“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter
the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will
of my Father who is in heaven.”  ~Matt. 7:31

Two influential bloggers who “identify” as Christians have rejected biblical orthodoxy in order to affirm homoeroticism as holy. Jen Hatmaker and Glennon Doyle Melton have chosen to reject two thousand years of church history to embrace heretical views of homoerotic activity and marriage.

Jen Hatmaker and her husband Brandon assure their followers that they studied the Bible closely using established hermeneutical principles; “engaged in hours of conversations with theologians, bishops, pastors, authors, and church leaders”; engaged in “a ton of prayer”; kept “a journal full of notes”; and even “researched the claims behind the Kinsey Scale” before they concluded that the Bible actually affirms the views that the Hatmakers were embracing before they embarked on their deep Scriptural studies.

The Hatmakers concluded that those theological views that emerged in the latter half of the latter half of the 20^th Century—views impelled not first by close study of Scripture but by the cultural movement to normalize homoeroticism—are correct. Like liberal theologians, the Hatmakers have concluded that only abusive homoerotic relationships are condemned by Scripture:

Every verse in the Bible that is used to condemn a “homosexual” act is written in the context of rape, prostitution, idolatry, pederasty, military dominance, an affair, or adultery. It was always a destructive act. It was always a sin committed against a person. And each type of sexual interaction listed was an abuse of God’s gift of sex and completely against His dream for marriage to be a lifelong commitment of two individuals increasingly and completely giving themselves to one another as Christ did for the church. But not one of these scriptures was written in the context of marriage or civil union (which simply did not exist at this time).

The Hatmakers evidently assume that the only reason Jesus defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman was that homoerotic “marriage” did not exist. They evidently believe that Jesus’ understanding of marriage as a sexually differentiated union was limited by his culture. In their view, Jesus’ understanding of marriage was a product of his limited knowledge.  The Hatmakers presume that if same-sex “marriage” had existed, surely Jesus would have defined marriage in the Bible as a union of any two people with their sexes being utterly irrelevant.

But if the sex of marriage partners is irrelevant, then what is the reason for limiting marriage to two people? Can’t three people love each other?

And since the Bible teaches that marriage is a picture of Christ—the bridegroom—and his church—the bride, are the Hatmakers saying there is no distinction in role or function between Christ and the church?

When asked if she would attend a friend’s “marriage” to a person of the same sex, Jen Hatmaker said, “I would attend that wedding with gladness, and I would drink champagne. I want the very best for my gay friends. I want love and happiness and faithfulness and commitment and community.”

Every Christian desires love, happiness, and faithfulness for their loved ones. But knowing what love is requires knowing first what is true. And no Christian should desire that an unholy relationship endure. Permanence does not mitigate the moral offense of homoerotic relationships. Commitment can no more transform an intrinsically immoral homoerotic relationship into a moral one than it could transform an intrinsically immoral incestuous relationship into a moral relationship.

Dr. Robert A. J. Gagnon, arguably the foremost authority on the Bible and homosexuality, has critiqued the late 20^th Century revisionist position that only exploitative, abusive homoerotic activity is condemned in Scripture. In his book The Bible and Homosexual Practice, Dr. Gagnon refutes the Hatmaker’s claim that the only homosexual acts condemned in Scripture are condemned were abusive or exploitative:

The prohibitions in Lev. 18:22 and 20:13 are unqualified: any man who lies with another male in the manner men lie with women (i.e., engaging in sexual intercourse) has committed an abomination. There are no exceptions. One finds no specifications regarding age of either participant. Neither is there any mention of the exploitative character of the relationship. If homosexual relationships were wrong primarily because they were exploitative, why would Lev. 20:13 specify a death penalty for both participants, the exploited as well as the exploiter?

The Hatmakers were motivated to critically reexamine what Scripture teaches about homosexuality by seeing “so much pain among the LGBTQ community: Suicidal teenagers. Divided families. Split churches. So. Much. Pain.” Let’s pray the Hatmakers don’t notice the pain of “zoophiles,” adulterers, and sibling-lovers. Let’s also pray that the Hatmakers do notice that church splits are largely caused by biblical revisionists like them and that the pain that results is felt not just by homosexuals but by the theologically orthodox as well.

While Jen Hatmaker until recently embraced theologically orthodox views, self-indulgent “Christian” blogger Glennon Doyle Melton has long made her unorthodox theological views known on her blog Momastery.

Melton, a recently divorced mother of three known for such faux-pearls of wisdom as “Life is brutal. But it’s also beautiful. Brutiful, I call it,” announced on Sunday night that she is “deeply, finally, FINE. Fine through my bones and soul and mind and just every fiber of me.”

And what is the cause of this deep, final bone and fiber-penetrating fineness? Could it be a renewed relationship with Jesus Christ? Nope. It’s her newfound homoerotic relationship with lesbian soccer star Abby Wambach.

For those who are unfamiliar, Melton, who has 645,000 Facebook followers, is a professional confessor in the mold of self-indulgent professional confessor Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love. Interestingly, Gilbert left her second husband for a homoerotic relationship with her best friend.

Oprah-esque/Gilbert-y Doyle rationalizes her self-indulgent, relativistic worldview to her children—a worldview manifestly non-Christian—arguing that through her selfishness she is a brave, empowering, feminist role model:

Now we are entering a new time which calls for a different type of leadership. And now it is my job as a leader not to concern myself too deeply about what you think and feel about me- about the way I live my life. That is what I want to model now, because that is what I want for YOU: I want you to grow so comfortable in your own being, your own skin, your own knowing – that you become more interested in your own joy and freedom and integrity than in what others think about you. That you remember that you only live once, that this is not a dress rehearsal and so you must BE who you are. I want you to refuse to betray yourself. Not just for you. For ALL OF US. Because what the world needs — in order to grow, in order to relax, in order to find peace, in order to become brave—is to watch one woman at a time live her truth without asking for permission or offering explanation.

When it comes to homoerotic activity, there is no such thing as “her truth.” There is only objective, eternal transcendent truth. And the betrayal revealed by Melton, who claims to be a Christian, is her betrayal of her commitment to Christ and rebellion against the will of the Father.

Those who care about Melton’s children and the temporal and eternal lives of both Melton and Wambach should pray that they will be called to Christ like Rosaria Butterfield who was deeply entrenched in a life defined by homosexuality and recently wrote this:

I was not converted out of homosexuality. I was converted out of unbelief. I didn’t swap out a lifestyle. I died to a life I loved.

The worldly view of “identity” stands diametrically opposed to a biblical view of identity. As I wrote in an earlier article, “progressives” always in thrall to subjective feelings have redefined “identity” to render it immune from moral judgment:

Homosexual activists began transforming the concept of “identity.” They sought to recast identity as something intrinsically inviolable, immutable, and good. They sought to refashion identity in such a way as to make it culturally taboo to make judgments about any constituent feature of identity. They re-imagined identity in such a way as to move homoeroticism from the category of phenomena about which humans can legitimately make moral distinctions to one about which society is forbidden to make judgments.

Identity in its former incarnation was merely a way of saying that a thing is itself. Identity when applied to individual persons simply denoted the aggregate of phenomena constituting, associated with, affirmed, or experienced by individuals. Identity was “the set of behavioral and personal characteristics by which an individual is recognizable as a member of a group.”

Identity was not conceived as some intrinsically moral thing, because identity could refer to either objective, non-behavioral, morally neutral conditions (e.g., skin color) or to subjective feelings, beliefs, and volitional acts that could be good or bad, right or wrong. Prior to the new and subversive conceptualization of identity, there existed no absolute cultural prohibition of judging the divers elements that constitute identity.

By conflating all the phenomena that can constitute identity, “progressives” demanded that society should no more make judgments about feelings and volitional acts than they should about skin color.

In contrast, Christians should find their identity in Christ which means we must die to ourselves. Butterfield writes about the meaning and challenge of being a new person in Christ:

Conversion to Christ made me face the question squarely: did my lesbianism reflect who I am (which is what I believed in 1999), or did my lesbianism distort who I am through the fall of Adam? I learned through conversion that when something feels right and good and real and necessary—but stands against God’s Word—this reveals the particular way Adam’s sin marks my life. Our sin natures deceive us. Sin’s deception isn’t just “out there”; it’s also deep in the caverns of our hearts.

How I feel does not tell me who I am. Only God can tell me who I am, because he made me and takes care of me. He tells me that we are all born as male and female image bearers with souls that will last forever and gendered bodies that will either suffer eternally in hell or be glorified in the New Jerusalem. Genesis 1:27 tells me that there are ethical consequences and boundaries to being born male and female.

While the world tells us that our identity is found and secured by yielding to our emotions, Christ tells us that our identity is found in obedience to him through which our feelings will be redeemed from their fallen distorted state.

These women, Hatmaker and Melton, influence people—particularly women. These two attractive women use flowery rhetoric to describe pseudo-love. It is pseudo-love in that it is severed from truth. By promoting sexual deviance as holy, Hatmaker and Melton are wolves in adorable sheep costumes.

Warn your loved ones about them and their false teachings, and please have conversations with your children about the differences between fallen man’s view of identity and Christ’s.

Listen to this article HERE.

Save the Date!  Feb. 18th Worldview Conference

We are very excited about our third annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Frank Turek on Saturday, February 18, 2017 in Barrington. Dr. Turek is s a dynamic speaker and the award-winning author of “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist”

Join us for a wonderful opportunity to take enhance your biblical worldview and equip you to more effectively engage the culture:  Click HERE to learn more or to register!

Click HERE for a flyer.

Written by Dustin Siggins

Last week, the Obama administration enacted a rule that prohibits the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) from contracting with groups that engage in “discrimination” against people who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. According to National Security Advisor Susan Rice in a speech on Wednesday:

This rule means that any organization that contracts with USAID must ensure that all people can benefit from its federally-funded programs, regardless of race, religion, disability — or sexual orientation and gender identity.  It’s a major step towards ensuring that American assistance is provided in a fair and equitable manner.

But “fair and equitable” have a specific meaning for the Obama administration. It doesn’t include the unborn. “Discrimination” is still permitted against the unborn — USAID has given tens of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion groups, and engaged in other anti-life policies.

It does include LGBT people. As Rice notes elsewhere in the talk, some countries punish homosexual acts with death, and a death penalty law was narrowly defeated in Uganda a few years ago. Her speech suggested that supporting the LGBT agenda is more important to the Obama administration than stopping the Syrian slaughter, preventing Russia’s advance internationally and protecting Christian refugees.

The Administration’s LBGT Pressure

Rice’s speech reflects how the administration has spent years blackmailing African nations over the LGBT agenda, demanding acquiescence in exchange for basic humanitarian aid. Many Christian leaders have refused to bow to the administration, but the pressure has continued. While some nations certainly have deplorable and inhuman policies, many times the administration has prioritized the LGBT agenda over fighting terrorism and stopping starvation.

