 211 and 15” illustrate the terrible way liberals seek to manipulate those who believe that congenital physical embodiment as male or female matters.

Simone McLellan Kentish accuses those who support sex-segregated restrooms and locker rooms of intolerance, ignorance, unjust discrimination, and bigotry:

The TRUTH is that a gender dysphoric child is going through so many challenges of his own dealing with discrimination and ignorance that the farthest thing from his mind would be to ogle another student of the same sex he identifies with.

The TRUTH is that the locker room issue is a convenient excuse intolerant people are using to justify their own bigotry.

My own child will soon be graduating from a D15 school and moving on to a d211 school. I am thankful she’s being brought up in an environment where tolerance and understanding prevail.

Jill Mayes goes even further in her defense of intellectual and moral incoherence:

“Enemies of Truth”?!? Ugh! This religious hatred breaks my heart. Do you even know any transgender people? Life is hard enough without people causing trouble for one another especially children … especially in the name of God. Honestly, this is the most unChrist like behavior I can imagine. Please stop.

Seriously? The most un-Christlike behavior Mayes can imagine is opposition to co-ed locker rooms? Has she heard of ISIS?

There is no doubt that gender-dysphoric children experience challenges, but the proper response to their disordered and futile attempt to reject their immutable biological sex should not be to allow them to invade the private spaces of opposite-sex children.

The objections to co-ed restrooms and locker rooms articulated in the “Enemies of Truth” article have nothing to do with “ogling.” The central objection to the sexual integration of private spaces pertains to the intrinsic meaning of biological sex, particularly with regard to modesty and privacy.

Whether Kentish and Mayes acknowledge it, allowing an objectively male student in girls’ private spaces (or vice versa) necessarily means that objective, immutable biological sex has no intrinsic meaning relative to modesty and privacy.

If, however, biological sex has meaning, then biological males who wish they were girls have no more right in girls’ locker rooms than do biological males who are content with their sex. Either objective, immutable biological sex matters or it doesn’t. If it matters, then boys and girls should not be sharing private spaces. If it doesn’t matter, then there is no reason to have any sex-segregated restrooms, locker rooms, showers, shelters or semi-private hospital rooms anywhere.

And if biological sex doesn’t matter in private spaces, then why is District 211 requiring the boy who is pretending to be a girl to use a private changing area? Doesn’t that requirement suggest that biological sex does, in reality, mean something?

When I worked at Deerfield High School where my children attended and were swimmers, I could walk into the locker room where the girl swimmers were changing and showering to talk to my daughter. I could not walk into the boys’ locker room to talk to my son. If during my children’s high school years, I were to have “transitioned” to a male, should I have been prohibited from entering the girls’ locker room and been permitted to enter the boys’?

Despite Kentish’s claim, it is not bigotry that leads girls to desire separation from boys when changing clothes. And it is not bigotry that leads girls not to want to do their business in a stall next to an unrelated boy doing his business. It is natural and good for girls and boys to want to undress and do their business in sex-segregated spaces.

Since Mayes objects to my claim that proponents of co-ed restrooms are enemies of truth, perhaps I should clarify what I meant and to whom the comment was directed.

• Anyone who claims that people can change their sex is an enemy of truth.

• Anyone who claims that private spaces should correspond to subjective feelings about biological sex rather than to objective sex is an enemy of truth.

• Anyone who claims that compassion, inclusivity, love, or Christ demands the sexual integration of restrooms and locker rooms is an enemy of truth. The Bible teaches that God created us male and female. God prohibits cross-dressing. And God prohibits bearing false witness. The love that Jesus embodied and taught does not affirm all human desires, beliefs, and actions. Quite the contrary. Jesus himself said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.”

• Anyone who believes that the government (i.e., public school administrations) has a right to require employees to lie by referring to gender-dysphoric students by opposite-sex pronouns is an enemy of truth.

• Anyone who believes that it is a good thing to give minors puberty-blockers, cross-sex hormones, or double-mastectomies is an enemy of truth.

The blame for locker room controversies in public schools rests not with parents who believe that biological sex matters but with parents of gender-dysphoric children who are trying to impose their arguable assumptions about “gender identity” on everyone and on their liberal allies who seek to humiliate and stigmatize dissenters. And here’s where children come in.

Policies that permit co-ed restrooms and locker rooms implicitly teach what Kentish and Mayes explicitly say: They teach all children that their desire not to share private spaces with opposite-sex persons is intolerant, ignorant, unjustly discriminatory, bigoted, hateful, and un-Christlike. When Kentish, Mayes and countless other “progressives” vilify opponents of co-ed restrooms and locker rooms, they are necessarily vilifying and shaming conservative kids. And that is shameful bullying.

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Three conservative organizations are sponsoring the “Free Speech Bus” on which are written these words:

#FreeSpeechBus
It’s biology:
Boys are boys…and always will be.
Girls are girls…and always will be.
You can’t change sex. Respect all.

The performance was stunning, as New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard absolutely smoked the competition, beating her nearest competitor, a Samoan woman, by nearly 20 kilograms. The only problem is that Laurel is a biological male, born Gavin, which is why a number of the competitors felt the competition was unfair.

But of course it’s unfair. Hubbard is a male, not a female, and even after months of hormone treatments, he still has unfair advantages over the other women, who sacrificed for years to make it to this elite level, only to lose to a man. How is that right?

As one woman tweeted in response to this news, “Imagine training for this your whole life, as a woman, only to have a known leader in men’s weightlifting take your title.”

When “Equality” Isn’t Fair

Gavin Hubbard had “previously competed at a national level in men’s weightlifting,” making it all the more absurd that he would now be competing against women, which is why his presence was “met with criticism from Australian competitors who believe a transgender athlete in the female weightlifting category was not an equal playing field.”

Not an equal playing field indeed — no more than it was an equal playing field when a female high school wrestler taking testosterone defeated all the other girls she wrestled against (she’s on hormone treatments as part of her “transitioning” to male) and no more than it was an equal playing field when a male-to-female mixed martial artist manhandled (literally) her female opponents.

After the wrestling competition, Patti Overstreet, the mother of another wrestler, said, “She’s standing there holding her head high like she’s the winner. She’s not winning. She’s cheating. It’s not equal. It’s never going to be equal.”

In response to this, cultural commentator Bill Muehlenberg wrote, “Nope, it sure ain’t equality, and it sure never will be. Trying to treat unequal things equally will always result in blatant, appalling inequality. And in the case of sports, it will result in more women being taken to hospital — if not the morgue.”

