In another brief excerpt from IFI’s interview with Dr. Carl Trueman, author of two books that touch on “trans”-cultic beliefs including Strange New World: How Thinkers and Activists Redefined Identity and Sparked the Sexual Revolution, Pastor Derek Buikema asks about the responsibility of Christians in regard to the harm being done to children by “trans”-cultic beliefs.

Dr. Trueman discusses three ways Christians ought to address this problem, one of which includes being aware that it is neither parents nor teachers who are most powerfully shaping childrens’ views on sexual identity.

There is an old fable which illustrates well what has happened to our nation’s standards of sexual morality over the last few decades. An Arab was making a journey on camelback through the desert. When he found a place to stop for the night, he tethered his camel, set up his tent, and crawled inside to sleep. However, his camel interrupted him, complaining about how cold it was outside and wanting just enough space to warm his nose inside the tent. No sooner had the Arab graciously agreed than the camel asked for space for his whole head, then for his front legs, than for his back legs, and finally for his whole body. Once inside, the camel innocently observed how there wasn’t enough space for both of them and booted the Arab out into the cold winds of the desert.

Our culture wasn’t filled with sexually deviant ideologies overnight. The sorry shape in which we see our culture—and especially our schools—is the culmination of decades of granting evil “just a little more room.” Now that many schools are in the grip of twisted curricula and policies bowing the knee to the idol of sexual insanity, we may be finally beginning to wake up.

The Florida State Board of Education recently passed a new rule curtailing the use of school transgender bathrooms. The rule forces school boards to notify parents—both on the school website and by mail—if the school has adopted a policy that separates restrooms around any other criterion than biological sex at birth. Such a policy, the rule mandates, must include a method for supervising students in restrooms, and parents must be informed about which restrooms will be not sex-separated.

According to State Board of Education chair Tom Grady, this rule doesn’t mandate “what a particular bathroom looks like or doesn’t look like or who can use it.”tRather, he said, “What this rule is about, as I understand it, is parental notification” (The Hill). So while the rule still allows for transgender bathrooms in schools—not at all ideal—it at least ensures that parents know about it. This is definitely an improvement because it recognizes that parents ought to know what’s happening at the school where they send their kids five days out of seven.

Parents’ authority over their child’s education is an oft-ignored principle in the days of government nannying, yet it is one that is both alluded to in U.S. jurisprudence and rooted in biblical truth. In the 1923 U.S. Supreme Court case Meyer v. Nebraska (262 U.S. 390), the Court held that

“it is the natural duty of the parent to give his children education suitable to their station in life,” and that parents have “power . . . to control the education of their own.”

And as recently as the 2000 case Troxel v. Granville (530 U.S. 57), the Court observed that

“there is a presumption that fit parents act in their children’s best interests,”

and affirmed

“parents’ fundamental right to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children.”

While these cases admittedly were addressing very different scenarios than school bathrooms, the overall principle of parental authority over their children’s upbringing and education remains standing in the law to this day.

This is but a reflection of the biblical perspective on parental authority over education. Scripture teaches that parents have authority over their children’s behavior (Ephesians 6:1), discipline (Proverbs 13:24), education in godliness (Deuteronomy 6:7), and upbringing (Ephesians 6:4). Schools are essentially hired hands that help parents teach their children; parents don’t abdicate their primary responsibility of education just because they choose to have their child taught certain subjects somewhere else. Schools are the employees of parents; parents aren’t the slaves of schools. This is why Florida’s small rule change is such a big deal. While it didn’t ban transgender bathrooms, it at least acknowledged that parents ought to know what’s happening at school.

This shouldn’t be just a “yay, you-go-Florida” moment. This should be a “why-doesn’t-my-school-system-have-this-rule” moment! Among all the forms of government we have in our already remarkably democratic system, school boards are among the easiest for ordinary citizens to influence. School board meetings are not hard to attend, school officials are not hard to contact, school board positions are not hard to run for. And if every concerned family protested to school leadership about how the school system is treating their kids . . . As the quote often attributed to Edmund Burke warns:

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Right now, a lot of evil is doing a lot of triumphing because a lot of good men are doing a lot of nothing.

Hopefully and prayerfully, policies like Florida’s are the beginning of a turnaround point in our nation’s gender policies. But now that the camel is mostly inside the tent already, it’s going to be a difficult task to kick it out. However, “with God all things are possible.” If, through His power, a camel can pass through the eye of a needle (Matthew 19:24-26), I’m sure it can pass through the door of a tent. Only through the power of God—and our prayers and efforts directed to that end—will such a miracle happen. Let’s get to work, before we find ourselves booted out into the cold winds of irrelevance as the enemy makes his home in our kids’ hearts.

Halloween: the favorite holiday of men who cross-dress, wear woman-face, and like to hang around young children. And in San Diego they did just that. The San Diego Union-Tribune (U-T) reported on the “first-ever Boo Bash,” which included, “candy, a kid’s costume contest,” and, fittingly, “a Disney-villain themed drag queen performance.” Drag queens are villainous—that is, depraved—and Disney is now America’s premier purveyor of depravity to children.

The sorry spectacle was held in San Diego’s homosexual/cross-dressing neighborhood mecca of Hillcrest, inside Pride Square, on—I kid you not—Normal Street, under a “giant, billowing rainbow flag.” The U-T describes the bash as “special” because it “brought together members of the LGBTQ community and allies” to celebrate Halloween in an “inclusive environment.” What’s worse, the event was promoted by the Encinitas Union School District through an all-district email.

To leftists “inclusive” doesn’t mean “all are welcome to attend.” Their version of “inclusivity” requires affirming and celebrating all the feelings, beliefs, and actions of leftists—and only leftists.

Historically, commitments to inclusivity never demanded approval or celebration of all the beliefs, desires, and actions of others—which logically would be impossible.

While we should accept and welcome people, we can disagree with their beliefs, find their desires disordered, and detest some of their volitional acts.

Leftists exclude and even detest anyone who believes differently on sexual matters than they—leftists—do. Members of the “LGBTQ+” community and their ideological allies want to cancel anyone who dares to speak truths leftists hate with as much boldness as sexual libertines speak their “truths.” Sexual libertines want to exclude conservatives from the workplace—from all workplaces. They want conservatives excluded, marginalized, cancelled, stigmatized, and unable to make a living.

San Diego’s demonic Halloween “celebration” was created by TransFamily Support Services and sponsored by an over-21 “gay” bar in San Diego and a San Francisco clinic whose mission is to “align body and mind” by mutilating bodies—for profit, of course.

While the proximate cause of the event may have been TransFamily Support Services, the ultimate cause is the father of lies whose masterworks of cultural dis-integration include dis-integrating children. In a dastardly decades-in-the making move, the father of lies is severing children’s minds and hearts from their bodies.

It’s astonishing that drag—a pitiable, fringe-y, grotesque, and unfunny form of pseudo-art, engaged in by sexual fetishists—would become mainstream for children. If children manage to escape the treacherous waters of the womb, American society will betray them in childhood through indoctrination with pro-homosexual and pro-“trans” beliefs (and practices).