She thanked the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and another group “who fight so admirably to promote equal rights and dignity for all.” Co-founded by Terrence Bean — who squirreled out of being found guilty in the alleged sexual abuse of a minor — HRC has targeted pro-marriage advocates to such a degree that a college professor told me he’s never sure if his family is safe.

HRC has also attempted to bully Johns Hopkins University into denouncing a much-cited study that debunks LGBT talking points about sexuality, and has led the dishonest-yet-successful effort to tar North Carolina’s HB2 “bathroom” law as bigoted and hateful. (The Obama administration has also contributed to this misleading state of affairs, with Attorney General Loretta Lynch comparing the very modest bathroom law to racist Jim Crow laws.)

Finally, after referencing the Pulse nightclub shooting this summer, Rice compared HB2 and state-based religious liberty laws to unfair and sometimes inhumane treatment of people who identify as LGBT in other nations. She briefly mentioned the cultural and legal LGBT fight in Indonesia, “governments in Central Asia and Eastern Europe” that are passing anti-homosexual laws and how that “in as many as ten countries, same-sex acts are punishable by death.” She then said:

And, in Syria and Iraq, ISIL has unleashed a unique brutality on LGBT people — dragging gay men behind trucks, stoning them, and burning them alive. ISIL works with chilling efficiency, often going through the cell phones and social media accounts of their victims to identify more LGBT individuals for slaughter. As we speak, the United States is supporting Iraqi and Kurdish forces as they push to liberate Mosul, where ISIL fighters were taped hurling gay men off of buildings.  As one Iraqi man testified before the UN: “In my society, being gay means death.”

Again, some of these laws are downright horrifying, and ISIS’ actions are the same. The Obama administration is right to condemn them, and put pressure on nations to change those practices and laws. But Rice’s speech shows that the Obama administration’s ideology on LGBT “rights” continues to go above and beyond what is right and just, instead giving state-sanctioned preference to the LGBT agenda over the rights of business owners, women and children.

This article was originally posted at the Stream.org

Written by Alan Shlemon

Two thousand years ago, Paul sounded a warning to his protégé Timothy. He said that a time will come when people will no longer “endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths” (2 Tim. 4:3-4).

Paul’s warning 2,000 years ago is still relevant today. Many Christians are turning to the myth of pro-gay theology, the belief that Scripture can be interpreted to be gay-affirming.

Early advocates of pro-gay theology invented arguments that were easily refuted. They claimed that David and Jonathan were gay, that Jesus and John (the “disciple whom Jesus loved”) were homosexual lovers, and that according to Isaiah 53:8 Jesus was a eunuch (“cut off,” castrated). These types of claims have been abandoned in favor of more modern arguments.

The new approach is to claim that the Bible does condemn homosexuality, but only abusive or exploitive homosexual acts. Scripture, they say, prohibits homosexual gang rape (i.e. Sodom and Gomorrah), pederasty (men who have sex with boys), master-slave sodomy, and other coercive same-sex acts. Since homosexuals today don’t engage in those kinds of abusive behaviors, the biblical prohibitions of homosexuality don’t apply to them.

That sounds clever, and unfortunately, many believers are buying it. This reinterpretive approach, though, is undermined in one step.

If you can show that any biblical passage categorically condemns all forms of homosexual sex (and not just abusive forms), then this new approach to pro-gay theology is mistaken. It turns out that all five passages that directly address homosexuality (Lev. 18:22, 20:13; Rom. 1:26-27; 1 Cor. 6:9; 1 Tim. 1:10) entail a wholesale prohibition of all forms of homosexual sex.

Take Leviticus 18:22, for example. It simply reads, “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination.” The verse before it condemns child sacrifice, and the verse after it condemns bestiality. Nowhere in the context is there an indication that any particular type of homosexual sex is in view, and no exception is made for loving, consensual homosexual relationships. The verse categorically condemns all same-sex sexual behavior.

The same is true with the almost identical verse in Leviticus 20:13, which says, “If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them.” Notice that both participants are punished, which indicates this is a consensual act, not coercive.

Had Leviticus been referring to homosexual gang rape, master-slave sodomy, or some other coercive act, only one of the men would have been punished. In Deuteronomy 22:25-26, for example, if a man rapes a woman, then the aggressor alone is put to death. Since he is forcing himself on another person, this instance of sexual activity is coercive. In the case of homosexual sex in Leviticus, though, both men are punished because they mutually engage in the act.

Don’t misunderstand me, though. I’m not claiming homosexual sex is a sin today because it’s forbidden in Leviticus. The Mosaic Law was written for Israel’s theocracy, which we are no longer under. My point is to show that the attempt to reinterpret the Bible in this way is mistaken. Besides, the prohibition of homosexual sex is carried over into the New Testament and under the New Covenant of Christ in three of Paul’s epistles.

In Romans 1:26-27, for example, the Bible teaches a wholesale prohibition of all forms of homosexual sex. Starting in verse 18, Paul places his comments about same-sex behavior in the context of a creation narrative. He doesn’t specify the type of homosexual sex that’s in view here, though. On the contrary, he points out that all homosexual sex abandons the male-female complementarity God established in the Genesis creation account. “Men,” Paul writes, “abandoned the natural function of women and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts….” They rejected the women God designed for them. Homosexual sex exchanges the natural male-female sex for unnatural male-male or female-female sex—what Paul called an “indecent act.”

It’s worth noting that the behavior Paul describes is “toward one another, men with men,” indicating mutual, consensual, non-exploitive, reciprocal affection. Also, verse 26 mentions lesbianism, which was not exploitive in Paul’s time. Indeed, by listing both males and females as violating this complementarity, Paul condemns all homosexual behavior.

Of course, 1 Corinthians 6 and 1 Timothy 1 also categorically reject all types of homosexual sex. All that’s needed, though, is to show that just one passage makes that point clear, which we’ve shown at least three do. Therefore, the modern case for pro-gay theology fails. It’s an example of how people “turn away their ears from the truth” and reinterpret the Bible to fit their desires.

Article originally published at STR.org.

Written by Anthony Esolen

Many years ago, the great British neurologist Oliver Sacks, a man with a flair for subtle observations and the clear prose to describe them, wrote a book about strange cases of mental confusion he had encountered. Its title seizes your attention instantly: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.

The title was no joke, nor was the man in question blind. His eyes registered the colors and the contours of his wife, but his mind had lost the capacity to interpret the messages correctly. The poor woman had to endure having her husband grasp her head with both hands as if to lift her and place her atop his head. Today, however, Dr. Sacks’s title might not pass muster before the captains of the current sexual and linguistic guard. Let me grasp their preferred title with both hands: The Adult Human Being Who Was Biologically Male but of As Yet Undetermined Sexual Preference and Sexual Identity Who Mistook His or Her or Zis or Xer Committed Life Partner Who Was Biologically Female but Also of As Yet Undetermined Sexual Preference and Sexual Identity for a Hat.

The sane reader will note that the only clear item in that sentence is the hat. The sane reader will also note that, of the two madmen, the man who mistakes his wife for a hat is as clear in the head as a sunny day by comparison with a person who could conceive of that new and “improved” title. At least the man who mistakes his wife for a hat still knows what a man is and what a wife is, though he is unclear about where she or his hat might be. But the person who thinks himself into believing that we cannot tell from ordinary observation who is a man and who is a woman is mad in a special sense. The first madman’s reason is struggling in the fog. The second madman’s reason is gasping for breath, because the second madman himself is throttling it.

Actually, the second madman is doing something even worse than that. What exactly he is doing I will explain shortly. First, let me assert that the first madman is the more truly social of the two. The first madman, after all, assumes that everybody else in the world knows what wives and hats are, and when he speaks about them he takes for granted this common knowledge. Indeed, only common knowledge of objective reality can make language possible. If I say to you, “I tripped on a rock on my way to the school this morning,” you will know what I am talking about, because you know what a rock is and what it is like to trip on one. The statement is not ambiguous. You will not wonder whether the rock was a promontory like Gibraltar, or a fortress like the Masada. You will not wonder whether my trip involved the inhaling or venous injection of hallucinogenic chemicals. You will not wonder whether I was talking about a school of fish in the Mediterranean Sea. You will also not wonder whether “rock” meant “cat” or “Napoleon” or “n-dimensional pyramid,” depending upon my peculiar and idiosyncratic linguistic preferences, or upon my idiosyncratic view of reality. Language is not language unless it is communal, and it cannot be communal unless it can refer, quickly and clearly, to the things in front of our noses: to husbands and wives and hats.

Sex: The First Thing We Notice and the Last Thing We Forget

Now, sex is the first thing we notice about someone, and the last thing we forget. It’s easy to see why this should be so. It cannot possibly be to any living thing’s advantage to be confused about male and female. As it is, sex is far more strongly marked upon the human body than it is upon the bodies of dogs or cats or horses or many of the species of birds. A man’s face is not like a woman’s face. A woman’s voice is not like a man’s voice, even when the woman is Greer Garson and the man is Frankie Valli. A man’s shoulders do not look like a woman’s shoulders, and a woman’s hips do not look like a man’s hips. Men and women differ down to their very hair, as anyone can perceive who looks at a woman’s smooth chin or a man’s bald pate.

Ordinary and healthy people love that it is so, and on those exceedingly rare occasions when you cannot determine someone’s sex from a glance or from one moment on the telephone—and some people will go through their entire lives without a single such experience—we feel that it is strange and disconcerting, just as we would feel if we were in the presence of someone who was born without arms. We are not talking about a mere statistical norm here, but about what is paradigmatically human.

To pretend, therefore, that we do not know what we immediately and urgently perceive is to do violence at once to human nature, language, the possibility of a shared life, and the intellect’s capacity to apprehend reality. If I cannot say, “There is a man walking down the street,” then it is hard to see how I can make any reliable judgment about anything at all that bears on human existence. If I cannot say, “Joey is going to grow up to be a fine man someday,” then what in life is left to talk about? Everything else is less certain than sex. We may disagree about whether President Eisenhower was a good leader of men, a loyal husband and father, or a pious Christian; but if we cannot agree that President Eisenhower was a man, then speech itself is but sound and fury, signifying nothing. Or, rather, speech collapses into action, and reason lies prone before appetite. Speech delivers the bribes and threats of people who want what they want and do not care overmuch how they get it.

Microaggressions Warrant Microattention

And here I return to what the second madman is doing. Or madwoman: it is more commonly she who is demanding that people undergo pronominal lobotomies. She says that she wants all people to feel “safe” and comfortable, regardless of their sexual identity. That is not true. What she wants is that ordinary people should feel uncomfortable. She wants to rob them of their ordinary perceptions. She sows the field of conversation with mines, glad if ordinary people learn to tiptoe around them, but much gladder still when they fail and blow themselves up, because that provides her with the opportunity for more “education,” which means a more aggressive campaign against our common grasp of objective reality and our ability to communicate with ease what we see.