When it comes to the weightlifting competition, one of the other lifters said, “We all deserve to be on an even playing field. It’s difficult when you believe that you’re not. If it’s not even, why are we doing the sport?”

Exactly? Why compete at all? Why have men compete against men and women compete against women? Why have weight classes? Why not just throw everyone into the same competition and have the world’s strongest (or fastest) human — of either sex, in any weight class, at any distance, in any event? Why not blur all distinctions, if a man can now compete side by side with women?

Ridiculously, Phil Gifford, described as a prominent sports writer, said “Hubbard had every right to compete with the women after passing ‘straightforward’ hormone regulations.”

Specifically, he argued, “It’s testosterone levels which is a much more scientific way of measuring male gender, female gender than anything else that is currently known. And Lauren has passed all of those tests over the last 12 months.”

So, then, a man who had lowered testosterone levels but all the other physical advantages a male would have over other women should be allowed to compete with the ladies? Just a glance at the pictures in the news report, in which Hubbard dwarfs his competitors, would tell you that something is not fair here.

When the World Revolves Around Revolving Genders

But no, the whole world must revolve around the perceptions of those who identify as transgender, regardless of how it hurts others, regardless of how it inconveniences others, regardless of what new inequities it causes. As one trans activist asked me after a lengthy twitter interaction, “So where are we supposed to go to the bathroom?” — meaning that the social issue that mattered was the convenience of trans individuals. Any consideration of the needs of others was immaterial.

Not surprisingly, David Mills recently shared this report from a distressed mother who encountered a man in the ladies’ room at Disneyland: “He wasn’t even peeing, washing his hands or doing anything else that you’d do in a restroom. He was just standing off to the side looking smug … untouchable … doing absolutely nothing.”

As described by Kristin Quintrail, this man “did a lap around the restroom walking by all the stalls. You know, the stalls that have 1 inch gaps by all the doors hinges so you can most definitely see everyone with their pants around their ankles and vagina clear as day.”

As Mills explains, “The man, apparently a fairly large man, wasn’t a man ‘transitioning’ to try to be a woman. The ‘very progressive’ Quintrail would have been fine with that. He was a predator. His way of being a predator was to transgress a boundary — the women’s room door — so that he could intimidate women and their children.”

So, this was apparently a heterosexual predator, not a transgender male-to-female, yet none of the women had the courage to ask him to leave, fearing if they did “he might respond by claiming to identify as a woman.”

As some of us have warned for some time now, and as an increasing number of cases confirms as a real danger, when the law says that you can use the bathroom of your perceived gender, that opens the door to abuses such as this. After all, if the only criterion is who I perceive myself to be, who can argue with it?

Quintrail rightly exclaimed at the end of her blog article, “Gender just can’t be a feeling. There has to be science to it. DNA, genitals, amount of Sephora make up on your face, pick your poison. … I’m sorry it can’t just be a feeling when there’s but a mere suggestion of a door with a peep hole separating your eyes from my vagina or my children’s genitals.”

And the science needs to be better than the “science” being used in Olympic sports worldwide, which allowed for the totally unfair results in the recent, aforementioned weightlifting competition.

Time to Say “Enough”

Speaking of unfair, Neil Munro reported last week that, “Two women were kicked out of a homeless shelter to make room for a man because he said he is a transgender woman, according to a Canadian news report.

“The women objected when they were told they would have to share a bedroom and live in the shelter with the man, and so ‘both were asked to leave the shelter for good,’ said the TV reporter.”

One of the women, named Tracey, said, “I was uncomfortable with my roommate being transgender. He wants to become a woman, I mean that is his choice but when a man comes into a women’s shelter who still has a penis and genitals, he has more rights than we do.”

And that says it all: This man who identifies as a woman has more rights than the other women, and they have to leave to make room for him.

Can you join me in saying “Enough!”

Let’s continue to look for ways to help those struggling with gender identity confusion while protecting the rights of the rest of society. If enough of us raise our voices, positive change will come.

This article was originally posted at The Stream.

­­A refreshing and much-needed take-down of the ethically impoverished Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and its avaricious founder Morris Dees inspired me to recount IFI’s true story about our interaction with the blackguards who maintain the SPLC’s “hate groups” list.

The impetus for Carl Cannon’s critique of the SPLC on Real Clear Politics was the recent assault on esteemed scholar Charles Murray at Middlebury College in Vermont, an assault that was inspired by the pernicious SPLC, the same organization that inspired the shooting at the Family Research Council’s headquarters in 2012.

In early March, 2009, about six months after I started working for IFI, we learned that IFI had been put on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) “hate” groups list.

Since IFI stands unequivocally opposed to both violence and hatred, we wondered why we were listed as an “anti-gay” hate group when other institutions like the Roman Catholic Church and many Protestant denominations that share our same views on matters related to homosexuality were not.

Why the SPLC first claimed IFI was put on its hate groups list

For clarification I called the SPLC and spoke with Heidi Beirich. Our conversation was troubling in that Ms. Beirich revealed that even a tenuous, distant connection to statements the SPLC doesn’t like will land an organization on their hate groups list.

She told me that the only reason IFI had been included on the hate groups list was that in 2005, a former IFI executive director had posted a very short article by someone not affiliated with IFI.

Although there were no defamatory comments made in this piece, Beirich claimed that in other articles that never appeared on IFI, the author had suggested that (in Beirich’s words) “Gays are sickly, and people should stay away from them.” IFI had no idea if that claim were true, but if it were, IFI would reject it, find it inconsistent with Scripture, and find it repellent. The problem was IFI had never cited or endorsed such rhetoric, and yet the SPLC had labeled IFI as an active “hate” group based on it.

Beirich also claimed that in the short article IFI had re-posted, the author had claimed that homosexual men have shortened lifespans—a claim that Beirich viewed as incorrect. I responded that I could see how a statistic could be erroneous and derived from flawed methodology, but I didn’t see erroneous statistics as defamatory or hateful.

More important, the same finding regarding reduced life expectancy for homosexual men had been reported by a world-renowned medical journal and cited as true by homosexual activists when it served their purposes.

That study, which appeared in Oxford University’s International Journal of Epidemiology, concluded that “In a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men. If the same pattern of mortality were to continue, we estimate that nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 years will not reach their 65th birthday.”