Among those traitors to children at the event were State Senator Toni Atkins (D-San Diego), San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, and County Board of Supervisors Chair Nathan Fletcher who expressed “support for transgender youth and their families,” which means approving of their sexual delusions and whatever damaging medical protocols they choose.

U-T reported that, “In the afternoon, drag queen Mariam T sat on stage in a sparkly purple evening gown to read ‘Red: A Crayon’s Story,’ to the audience. The book is about being true to yourself and following your own path despite obstacles.”

Drag queen “Mariam T” is Remington Scott Kienbusch a 30-year-old homosexual man whose favorite activities are “rhinestoning everything he wears” and going to Disneyland “any chance he gets.”

What if “being true to” oneself means following Christ despite the obstacles the “LGBTQ+” community and their bootlicking leftist government leaders toss in one’s path. Will “trans”-supporters Atkins, Gloria, and Fletcher support Christians as they are true to themselves? Or will they follow Governor Gavin Newsom‘s lead?

Newsom has decided to throw a boulder in the path of conservative people of faith who want to serve their communities as police officers. In September, Newsom signed into law a bill that amends a reasonable existing law which requires police officers to be free from any “emotional or mental condition that might adversely affect the exercise of the powers of a peace officer.”

The unreasonable amendment requires that police officers be evaluated for “bias” based on “sexual orientation.” Christians, Jews, and Muslims who believe homosexual acts are not moral may no longer serve as policewomen and policemen in California.

And now there’s a new bill pending that, if passed, will establish a “Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST) to set minimum standards for the recruitment and training of peace officers.” Further, it “authorizes POST to suspend or revoke the certification of a peace officer if the person has” demonstrated “bias on the basis of … gender identity or expression … [or] sexual orientation.”

The commission “shall develop guidance for local law enforcement departments on performing effective Internet and social media screenings of officer applicants” to root out “potential biases,” either “implicit or explicit.”

Everyone knows what “bias” on the basis of gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation means in the deceitful mouths of leftists. It means moral disapproval of cross-sex impersonation, cross-dressing, and homosexuality—disapproval that for many derives from their religion.

Therefore, Newsom and his collaborators seek to pass a law that demonstrates bias on the basis of religion, which violates the First Amendment prohibition of the free exercise of religion.

As criminal activity soars, Newsom has decided to reduce the number of good candidates to serve as police officers. Newsom does not care about public safety, public order, or the public good. He cares about pandering to any group that will help him retain power.

These are yet more reasons to hightail it out of California.

Looking over a list of Christian conferences coming up in 2023 I ran across one that states it is for: “LGBTQ+ Christians who have committed to celibacy as a personal call in their spiritual journeys.”

Here are some of the bios of the speakers:

“(Speaker A) identifies as cis/gay/queer and is the mom of a grown son from a 25-year mixed-orientation marriage.”

“(Speaker B, He/Him) is passionate about the intersection of faith, sexuality, and… facilitates conversations among Christian sexual and gender minorities.”

“(Rev. Speaker C, she/her) is…an outspoken advocate for youth ministry and social justice, (she/her) has worked as a youth leader, Children, Youth and Family Pastor, (has used) theatrical and improvisational elements in services but also to respond to God as a worship light and (has been)…a drag king, and occasional amateur DJ.”

“(Speaker D) was raised in a Christian home that was heavily involved in addiction recovery ministries. While leading in a large evangelical campus fellowship her first two years of college, (she) had a crisis of faith and ultimately joined a new group specifically created for Queer people of faith on campus. Attending (this same conference) in 2019 was a huge turning point for her, where she felt able to fully embrace her identity. She has gone through a long period of deconstructing her faith and continues to ponder the liberating potential of faith. She frames Jesus as her earliest example of what a revolutionary can look like.”

It goes on.

Where the Battle Fiercely Rages

This issue reminds me of the following quote:

“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christianity.  Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace to him, if he flinches at that one point.” — A follower of Martin Luther, 2 April 1526, quoted in Chronicles of the Schönberg-Cotta Family (New York, 1865), page 321.

The front-line of the battle in Evangelicalism today is that of sexual ethics: Marriage, divorce, remarriage, fornication, adultery, pornography, abortion, same-sex attraction, “sexual orientation,” “gender identity,” “gender fluidity,” “non-binary,” “non-conforming,” transgender, and of course, the entire alphabet soup of titles and “preferred gender pronouns.”

In 2014, the liberal Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) published an article promoting the acceptance of “gay” as a category for Christians but offering the suggestion of celibacy for those who are not “married.” The United Methodist Church (UMC) also led with this path.

Christian colleges and university are also impacted by this movement. For instance, Calvin University (a school in Grand Rapids, MI that is connected to the Dutch Reformed tradition) has (in 2022) denounced premarital sex and defined marriage as between a man and a woman, however it still allows a support group for LGBTQ students on campus. In the 2020-21 academic year, the school allowed a bisexual student to be elected as student body president.

Matthew Vines, a self-identified “gay” man, and a Presbyterian authored the popular book God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships. Vines promotes celibacy outside of marriage but believes “gay Christians” have a theological case for same-sex marriage.

He has helped to shift the nature of the dialogue on this issue among Evangelicals. He says, “It’s a subtle but significant shift. (People are now) saying, ‘There’s nothing wrong with being gay in and of itself,’ and that is a big change.”

Moving the Goalpost

It is believed by many activists that the way to normalize all LGBTQIA+ issues is to take the path of least resistance with Evangelicals. If you claim to be celibate or “non-practicing,” then everyone drops their guard and chills out. Pragmatically, their theory seems to work. This approach has been repeatedly attempted in the more conservative Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) denomination, who so far has withstood the acceptance of those into positions of leadership who self-identify as “gay Christian,” “homosexual Christian,” or even “same-sex attracted Christian.” Even some Southern Baptists are moving in this direction. Some of their top seminary faculty have spoken at conferences that affirm the acceptance of “identity” as long as the individuals are non-practicing.

The Law of Identity

Many LGBTQIA+ advocates claim Jesus never taught on the matter, and they infer from this that He must have approved of such ideas. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Jesus said, regarding sexuality:

“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’? So, they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matt. 19:4-6, ESV).

The first law of formal logic is “The Law of Identity.” This very basic law asserts that “whatever a thing is, it is.” This kind of thesis also presents a “Classical Negation.” If something is true, the opposite is false (the Law of Non-Contradiction), and truth cannot in this sense be both true AND false (the Law of the Excluded Middle). So, when Jesus says there are two sexual categories of humans (male and female) in the original creation, He is describing a Universal Elimination all other possibilities.

A New Identity

One of the churches the Apostle Paul founded in the middle of the first century had many of the same sexual problems that exist in America today. Rather than teaching them to see themselves as “Christian swindlers” “Christian adulterers,” or such, Paul emphasized their rebirth and new identity in Christ.

“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor. 6:9-11, ESV, emphasis added).