Here is the connection between the multiplication of pronouns and the efforts to suppress truths about sex. The inventors of such ugly and meaningless collocations as “xe” and “zir” do not want to enrich the language, and they do not want us to probe more deeply and sensitively into the realities of male and female. They want to impoverish the language and to prevent us from acknowledging things about men and women that even little children perceive.

This is the sort of thing—and maybe the only sort of thing—that can really be called a “microaggression.” If there is a burr in my shoe, I do not make a federal case of it, suing my neighbor for not mowing his grass. I take off my shoe, get rid of the burr, and go about my business. If somebody says to me, “Italy never produced a mathematician worthy of the name,” I think of the Fibonacci family, roll my eyes, and go back to reading my book. Microaggressions warrant microattention: the elephant need not go on a stampede on account of the flea.

But this microaggression is like the deliberate injection of carcinogenic RNA into the healthy cells of the mind. It would infect common sense with confusion and madness. It would render people incapable of obvious judgments: so that you cannot say that Laurie is “strong for a girl” because she can do fifteen unmodified pushups, or that little Mike needs a father in his life, or that every culture known to man has celebrated the union of man and woman in marriage. And that prompts the question: why should anybody want to do this to other people? Cui bono?

What Ordinary People Get Right

The first answer is that the confusion redounds to the benefit of the self-confused, who get to compel other people to play along with their idiosyncratic dreams of unreality. Elwood P. Dowd not only has his invisible friend, the six-foot-tall rabbit named Harvey, but will take you to court unless you shake Harvey’s hand and register Harvey in at the hotel. Harvey must be your friend too, or else. Christian bakers who have retained their hold on reality can tell us what will happen to you if you say, “But there is no Harvey here, nor will I pretend that there is.”

The second answer is that ideological rent-seekers benefit. I am thinking especially of certain college professors, directors of the hideously named “human resources,” compliance lawyers, federal bureaucrats, and captains of monoform diversity. They sow the mines and then sell you a map to the field. They poison one well, station a surveillance team around the others, and force you to drink from theirs—levying severe fines on you if you try to dip your pitcher into healthy water. They seek confusion and confrontation, because those bring them money and power.

But the third answer, I think, brings us nearest to the heart of the issue. The sexual revolution always has been a war waged against the ordinary family, against the ordinary ways of men and women and children. The moral law as regards sex is meant to protect that family from threats without and within: from the pseudo-marriage that is fornication, from the betrayal of marriage that is adultery, from the rickets and scurvy of impure habits, and from the mockery of the marital act that is sodomy. If a man’s home was his castle, then the walls round that castle were his people’s understanding of the moral law and the customs that gave the law vigor and force. Who then would benefit by riddling the walls with holes? All people who could not, because of their own failings and vices, enjoy the good of family life; all people who saw the family as the great opponent in the way of their statist ambitions; all rebels against Nature and Nature’s God, who would be happier to see a man leave his wife and children to take up with another man than to see a young woman turn away from the hothouse of a lesbian relationship to become a wife and mother after the ordinary way of nature.

Ordinary people get many things wrong, but they are not motivated by hatred of reality. They are too ordinary for that: too happily bound to the order of things. They see boys playing baseball in a field, and it cheers them up. They see girls chatting on the porch as they paint pictures, and it cheers them up. They like reality. They like boys and girls, men and women. They can imagine wanting to tear down a building because it is useless or ugly or dangerous. They cannot imagine wanting to tear down a building because it is beautiful. They cannot imagine anyone else wanting to do such a thing, either.

I am here to tell all such admirably ordinary people: broaden your imaginations. Do not dismiss the pronominal wars as nonsense. Do not assume that the warriors are merely daft. Do not mistake the pale horse and its rider for snowflakes or mittens or bunnies or anything else that is soft and inoffensive and trivial. The pale horse and its rider aim to destroy.

Article originally published at ThePublicDiscourse.com.

“The very term ‘language rule’ was itself a code name;
it meant what in ordinary language would be called a lie.”
~Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem

With Hollywood, academia at all levels, the mainstream media, the arts community, professional medical and mental health organizations, and increasing numbers of heretical faith leaders in the tank for sexual deviance, the hubris of homosexual and “trans” activists grows.

First they pleaded for tolerance, then approval, then celebration. But despite pervasive “progressive” efforts to indoctrinate, suppress dissent, or compel acquiescence, there remains a remnant of Americans (and immigrants) who believe, among other things, the following:

• Homoerotic activity is immoral.
• Marriage has a nature central to which is sexual differentiation and without which a union can never in reality be a marriage.
• Men and women who choose to be in intrinsically sterile homoerotic relationships have no right to acquire children.
• Children have a right to be raised by a mother and father, preferably their own biological parents.
• Biological sex per se has profound meaning and is the source of feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy to which humans are entitled when engaged in private activities.
• Restrooms, locker rooms, showers, dressing rooms, shelters, and semi-private hospital rooms should correspond to objective, immutable biological sex—not to subjective feelings about one’s sex (known by Leftists as “gender identity”).
• Pronouns correspond to and denote objective, immutable biological sex—not subjective feelings about one’s sex.

Not one item on this list constitutes hatred unless hatred is redefined as being constituted by beliefs with which Leftists disagree.

The Left believes that to be compassionate, loving, and inclusive, one must affirm and celebrate every feeling, desire, attraction, belief, idea, and moral claim that another person experiences or holds. Well,  that’s not quite accurate. They believe society must affirm and celebrate all the feelings, beliefs, ideas, and moral claims of Leftists—not those of conservatives.

Not quite sated by what they have thus far gobbled up of the culture, sexual anarchists are belching out their dessert desires: speech.

It’s not that they seek with their slavering maw only to gobble up the First Amendment. No siree. They not only seek to silence speech they don’t like but also to compel speech they do like. And the speech they like serves the cause of deception, disorder, and deviance.

Sexuality rebels are working feverishly to impose language rules—otherwise known as lies—on all of society, rules that if broken will bring fines or worse. Already schools are requiring faculty and staff to use opposite-sex pronouns (or pronouns like ze and zir) when referring to gender-dysphoric students, and New York City has issued legally binding “guidance” mandating that businesses, their employees, and patrons use the preferred pronouns of their employees, tenants, and patrons or be liable for up to $250,000 fines.

Professor Eugene Volokh who “teaches free speech law, religious freedom law, church-state relations law, a First Amendment Amicus Brief Clinic, and tort law at UCLA School of Law” illuminates the dangerous nature of such a law:

We have to use the person’s “preferred … pronoun and title,” whatever those preferences might be. Some people could say they prefer “glugga” just as well as saying “ze”; the whole point is that people are supposed to be free to define their own gender, and their own pronouns and titles. Seems improbable that some people would come up with new terms like that? Well, 10 or 20 years ago it would have seemed pretty improbable that today New Yorkers would be required to call some people “ze.”…Why wouldn’t some creative folks decide they want to add still more?

Or what if some people insist that their title is “Milord,” or “Your Holiness”? They may look like non-gender-related titles, but who’s to say? What if someone decides that one of the 56 genders is indeed especially noble or holy and that those really are the preferred gender terms? Or even if “Your Holiness” is understood as purely religious (again, why would that be so, given that the point is that people are supposed to be free to define their own gender self-conception and the words that go with it), presumably the same logic that applies to gender-related self-chosen titles would apply to religion-related self-chosen titles. Both sex and religious discrimination are, after all, prohibited by the same laws; by the City’s logic, if you call a Catholic priest “Father,” you’d have to use whatever other self-chosen religious titles people insist on.

…

[Y]ou should feel uncomfortable about people being forced to use “ze,” which expresses a view about gender that they might not endorse. And, more broadly, I think we should all feel uncomfortable about government regulators forcing people to say things that convey and support the government’s ideology about gender.

Thankfully, some courageous souls are mounting a counter-rebellion against the despotic demands of sexuality rebels.

One such courageous hero of the anti-totalitarian, pro-truth movement is University of Toronto psychology professor Dr. Jordan B. Peterson who explained in a YouTube video that if a student or colleague were to insist that he refer to them by gender neutral pronouns like “ze” or “zir,” he will not do it, arguing that he will not be a “tool” of “radical Leftist political motivations.”

In an interview, he elaborated further:

I don’t recognize another person’s right to decide what words I’m going to use, especially when the words they want me to use…are non-standard elements of the English language, and they are constructs of a small coterie of ideologically motivated people….I’m not claiming that a person is free to use any words, in any context. But what I’m saying is that I’m not willing to mouth words that I think have been created for ideological purposes.

When asked about University of Toronto “nonbinary transgender” physics professor Dr. Amanda W. Peet’s request that she (she actually is female) be referred to by the plural pronoun “they,” Dr. Peterson explained that Peet’s request places no moral obligation on him:

The mere fact that professor Peet would like to be addressed by a particular pronoun does not mean that I am required to address him by that pronoun. That doesn’t mean that I deny his existence or the existence of people who don’t fit neatly in binary gender categories. I reserve the right to use my own language and I’m perfectly willing to take that to its conclusion. If it’s the case that I can’t use my language the way that I see fit, because I’m using my language to formulate and articulate the truth in the clearest manner I can possibly manage and if that lands me in legal trouble—well, so be it.  

It is not an act of love to participate in or facilitate a fiction. Moreover, Christians are prohibited from bearing false witness, which means Christians are prohibited from lying. Will the church stand for truth even when doing so is costly? We’ll find out.

Our get-out-the-vote campaign is up and running. We are distributing the IFI Voter Guide to hundreds of churches, civic groups and tea party organizations. Will you financially support our endeavor to educate Illinois voters and promote family values?  Donate today.

No, the title of this article was not ripped from the virtual pages of the satirical website Babylon Bee.

A Time Magazine article on InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s (IV) 20-page internal policy position paper on human sexuality is generating a huge brouhaha.

IV, an evangelical parachurch organization that includes 667 college chapters as well as InterVarsity Press which publishes books by D.A. Carson, William Lane Craig, Os Guinness, J.I. Packer, R.C. Sproul, and John Stott, distributed this position paper, which addresses sexual abuse, divorce, premarital sex/cohabitation, adultery, pornography, and same-sex “marriage,” to employees in March 2015. Beginning in November 2016, employees will be required to affirm these historical and biblically consonant positions.

It will come as no surprise that the IV position that is causing all the vexation,  huffing, and puffing is its position on marriage—a position that “progressive” disciples of diversity believe no individual and no organization should be permitted to affirm. And I guess that goes for Jesus who created marriage:

“He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?

As theologian Denny Burk tweeted, “We live in a day when this is news: Intervarsity stands with scripture and the consensus of the entire 2,000-year history of the Christian church.”

Leftists are fake-enraged over this non-news, and others are wondering why the theologically orthodox IV is making clear its theologically orthodox views on marriage now.