Also, in their book Caring For Lesbian and Gay People-A Clinical Guide, authors Dr. Allan Peterkin and Dr. Cathy Risdon suggest that the life expectancy of gay/bisexual men in Canada is 55 years.

What the SPLC’s Mark Potok did next

Following our exposé of the reason for the SPLC’s inclusion of IFI on their “anti-gay” hate groups list, the SPLC started receiving complaints, which evidently didn’t sit too well with them. As a result of those complaints, the editor of their ironically named “Intelligence Report,” which includes the hate groups list, Mark Potok, started leaving troubling voice messages around the country for those who called to complain.

Here’s a transcription of one of those messages:

Yes, Hi, this is a message for . . . from Mark Potok, Southern Poverty Law Center. Very briefly, I just wanna say very briefly – we do list them (Illinois Family Institute) for a reason, which we’ve stated publicly. They (IFI) have been less, in my opinion, than honest about what we really said. They publish and promote the work of a man named Paul Cameron. Paul Cameron is a guy who is infamous for over the last 20 years for producing, for publishing fake studies that allege all kinds of terrible things about homosexuals. For instance, that gay men are, something like, 20 times more likely to molest children; that gay men have an average death age of something like 43 because they’re so sickly and, ya know, sorta do such terrible things. These things are completely false and have been proven false long ago. Our view is that the Illinois Family Institute promotes these complete falsehoods. Then that is hateful activity. We never list any group on the basis of simply disagreeing morally or otherwise with homosexuality. We told the Illinois Family Institute directly that if they remove this material from their website, in fact, that we would take them off the list. Instead, what they’ve done is essentially launched an attack on us to try to get people to call us as you did. Anyway, that’s all. I just wanted to at least briefly explain that it was not quite the way it was being portrayed.

Contrary to Potok’s claim that the SPLC had publicly stated their reason for including IFI on their “anti-gay” hate groups list, to my knowledge, prior to my phone call to them, they had never publicly stated their reason. And stating their reason in a private phone conversation with me doesn’t constitute a public statement.

Was IFI dishonest?

After I heard his voice message in which Potok stated that IFI had “been less than honest,” I called and spoke to him, informing him that in my article, I was scrupulously honest about what Heidi Beirich had said to me. In fact, I even included a follow-up email in which Beirich confirmed the reason for the SPLC’s inclusion of IFI on the SPLC’s  “hate” groups list.

Was the SPLC accurate in their description of what IFI had done?

Mr. Potok stated in his voice message that we “publish and promote the work of a man named Paul Cameron.” This grossly misrepresented the nature of our involvement with Cameron’s work. It suggests that we regularly or continually published and promoted his work, when, by Potok’s and Beirich’s own admission, we published only one brief article.

More troubling yet, this one article contained no statements remotely like these that Potok claimed it did: “gay men are, something like, 20 times more likely to molest children” or that “they’re so sickly and, ya know, sorta do such terrible things.”

Potok dug himself in even deeper when he said in his voice message that it is the SPLC’s view that “the Illinois Family Institute promotes these complete falsehoods.” He was saying that IFI promotes falsehoods that the SPLC’s own evidence proves we did not promote. The SPLC’s own evidence was the one four-year-old article that did not include any references to “child molestation,” or “sickly homosexuals sorta doing terrible things.” Potok was lying.

Suspicious timing of the SPLC’s addition of IFI to their hate groups list

I asked Mr. Potok if IFI had been on the SPLC’s hate groups list since 2005 when the challenged article was posted. He replied “No.” I then asked when we were first listed, and he said 2008. So, they added us to their list in 2008 based on one brief article posted in 2005. Coincidentally, I started writing for IFI in 2008.

Exposing the SPLC’s deceit

In order to expose the deceit of the SPLC, IFI took the offending article down in 2009, and the SPLC took us off the hate groups list. Then in 2010, we were back on. What happened in 2010?

Well, in 2010, Potok and his accomplices Heidi Beirich, Evelyn Schlatter, and Robert Steinback finally got around to manufacturing criteria for determining what constitutes a “hate group.”

In 2010, the SPLC created a definition of “hatred” that is elastic enough to allow the inclusion of organizations the SPLC doesn’t like. The dubious criteria dubiously applied focus on social science research or propositions that the SPLC doesn’t like.

Schlatter explains that the “propagation” of “known falsehoods” about homosexuality will result in organizations being included on the SPLC’s “anti-gay” list and perhaps also on their hate groups list.

I’m not sure if the anti-Christian activists at the SPLC actually understand what a “known falsehood” (also called a lie) is. A known falsehood is a statement that is objectively, provably false and is known to be false when made.

So, let’s take a closer look at just four of the ten “known falsehoods” that Schlatter and co-author Robert Steinback cite in their companion article “10 Anti-Gay Myths Debunked”.

Alleged falsehood about hate crimes legislation and the repeal of  DADT

The SPLC has said that if an organization argues that hate crime legislation may result in the jailing of pastors who condemn volitional homosexual acts as sinful, the organization is guilty of “anti-gay” hatred and will be included on the SPLC’s hate groups list. And any organization that argues that allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military will damage the military merits inclusion on its “anti-gay” hate groups list.

How can the SPLC sensibly claim that speculating that hate crimes legislation may lead to the jailing of pastors who condemn homosexuality is a known falsehood? It is a prediction of possible future events that may result from the logical working out of a law. This prediction may not come to fruition, but at this point it cannot reasonably be deemed a “known falsehood.”

And how can a prediction about the effects of allowing homosexuals to serve openly in the military be a known falsehood? Certainly, there are differences of opinion on the effects of the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, but liberal speculation that such a change will not damage the military is not a known truth.

Alleged falsehood concerning mental illness and drug use among homosexuals

If any organization states that homosexuals experience higher rates of depression or drug use might land on the hate groups list. The SPLC engages in some tricksy rhetoric to defend this criterion. Schlatter and Steinback argue that mental health organizations no longer consider homosexuality a mental disorder, which is true but has no relevance to the fact—which even the SPLC concedes—that homosexuals experience much higher rates of mental illness and drug and alcohol abuse than the general population.

What really sticks in the craw of the SPLC is that conservative organizations don’t agree with the unproven speculation by the SPLC and some social scientists that the reasons for the increased incidence of mental disorders and drug use are social stigma and “discrimination.”