Paul encouraged them to identify their past sins and struggles but to look forward, not back. You will never overcome a sin or habit that you believe you ARE. If something defines your very existence, you will never move past it because it controls you. You may be a male or female who struggles with same-sex attraction (or illicit heterosexual attraction), but rather than defining yourself by a temptation, you should not only abstain from sin, but pursue righteousness instead.

“We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin” (Rom. 6:6).

This issue of identity is not just a side issue. It is the dam that holds back the floodgates of immorality in the Church. If you ARE something other than God says He made you to be, that makes Him out to be a liar. That makes humans, not God, the arbiters and definers of sexuality. The original argument in the garden from that serpent was, “Hath God REALLY said?” That is the enemy’s same approach today. God did not make anyone “gay” or “transgender.” He made them male and female. Sin has made them all these other things by which they self-identify. The solution is the same one the Church has been preaching for 2,000 years: The gospel of Jesus Christ that forgives sin and changes sinners.

It’s the greatest gifts from God and the fundamentals of how He designed the world that are often attacked the hardest. God gave us gender as one of His very first gifts to mankind in Genesis 1. It’s the building block of the building block of society, for without gender, marriage wouldn’t exist in the way God created it to work: as an example of Christ’s relationship with the Church.

In our current culture, gender is attacked in pretty much every way possible. Gender and the innate things that go along with being male or female are caricatured, blown up, held to impossible standards, ignored as merely feelings or fancies, and beat down on as toxic or harmful. It creates a mess that harms both individual people and the society in which they live.

A recent interview Ulta (a large beauty retailer and make-up brand) did on their podcast, “The Beauty of…,” has gone viral, so-to-speak, because the host, David Lopez (a biological male who styles himself as nonbinary), spoke with Dylan Mulvaney (a famous TikToker who came out as “trans” and has been journaling his “journey to ‘girlhood’” through a series of videos – he’s a biological male) about the beauty of girlhood. Two grown men wearing make-up and talking about being a girl. This didn’t go over very well with Ulta’s clientele, probably because it’s made up of mostly women who didn’t appreciate two men telling them what it’s like to be a girl.

In fact, Ulta got so many negative comments about the interview that they’ve hid many replies on Twitter, and turned off comments on YouTube, and one of the clips posted to Instagram.

Ulta responded to the backlash by tweeting,

“The premise of ‘The Beauty Of…’ is to feature conversations that widen the lens surrounding traditional beauty standards. We believe beauty is for everyone. And while we recognize some conversations we host will challenge perspectives and opinions, we believe constructive dialogue is one important way to move beauty forward.  The intersectionality of gender identity is nuanced, something David and Dylan acknowledge themselves within the episode. Regardless of how someone identifies, they deserve our respect.”

It’s an answer that keeps accord with a non-biblical view of the world in a society driven by feelings and desires. Why shouldn’t gender be whatever you want it to be if you don’t believe God created everything for a purpose and has ordered the world to work a certain way? Feelings may be valid, but they certainly are not always accurate, and we shouldn’t use them to go by. God created each and every person fearfully and wonderfully and made them the gender He made them, and it’s good.

An attack on gender (and marriage) is especially egregious because these physical realities don’t just point to physical realities. We’re told in Genesis 1:27, “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male and female He created them.”

Jesus later reiterates this in Mark 10:6-8, “But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female. Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’” Gender is the basis for one of the most significant symbols in scripture – marriage. God designed marriage to reflect salvation, as seen in Ephesians 5:24. It’s a wonderful gift from God, and therefore, the devil is going to attack it.

It’s good to be a man, and it’s good to be a woman in the way God created them to be. Listening to your feelings when they tell you differently is a sure way to hurt yourself and those around you. Feelings are wishy-washy, and they change often. Reality – and the truth of Scripture – doesn’t.

For the last 40 years, with rare exception, I have been teaching in (and leading) ministry schools on a weekly basis, having the joy and privilege of pouring into the next generation of leaders.

I now spend 5 days a month in Texas, teaching three days at a school in Dallas and two days at a school in Fort Worth. This week, after speaking about the church and LGBTQ+ issues and people, one of the deans made a striking comment to me: “The church’s silence has hurt these people.”

She was absolutely right.

I devoted the class this past Monday to the subject of the church’s calling to make a positive impact on society, to function as salt and light.

On Tuesday, I spoke about our calling to reach out to the LGBTQ+ community with compassion while resisting the agenda with courage.

And on Wednesday, I took questions from the students, about 600 in number and coming from more than 40 different nations.

Unfortunately, I was not able to respond to all the students, since so many had important and relevant questions to ask. So I stuck around for a few minutes afterwards, interacting with them one on one.

A young woman said to me, “I came out of the very things you have been describing. I was gender-fluid, omni-sexual, and polyamorous.”

When I asked her age, she said she was 18. That is the world we live in today.

An older man said to me with pain in his voice, “Please pray for my daughter. She now identifies as a man. She has changed her name, she is taking hormones, and she had her breasts removed.”

He told me she was 23 years-old and had the mastectomy at the age of 21. Can you imagine how this father feels?

With his wife, he welcomed their precious daughter into the world, probably bouncing her on his knees and singing songs to her when she was a baby, only to see her make these tragic, self-destructive choices.

She was once their precious little girl, perhaps wearing cute frilly dresses for fun. Now she has mutilated her body and identifies as a man.

I encouraged him to watch the In His Image documentary that I had the privilege of hosting for American Family Studios. It gives hope to family members praying for their struggling ones, as well as hope to the struggler. And he gave me a piece of paper with her name on it, asking again for my prayers.

As I walked back to my on-campus apartment, one of the school deans wanted to talk with me. She thanked me for addressing these subjects, since they are so relevant to the students.

And then she said those words that were so striking: “The church’s silence has hurt these people.”

Just a few minutes earlier, I had polled the student body, which, to repeat, is from more than 40 nations. I asked them how many of them had a friend or loved one who identified as somewhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum. The vast majority raised their hands.

And during the Q&A time, they asked many relevant questions.

How should they relate to a trans co-worker who now goes by a new name? What do they say about people who are biologically intersex? How can our churches hold to biblical values and still be safe spaces for those who identify as LGBTQ+? How can we be compassionate without compromise?

One of the students used to work in a Christian school. She explained that a little girl in the school was being raised by two lesbians. One day, the girl was talking to another girl about her two mothers.

She asked her schoolmate, “Do you think they are going to hell?”

The other girl said, “Yes,” and the teacher backed her position.

Was this the right thing to do? If so, how does this affect the little girl? What does it say to her two mothers? Or should a Christian school not even allow a student to attend unless the family is in order? Or is this the opposite of being Christlike?

Virtually every time I have spoken on the LGBTQ+ subject and fielded questions, there is a long line of people waiting to speak with me, many of them crying as they wait.

Should they attend their son’s same-sex wedding?

Their daughter wants hormone therapy to prepare to transition, threatening suicide if she cannot get the shots. What should they do?

A husband and father of four has left the family for another man. Is there any hope he will return?

Should a family allow their daughter and her girlfriend to stay at the house during the Christmas holidays? If so, must they stay in separate rooms?