There are two good reasons for IV to make clear its views on marriage now, neither of which should need to be identified but for the cave-dwellers among us, here they are:

1.)  If churches and parachurch organizations are not crystal clear in articulating their positions on matters related to sexuality and if they do not require affirmation of and behavioral adherence to these theological positions, the litigious Left will come after them.

2.) The anti-cultural mess we’re mired in has resulted in either the church’s cowardly silence on essential matters pertaining to homosexuality or its embrace of heretical views on these matters. Between the corrosive ideas on sexuality in general and marriage in particular that pervade American public life, Christians and especially young Christians are being deceived. Christians need clarity, correction, and unequivocal, unambiguous teaching.

A young IV worker cited in the Time Magazine  article provides troubling evidence of the heretical views being adopted by Christian youth:

Bianca Louie, 26, led the InterVarsity campus fellowship at Mills College, a women’s liberal-arts school in Oakland and her alma mater….Louie and about 10 other InterVarsity staff formed an anonymous queer collective earlier this year to organize on behalf of staff, students and alumni who felt unsafe under the new policy. They compiled dozens of stories of individuals in InterVarsity programs and presented them to national leadership. “I think one of the hardest parts has been feeling really dismissed by InterVarsity….The queer collective went through a very biblical, very spiritual process, with the Holy Spirit, to get to where we are. I think a lot of people think those who are affirming [same-sex marriage] reject the Bible, but we have landed where we have because of Scripture, which is what InterVarsity taught us to do.

I’m pretty sure it was neither Scripture nor the Holy Spirit that led the queer collective to affirm same-sex “marriage.”

Theologically orthodox pastor and well-known speaker Skye Jethani has written a very good blog post articulating the reasons IV’s policy directive is both a “big deal” and a good and even necessary document. That said, Jethani concludes his post with this head-scratching comment:

However, I do grieve that rather than allowing Christians, and particularly younger Christians, grow in their understanding of these matters in an environment of grace and inclusivity, wonderful ministries like InterVarsity are being forced to take premature and artificially divisive stands.

Would Jethani grieve if IV were to take an unequivocal and explicit position on consensual adult incest, bestiality, polyamory, or slavery? Would he grieve if IV required employees to affirm biblical positions on these issues rather than allowing them to “grow in their understanding of these matters in an environment of grace and inclusivity?” How is requiring employees to hold fast to biblical truth lacking in grace?

And although Christianity (like “progressivism”) is exclusive in that it holds some beliefs to be false, it is inclusive in that anyone who repents and follows Christ is included. In order to repent and receive God’s grace and mercy, people need to know what constitutes sin. And surely those, like IV employees, who already claim to be Christ-followers, should know and affirm truth.

Moreover, IV’s position is neither premature nor artificially divisive. If IV has employees who reject biblical truth on marriage, heresy has created the division—not IV. And if IV has employees that embrace heresy, IV is late to the party decorated with rainbow-appropriated streamers.

Marriage is a picture of Christ and his bride, the church. The belief that marriage can be the union of two men or two women necessarily entails the belief that there is no difference in role, function, or nature between Christ the bridegroom and his bride, the church. Further, affirming the false belief that marriage can be a same-sex union undermines respect for the authority of Scripture and not just on marriage.

Every church and parachurch organization and every Christian should explicitly affirm the biblical view of marriage as InterVarsity Christian Fellowship has done.

Our get-out-the-vote campaign is up and running. We are distributing the IFI Voter Guide to hundreds of churches, civic groups and tea party organizations. Will you financially support our endeavor to educate Illinois voters and promote family values?  Donate today.

I just saw a commercial during a football game that inspired me, and then irked me. A young black girl is shown growing up in the Civil Rights era, watching the achievements of African American athletes, political activists, and religious leaders. Believing she can become anything if she sets her mind to it, she fights for acceptance in financial firms, eventually graduates with an MBA, and becomes a Wall Street executive. “You may trod me in the very dirt,” she says, “but still, like dust, I rise.”

It’s a great message. But halfway through this ad for the University of Phoenix, alumna Gail Marquis is shown marching hand-in-hand with LGBT activists and waving a rainbow flag. The implication is crystal clear: The fight of African-Americans for equal rights is the same one LGBT Americans are fighting today.

Unbelievably, this conflation between skin color and sexual orientation surfaced during the recent unrest in Charlotte, North Carolina. In an interview with historian Brenda Tindal, Public Radio International’s John Hockenberry suggested that protesters and rioters who took to the street following the police shooting of Lamont Scott were actually angry about—get this—the new transgender bathroom law!

Are you kidding me?

This kind of race-exploitation has infected even the highest levels of government. Back in May, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch filed a lawsuit against North Carolina to force accommodation on the transgender bathroom issue. “It was not so very long ago,” she then lectured the nation, “that states, including North Carolina, had other signs above restrooms, water fountains and public accommodations, keeping people out based on a distinction without a difference.”

It’s a line that has won the LGBT movement virtually endless mileage. 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.”

Other African American leaders upset with the attorney general have pointed out something I told you here on BreakPoint recently: Research shows the vast majority of gender dysphoric children will later abandon those feelings, and transgender individuals who “transition” from one sex to the other frequently have second thoughts.

One of those folks is Walter Heyer. Writing at Public Discourse last Tuesday, Heyer insists based on his own experience that in contrast to race, “people are not born transgender. And those who “wholeheartedly believe that they need a sex change…often…change their mind and go back.” He adds that the emotional devastation of buying the transgender lie can take a lifetime to heal.

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.

LGBT Is not a Color: Stop Hijacking Civil Rights

As John affirms, these two issues are not comparable. One is based on biological reality, the other is based on the shifting sand of personal choice. For more discussion, check out the resources linked below.

I fought for civil rights. It is offensive to compare it with the transgender fight.
Clarence Henderson | Charlotte Observer | May 19, 2016

Comparing HB2 with Civil Rights Movement ‘offensive’
Elaina Athans | ABC11.com | May 24, 2016

Born This Way is Shaky Science: The Truth Comes out of the Closet
John Stonestreet | BreakPoint.org | August 31, 2016

Transgender Identities Are Not Always Permanent
Walt Heyer | Public Discourse | September 27, 2016

This article was originally posted at BreakPoint.org

Hard to believe but another offense was just exposed in Illinois School District U-46, and ironically, CEO Tony Sanders inadvertently exposed it.

Last Thursday, September 29, CEO Tony Sanders released a statement regarding the controversy over his secret decision to allow a gender-dysphoric student to use a locker room and restroom designated for persons of the opposite sex. Here is an excerpt from that statement:

Earlier this school year, I agreed to provide access to one transgender student to the locker room and restroom based on that student’s gender identity….As I shared in a prior weekly message, we could have done a better job communicating the change….For the sake of transparency, I am sharing with you the guidelines  we have established to support transgender students.

The guidelines assure community members that “The District is committed to proactively address the needs and concerns of…gender expansive students.” (trigger warning: sarcasm coming) It’s hard to imagine that for almost 200 years public schools failed to address the concerns of “gender-expansive” students. What was wrong with those people?

On a cursory read, Sander’s statement may seem innocuous, maybe even positive in that Sanders admits his prior poor communication and lack of transparency. But spend a few moments cogitating on the implications of what he has implicitly acknowledged and admitted. They ain’t pretty.

In his statement Sanders shared that there is a gender-dysphoric student in the district who has been given permission to use an opposite-sex locker room and restroom, which is exactly what school board member Jeanette Ward communicated and was vilified for communicating.

Tony Sanders implicitly admitted that Jeanette Ward is the only school board member who did a good “job communicating the change.” She is the only board member who was transparent.

Because Sanders chose to conceal information to which parents have a right, Mrs. Ward posted this on Facebook on September 5:

Starting tomorrow, U-46 Administration is changing its practice concerning students’ access to locker rooms of the opposite sex. Students who identify as the opposite gender (regardless of biological sex) will be able to use the locker room that corresponds with the gender with which they identify, at the same time as other students. U-46 has opted not to inform parents or the community at large of this change. I am informing you. I encourage you to contact U-46 administration about this matter if you have concerns.

Mrs. Ward did not release the name of the student, the sex of the student, or the name of the school the student attends. She provided no identifying information. The only additional information she provided in a press interview was that the student attended a middle school. U-46 has eight middle schools that serve 5,827 students. Communicating that the student is one of almost 6,000 middle school students hardly constitutes identifiable information.

The day after Mrs. Ward’s post, Sanders, evidently feeling some heat, posted this defensive and dissembling post: “Did we notify families? No, we did not. Why? Because it would be a violation of state and federal laws that protect students from the release of personal information.”

Was Sanders intentionally trying to mislead the public by playing fast and loose with language? His statement seems to suggest without stating that the district was prohibited from sharing with the public the information contained in Mrs. Ward’s post. His statement seems to suggest that Mrs. Ward violated federal and state laws with her September 5 statement—a statement which mirrors his very own statement published 3 ½ weeks later on September 29.

Surely in the past 3 ½ weeks, Sanders knew the public thought he had said that Mrs. Ward had violated state and federal laws. He must have known that because “progressives” have been accusing her on social media and at school board meetings of doing so. And in the midst of this unseemly spate of false accusations, Sanders never once stepped in—as a person of integrity would have—to correct the public. Never once did Sanders clarify that Mrs. Ward had not released any information that violated federal or state law.

Please absorb this: Sanders has now implicitly admitted there is no federal or state law prohibiting Mrs. Ward from making the statement she did on September 5. He implicitly admitted it when he said the very same thing. And every board member who claimed that it was illegal for Mrs. Ward to share the general information she—and finally Sanders—shared has been lying. Either that or they have utterly inept legal counsel (i.e., Miguel Rodriguez, you know the school attorney who “liked” board member Traci O’Neal Ellis’ reference to the Republican National Convention as the “Klanvention.”) Either way, Mrs. Ward is owed an apology—many apologies.

Sanders said “we could have done a better job communicating the change.” Surely he jests. Does he think all of his community members just fell off the turnip truck?

Most of the board did no job “communicating the change.” And the only board member who in fact did do a “better job of communicating the change” has been treated like a pariah by four board members, Tony Sanders, and many community members.

Speaking of which, every community member who insulted and attacked Mrs. Ward on the Facebook pages “Connecting the Dots in U-46” and “School District U-46 Uncensored,” wrongly accusing her of violating laws and releasing private information owes her a public apology for saying what Sanders has just said.

Now that Sanders has inadvertently admitted that the board should have communicated the information Mrs. Ward communicated three weeks ago, perhaps Rebecca Vogt-Miller, Dana Michelle, and Sandy Achler Reeves who wrongly accused Mrs. Ward of violating state and federal laws will apologize to her.