Alleged falsehood about children raised by homosexuals

The SPLC deems hateful the claim that same-sex parents harm children. Potok and his minions don’t define harm and apparently reject a whole body of social science research that claims that children fare best when raised by a mother and father in an intact family. Even President Obama in his Mother’s Day and Father’s Day proclamations argued that both are essential to the welfare of children.

While homosexual activists exalt even the most poorly constructed social science research if it reinforces their presuppositions, they reject better constructed studies that undermine them. If organizations don’t accept the ever-fluid, controvertible, and highly politicized social science research that the SPLC favors, they go on the “hate group” list.

Alleged falsehood about persons who choose to leave homosexuality

If an organization claims that people can “choose to leave homosexuality,” it risks being added to the hate groups list.  But there exist people who choose to stop engaging in homoerotic activity, and choose to leave homoerotic relationships, and choose no longer to place unwanted homoerotic attraction at the center of their identity.  There are former homosexuals like Rosaria Butterfield and Michael Glatze who are now happily married to opposite-sex persons. How can making a true statement about the possibility that humans can make choices about their sexual  identity be construed as a known falsehood or hateful?

Next time a feckless school board member or politician cites the Southern Poverty Law Center to discredit the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, or the Illinois Family Institute, do your level best to confront their ignorance and bigotry with truth.

Illinois House Committee Approves HB 1785
Falsified Birth Certificates

This morning, the Illinois House Human Services Committee held a hearing on a highly controversial proposal that would legalize fraud through the alteration of birth certificates by gender-dysphoric persons who wish to have the government reinforce their deceit.

The bill passed on a party line vote: 7 Democrats voted yea, while 4 Republicans voted no.

State Representative Greg Harris (D-Chicago), who represents a segment of Chicago’s gay community, is one of three openly homosexual members of the Illinois General Assembly and an LGBT activist, is once again pushing this deceit, as he did last session.

HB 1785 would amend the Vital Records Act to allow transgender Illinoisans to easily change their gender and name on their birth certificate. According to HB 1785, all that would be needed is for a licensed health care worker or mental health professional to issue a declaration that the gender dysphoric person has undergone “gender transition treatment,” which doesn’t necessarily include surgery.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send an email message to your state representative to ask him/her to reject HB 1785 and uphold birth certificates as legal documents.  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.  Ask your lawmaker to vote NO to the Birth Certificate Designation Act, HB 1785.

IFI’s Laurie Higgins‘ rightly pointed out in an article earlier this year:

[I]t’s critical to remember that cross-dressing, hormone-doping, and surgical mutilations do not turn males into females or vice versa. Compassion and a commitment to truth dictate that we must not treat students who take cross-sex hormones as if they are in reality the sex they are not.

And the government should never be required to participate in a science-denying fiction.

It is staggering to see a modern civilization snookered into accepting (or pretending to accept) the science-denying superstition that surgical tinkering and hormone-doping can turn a man into a woman or vice versa. The ordinary men and women behind the curtain promoting this superstition know full well that no human’s sex can change, so they had to invent new language to confuse and deceive…

Please take action today to let your state representative know what you think of this legislation.  The Capitol switchboard number is (217) 782-2000.

Please also note that this bill is cosponsored by State Representatives Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago), Barbara Flynn Currie (D-Chicago), Will Guzzardi (D-Chicago), Emanuel Chris Welch (D-Westchester), Sam Yingling (D-Round Lake Beach), Cynthia Soto (D-Chicago), La Shawn Ford (D-Chicago), Silvana Tabares (D-Chicago), Ann Williams (D-Chicago), Carol Ammons (D-Champaign), Robyn Gabel (D-Evanston), Litesa Wallace (D-Rockford), Sara Feigenholtz (D-Chicago), Theresa Mah (D-Chicago), Lou Lang (D-Skokie), and Laura Fine (D-Glenview).

Organizations lobbying in favor of this legislation include:  the ACLU of Illinois, Equality Illinois, Trans-Life Center, and Safe Schools Alliance.

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Written by Mike Konrad

Pharmaceutical companies have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to test new drugs. Yet, we in America are permitting confused youth to be used as guinea pigs in medical procedures that mutilate the anatomy and flood the body with potentially damaging hormones.

The current rush to acceptance of transgenderism ignores a problem beyond the immediately obvious. Are we setting up hundreds of thousands for early deaths due to cancer?

Every cell in the human body has a sexual fingerprint in the sex chromosome (allosome) pairs. The born male has a XY pair. The born female an XX. These chromosomes do serve a function beyond mere reproduction. Without getting too complicated:

Most genes contain the information needed to make functional molecules called proteins. — Genetics Home Reference

Essentially, the chromosomes, which carry those genes, are the control center of the cell, the central processing unit — controlling processes above and apart from cell reproduction. Protein synthesis, so necessary for life, is controlled by these chromosomes. We would be foolish not to conjecture that Y chromosomes were not designed to act properly in cell floating in a bath of female hormones; neither an XX pair in cell floating under a bath of male hormones. Since these hormones might conceivably cause cells to go awry in protein production, as well as in cell reproduction, we should not be surprised to see unusual problems of transgenders with cancers. Add in that transgenders, even after surgery, will retain residue tissue unique to one gender, and noting that those specific tissues will be subjected to hormone levels they were not designed to process, and the possible outcomes become frightening.

The research is just starting …

There is a dangerous paucity of data on transgender health issues, and little research, which is why the NIH launched a five-year study of trans youth last year. — Newsweek

In September 2015, the Lancet editorialized:

Case reports and anecdotal evidence suggest that transgender people have a disproportionate cancer burden, but without high-level evidence, health-care providers are stifled in their ability to provide adequate guidance. — The Lancet

Well, why would anyone expect anything else? Hormones are powerful chemicals. Yet, with complete disregard to possible future consequences, our society has endeavored to allow a dispensing of cocktails of these hormones to teens who seek to reorient themselves.

There is a body of evidence which suggests that abortions, which interrupt the hormonal cycles in expectant mothers, are behind the higher rates of breast cancers in such women. Apparently, the human body was not designed to be so abruptly turned on and off.