What should a dad say to his 15-year-old son, a committed Christian, who is struggling with same-sex attractions?

This is just the tiniest sampling of the kinds of questions I hear – and I have been hearing such questions for many years now.

For pastors and Christian leaders not to address these issues is to hurt the people they love. And if they themselves do not feel equipped to address these issues and help their people, it is incumbent on them to find others who can. The resources are available, as are the speakers and the counselors. They just need to be sought out or invited.

The young generation in particular needs guidance. They have been bombarded for years by anti-God, anti-biblical voices and values. They are confused. They are grieved. They are hurting. They are seeking. They are looking for clarity with compassion and for guidance with grace. Who will give them what they need?

This is where pastors and Christian leaders must come alongside and help, equipping the parents and grandparents too. To fail to speak, whatever the reason, is to fail to serve the Lord and to fail to serve the flock.

I appeal to each of you: please don’t hurt your people by your silence.

Let me also be a resource to you in the most practical, hands-on way.

Just take a minute and download the brand new AskDrBrown Ministries app on Apple and Android and explore the resources there. In fact, if you scroll down on the app to “Consider This,” you’ll find two helpful, animated videos, “Can You Be Gay and Christian?” and “Why Don’t More Pastors Speak Out?”

Or just search through our articles and videos by subject. We are here to help!

Let’s stand strong together and make a difference for the Lord.

Let’s help those who are hurting.

There is no excuse for silence.

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.

Recently, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, University of Virginia Children’s Hospital, Boston Children’s Hospital, Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Transgender Health Clinic, and Akron Children’s Hospital have been under fire for engaging in experimental cross-sex hormone-doping on gender-confused teens—some effects of which are risky and irreversible—and for performing mutilating surgeries on the healthy sexual anatomy of minors. These Mengelesque procedures are beginning to pierce the consciences of Americans. While the growing outrage over what scores of hospitals and gender clinics are doing is a very good thing, it’s troubling that it’s taken this long.

Seven years ago, I wrote about Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago performing a double mastectomy on a 17-year-old girl from Grayslake, Illinois, whose birth name is Emily Paschal. How many more healthy breasts of minors have surgeons at Lurie lopped off since 2015?

The doctor who began Emily—now “Emmett”—on a path to affirming her metaphysical confusion via drugs was the infamous and ubiquitous homosexual, Dr. Robert Garofalo, who was profiled in a 2015 article titled “The Change Agent” published in Chicago Magazine. The profile reveals that Lurie’s lurid clinic was the brainchild of activist Garofalo:

Garofalo’s clinic, one of only 25 of its kind in the nation and the first to open in the Midwest, is pushing the boundaries of treatments for the growing population of transgender kids. In the past, patients this young were often redirected through “corrective” therapy to more gender-typical behaviors; Garofalo and his 25-person team take a much different approach: They aid these patients in transitioning.

Garofalo believes he’s “helping” confused children, who often suffer from co-morbidities like autism spectrum disorder, anxiety, and depression, “become their authentic selves.” By “authentic selves,” Garofalo is referring to what adolescents’ confused, troubled minds desire years before their brains are fully developed.

Chicago Magazine writes about one patient of Garofalo, a boy (i.e., an actual boy) who was named David at birth, then became “Jae” in 2013, then became “Diana” in 2015 when Garofalo recommended he start doping estrogen:

It wasn’t until she [sic] was 12 and saw an episode of Oprah about transgender women that she [sic] realized her [sic] situation was more complicated. She [sic] asked her [sic] mom to make an appointment with Garofalo. The doctor immediately put her [sic] on Lupron, a treatment for prostate cancer and fibroid tumors that also happens to suppress puberty.

As with so many adolescents today, David diagnosed himself.

Prior to starting David/Jae/Diana on the estrogen-doping regimen, Garofalo gave him and his mother Lisa Salas the requisite consent form:

“There are a lot of wishy-washy statements here,” Garofalo continues as he hands them the form. “That’s because there haven’t been many studies on the long-term effects of estrogen on young people.” He pauses to look at Diana’s mother. “I wish I could tell you everything that’s going to happen, but I can’t. There’s just so much that we don’t know yet.”

And with that, the diabolical Garofalo proceeded.

Lurie was initially leery of Garofalo’s proposed gender clinic, but J.B. Pritzker’s deep-pocketed, burly, cross-dressing cousin James/ “Jennifer” Pritzker ensured it come to fruition:

Leading the way through this uncharted water is Garofalo, a 49-year-old HIV-positive cancer survivor who readily admits he doesn’t have all the answers. Since he opened the clinic—thanks to a significant grant, matched by Lurie, from a foundation run by Jennifer Pritzker, the billionaire investor and philanthropist who came out as transgender in 2013—Garofalo has emerged as a leader in the adolescent transgender field. He travels the world to speak on the topic, is regularly brought in by medical schools and hospitals to train young pediatricians, and serves as a primary investigator on a National Institutes of Health research grant focusing on transgender people.

For those who don’t know, the Pritzkers are essential members of the cabal to socially construct their deviant beliefs about “transgenderism”–or what investigative journalist Jennifer Bilek more accurately calls “synthetic sex identities,” (SSI)–in every corner of American life.

Chicago Magazine gets nervily close to indicting Garofalo’s disturbing vision for gender-confused youth but ultimately bails by using the passive voice to avoid saying who questions Garofalo’s actions:

Garofalo’s treatments have to be seen as a radical form of medical improvisation, and that scares some folks.

Garofalo has historically been an outlier in the unholy quest to harm children:

Both the Endocrine Society and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health recommend waiting until patients are 16 to begin them on cross-sex hormone treatment. But Garofalo and other doctors at the clinic … will start patients as young as 14 on hormones. … Garofalo has had patients as young as 15 undergo top surgery.

Remember, this was written over seven years ago.

Matt Walsh recently exposed a Vanderbilt University Medical School doctor admitting that disfiguring minors makes big bucks for hospitals, not to mention for counselors, endocrinologists, pediatricians, surgeons, and the maker of Lupron.

Garofalo and his minions at Lurid make sure they squeeze money out of everyone they can to fund their dirty work:

Transgender treatments aren’t cheap—Lupron, for example, costs $8,500 to $18,000 a year—but Garofalo works with his patients, including those on Medicaid, to help get insurance companies to cover the medications. “Nearly every patient who comes through the door gets a denial initially from their insurance,” says Ginny Scheffler, the clinic’s nurse, who spends a good bit of her time writing appeals on behalf of patients. But even those without coverage can get treatment at Lurie thanks to private donations, including one from the Chicago transgender filmmaker Lana Wachowski of The Matrix fame.

Because of the profitability of creating synthetic sex identities for minors, because of the social contagion nature of “trans” identification, because of the terror instilled in parents by profiteers and ideologues, and because of the collaborationist silence of those who know the movement is evil, a low estimate of the number of children ages 6-17 who were diagnosed with gender dysphoria in 2021 is over 42,000. That is 42,000+ children who are being exploited and harmed for profit and for the social and political goals of adults who want to normalize their perverse desires.