Perhaps Reeves, who was not content merely to accuse Mrs. Ward of violating laws but also wanted to kick her in the gut, will apologize for this:

I want Mrs. Ward to think about this. What if this student decides to take their own life because of what YOU did? What about their family losing their child because YOU violated federal and state law?? Can YOU live with yourself? Mrs. Ward please resign because YOU don’t care about these kids.

Perhaps Phil Novello who called Mrs. Ward’s act of good communication and transparency “a blatant hateful act” will apologize.

And surely failed school board candidate Larry Bury will apologize for not only wrongly accusing Mrs. Ward of violating laws but also for penning this malignant accusation:

Monday evening will be the true test of character for the members of our U46 Board of Education.

…

Do they stand in support of state and federal law?
…

Or do they stand in support the ugliness being perpetrated on U46 by a certain Board member who is willing to destroy the life of a U46 student in the name of political self-promotion

A feckless CEO and four feckless board members stumble from one offense to another—all of their own making—leaving the community with more than ample justification and motivation to give the sorry four (also known as the gang who can’t shoot straight) the heave ho. Two of them, Donna Smith and Veronica Noland are up for re-election this coming April.

And maybe, just maybe some of the people who have bullied Mrs. Ward for doing exactly what Sanders has finally done will have the humility and integrity to apologize to her (mark your calendars for the 12^th of never).

There is another school board meeting this Monday night, October 3 at 7:00 p.m.  at 355 East Chicago Street in Elgin. Please try to attend and perhaps ask CEO Tony Sanders and board members Donna Smith, Susan Kerr, Traci O’Neal Ellis, and Veronica Noland how it is that Tony Sanders didn’t violate any laws for saying virtually the same thing Jeanette Ward said.

And then there remains that pesky problem of co-ed locker rooms and restrooms in U-46. Sanders likes to emphasize that only one student is currently using an opposite-sex locker room and restroom, but someone should ask the board what they will do when more gender-dysphoric and “gender-expansive” students ask to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms. And what will the board do when these students and their parents assert that privacy stalls and adult supervision are unjustly discriminatory, because that’s what’s a’comin’.

Please prayerfully consider how you can support
the work and ministry of IFI through a donation.

The world knows what Target ushered in on April 19^th 2016 – from that politically motivated announcement that pronounced to all men everywhere – come use the bathroom with our daughters and wives millions of people made the decision to boycott Target.  My family is one of them.

Now more than ever, it is important to continue to boycott Target. This is not a short term decision but a long term commitment — at least until Target reverses it’s policy. Where ever you live there are great alternatives; places where the executive team does not feel the need to aggressively enter the political landscape and undermine basic moral principles.

Let’s be clear; individuals that truly identify as transgender have been using the bathroom of their choice – this is not a debate about individuals that are confused about their male or female identity. It is about undermining both the physical and spiritual unique differences and qualities of males and females as given by God and about keeping those you love safe.

Here is what we all still need to do:

1. Continue to choose an alternate place to shop.
2. Comment on and share articles like this one with your family, friends, and social media circles.
3. Sign up on various petitions boycotting Target, such as the American Family Association’s (currently with over 1.4 million pledges to shop elsewhere).
4. Organize a peaceful event at a local Target like the one I am mentioning below.

Here is the very real and for anyone with women in your lives that you care about, frightening, reality of the implications of what Target did. I chose a Target near me; 601 S. County Farm Rd. Wheaton, IL 60187. I then searched both the state and federal online registered sex offenders data base (I am including links below for you to do a similar search near your Target).

I found a staggering 97 registered sex offenders within a 10-mile radius of this Target. Keep in mind, this is only registered sex offenders, meaning people who have been caught. Likely, there are hundreds more within that 10-mile radius.

These 97 individuals have now been given a invocation from Target Corporation to enter the women’s bathrooms or fitting rooms and dis-robe, expose themselves, watch, comment, and fulfill their deviant sexual predator desires, including video recording. This will lead to my and your daughters, wives, and female family and friends being sexually exploited, harassed, and even, potentially, raped.

Take a look at the map below and know that each circle represents a registered sexual predator that now has been given free access by Target to your wives and children’s fitting rooms and bathrooms.

97 Registered sex offenders with 10 miles of the Wheaton Illinois Target

It is because of this that I and my family participated in a “Target Education Day” in front of the very Target that currently has 97 registered sex offenders within an easily accessible range in Wheaton, IL on Saturday, September 24, 2016. It was a wonderful event, we, along with the organizers of this event and fellow participants, handed out 750 flyers informing people of Target’s decision and what it means.

Of the more than 30 people that I talked with, all but a few had no idea that Target and it’s executive team want men to have the “right” to be able to use the bathroom with your wife and children in their stores.  It is because of this low understanding that I ask you to share this with your friends, family and co-workers.

I encourage you to participate or host your own event and continue to send your shopping dollars elsewhere. It does have an affect. Especially, if you don’t quit. Target Corporation is hoping that we let this go – I hope you will join me in never letting it go. Our ultimate goal is to simply have the policy reversed and keep our loved ones safe.

Here is the link to the US Department of Justice https://www.nsopw.gov/. NSOPW stands for National Sex Offender Public Website

In Illinois here is the link for the Illinois Sex Offender Search: https://www.isp.state.il.us/sor/

A second article was needed to address adequately the problems exposed in Monday’s school board meeting in Illinois School District U-46 in which the decision to allow a middle school gender-dysphoric student to use an opposite-sex locker room and the decision of school CEO Tony Sanders’ to conceal that information from parents were debated.

It is important for taxpayers in every community to pay close attention to what is being done and said by leaders in U-46, because the serious issues regarding modesty, privacy, the meaning of biological sex, parental rights, and gender dysphoria will confront every community. And the arrogance, ignorance, and hypocrisy of “progressives” who are driving this destructive assault on truth and reality will need to be identified and boldly confronted.

Anti-discrimination policy bait and switch

Board member Traci O’Neal Ellis inadvertently let the cat out of the bag “progressives” furtively carry about and use to humiliate conservatives into silence and submission. But first some background is in order.

Any conservative who opposes the inclusion of “sexual orientation” (code word for homosexuality) or “gender identity” in anti-discrimination policies is routinely called hateful and falsely accused of either not caring about the bullying of homosexual and gender-dysphoric students or of actively supporting such bullying. School board member Jeanette Ward has been on the receiving end of such malignant and false accusations.

It is not a desire to harm students that leads conservatives to oppose the inclusion of conditions constituted by subjective feelings and volitional acts (as opposed to objective, non-behavioral conditions like race, sex, and national origin) in anti-discrimination policies. All decent people—and yes, the vast majority of conservative people are decent—oppose bullying of any person for any reason.

Rather, the reasons conservatives oppose the inclusion of these conditions in anti-discrimination policies are these:

1.)  It opens the door for other conditions similarly constituted to be added to anti-discrimination policies.

2.)  It inevitably leads to the erosion of religious liberty, as we are currently witnessing.

3.)  Such policies are later exploited for purposes perhaps intended but never mentioned. In other words, “progressives” use the old bait and switch stratagem, knowing that gullible or gutless conservatives will fall for it.

So, back to Ellis’ revelatory comments.

She referred to the district’s “existing anti-discrimination policy,” that she said “has not changed.” Well, she means it hasn’t changed since 2013 when it changed.

Ellis implied without stating that the non-changing, existing policy mandates that gender-dysphoric boys be allowed in girls’ locker rooms and vice versa. Is that how the addition of the term “gender identity” to school anti-discrimination policies is ever explained, promoted, or justified to community members?

In 2013 U-46’s School Board—which had exactly zero conservative representation—added “gender identity” to its anti-discrimination policy at the recommendation of school attorney Miguel Rodriguez. I can’t find in board minutes an account of the discussion that took place prior to the vote, so I wonder what arguments were put forth to defend the addition. Did school board members inform parents that this policy change was needed in order to ensure that gender-dysphoric boys would be allowed in the girls’ restrooms and locker rooms? Or was it promoted as an effective tool for curbing bullying? Did community members assume the policy change was made in order to prevent harassment and abuse only to see it now used to justify co-ed locker rooms?

Ironically, the footnotes in the board documents recommending the change—a change that Ellis now suggests  requires sex-integrated locker rooms—cites the Illinois Human Rights Act which states the exact opposite: “The Act permits schools to maintain single-sex facilities that are distinctly private in nature, e.g., restrooms and locker rooms.”

It’s important to note that the policy that was changed applies only to “educational and extracurricular opportunities”—not to bathroom and locker room usage. In addition, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 specifically states that schools may maintain sex-separated locker rooms and restrooms.

Ellis, the school board member who suggested that those who oppose co-ed locker rooms are exercising “authority without wisdom” and are “bruising” children, is the same board member who referred to the Republican National Convention as the “Klanvention” on her Facebook page.  Enquiring minds want to know if such a slur might erode the trust conservative community members have in her ability to honor her oath to “represent all school district constituents honestly and equally”?

Ellis concluded her school board statement Monday night with these hollow words:

And to our students, I offer this to you. If you are straight, bisexual, gay, lesbian, transgender, gender non-conforming, queer, questioning, white, black, Latino, Asian, Native American, bi-racial, or any other racial, ethnic or national origin…if you score a perfect score on the SAT and are headed to Harvard, or you graduate dead last in your class, if you are able-bodied, or disabled, if you are low income or the child of the most affluent family in this district; if you have one, two, or no parents, if you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Scientologist, atheist, agnostic or of any other belief…however you show up in U-46, when you cross the threshold of a U-46 school, I welcome you. You are not “less than”. And because you are welcome here, that means that as a district, we have to work to meet your unique needs and well-being, while balancing others’ needs and well-being. In other words, we must exercise our authority with wisdom, in order to polish, not bruise you.

I wonder if Republican students who may have Republican parents believe those words.

And who “liked” Ellis’ “Klanvention” Facebook comment? None other than U-46 attorney Miguel Rodriguez, the person who recommended adding “gender identity” to school board policy.

Macro-aggressive government employees 

Although Bartlett High School English teacher Gary Lorber’s macro-aggressive conduct at the board meeting may have been unusual conduct for a teacher, his views are widely held by “progressive” teachers in government schools who self-righteously view themselves as “agents of change” and have assigned themselves the duty of shaping the moral and political views of other people’s children. In my experience, this kind of arrogant teacher is over-represented in English departments. They, like many on the U-46 school board, want government schools to have no conservative representation in leadership or teaching positions. One conservative member on a board of seven is one too many for the disciples of diversity.

Lorber’s intemperate treatment of Mrs. Ward, especially his maudlin concluding insult was both unprofessional and cruel. I hope you can find three minutes to watch this video of Lorber’s performance, but in case you can’t, here’s a bit of what he said to his board member, Mrs. Ward:

I do not know how you…have become…so hateful….I wonder what a little girl thinks of you when she looks into your eyes. I wonder what hatred you indoctrinated into her eyes when she looks into yours.