In 2013, Dr. Rebecca Johnson, a cancer specialist at Seattle Children’s Hospital, released results of a study that demonstrated that the number of advanced breast cancer cases has increased among younger women, aged 25-39 years. After an analysis of 34 years worth of data from many countries, Johnson and her colleagues found that induced abortion was likely a causal — not correlational — risk factor for the development of breast cancer. —Breitbart

Or this, from the American Cancer Society:

In 2004, the Collaborative Group on Hormonal Factors in Breast Cancer, based out of Oxford University in England, put together the results of many studies that looked at abortion and breast cancer risk. It looked at both cohort and case-control studies. When the studies that gathered information retrospectively (case-control studies) were looked at together, there were about 39,000 women with breast cancer (the cases) that were compared to about 48,000 women who hadn’t had breast cancer (the controls). They found about an 11% increased risk of breast cancer in women who reported having an induced abortion

Some other retrospective studies published since then have also found an increased risk, including a case-control study of about 1,300 women from China (published in 2012) and a case-control study of 300 women in Iran (published in 2011). — American Cancer Society

The implications are disputed by other studies — which the American Cancer Society also lists. Some charge that politically correct pressure is being applied to squash the evidence. Even the American Cancer Society, which waffles on the implications, admits that more than scientific evidence is at play.

Induced abortion brings up many strong feelings in people, so it is often hard to study its long-term effects. — American Cancer Society

What is clear is that no one is absolutely sure, and there seems to be a good possibility of an increase in cancer.

If merely interrupting the natural hormonal cycle of a pregnancy might be enough to cause cancer, what can we expect when the natural cycles in humans are not merely interrupted, but stopped altogether and replaced by the hormones of the opposite sex, introduced into a body where every cell is keyed in opposition to the new hormonal environment.

…Trans Man’s Breast Cancer Nightmare Exemplifies The Problem With Transgender Health Care — Huffington Post

Now, take this a step further, and what should we expect when mothers indulge (or possibly influence) their sons’ wish to be female, such as Avery Jackson who appeared on the cover of National Geographic.

She [Avery’s mother] has said Avery will take hormone blockers when she reaches puberty, and that if she wanted surgery in the future it would be something the family would consider. — Daily Mail

Hormone blockers?! Male and female brains are different. All his life, Avery’s brain has been male. Then suddenly, a switch will be turned off.

Or how about this mother, who gives her 14-year-old boy estrogen?

And what should society do when courts order a father to treat his daughter as a boy?

In the meantime, the judge ordered, P.K. will continue to get the hormone blockers. — LifeSite News

Do these jurists understand that skeletal and brain development during puberty will be irreversible should the child later on change its mind?

Do they even realize that transgenders often try to kill themselves?

Hence, it’s of little surprise that, tragically, of those who put themselves through this imaginary “transition,” 41 percent will subsequently attempt suicide. — Barbwire

Finally, the American College of Pediatricians — not the more powerful American Academy of Pediatricians — has condemned this indulgence of transgenderism as child abuse.

The treatment of [Gender Dysphoria] in childhood with hormones effectively amounts to mass experimentation on, and sterilization of, youth who are cognitively incapable of providing informed consent. There is a serious ethical problem with allowing irreversible, life-changing procedures to be performed on minors who are too young to give valid consent themselves; adolescents cannot understand the magnitude of such decisions. — “Gender Dysphoria in Children,” American College of Pediatricians

But if one jumps through all the hoops of common sense to still defend transgenderism, we are left with the yet not fully known prospect of cancer.

Among the health issues faced by transgender people, cancer has received little scientific attention. Until very recently, no long-term health-tracking studies have focused specifically on cancer in transgender individuals, and the few that are now under way will require years, even decades, to yield useful information. — Dana Farber

However, we do have a good inkling of what is coming.

A July 2015 report published by the World Health Organization (WHO) highlights distinct health risks for the world’s transgender community.

Of particular note is the measurably higher risk of cervical, ovarian, and uterine cancer faced by transgender men who retain genitalia they were born with. — Quartz

Or this:

For a transgender man, excessive testosterone can be converted into estrogen by the body, which leads to increased cancer risk. —transgenderequality.wordpress.com

Or this:

We present the case of a transgender woman who developed rising testosterone and estradiol levels while on feminizing hormones. After months of uncertainty about the cause of her elevated hormone levels, her physician found a large testicular mass on examination. The patient was diagnosed with a rare virilizing form of testicular cancer. — http://online.liebertpub.com

Apparently, the body does not take so kindly to reorientation, and evinces its displeasure.

How in the world could any of this slip by the medical community at large without a large number of doctors standing athwart this idiocy to say: stop!

Insanity at this level is not benign, but deliberate. The American Medical Association is delinquent in its duty for not opposing this. I cannot believe most American doctors are clueless; but I can believe they are cowed into silence. We are sacrificing a generation of confused children and adults to the Moloch of political correctness spawned by the rather small, but ferocious, LBGT community. Not merely will these confused children be neutered, but they may soon be victims of hitherto unknown hormonally-induced cancer epidemics.

Why is almost no one mentioning this?

This article was originally posted at AmericanThinker.com

The recent “March for Women” in Washington, D.C., might have been  a bit vague in its goal, but it sure was vulgar its execution. It also provided nice fodder for this series on identity politics.

This is from the Free Beacon — not The Onion. Really. I’m not kidding. Here is the title and subtitle of a post from freebeacon.com:

Transgender Activists Upset Over ‘White Cis Women March’
Women’s march ‘dangerous space’ with ‘oppressive message’ that ‘having a vagina is essential to womanhood’

If you’re keeping score, here’s the basic substance:

Transgender activists are upset that the women’s march over the weekend was not inclusive to biological men who identify as women, as the protest presented an “oppressive message” that having a “vagina is essential to womanhood.”

Saturday’s event to oppose the inauguration of Donald Trump was largely a “white cis women march,” with too many pictures of female reproductive organs and pink hats, according to trans women and “nonbinary” individuals interviewed by Mic.com.

A fight is brewing between “trans-exclusionary radical feminists,” or “TERFs,” and transwomen, according to the article, “How the Women’s March’s ‘genital-based’ feminism isolated the transgender community.”

The women’s march had an over-reliance on slogans and posters depicting gender norms, like using pink to represent women and girls, said some transgender activists who boycotted the march.

Okee dokee. You can confirm that this isn’t from The Onion by clicking here. Here is just one more excerpt from someone offended by the event:

‘I believe there’s a lot of inequality that has to do with genitals—that’s not something you can separate from the feminist movement,’ the transwoman added. ‘But I feel like I’ve tried to get involved in feminism and there’s always been a blockade there for trans women.’