And now we have public elementary schools reading picture books to little ones that affirm leftist beliefs about cross-sex impersonation. We have public libraries dragging in drag queens to read stories to toddlers. We have policies that enable teachers to keep secrets from parents about their children’s cross-sex impersonation at school. We have an organization committed to finding “trans”-complicit adults to appropriate wayward confused children from their parents. And perhaps the most alarming recent development is a bill sponsored by deviant California State Senator Scott Wiener and signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom that empowers “California courts to strip parents [from other states] of custody if a [non-parent] person takes the parents’ child to California and arranges for the child to receive gender transition procedures.”

“Trans”-cultism did not emerge on the cultural scene suddenly in the last two years. It didn’t emerge suddenly in 2015 after the disastrous Obergefell U.S. Supreme Court decision. “Trans”-cultism has been metastasizing for decades, destroying the hearts, minds, and bodies of children and teens; corrupting schools; shattering families; undermining First Amendment rights; and sexually integrating private spaces and sports.

Illinois Family Institute (IFI) has been warning about it for almost fifteen years, and so we have been watching with mixed feelings the long-anticipated, desired, and prayed-for anti-“trans”-cult movement grow.

We are thankful that at last parents and others on both sides of the political aisle are speaking out against the evil of “trans”-cultism. We are also sad and frustrated that it has taken so long for Americans in large numbers to speak out against this evil, resulting in untold numbers of children being grievously and irreparably harmed.

One of my first articles after being hired by IFI in the fall of 2008 was about lesbian Laurel Dykstra who had written a how-to article on ideologically grooming preschoolers into the “trans” cult. Her article, titled “Trans-Friendly Preschool,” was published in 2005.

My article, titled “Soulless Teaching,” summarizes Dykstra’s suggestions for indoctrinating preschoolers. Here are some of the claims and recommendations Dykstra, now a pastor, made 17 years ago. See if anything sounds familiar:

• She said that the “gender binary system…. is harmful to everyone.”

• She moralized that “It is not enough for classrooms, teachers, and schools to be ‘open’ or ‘non-judgmental’; they need to be actively trans-positive.”

• Dykstra recommended that when talking to preschoolers, teachers should say things like “‘Well, most men have penises, but some don’t,’” and “‘Some girls grow up to be men.’”

• She urged teachers to “Encourage kids to question their assumptions. ‘How do you know that that person is a woman? Could a man wear a dress?’”

• She instructed teachers to “Call children by the name and the pronouns they choose.”

• She recommended accessorizing classrooms with a “Tranny Teddy. Have a non-gendered toy/doll/puppet…. Do not use pronouns and give this creature a variety of gendered clothing, such as a skirt and tie. If asked, say ‘Oh, Binker isn’t a boy or a girl.’”

• She suggested having a “Butch/Femme Day. Why not teach kids language like butch/femme, as an alternative to boy/girl or male/female? You could have dress-up days to play deliberately with gender, like ‘Fabulous and Fearless Day’ or ‘Capable and Campy.’”

• She encouraged teachers to “Invite a drag performer or transsexual person who would be willing to share their story and a photo album.”

• When reading picture books to preschoolers, Dykstra recommended “switching pronouns, avoiding them altogether, or using alternative pronouns.”

• Dykstra rationalized using deceit in the face of parental opposition: “For ‘stealth practitioners’ (i.e., teachers in a transphobic setting), these classroom suggestions can be implemented without fanfare to create a more just and welcoming classroom.”

I reiterated her recommendations again in a 2018 article titled “Queering Government Schools: Just Say No.”

In 2017, when leftists everywhere were promoting the specious claim that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) supports the social, chemical, and surgical “transitioning” of minor children and teens, I wrote an article exposing the disturbing way the AAP developed its position on the treatment of gender-dysphoric children. That article, titled “Do 66,000 Pediatricians Really Support the AAP’s Trans-Affirmative Policy,” outlines the secret process by which the AAP ensured its policy would reflect only leftist views.

The following year, 2018, I wrote an article titled “55 Members of the American Academy of Pediatrics Devise Destructive ‘Trans’ Policy,” exposing in greater detail the position of the AAP select-committee on harming children through profitable-but-medically-unsubstantiated protocols.

By the way, Lurid’s creepy Dr. Robert Garofalo has been instrumental in the social construction and imposition of the AAP’s non-science-based “trans” affirming policy.

In 2017, I wrote an article titled, “Things You Don’t Hear About Gender Dysphoria,” which lists 13 bulleted facts about gender dysphoria in minors and the health risks and grotesque nature of the “treatments” from which hospitals are profiting handsomely.

And still the medical cultists march on, surgical weapons unsheathed.

There are steps churches, parents, and other concerned citizens can take to begin to undo the damage done by synthetic sex identitarians and their apostles. In addition to removing your children from schools that affirm synthetic sex identities, watch and discuss these three documentaries with your children and in church youth groups:

Dysconnected: The Real Story Behind the Transgender Explosion 

Whose Children Are They? 

What is a Woman?

Written by Adamo Mafra

If you follow news stories about transgender issues among U.S. children, you are likely concerned by the exponential increase in trans-identifying youth and the dramatic institutional shifts towards “gender affirming care” being offered and available to adolescents—both with or without parental consent. Perhaps you’re familiar with Abigal Shrier’s well-researched yet controversial book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, or Ryan Anderson’s book, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Movement.

You may even have read about the increasing numbers of trans-identifying adults who now regret the medical transitions they underwent as youth, including as many as 1,000 families suing England’s Tavistock clinic. There is even some statistical evidence that hormonal treatment of gender dysphoria can increase suicidality in youth. All of this offers cause for concern. However, there is some cause for hope moving forward.

Many European countries have been ahead of the US on transgender issues for years, and a sign of hope is emerging from across the sea: at least four countries—Finland, France, Sweden, and the United Kingdom—are taking steps to reduce adolescent transgender medical transitions. This move is not coming from a renewed conservatism, but from countries that are further on the transgender journey and are recognizing the dangerous path they have been pursuing.

Sweden was the first country to allow people to change their “legal gender” a full 50 years ago. Yet, five of the six clinics there that treat minors with gender dysphoria paused the initiation of “pediatric gender transitions.” Just last year, Astrid Lindgren Children’s Hospital, part of the Karolinska University Hospital—Sweden’s second largest hospital network—announced a policy change regarding treating minors with gender dysphoria in which they acknowledged both the scientific and legal concerns with hormonal treatment of children and adolescents.

Two years ago, Finland’s Council for Choices in Health Care (COHERE) promoted a much more considered approach than what we hear about in the US right now. They stated, “Based on thorough, case-by-case consideration, the initiation of hormonal interventions that alter sex characteristics may be considered before the person is 18 years of age only if it can be ascertained that their identity as the other sex is of a permanent nature and causes severe dysphoria. In addition, it must be confirmed that the young person is able to understand the significance of irreversible treatments and the benefits and disadvantages associated with lifelong hormone therapy, and that no contraindications are present.” Another highlight in their decision is the requirement to treat gender identity concerns only after other psychiatric symptoms have ceased. Furthermore, “Surgical treatments are not part of the treatment methods for dysphoria caused by gender-related conflicts in minors.”