I have never seen a teacher so brazenly and perniciously attack his own school board member. If a conservative had said anything approaching this, he or she would be vilified as a hateful bully. No child of mine would ever sit in a classroom under the tutelage of a teacher so devoid of tolerance, respect, decorum, civility, and humility.

U-46 board policies state the following: “All District employees are expected to maintain high standards in their school relationships, to demonstrate integrity and honesty, to be considerate and cooperative and to maintain professional relationships.” When the board and administration review Mr. Lorber’s statement, do they hear the voice of a considerate, cooperative, and professional staff member?

“Fringe” political “hate” group 

Two speakers at Monday’s meeting alluded to Mrs. Ward’s support coming from a hate group. Rich Jacobs, “husband” of homosexual activist and Kane County judge John Dalton, referred to “fringe political groups known for hate and divisiveness,” and board member Veronica Noland referred to a group labeled a “hate group” by the (ethically dubious) Southern Poverty Law Center. Because of my keen powers of deduction, I suspect the allusions were to the Illinois Family Institute, and, therefore, some context is warranted. And I know from assertions made by multiple board members that the board takes pride in listening and learning from diverse voices (after which some members hurl epithets).

Since the Left loves them some yum yum southern impoverished law center putrescent potage, below are five articles about the SPLC. The first three detail my experiences with the infamous Mark Potok and his laughably named “Intelligence Report.” They reveal how deceitful and hapless Potok is and how bogus is his “hate groups” list:

“IFI Labeled Hate Group”

“When Will the Southern Poverty Law Center Stop Bullying?”

“The Morality Police at the Southern Poverty Law Center”

“The Church of Morris Dees” (originally published at Harper’s)

“The SPLC exposed – Southern Poverty Law Center – Morris Dees and hate crimes”

It is clear that some of the U-46 board and faculty members, like the SPLC, have redefined “hate” to include the expression of moral and ontological propositions with which they disagree. Perhaps these particular board and faculty members hate those with whom they disagree, but they ought not project their habits of mind onto others.

Most people are fully capable of deeply loving those who hold different beliefs and act in accordance with those beliefs. Most of us in this wildly diverse world do it every day. I wonder if these board and faculty members hurl the same ugly epithets at Muslim and Orthodox Jewish students and their parents who likely hold conservative views regarding co-ed restrooms and locker rooms?

Who really foments hatred?

Finally, I would argue that it is “progressives” who act and speak in destructive ways that foment hatred by relentlessly telling children and teens that those who believe that biological sex is profoundly meaningful hate those who reject their biological sex. That is a pernicious lie that undermines the possibility of dialogue with and relationships between people who hold different beliefs. Such a lie works against the purported goal of school boards everywhere to create and sustain diverse communities. By its nature, a diverse community will include those who hold diverse views, including on matters sexual. What “progressives” seek is a “diverse” community (and a “diverse” school board) in which everyone thinks just like them.

Here’s what “progressives” in their arrogance and self-righteousness refuse to acknowledge: Conservatives believe as strongly that “progressive” views on modesty, privacy, biological sex, and gender dysphoria are ignorant and destructive as “progressives” believe conservative views are.

Treating unreality as reality harms the entire U-46 community and undermines the very essence of education.

Last Call for IFI’s Faith, Family & Freedom Banquet

We are excited to have as our keynote speaker this year, former Congresswoman and Tea Party Caucus Leader, Michele Bachman!

Don’t delay, act today!

(Please make sure to watch the linked video excerpts!)

So much to say about Monday night’s barn-burner of a school board meeting in Illinois School District U-46, so little time.

The meeting started at 7:00 p.m. By 6:00 p.m. the meeting room was filled to capacity, and attendees were sent to two upstairs overflow rooms to watch a livestream of the meeting. Approximately 58 visitors spoke, with 37 speaking in opposition to the school board’s decision to allow a student to use the locker room designated for persons of the opposite sex and to do so without telling U-46 parents of this decision. The remaining 21 spoke in favor of these decisions. In the overflow room where I was seated, pro-transparency/pro-single-sex facilities supporters vastly outnumbered anti-transparency/pro-co-ed supporters.

Accusations of hate flew during the lengthy meeting. Well, to be more accurate, accusations of hate flew from the Left to the Right as usual. Leftists accused those who reject Leftist assumptions about modesty, privacy, the meaning of biological sex, parental rights, and gender dysphoria of being hateful. Ad hominem epithets are infinitely easier to hurl than arguments are to make.

Some of the most obnoxious comments were expressed by school board member Veronica Noland, Rich Jacobs, and (my personal favorite) Bartlett High School English teacher (why am I not surprised) Gary Lorber.

Lorber is also the 1^st vice president of the local teachers union, the Elgin Teachers Association.

Lorber’s theatrical performance is a must-see, replete with fallacies of logic (e.g., ad hominem, appeal to ridicule, moral high ground, appeal to emotion, appeal to spite, bandwagon, and strawman). Lorber was shockingly unprofessional, referring to two of his own school board members as part of a “cast of cackling cronies.” His performance included repeated melodramatic proclamations that he will “be there,” wherever injustice—as he defines it—is to be found, and he presumptuously asserted that the students he is paid by taxpayers to teach English are his kids.

Rich Jacobs’ comments too were replete with fallacious reasoning, beginning with misrepresenting Jeanette Ward’s actions and then imputing ugly motives to her by accusing her of “intentionally fanning the flames of hatred.” Now that’s what I call “sickening” bullying.

Jacobs also stated that Mrs. Ward reached out to “fringe political groups known for their hate and divisiveness.” Some questions for Jacobs: What are the names of the “fringe political groups” to which he referred? What makes them “fringe”? What specifically constitutes hatred in Jacobs’ view? Is it the expression of moral and ontological assumptions with which he disagrees that constitutes hatred? Does he believe that love requires the affirmation of every desire, belief, and action held by others? Or is he the arbiter of which desires, beliefs, and actions must be affirmed in order to love others? How is the decision to allow gender-dysphoric students in opposite-sex locker rooms less divisive than opposing such a practice?

Jacobs is the “husband” of homosexual activist and Kane County judge, John Dalton. In 2011, Dalton was asked by the homosexual newspaper Windy City Times, “Are you active in the LGBT community?” Dalton responded, “I have for the last 20 years…worked, whenever the opportunity has presented itself, for equal rights. Some of the things I’ve done more recently include working with the School District U-46, which is the second largest school district in the state.”

Board member Veronica Noland, using Leftist language to convey Leftist dogma, referred to children whose “gender is not the same as the one assigned to them at birth.” News flash for Noland: No one is “assigned a gender” at birth. The objective sex of persons is identified at birth.

Noland implied wrongly that opponents of co-ed restrooms seek to force gender-dysphoric students into restrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their sex. She either didn’t listen to all the speakers or dishonestly ignored their comments, because multiple speakers who oppose co-ed restrooms and locker rooms recommended a compromise of allowing gender-dysphoric students to use existing single-occupancy restrooms.

After claiming to listen to all stakeholders, Noland proceeded to call those who dissent from her ideology “narrow-minded fear mongers.” Nice to see how she “represents” the whole community

Not to worry, folks, in the service of representing “all children,” compassionate Noland will make special accommodations for those non-gender-dysphoric students who don’t want to share private acilities with the opposite sex. Objectively female children have Noland’s kind permission to exit the formerly all-girls locker room and change elsewhere, and objectively male children are similarly permitted to exit the formerly single-sex boys’ locker room and change elsewhere.

Perhaps the most arrogant and ironic statement came from school board member Traci O’Neal Ellis who began with this quote from Anne Bradstreet: “Authority without wisdom is like a heavy axe without an edge, fitter to bruise than polish.” Ellis futilely attempted to suggest that allowing gender-dysphoric students into opposite-sex locker rooms and restrooms without informing parents constitutes exercising authority with wisdom, and that those who oppose such a decision are exercising authority devoid of wisdom and consequently are “bruising” children.

She further asserted that district policy that prohibits discrimination based on “gender identity” requires the district to allow gender-dysphoric students in opposite-sex private spaces. Such a claim flies in the face of the Illinois Human Rights Act which prohibits discrimination based on “gender identity” and says the following in its section on exemptions:

Nothing in this Article shall apply to: Facilities Distinctly Private. Any facility, as to discrimination based on sex, which is distinctly private in nature such as restrooms, shower rooms, bath houses, health clubs and other similar facilities for which the Department, in its rules and regulations, may grant exemptions based on bona fide considerations of public policy.

In addition Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 explicitly states that public schools may maintain separate restrooms and locker rooms for boys and girls.

For those who prefer not to listen to Ellis pontificate, the full text of her statement can be read by clicking here.

Here are some questions for the U-46 epithet-hurlers, including but not limited to Lorber, Jacobs, Ellis, and Noland:

1.) Why is it more hateful to believe that locker rooms and restrooms should correspond to objective sex than to believe that they should correspond to feelings about one’s sex?

2.) Do parents have an intrinsic right to know if their children will be sharing restrooms and locker rooms with persons of the opposite sex?

3.) Do students have an inalienable and intrinsic right not to share restrooms and locker rooms with persons of the opposite sex?

4.) Does objective biological sex per se have any meaning?

5.) Would you object to gender-dysphoric students changing clothes out in the open areas of a locker room designated for persons of the opposite sex?

6.) Would you object to a gender-dysphoric student showering in the locker rooms designated for persons of the opposite sex if those students didn’t object? If so, why would you object?

7.) Since U-46 believes that existing anti-discrimination policy requires the district to allow “trans” students to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms, may “cisgender” students use opposite-sex facilities as well? Wouldn’t prohibiting “cis boys” from using girls’ facilities constitute discrimination based on “gender identity”?

8.) If separate restrooms and locker rooms for gender dysphoric boys and girls are equivalent to separate restrooms and locker rooms for blacks and whites—as Attorney General Loretta Lynch asserts—then why aren’t separate restrooms and locker rooms for “cisgender” boys and girls equivalent to racism? And why aren’t separate restrooms and locker rooms for gender-dysphoric boys and “cisboys” equivalent to racism?

9.) Does the district have any Muslim or Orthodox Jewish students? If so, does the district know how these students and their parents view co-ed restrooms?

10.) Some supporters of sex-integrated restrooms and locker rooms object to the term “co-ed.” How many gender-dysphoric boys must be allowed in a girls’ locker room (or vice versa) before it can be called a “co-ed” locker room? 1, 2, 5?

11.) Will gender-dysphoric students be required to use opposite-sex facilities?

12.) What are the restroom and locker rooms practices with regard to “gender fluid” students?

Who has a “personal agenda”?

While “progressive” U-46 board members routinely promote and implement their subjective assumptions about modesty, privacy, parental rights, the meaning of biological sex, and gender dysphoria through practices and policies, they accuse those who dissent from their views of promoting a “personal agenda.” Hmmm…Curiouser and curiouser.