On the topic of “misguided” “genital-based womanhood” that was espoused by the women’s march, let us quickly move to our paraphilia of the day: Autoandrophilia. First you need to know that for the sake of time I will occasionally include similar paraphilias — in this case, the connecting theme is the need for a terrific imagination. For the sake of space, I’m going to post the abbreviated definitions — you can follow the individual links to learn more. Since I have no idea what the proper listing order should be, let’s just go with, uh, ladies first:

Autoandrophilia: A biological female imagining herself as a male

Autogynephilia: A biological man imagining himself as a female

Autonepiophilia: The image of one’s self in the form of an infant.

Autopedophilia: The image of one’s self in the form of a child.

Autozoophilia: The image of one’s self in the form of an animal or anthropomorphized animal.

I hope our readers won’t mind the abbreviated label “auto*philia” representing all of the above.

Let’s close with a question: Will wannabe auto*philia-loving journalists form professional journalism associations (such as this one) to monitor and exploit the Fourth Estate in the service of breaking down barriers and normalizing auto*philia?

Here’s another question: if America is to be truly free, shouldn’t all sexcentric-identified individuals be treated equally under the law?

Lastly, here is related short interview by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson — here’s the headline and lead-in:

Obama’s transgender bathroom mandate and strange bedfellows

One Christian organization and a radical feminist group are the most unlikely tag team partners in a challenge to former president’s transgender bathroom order.

Image credit: www.webneel.com.

Articles in this series, from oldest to newest:

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Introducing a Series

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Incest

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Body Integrity Identity Disorder

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Impact & Transgenders

Transgenderism a Choice or Disorder?

Why the Term “Sexual Orientation” is Nonsense

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Man’s Search for Meaning

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Leftists smugly ask what they perceive to be THE “gotcha” question about trannies in restrooms: “So, are we going to have genital police?” To those smugsters, I ask, “How will you determine whether the burly, bearded, bulging-biceped person in the women’s restroom or locker room is a member of the “trans” cult or a predator pretending to be a member of the “trans” cult?”

Please read this short blog post from liberal California mom Kristen Quintrall whose eyes were (partially) opened by an experience in the women’s restroom at Disneyland:

I didn’t know if I was going to write this blog or not. A part of me was scared it’d be shared as some transgender hot piece about yet another homophobic mom lashing out at Disney and then I’d have to deal with the wrath of the internet telling me to kill myself. So let me be clear. This isn’t that story. This is a story about a biological man in the women’s restroom.

I’ve lived in Los Angeles for over a decade and have seen my fair share of transgender/gender fluid people. They in no way offend me. I’d consider myself pretty progressive and tolerant of most things….But how transgender people feel, how they choose to dress or any surgeries they get, don’t infringe on any parts of my life, so I support their decision to live as they see fit. I’ve also seen my fair share of transgender women in the women’s restroom before. Not ALL the time. But over the past few years, I’d say 4-5 that I noticed. Men…who were in some stage of transition and making every attempt to be a woman from mascara to heels. Transgenders who certainly felt comfortable in the women’s room and probably frightened to go into the men’s. At these times, I smiled…I peed…and life went on. But 2 weeks ago something very different happened. 

I was at Disneyland with my son, my friend and her son. We were over in California Adventure in the food court area. We’d just finished eating and decided to pee before we headed out to The Little Mermaid. I went to the bathroom while she watched our boys in their strollers, and then I did the same…. 

I was off to the side waiting with the two boys, when I noticed a man walk into the restroom. My first thought was “Oh sh*t, he’s walked in the wrong restroom by mistake. lol” He took a few more steps, at which point he would’ve definitely noticed all the women lined up and still kept walking. My next thought was, “Maybe he’s looking for his wife…or child and they’ve been in here a while.” But he didn’t call out any names or look around. He just stood off to the side and leaned up against the wall. At this point I’m like, “WTF? Ok there is definitely a very manly hispanic man in a Lakers jersey who just walked in here. Am I the only one seeing this?” I surveyed the room and saw roughly 12 women, children in tow…staring at him with the exact same look on their faces. Everyone was visibly uncomfortable. We were all trading looks and motioning our eyes over to him…like “what is he doing in here?” Yet every single one of us was silent. And this is the reason I wrote this blog. 

If this had been 5 years ago, you bet you’re a*s every woman in there would’ve been like, “Ummm what are you doing in here?”, but in 2017? the mood has shifted. We had been culturally bullied into silenced. Women were mid-changing their baby’s diapers on the changing tables and I could see them shifting to block his view. But they remained silent. I stayed silent. We all did. Every woman who exited a stall and immediately zeroed right in on him…said nothing. And why? B/c I…and I’m sure all the others were scared of that “what if”. What if I say something and he says he “identifies as a woman” and then I come off as the intolerant a*shole….? So we all stood there, shifting in our uncomfortableness…trading looks. I saw two women leave the line with their children. Still nothing was said. An older lady said to me out loud, “What is he doing in here?” I’m ashamed to admit I silently shrugged and mouthed, “I don’t know.” She immediately walked out…from a bathroom she had every right to use without fear.

So there lingered this unspoken doubt everyone had….that .00001% chance this wasn’t a man. Let me be clear. This was totally a man. If this wasn’t a man, this was a woman who had fully transitioned via surgery and hormones into a man and had also gotten an adam’s apple implant, chest hair and size 9-10 shoes ….and at that point, wtf are you doing in the women’s restroom?

And let me be clear, my problem wasn’t JUST that there was a man in the restroom. Its that he wasn’t even peeing, washing his hands or doing anything else that you’d do in a restroom. He was just standing off to the side looking smug…untouchable… doing absolutely nothing. He had to of noticed that every woman in the long line was staring at him. He didn’t care. He then did a lap around the restroom walking by all the stalls. You know, the stalls that have 1 inch gaps by all the doors hinges so you can most definitely see everyone with their pants around their ankles…..

So here I am…writing this blog, because honestly I need answers. We can’t leave this situation ambiguous any more. The gender debate needs to be addressed….and quickly. There have to be guidelines. It can’t just be a feeling. I’m sorry. I wish it could, but it can’t. I’m fine going by “if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck…it’s a duck.”…But this notion that we’re shamed into silence b/c we might offend someone, has gone too far.