Perhaps the most dramatic example is what is happening this year in the United Kingdom.  They also are addressing their treatment of gender dysphoric youth. The Travistock Centre, which has been the only clinic for gender transitions in the UK, has seen a 1900% increase (yes, 1900%, not 190%) in transgender youth from 2011 to 2021. The National Health Service commissioned an independent review of their gender identity services, headed by Dr. Hilary Cass. The Cass Review produced an interim report this year which draws attention to the fact that there are “significant gaps in the research and evidence base,” and further argues, “It has become increasingly clear that a single specialist provider model is not a safe or viable long-term option.” The National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) also found insufficient scientific evidence for the use of puberty blocking drugs to treat young people.

Even in France, which is anything but a neo-conservative country, the National Academy of Medicine issued a statement acknowledging that “a great medical caution must be taken in children and adolescents” when it comes to care related to “gender transidentity.” They note “the vulnerability, particularly psychological, of this population and the many undesirable effects, and even serious complications, that some of the available therapies can cause.” Even with parental authorization, they say, the “greatest reserve is required” in the use of hormone treatment for children.

Here in the US, there are also some glimmers of hope. Pediatricians are finally speaking up about the harmful effects of a drugs-first approach to adolescent transgender care. Unfortunately, for now, the American Academy of Pediatrics seems to be working to silence such criticism, but the fact that these pediatricians are voicing concerns, belies the claims from HHS that “there is no argument among medical professionals” against such care.

Additionally, the FDA recently added warning labels to puberty blockers after six pre-teen patients developed symptoms including tumor-like masses in the brain. While the fact that this occurred is heartbreaking, the fact that the FDA is responding offers hope that concerns are being recognized.

When asked by his disciples why a certain man was born blind, Jesus answers, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him. I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work.” (John 9:3-4)

People suffering from gender dysphoria do need care. But if that care is not rooted in love and truth, it cannot be truly for their good. As ears are beginning to open to hear the truth, let us embrace this hope-filled moment to do the work of God and let God’s grace be revealed through His ability to heal the suffering. We need to help our political and medical institutions return to seeking truth, love, and true human good. This is especially important when it comes to caring for our children.

This article was originally published by the North Carolina Family Policy Council.

On September 9, 2022, Indiana University (IU) issued a press release announcing that in honor of the 75^th anniversary of the Kinsey Institute, the university has installed a life-size bronze statue of entomologist and pervert extraordinaire Alfred C. Kinsey after whom the Kinsey Institute is named.

Demonstrating the astonishing ignorance of leftists, the press release says,

The sculpture’s installation on the Bloomington campus demonstrates the university’s pride in the living legacy of research and academic freedom Kinsey helped to forge and the institute’s ongoing commitment to equity regarding sexual diversity established by Kinsey’s research.

Well, Kinsey was inarguably a fan of what IU calls euphemistically “sexual diversity,” and his legacy tragically lives on, but neither his predilection for “sexual diversity” nor his legacy are deserving of prideful honors.

Demonstrating a risible absence of irony, Justin Garcia, executive director of the Kinsey Institute, said this—I kid you not:

Dr. Kinsey left us with the extraordinary legacy of his endless scientific curiosity, his unwavering commitments to academic freedom and his passion for understanding humanity’s sexual diversity. … This spectacular sculpture honors Kinsey’s international scholarly and public impact.

I would agree if by “spectacular,” Garcia means “of, relating to, or being a spectacle.”

“Legacy of “endless scientific curiosity” is Newspeak for unbridled, morally untethered sexual license, which is really not all that extraordinary. Countless numbers of perverts share Kinsey’s endless curiosity. The diverse porn pandemic reveals that sick reality. What Kinsey possessed that ordinary, run-of-the-mill perverts lack is the imprimatur of academia.

Having a life-size bronze sculpture of a creeper/criminal who self-identified as a serious scholar is definitely a spectacle and one wholly unworthy of any institution committed to “Lux et Veritas—”Light and Truth.”

Here are some of the salient features of Kinsey’s salacious life and research:

• “In Kinsey’s 1948 report he recounted using nine men to ‘observe’ the sexual responses of children for his research. … ‘Some of these adults … are technically trained persons who have kept diaries or other records which have been put at our disposal.’ He included a chart that indicated that these ‘trained’ adults were inducing sexual ‘orgasms’ in babies as young as five months of age. One four-year-old is reported to have had 26 ‘orgasms’ in 24 hours. An 11- month-old baby had 14 ‘orgasms’ in 38 minutes.”

• In reality, it was revealed in 1995 that all this data came from the diaries of one pedophile named Rex King who attempted to “bring to orgasm boys between the ages of 2 months and 15 years, in some cases over a period as long as 24 hours.” Kinsey eagerly encouraged King to send all his diaries: “I rejoice at everything you send.” In the 2004 movie starring Liam Neeson as Kinsey, the actor portraying King says this:

My grandmother introduced me to sexual intercourse when I was 10. My first homosexual act was with my father. I was 11. The 33 members of my extended family – I’ve had sex with 17 of them. That’s five generations now. … I’ve had sex with 22 separate species of animals. I’ve had intercourse with 9, 412 people. I’ve had sexual relations with 605 pre-adolescent males and 231 pre-adolescent females.

• “In his 1953 report the sexual data was mainly taken from ‘adult partners’ of 609 pre-adolescent girls. Kinsey called these molestations ‘play’ and claimed them harmless.”

• Criteria used to determine when infants were experiencing “orgasm” included “violent convulsions, groaning, ‘an abundance of tears’ (i.e., sobbing), extreme trembling and fainting. In other words, what any normal adult would view as a child’s severe reactions to trauma Kinsey interpreted as children enjoying themselves.”

• Kinsey’s “research” has been criticized for serious methodological and ethical flaws, including using significant numbers of imprisoned child molesters and prostitutes as well as a Nazi pedophile (Friedrich “Fritz” Von Balluseck) but reporting their responses as representative of the population at large.

• The married Kinsey had sex with many men, including students and research assistants.

• Kinsey encouraged his wife to have sex with other men.

• Kinsey recorded sexual activities between his wife and other men, and homosexual acts between men and group sex in his attic.

• Kinsey circumcised himself with a pocketknife at about age 60.

• Kinsey had himself filmed masturbating while inserting objects into his urethra.

American historian and art critic Kelly Grovier writing for the BBC about the BLM rioters who went on a statuary-destruction tear offers this about the meaning of statues:

From their earliest inception … statues were … less about the individuals they depict than about how we see ourselves.

Clearly, Kinsey represents favorably how many Americans see themselves.

While the Founding Fathers, whose statues were defaced or torn down in 2020, were men with moral blind spots, it was not their moral failings that were honored. Today’s Americans don’t see themselves in or seek to honor the moral failings of Thomas Jefferson. No, it was the wisdom and noble efforts to create a more perfect union that Americans honor through their statues of the great men of American history. In their statues, Americans see an aspirational picture of themselves and the country that has been a beacon of light to millions.