Long-Range Leftist Plan

Some find solace in the delusion that U-46 will continue the current practice of providing overseers who  stand near the private changing area when the gender-dysphoric student is using it. How charmingly naïve–or ill-informed.

The Left will allow no such accommodation to long remain. During this transitional period (pun noticed but not intended), cunning Leftists will allow privacy curtains. But not for long. They will continue their quest for total societal capitulation to their make-believe world. They will not stop demanding that everyone treat gender-dysphoric persons as if they are, in reality, the sex they wish they were. In the Orwellian world of Leftists, who insist even on controlling speech through force of law if necessary, there will be no long-term compromise. Resistance—so they believe—is futile.

Unless conservatives act with tenacity and boldness, there will be no separate changing areas for students who reject their sex. Everyone will be compelled to join them in their delusional, immodest world. Boys will have unrestricted access to girls’ facilities and vice versa. Everyone will be forced to refer to delusional boys by pronouns that correspond to and denote those who are objectively female. You see, it’s harder for gender-dysphoric boys and men to maintain their delusion when people keep using those darn correct pronouns.

It’s only a matter of time before Leftists tear down those walls segregating boys from girls, because the ultimate goal is “dismantling the gender binary.” Leftist ideologues have “deconstructed” marriage, and now they seek to “deconstruct” human nature. It’s quite a remarkable feat to delude hordes of sheeple or coerce them into pretending that the naked Emperor is actually an Empress wearing a dress. But maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. It’s not the first time in history that tyrants have managed to delude or coerce masses of sheeple into acquiescing to lies.

Rights

Not one Leftist responded to the idea expressed multiple times during the meeting that students are entitled to physical privacy when engaged in intimate bodily activities. Moreover, they also conveniently avoided saying that students have no such rights.

Harm

While many Leftists took umbrage at any suggestion that any gender-dysphoric student might ever engage in harassing or abusive behavior toward an opposite-sex student in a locker room, they studiously avoid discussions of what constitutes harm. Is harm only constituted by physical assault, or might harm include being seen partially unclothed by persons of the opposite sex? Might harm include the erosion of modesty? Some speakers last night shared that their children and others find nothing objectionable about sharing private spaces with opposite-sex persons. Is that a good thing, or is it an indication that harm has already been done?

“Progressives” routinely exploit children to advance their perverse, morally relativistic, culturally oppressive, anti-science agenda. Leftist adults caterwaul that any public expression of views they don’t like about what constitutes the good for children who suffer from gender dysphoria harms those children. In truth, it is “progressives” who harm confused and suffering children, first by affirming disordered thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and then by using those children as human shields to silence dissent.

Love vs. hate

U-46 “progressives” seem to believe that love, respect, and support necessitate affirming whatever each individual believes, feels, and chooses to do. Conservatives, in contrast, believe that love, respect, and support necessitate knowing and affirming what is true, which often entails disapproval of the beliefs, desires, and volitional acts of others. The two worldviews are irreconcilable. Ironically, “progressives” don’t apply their principles consistently. Not only do they not affirm the beliefs, feelings, and actions of conservatives with regard to modesty, privacy, the meaning of objective biological sex, parental rights, and gender dysphoria, but they also call conservatives ugly names.

Equality, empathy, compassion, inclusivity, diversity, tolerance, and liberty

U-46 “progressives” referenced equality, but commitments to equality demand that society treat like things alike. Boys and girls are by definition different. Even homosexuals implicitly acknowledge that reality when they say they are romantically and erotically attracted only to persons of the same sex. It is not hateful to acknowledge and respect those differences—which include meaningful bodily differences—in private spaces.

During the meeting “progressives” talked about empathy, compassion, and inclusivity, implying that these admirable qualities require boys and girls to share private spaces with persons of the opposite sex. And this illuminates one of the many problems with these subversive practices and policies: They teach all children  that in order to be empathic, compassionate, and inclusive, they must be willing to relinquish their privacy.

Those who once claimed to value diversity, tolerance, and liberty have become bitter Orwellian control-freaks. Welcome to Oceania.

Please Prayerfully consider how you can support
the work and ministry of IFI through a donation.

“Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe topful
Of direst cruelty!”
—Lady Macbeth

By the fall of 2017, kindergartners in Washington State will be taught to “understand the range of gender roles, identity, and expression across cultures.”1 For those unclear about what precisely will be taught, the kindergarten curriculum developers provide a helpful glossary that includes a definition of “gender”:

Gender: A social construct based on emotional, behavioral, and cultural characteristics attached to a person’s assigned biological sex. A person’s social and/or legal status as male or female.

• Gender expression. The way someone outwardly expresses their gender, whether consciously or unconsciously.

• Gender identity. Someone’s inner sense of their gender (see Transgender).

• Gender roles. Social expectations about how people should act, think, or feel based on their assigned biological sex.

Kindergarten now marks the starting point for government indoctrination of children into the brave, new, sexless, science-denying orthodoxy of the “transgender” movement, the end result of which is not a more compassionate society, but a society in which there is no public recognition of, or respect for, sexual differentiation.

In early May 2016, the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) joined the ranks of the foolish by issuing guidelines pertaining to gender-dysphoric students in K–12 schools. Students who wish they were the opposite sex may now use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms, and on school-sponsored overnight trips, they may room with opposite-sex students.

These guidelines also apply to “gender non-binary” students who don’t “identify” as either male or female and to “questioning” students who aren’t yet sure which sex they would like to be. In other words, these students may make their restroom, locker room, and hotel room selections in accordance with their unstable sexual confusion.

In an effort to facilitate student confusion, the CPS “guidelines” mandate the use of Newspeak by faculty and staff, requiring them to lie by using opposite-sex pronouns when referring to gender-dysphoric students.

Exploitation of Title IX

One week later, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Department of Education (ED) issued an almost identical edict, except theirs came with a threat of the loss of federal funds for non-compliance with what they euphemistically describe as “significant guidance.”

Elementary, middle, and high schools all around the country have been accommodating requests (or demands) from parents to have their gender-dysphoric children granted access to restrooms, locker rooms, and athletic teams that correspond to the sex these children wish they were rather than the sex they actually are. In a case in Illinois, a male student sued his district for the right to unrestricted access even to the girls’ locker room, which includes showers. Often school administrations are accommodating these requests without informing the parents of students whose privacy is being invaded.

The DOJ and the ED, through the intrusive Office for Civil Rights (OCR), which is an unelected collective of bureaucrats, have proclaimed that henceforth, in the section of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 that prohibits discrimination based on “sex,” the word “sex” includes “gender identity” and “gender expression.” Further, sex-segregated restrooms constitute discrimination based on “sex,” meaning that schools have no legal right to maintain separate restrooms for boys and girls.

There are multiple problems with this creative argument, the first of which is that the word “sex” in Title IX means sex.

Second, progressives themselves relentlessly assert that sex and “gender identity” are wholly distinct.

Third, Title IX specifically states the following: “A recipient [of federal funds] may provide separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex, but such facilities provided for students of one sex shall be comparable to such facilities provided for students of the other sex.“2

Fourth, neither the DOJ nor the ED has lawmaking authority, so neither can change the definition of the word “sex” in Title IX.

Exploitation of Title VII

But the Barack Obama administration had still more government power to wield illicitly in its quest to eradicate sex-segregation. Like the ED, the DOJ under Attorney General Loretta Lynch has declared that the word “sex” in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 includes “gender identity” and “gender expression.” The abuse of Title VII is far more dangerous than that of Title IX because it has broader applicability.

Whereas Title IX applies only to schools, Title VII applies to every business in the private sector with over 14 employees, to every government entity, and to every religious organization, including religious schools of every grade level from elementary through college.It even applies to churches, which are exempt only from the prohibition of religious discrimination. Churches and other religious institutions are not exempt from the ban on “sex” discrimination.

So if the Obama administration’s redefinition of the word “sex” to include “gender identity” prevails, even churches couldn’t prohibit gender-dysphoric persons from using opposite-sex restrooms. The decree—it can’t veraciously be called a law—would mandate that gender-dysphoric guests at church weddings or attendees of concerts and athletic events at Christian colleges be allowed in opposite-sex restrooms.

Since men are permitted to go shirtless on beaches, at pools, in public parks, in high-school swim classes, and on swim teams, there would be no legal warrant for prohibiting women who “identify” as men but forgo bilateral mastectomies from going shirtless as well.

Sex Segregation versus Racial Segregation

Progressives, who never tire of exploiting race as an analogue for sexual deviance, compare racially segregated restrooms to sex-segregated restrooms, again misconstruing the issues. Racially segregated restrooms were unjustifiable because they were based on the false belief that people of different races are ontologically different. Sex-segregated restrooms are justifiable because they are based on the true belief that men and women are different—a true belief that even homosexuals implicitly acknowledge when they say they are attracted only to persons of their own sex.

When announcing the DOJ’s lawsuit against North Carolina following that state’s passage of a law prohibiting de-sexed, co-ed restrooms, Attorney General Lynch said, “It was not so very long ago that states, including North Carolina, had signs above restrooms, water fountains and on public accommodations keeping people out based upon a distinction without a difference.”

If there is no more difference between men and women than there is between blacks and whites—as Lynch clearly implies—then how is it justifiable to maintain single-sex restrooms or showers anywhere? Why not allow men and women and boys and girls to share the same restrooms, locker rooms, showers, shelters, and hospital rooms just as blacks and whites do?

Lynch also suggested that the unwillingness of women to share restrooms with gender-dysphoric men is evidence of fear, disrespect, misunderstanding, closed-mindedness, unfairness, lack of compassion, unjust regressive discrimination, and the denial of equality. If that’s the case, then how would she characterize the unwillingness of gender-dysphoric men to share restrooms with non-gender-dysphoric men? If separate restrooms for men and women are analogous to separate restrooms for blacks and whites, then aren’t separate restrooms for gender-dysphoric men and normal men also analogous to separate restrooms for blacks and whites?

Justifying Deception

The left uses the little-known history of some cross-dressing men successfully deceiving women in restrooms as a perverse ethical justification for allowing men in women’s restrooms. The argument goes something like this: Since gender-dysphoric men in especially convincing disguises have successfully deceived and violated the privacy of women who don’t want to share restrooms with men, let’s just openly allow gender-dysphoric men to continue to invade women’s privacy.

That’s analogous to arguing that since some peeping Toms successfully spy on women through windows without being found out, there’s no harm done, so no foul. Or, since some husbands commit adultery without their wives ever finding out—again, no harm, no foul.

Others believe, however, that the deception per se is harmful. The use of ever-more-elaborate disguises—including chemically and surgically facilitated ones—by gender-dysphoric men to conceal their sex from women who don’t want to use restrooms with objectively male persons is comparable to peepers using ever-more-sophisticated technology to peep.