There was a man in the bathroom. Not transgender. There was a man who felt entitled to be in the woman restroom, because he knew no one would say anything. There were 20-25 people by the time I left, who were scared and uncomfortable by his ominous presence. And the only thing stopping us, was our fear of political correctness and that the media has told us we don’t know what gender is anymore. I never want to be in the position again. Im not asking for permission to tell transgender people to get out my bathroom. I need to know it’s ok to tell a man, who looks like a man, to get the f*ck out. Gender just can’t be a feeling. There has to be science to it. DNA, genitals, amount of Sephora make up on your face, pick your poison, but as a very progressive woman…I’m sorry it can’t just be a feeling when theres but a mere suggestion of a door with a peep hole separating your eyes from my vagina or my children’s genitals.

I commend Quintrall for her courage and partial insight, but she doesn’t see the intellectual and moral incoherence that yet animate her new position.

She says this man wasn’t transgender. He was a “biological male.” She says there “has to be science to it.” Well, science tells us that the sex of persons can never change. Men who identify as “trans” remain always biological males. So, the man who through castration and cross-sex hormone-doping looks like a woman and talks like a woman remains forever a man. And women should be no more comfortable with the frock-wearing, Sephora-painted man sashaying past women doing their business in stalls than they would be if a construction worker in Carhartts lumbered past the stall door.

Objective sex either matters in private spaces or doesn’t matter. And if it doesn’t matter—if biological sex has no intrinsic meaning—we should eradicate all single-sex contexts everywhere. That would include restrooms, dressing rooms, locker rooms, showers, saunas, steam rooms, and semi-private hospital rooms.

Quintrall suggests that if this man-appearing person were actually a fully-“transitioned” “transman” (i.e., a woman), she should be using the men’s restroom. Wrong. Women cannot become men, and no women—not even women in disguise—belong in men’s restrooms.

And this brings us to the thorny problem of where these confused people should go to do their private business. Not to be unkind, but that’s a problem of their own creation. With regard to restrooms, most places of public accommodation have single-occupancy family restrooms that fully-disguised men and women can use. With regard to locker rooms, they’re out of luck. They should change and shower at home.

If people would bother to read more deeply on this critical cultural issue—that is, the meaning of sexual differentiation—they would learn that sexual anarchists seek to obliterate any and all public recognition of and respect for sexual differentiation.

The ignorant among us do not yet know that the “gender” eradication movement believes that “identifying” as the opposite sex requires nothing more than a verbal assertion. No diagnosis, no cross-dressing, no cross-sex hormone-doping, no surgery needed. Don’t misunderstand me. None of those can transmute men into women or vice versa. Unfortunately, I hear even from some purported conservatives that they’re fine with men who wish they were women using women’s restrooms as long as they’ve been castrated. But such a statement implies that the only issue with trannies in private spaces is the risk of physical predation in the form of peeping or assault. It’s not.

The central issue is the meaning of objective, immutable biological sex.

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Written by Josh Hetzler

The entire “transgender” movement rests on the proposition that a person can define his or her (or “ze”) own reality, and that society should recognize and yield to that conception of reality at all times in all places. It appears to be yet another unwieldy extension of the Supreme Court’s infamous declaration in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (upholding Roe v. Wade) that “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

Fine then, if those are the rules, two (or more) can play this game.

You can be free to define your reality by feelings, emotions, and personal experiences, as long as I am free to define my reality with biological facts, logical reasoning, and a belief in objective truth, both physical and spiritual.

For the sake of this experiment, I’ll concede that your “gender” is something altogether different than your sex, and that you should be entitled to be treated as your preferred gender in every way – in bathrooms, showers, restrooms, the use of preferred pronouns, etc.. I guess if “perception is reality”, then self-perception must be the ultimate reality.

Alright, now it’s my turn. You have to accept that there are only two sexes – male and female – as evidenced most obviously through biological and anatomical differences, that “gender” is simply another word for biological sex, that humans were created by God as either male or female, that one’s sex is immutable, and that in recognizing the profoundly unique differences between the sexes, society should honor their privacy and dignity with separate locker rooms, showers and restrooms. After all, in this game, I have an equally valid right to others’ respect and official recognition of my reality.

Sounds fair enough, right?

Oh wait…except for the fact that it doesn’t work at all. (Yes, I know that we BOTH innately recognize the objective “law of non-contraction” here.) That’s because the realities we’ve “created” are in direct conflict with one another. Together they present an irreconcilable contradiction such that, no matter how hard we try, there can be no peaceful coexistence. One conception of reality will eventually succumb to the other – you can bet your next group therapy session on it.

I wish this weren’t so. I really do. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could “all just get along” in a world in which we each define what’s real to us and then expect everyone else to live by the rules we create? Sounds pleasantly warm and fuzzy to me. Yet we all know such a place does not exist, nor could it ever. In case you had forgotten, this is precisely why we fight so fiercely over laws and public policies. We know that only one reality can prevail and that we’ll have to conform our behavior to it.

The question we must answer then is: Whose reality will prevail? Will we decide that reality is defined by some person’s feelings, emotions, or experiences? Will we decide to define reality by what we can see, touch, and perceive through our faculties of logic, reason, and common sense? Will it be some combination of these or some other standard altogether?

I think I know which conception of reality should prevail. But one thing I know for certain: this business of defining one’s own personal reality is as nonsensical as it is untenable. We don’t get to define reality, but we nevertheless have choices. We can either acknowledge its existence and align our behavior accordingly, or we can ignore it or pretend it doesn’t exist until invariably it hits us like a ton of bricks.

Josh Hetzler is Legislative Counsel for The Family Foundation in Virginia.

This article was originally posted at The Family Foundation.

The parenting blogger “Scary Mommy” and her husband—who have three young children—are divorcing. The proximate cause of their divorce is his homoerotic desire. The ultimate cause is rebellion against God.

Scary Mommy, Jill Smokler, and her husband Jeff have been married for 17 years. In a recent interview Jeff describes his love for Jill:

Jill and I are soul mates, and I knew that very early on.…She just completed me….[O]ver the years, my sexuality became much more a part of who I was….What’s amazing to me is how in love a gay man could be with a woman….I was in love with Jill as much as anybody could be in love with anybody. And for the first seven years of our relationship, that was enough, it truly was….We want to show folks that you can do divorce in a way that not just puts your children first, but can come from a place of love. And in our case, there has never been a shortage of love.

Yes, nothing says “putting your children first” quite like leaving their mother to have erotic relations with men.