In contrast, Kinsey’s depravity is not a moral blind spot that his fans overlook. His depravity is what they celebrate. Kinsey is like Harvey Milk in that regard. Both men are honored by leftists because of their depravity–not despite it.

Grovier continues:

Just how engrained that instinct is – to perceive an aspect of oneself in the image of another – is impossible to measure. Such an impulse may explain why it is so agonisingly difficult to tolerate the persistence of memorials that venerate past masters of pain. Theirs is a suffocating weight. The outrage that many feel about having to share the streets with such hulking ghosts of oppression is deep and crushingly real. 

A statue of Kinsey—the abusive father of the sexual revolution and, therefore, master of incalculable pain—is agonizingly difficult to tolerate. His statue is a suffocating weight. The hulking bronze ghost of Kinsey is a painful reminder of the suffering of the many victims—the slaughtered unborn, children without mothers or fathers, single parents, and children whose minds are being deceived and bodies mutilated—of Kinsey’s sexual revolution.

While repugnant, perhaps the bronze statue at the public Indiana University honoring Alfred Kinsey fits the repugnant contemporary era leftists have socially constructed in America where our public schools train up children in the ways sexually perverse leftists want them to go. At the same time, it is a grotesque reminder of the human suffering Kinsey has caused.

State “education” authorities in Michigan are under fire nationwide after getting caught red-handed encouraging teachers to, among other absurdities and crimes, “transition” children to new “genders” without the consent or even knowledge of their parents. The trainings are almost too outrageous to believe, and yet officials are publicly defending it all.

The growing scandal, which was first exposed by prominent anti-woke activist Christopher Rufo with the Manhattan Institute, has government “school” officials scrambling to perform damage control. But parental outrage over the abuse is growing nationwide as even liberal-media polls show the public has overwhelmingly turned against this sort of brainwashing in school.

The Michigan Department of Education program in question urges government-school “educators” to “facilitate the sexual transition of minors without parental consent,” as Rufo put it in his exposé posted on social media. The trainers also claim the notion that gender is “binary” is a “system of oppression” created by the West that must be dismantled.

There is proof, too, as documents and footage emerge. One leaked training video for teachers features a self-styled “Black, masculine-identified, cisgendered lesbian baby boomer” instructor named “Amorie Robinson.” During the training session, she urges teachers to familiarize themselves with the “terminology” such as “gender fluid,” “gender queer,” or “gender non-conforming.”

According to Robinson, children may “identify” as “asexual, lesbian, straight, gay, bisexual, queer, questioning, demisexual, demiromantic, aromantic, and skoliosexual.” Teachers should “Google on those” because “we ain’t got time today” to examine all the sexual and gender “identities” children might adopt, she said.

Another trainer urges teachers to hide children’s sexual and gender “identities” from parents, even if discussing the child’s desire to commit suicide. “I would one-thousand percent recommend working with the student to let them guide that process,” says the trainer, Phillips-Knope, after recommending teachers refer to children as “earthlings” instead of boys and girls.

When it became a toxic political hot-potato when blasted by GOP gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon, even far-left Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer was forced to condemn it. Her office sent a mild rebuke to the Department of Education and urged it to “review your trainings to ensure they comply with all applicable regulations, maintain department guidelines, and are reflective of best practices.”

In an op-ed published by establishment propaganda organs, Michigan Superintendent of Public Schools Michael Rice defended the abusive “trainings.” In fact, he referred to them as “professional development” to “build the capacity of educators to provide safe, supportive, and inclusive school climates where all students can thrive — especially students who identify as LGBTQ+.”

“Our local educators and support staff care deeply about their students and seek to better understand how to reach students and help them feel accepted, safe, and supported,” Rice continued, adding that anyone who calls out the madness is attempting to “bully” school staff. “Children deserve safe and inclusive environments to minimize their fears and anxieties.”

After falsely denying that teachers were taught to keep parents in the dark, Rice went on to admit that it’s true—but it’s “for the children,” supposedly. “In a situation in which the student is concerned about abuse, neglect, or homelessness if parents are told, educators may be cautious about sharing issues of sexual orientation and gender identity with parents,” he said.

Teachers “have a responsibility not to put children in harm’s way, even inadvertently,” Rice continued, as if government was now in charge of protecting children from their own parents and families—the very people who love them more than anyone else on the planet. “Such decisions are not made lightly and are ultimately about safeguarding the health, safety, and wellbeing of students.”

This is a similar attitude to the one adopted by the Biden administration. As The Newman Report documented earlier this year, the U.S. departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services released a video encouraging children to file federal complaints against their own families and communities if they were not “affirmed” in their chosen sexual proclivities or gender fantasies.

This is collective madness — and it is beyond evil. Adults must stop encouraging and normalizing the madness, for the same reason it would be irresponsible to talk to a schizophrenic’s imaginary friends or encourage an anorexic girl to have liposuction. This dangerous abuse of children should be prosecuted. But as has always been the case, the only true protector of a child will be his or her parents.

This article was originally published on FreedomProject.com and is reprinted here with permission.

The United States under the Biden administration is choosing to favor dangerous medical treatments for children dealing with gender dysphoria—and using the force of government against those who oppose such harmful treatments.

In recent months, the Eagle Forum of Alabama (the national group was founded by Phyllis Schlafly) has helped write legislation in that state to protect children with gender confusion from receiving “treatment” that could permanently damage them.

In his End of Day Report (9/9/22), Gary Bauer writes, “After Alabama banned transgender surgeries on children, the Biden Administration sued the state in federal court to block the law. But they’re not just arguing against the constitutionality of the law. They are also going after a conservative public policy group that lobbied on behalf of the law.” Of course, that group is the Eagle Forum of Alabama.

The United States’ Department of Justice issued a subpoena in August demanding records from the Eagle Forum of Alabama, stating: “Several public statements suggest that Eagle Forum of Alabama staff may have had some involvement in drafting the legislation or its predecessor bills. As a result, the United States is issuing the enclosed subpoena for certain records in the Eagle Forum of Alabama’s possession from January 1, 2017 through the present.”

The official subpoena demands: “any draft legislation, proposed legislations, or model legislation.” This included all their communiques on the subject, e.g., “any social media postings.”

Eagle Forum of Alabama responded to this “unprecedented request”: “This should cause every single advocacy group or individual in America engaged in the legislative process to pause and consider the potential ramifications if any part of this subpoena is allowed to stand.”

Kristen Ullman, president of Eagle Forum (nationally), comments on the wider issue here: “If the Department of Justice doesn’t like your viewpoint it may target you next.”

What is the government alleging was illegal? Certainly it’s not illegal for an organization to be involved with crafting legislation?

The Biden Administration’s action is particularly astounding because we do not yet fully grasp the long-term deleterious effects of the puberty blockers and body-part-removal surgeries to “cure” gender dysphoria.

In her eye-opening book, Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters (2020), Abigail Shrier chronicles the incredible harm being foisted on so many children in our society today, especially girls, because of this current fad of transgender mania.