Questions for Progressives

There are still more critical questions that should be posed to anyone who supports de facto co-ed everything, questions that will expose the incoherence of the subversive un-sexing of America:

1. Why should gender-dysphoric men and women be allowed to dictate that restrooms, showers, locker rooms, shelters, and hospital rooms no longer correspond to objective, immutable sex?

2. Why should gender-dysphoric men be able to dictate that they get to use restrooms with only women, but actual women are prohibited from saying they should get to use restrooms with only women?

3. If stalls provide sufficient privacy to separate gender-dysphoric men from women in restrooms, and curtains provide sufficient privacy to separate gender-dysphoric men from women in changing areas, why don’t stalls and curtains provide sufficient privacy to separate gender-dysphoric men from other men in men’s restrooms and changing areas?

4. If there is a mismatch between a person’s sex and his feelings about his sex, how can progressives be certain that the error resides in the body rather than the mind? If a person has XY chromosomes that have commanded his brain to produce and release male hormones to which his body is able to respond, thereby developing normal, unambiguous, healthy, fully functioning male anatomy, he is clearly male. If he nevertheless desires to be—or insists that he is—female, might this not be an error of his mind?

5. If a man “identifies” as “bi-gender” and has appended faux-breasts to his torso while retaining his penis, should he be permitted to decide at will which locker room he uses in the altogether?

6. Those who suffer from gender dysphoria claim that their DNA and the genitalia it shapes are wholly unrelated and irrelevant to “gender” and “gender identity,” and that genitalia shouldn’t matter when it comes to restrooms, changing areas, and showers. They further claim they want to use restrooms with only those whose “gender identity” they share. So, why do gender-dysphoric men demand to use women’s restrooms? How do they know that the males using the men’s restrooms do not “identify” as women, and how can they be sure that the females using the women’s restrooms do “identify” as women? Is it possible that gender-dysphoric men are basing their restroom choices on genitalia? If so, why are they permitted to do so, but actual women are not?

7. Leftists claim that people who don’t want to share restrooms, changing areas, showers, shelters, and hospital rooms with persons of the opposite sex are hateful. If it’s hateful for women to say they want to share these facilities only with other women, why isn’t it hateful for gender-dysphoric men to say they want to share them only with women?

8. Progressives routinely mock opponents of co-ed restrooms, asking whether historical restroom practices that require restroom-usage to correspond to sex will also require “genitalia police” to determine whether restroom-users are in reality the sex that corresponds to the restrooms they seek to use. Well, in the mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up progressive world, will there be “gender-identity” police demanding proof that all restroom-users are either the sex that corresponds to the restrooms they seek to use or have proof that they have been diagnosed as gender-dysphoric? If not, how will women know if their fellow restroom-users are actual women, or gender-dysphoric men masquerading as women, or male predators masquerading as gender-dysphoric men?

9. If the views of Obama and Lynch prevail and gender-dysphoric men are permitted in women’s restrooms, on what basis could all other men be prohibited from using women’s restrooms? Normal men couldn’t be prohibited from using women’s restrooms based on their male sex because men would already have been allowed in. And normal men couldn’t be prohibited from using women’s restrooms based on their “identification” as males because that would constitute discrimination based on “gender identity,” which Obama and Lynch argue violates Title IX and Title VII.

The Final Chapter

The editorial board of the Charlotte Observer opined that “the thought of male genitalia in girls’ locker rooms—and vice versa—might be distressing to some. But the battle for equality has always been in part about overcoming discomfort.”3 This comment reveals what many Americans don’t realize: identifying as the opposite sex does not require or necessarily include any surgery, cross-sex hormone-doping, or even cross-dressing; the mere assertion of one’s “gender identity” is sufficient.

Of course, none of those actions can efface the truth of sex; all they can do is mask it. But Americans should disabuse themselves of the rationalization that sharing a shower with Caitlyn Jenner might not be so bad as long as his testicles have been given the heave-ho and his pesky penis has been tucked inside.

And this brings us to the final chapter in the dystopian cultural narrative the left is writing: the end of sex-segregation everywhere. The elimination of the binary. No more public recognition of or respect for objective maleness and femaleness. “LGBTQQAP” activists and their ideological allies seek to create a solipsistic, make-believe world in which nothing outside the self is recognized as real or meaningful. Objective, immutable, biological sex, which is the source of feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy, will become a hoary relic of the past. Even language will be co-opted to serve an ontological and epistemic lie.

A compassionate society helps those who suffer from disordered thoughts and emotions. It does not affirm confusion or facilitate fiction. This most profound distortion of reality and morality must be resisted. •

1. Washington State Health and Physical Education Standards (March 2016), 32
2. 34 C.F.R. Part 106, Subpart D, §106.33: www2.ed.gov/policy/rights/reg/ocr/edlite-34cfr106.html.
3. “Taking the fear out of bathrooms,” The Charlotte Observer (May 13, 2016): charlotteobserver.com/opinion/editorials/article77475147.html.

*TRIGGER WARNING*: A few words about silly people.

I know things seem bleak right now what with China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea flexing their military muscles, our impotent president issuing more comical “warnings,” and racial strife dividing the nation.

But not to worry, folks. Just look at what some of our best and brightest are doing. Viet Nguyen, the student president of Brown University Undergraduate Council of Students has announced that–in the service of inclusivity–the Council will be stocking men’s restrooms with free tampons because “menstruation is experienced by more than just those who identify as women and…not all people who identify as women menstruate.”

Ah, I feel so much better about our future.

(Caution: Not for younger readers.)

According to a lawsuit filed yesterday by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a high school boy in the city of Virginia, Minnesota (near Duluth) who is pretending to be a girl and whom school administrators allow to invade the privacy of girls has been accused of engaging in vulgar sexual gestures in a girls’ locker room.

A group of girls uncomfortable changing with this boy present had sought from the administration the privacy to which they are entitled. Rather than require the biological-sex-rejecting boy to move to a single-occupancy restroom to change, the school suggested the girls move to an unused boys’ basketball locker room in an elementary school basement—which they did. The biological-sex-rejecting boy soon followed them, and on one occasion lifted up his dress and “twerked” in front of girls who were wearing only their underwear.

Todd Starnes reports that the suit alleges the following:

• Student X commented on girls’ bodies while in the girls’ locker room, including asking Girl Plaintiff F about her bra size and asking her to “trade body parts” with him;

• Student X danced to loud music with sexually explicit lyrics while twerking, grinding and lifting up his skirt to reveal his underwear;

• Student X would dance in a sexually explicit manner “dancing like he was on a stripper pole” to songs with suggestive lyrics….

The lawsuit also alleges that “Student X walked into the…locker room while Girl Plaintiff A was in her underwear and removed his pants while he was near her and other girls who were also changing.”

So, while a troubled boy is allowed to use restrooms and locker rooms with only girls and designated for girls, actual girls are denied the right to use restrooms and locker rooms with only girls and designated for girls despite complaints from both the girls and their parents.

The lawsuit names as defendants “Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Independent School District Number 706 (the Virginia School District) and Secretary of Education John King, Jr.”

Psychiatrist Dr. Boris Vatel writing for Salvo Magazine makes clear some inconvenient truths about the “transgender” phenomenon of which school administrators seem ignorant:

The NYC Commission on Human Rights maintains that gender identity is “one’s internal deeply held sense of one’s gender, which may be the same or different from one’s sex assigned at birth.” This statement intentionally uses language to distort reality. Except in cases of rare medical conditions resulting in ambiguous genitalia, no one’s sex is “assigned” at birth any more than the fact of belonging to the human species is assigned at birth.

More significantly, this statement erroneously implies that a person’s beliefs about himself carry more legitimacy than the physical facts that contradict such beliefs. Using the Commission’s reasoning, can we declare an alternate “age identity” to be legitimately different from one’s true age? What about “race identity” or even “species identity”? If one accepts as legitimate the logic by which men may identify themselves as women and insist on being considered as such by others, there is no reason to reject as invalid any number of other idiosyncratic identities that have no basis in reality.

…To suggest that there is no such thing as objective reality, or that reality is less important than what one wishes it were, renders the entire concept of psychiatric disorder invalid. In fact, the only way to accept the transgender phenomenon as psychiatrically normal is to say that, as a measure of reality, physical evidence is subordinate to what a person believes about or wishes for himself. And on that logic, we have no basis for calling anyone delusional….

Reading through the APA’s position on the transgender phenomenon, one gets the impression that the only suffering and disability experienced by “gender nonconforming” individuals stem from prejudice and discrimination on the part of those who disapprove of them. In reality—that is, any reality apart from the current attempt to reframe this phenomenon as a civil rights issue—these individuals do experience a great deal of disability associated with being unable to function adequately in society, as do other patients whose delusions influence their appearance and behavior.

Although the public’s reaction to the appearance and behaviors of people who consider themselves transgender may, indeed, be negative, to say that the disability of transgender individuals consists of being the recipients of a negative public reaction means confusing the cause with the effect. The fact is that the disability originates in the abnormal mental experience of “transgender” individuals and not in having been born in the “wrong” body or of living in the “wrong” society. However, according to the inverted logic of those who support the LGBT agenda, when an external reality contradicts the internal experience, the solution lies in altering reality in such a way that it conforms to the internal experience. Hence, the advocated approach to addressing an idiosyncratic internal experience is to give the person a new external reality by means of a surgically altered body and a re-educated society.

Identifying the problem as ultimately external naturally leads to the kind of solutions proposed by the New York Commission on Human Rights: fines and sanctions against individuals and institutions that refuse to recognize the legitimacy of being transgender. Ironically, the fact that the Commission would force others to conform to the beliefs of transgender individuals speaks to just how much functional impairment the latter experience in their everyday lives as a result of their beliefs.

The response of organized medicine, and psychiatry in particular, to the transgender phenomenon has been intellectually dishonest and dangerous to the mental and physical health of affected individuals. The acceptance of transgender beliefs as psychiatrically normal has in many cases led to harmful medical interventions in which individuals undergo so-called “sex-reassignment” surgery. These operations cannot “reassign” sex; they can only disfigure normal anatomy.

And now schools are facilitating an intellectually dishonest and dangerous response to a psychiatric disorder—a response that harms both those students who suffer from gender dysphoria and all others.

Here’s an idea: How about parents of students in this district and all other Virginia, Minnesota community members organize a sit-in to protest this science-denying nonsense and moral outrage. They should sit in the superintendent’s office until the administration restores school policies and practices that prohibit students from accessing opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms, thereby fulfilling their obligation to protect the modesty and  privacy of girls and boys.

Oh, and maybe someone should send this story to School District U-46 CEO Tony Sanders.

“Laurie’s Chinwags”

Have you had a chance to checkout the latest special feature we are calling “Laurie’s Chinwags?” For the past few weeks, we’ve been adding audio recordings (aka podcasts) to articles written by Laurie. We hope this new feature will serve the needs and desires of IFI subscribers. We would appreciate any constructive feedback.