Blog commenters defending this decision argue that the husband didn’t choose to experience homoerotic desire, that homoeroticism has always existed, and that the times they are a-changin’.

First, the fact that a person experiences powerful, seemingly persistent, and unchosen feelings does not mean that activity impelled by such feelings is intrinsically moral activity. Do we really want to defend the proposition that it is morally legitimate to act on every powerful, persistent, unchosen feeling? Yikes.

Second, divorce-defenders are right: There is nothing new under the sun. But what do people mean with such a statement? Consensual adult incest has always existed. Does the fact that it has always existed confer on it the status of a moral good?

Third, these divorce-defenders seem to suggest that the arc of morality bends ineluctably toward greater moral truth. They seem to be arguing that shifts in moral beliefs over time are always good (How they would explain the shift over time from approval of homosexuality to disapproval and back again to approval would be fascinating to hear). The inconvenient truth is that there exist objective, transcendent moral truths that do not change with the vagaries of cultural. In his book, Ideas Have Consequences, Richard Weaver wrote this:

Whoever argues for a restoration of values is sooner or later met with the objection that one cannot return, or as the phrase is likely to be, “you can’t turn the clock back.” By thus assuming that we are prisoners of the moment, the objection well reveals the philosophic position of modernism. The believer in truth, on the other hand, is bound to maintain that the things of highest value are not affected by time; otherwise the very concept of truth becomes impossible. In declaring that we wish to recover lost ideals and values, we are looking toward an ontological realm that is timeless.

Here’s a moral truth: Wedding vows are oaths—commitments proclaimed before God and man that a man and woman will remain united as husband and wife through the good and bad until death parts them. And such oaths entail self-denial. All lifelong married couples experience self-denial and that self-denial or self-sacrifice is not “fairly” or equally distributed.

Here’s another moral truth: Children need and deserve to have parents who are willing to sacrifice their desires for the good of their children—children for whom most parents claim they would lay down their lives. I guess setting aside homoerotic attraction is a bridge too far.

Scary Mommy’s soon to be ex-hubby (aka Selfish Daddy) told his young sons that “Mommy and Daddy are going to be happy now and happier people make better parents.”

What a self-serving, pop-psychology crock.

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Last fall Breakpoint’s John Stonestreet posted an op ed titled and subtitled, “LGBT Is not a Color: Stop Hijacking Civil Rights,” and here was the introduction: “Are sexual orientation and gender identity the same as race? That message is being snuck in all over the place.”

He writes about the “conflation between skin color and sexual orientation”:

Nobody wants to be on the wrong side of today’s equivalent of the Civil Rights struggle, or to be viewed like racists by future generations.

But the fact remains, the two issues are just not the same. And black leaders—many of whom fought for the right to be treated as equal human beings decades ago—keep telling us this.

Writing at the Charlotte Observer last summer, Clarence Henderson, the chairman of the North Carolina Martin Luther King, Jr., Commission, called it “insulting to liken African Americans’ continuing struggle for equality” to the LGBT movement.

“The language of ‘civil rights’ shouldn’t be hijacked to give privileges to the politically vocal while taking away freedoms” for everyone else, said Bishop Patrick Wooden at a gathering of black faith leaders in Raleigh. And Pastor Leon Threatt of Christian Faith Assembly in Charlotte, agreed: “Restrooms and showers separated by biological sex is common sense.”

. . .

The Civil Rights comparison will continue to crop up, but we’ve got to vocally and repeatedly point out why it’s false. Sexual urges don’t determine who we are, and recognizing the fact that God created us male and female isn’t racism. It’s reality.

“Sexual urges don’t determine who we are” isn’t difficult to understand; no one should be confused. Yet the advance of the “LGBT agenda” owes its success in promoting identity politics to just that kind of lack of understanding.

The premise of this series is that one important way to breakthrough to the confused is to make it clear how many possible “identities” there are, and thus just how many letters follow the first four — “LGBT.” It’s time for our next paraphilia — today let us focus on “fetishism.”

As previously noted, this investigation into the many paraphilias is a remedial education effort to put the discussion of so-called “gay rights” in its proper perspective. Experiencing and acting upon same-sex attraction is not comparable to race, but rather is comparable to the myriad and many ways people experience sexual arousal outside of natural sex between men and women.

Here is the Wikipedia page on fetishism as this article goes to press:

Sexual fetishism or erotic fetishism is a sexual fixation on a nonliving object or nongenital body part. The object of interest is called the fetish; the person who has a fetish for that object is a fetishist. A sexual fetish may be regarded as a non-pathological aid to sexual excitement, or as a mental disorder if it causes significant psychosocial distress for the person or has detrimental effects on important areas of their life. Sexual arousal from a particular body part can be further classified as partialism.

One more note of interest that actually increases our list of possible letters to follow “LGBT” — here is Wikipedia’s paragraph on types of fetishes:

In a review of 48 cases of clinical fetishism, fetishes included clothing (58.3%), rubber and rubber items (22.9%), footwear (14.6%), body parts (14.6%), leather (10.4%), and soft materials or fabrics (6.3%). A 2007 study counted members of Internet discussion groups with the word “fetish” in their name. Of the groups about body parts or features, 47% belonged to groups about feet (foot fetishism), 9% about body fluids, 9% about body size, 7% about hair (hair fetish), and 5% about muscles (muscle worship). Less popular groups focused on navels (navel fetishism), legs, body hair, mouth, and nails, among other things. Of the groups about objects, 33% belonged to groups about clothes worn on the legs or buttocks (such as stockings or skirts), 32% about footwear (shoe fetishism), 12% about underwear (underwear fetishism), and 9% about whole-body wear such as jackets. Less popular object groups focused on headwear, stethoscopes, wristwear, and diapers (diaper fetishism).

Are you overwhelmed with what the future holds as all these categories demand their rights and equality and recognition?

Let’s close with our next question in our long list of questions regarding all the various paraphilias: How will schools respond to requests to start pro-fetishism clubs to support students who experience such feelings and who seek to come out of the closet? Will the Day of Silence expand to include fetishism?

Up next: Leftists Can’t Navigate it Either.

Image credit: Breakpoint.

Articles in this series, from oldest to newest:

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Introducing a Series

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Incest

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Body Integrity Identity Disorder

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Impact & Transgenders

Transgenderism a Choice or Disorder?

Why the Term “Sexual Orientation” is Nonsense

Identity Politics and Paraphilias: Man’s Search for Meaning

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