Shrier, a writer for The Wall Street Journal, notes, “In 2016, natal females accounted for 46 percent of all sex reassignment surgeries in the United States. A year later it was 70 percent.”

She adds, “Some small proportion of the population will always be transgender. But perhaps the current craze will not always lure troubled young girls with no history of gender dysphoria, enlisting them in a lifetime of hormone dependency and disfiguring surgeries….No adolescent should pay this high a price for having been, briefly, a follower.”

The left is imposing on this country a form of mental insanity. Both God and science teach us that we are either male or female. God said He has created us male or female in His image. Science teaches us that we have trillions of cells in the human body, and virtually every one of them provides a marker that you are either male or female.

Now, there is such a thing as gender dysphoria, where some children feel confused. “Am I a girl trapped in a boy’s body?” they wonder. But experts say that about 95% of these children with gender dysphoria will grow out of this by around puberty—if the process is not interrupted along the way.

Tragically, there are many people in high places that are interrupting this process all too often.

And then when children go through with some form of transition, very often deep depression follows, as documented at www.sexchangeregret.com.

Dr. Ryan Anderson, author of When Harry Became Sally, writes:

“The most thorough follow-up of sex-reassigned people—extending over 30 years and conducted in Sweden, where the culture is strongly supportive of the transgendered—documents their lifelong mental unrest. Ten to 15 years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to 20 times that of comparable peers.”

The founders gave us the First Amendment to enshrine in the Constitution the right to freely practice religion and by extension, the right of conscience. We also have free speech rights and the right to petition our government in case of grievances. That would include lobbying for legislation for the good of society.

But the Biden administration is steam rolling over conscience rights, despite the Constitution.

Phyllis Schlafly herself once told me in a 2004 television interview: “The Constitution is not out of date.  It’s just as good today as when it was written.” Would that it was being followed today by the Biden administration.

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

Sexual libertines long sought to transform cultural disapproval of homoeroticism into approval, and one way they pursued this goal was to co-opt the fight of blacks for racial equality. Hence, sexual libertines pursued the inclusion of homosexuality (and now “gender identity”) in anti-discrimination law. To that end, sexual libertines relentlessly compared those two groups (i.e., blacks and homosexuals) who had been historically mistreated, suggesting without proving that since blacks have been stigmatized and mistreated and homosexuals have been stigmatized and mistreated, the two conditions are ontologically the same and must be thought of and treated in all contexts as identical.

In short, this is what libertines think—or pretend to think—in the service of normalizing sexual deviance:

• Blacks were stigmatized and mistreated

• Homosexuals were stigmatized and mistreated.

• Therefore, skin color and homoeroticism are equivalent.

But if mistreatment of people because of cultural disapproval of their volitional acts renders them the ontological equivalent of blacks, then zoophiliacs, “minor-attracted persons” sibling-lovers, polyamorists, and “sex-workers” (i.e., prostitutes and porn actors/actresses)—all of whom are at times stigmatized or mistreated—are analogous to blacks.

But subjective homoerotic attraction and volitional homoerotic activity do not constitute a condition analogous to race or a condition that deserves special legal protections. Neither does the desire to be the opposite sex or pretending to be the sex one is not constitute the ontological equivalent of race. And if they do, then so do all other conditions constituted by subjective desires and volitional activities.

The fallacious and odious comparison of race to sexual perversion has been an effective stratagem in our increasingly non-thinking culture, but there was yet more rhetorical gimcrackery to come.

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 simply denoted the aggregate of phenomena constituting, associated with, experienced and affirmed 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 of 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 diverse 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 short this is what libertines think about identity (except when it comes to those whose identity is found in Christ):

• All phenomena that make up identity are off-limits to moral judgment.

• Homosexuality (or cross-dressing) is part of identity.

• Therefore, homosexuality (or cross-dressing) is immune from moral judgment.

But if all conditions constituted by powerful, persistent, unchosen desires and the behaviors impelled by such feelings are part of this new and culturally destructive understanding of identity and, therefore, immune from moral judgment, then so too are zoophilia/bestiality, “Minor Attraction,” “Genetic Sexual Attraction,” polyamory, and sex work immune from moral judgment. And a society with no judgments about sexual morality—a sexually untethered, boundary-free culture—is a chaotic, corrupt society unfit for raising children.

The left demands that society affirm all subjective feelings not only as good but also as signifiers of objective reality, and this demand results in sometimes hilarious conundrums for those who know that reality exists and that the emperor is buck naked. For your chuckle ‘o’ the day, watch this short video to see the ideological Gordian knot from which post- Dolezalians can’t seem to extricate themselves:

People of all faiths and no faith have the right to make moral judgments about subjective feelings, beliefs, and volitional activity—even if others choose to place those phenomena at the center of their “identities.” In fact, moral creatures have an obligation to make such judgments.

On September 6, the Human Services Committee of Evanston City Council voted unanimously to send Alderman Devon Reid’s proposed ordinance to allow women to go topless in “all public places (forward to 51:25)” to the “Equity and Empowerment Committee.” Reid wants his proposed ordinance reviewed over concerns that “it excluded the transgender community.” How might it have done that, you may wonder. Well, apparently, someone objected to the ordinance’s “gender binary” language. Sex-deniers cannot tolerate any public acknowledgment that the human species is a sex-binary species.

Reid, is a “queer, 29-year-old” activist and former city clerk who was arrested in 2018 for driving on a license that had been suspended since 2013 and ticketed for “possession of under 10 grams of marijuana.” This was two years before Illinois legalized recreational marijuana. It seems Reid has little respect for either public decency or the law.

Here is what Alderman Devon Reid’s ideal transgressive world would look like: Women would be free to go topless in all public places. Men who identify as women and have received breast implants as part of their skin costume would be free to go topless in all public places. And women who identify as men but have chosen not to have their breasts excised would be free to go topless in all public places.

The committee meeting is well worth watching, especially from 3:15-8:14 during which time attorney and president of Evanston’s Parks and Recreation Board, Robert Bush, shared his opposition to the proposed ordinance as well as his concern about the lack of public input on it. Later in the meeting, “political consultant,” community organizer, and Human Services Committee member Bobby Burns unprofessionally described his colleague Mr. Bush as “irresponsible” for spreading “misinformation.” Ah yes, the “misinformation” ploy–the last refuge of a political scoundrel.

Reid believes that “equity” demands that if men may go topless in all public places, so too should women be allowed to go topless in all public places. The wokester opposes any ordinance that “regulates women’s bodies in a way that we do not regulate men’s bodies.”

According to WBBM, Reid says “he wants to treat men and women equally and eliminate ambiguity for trans people.” Perhaps Reid doesn’t understand that “equality” demands we treat like things alike. One would think the “queer” Reid would know that men and women are not alike in critically important ways. One important way they are unlike is in their sexed bodies.

While Reid’s ordinance will harm men, women, boys, and girls, the harm done to girls and women will be far greater.

This is the rotten fruit of both the ideology of “equity” and the ideology of the “trans” cult. And it serves both the anarchistic impulses of radical leftists who seek to destroy America by a thousand cuts and the prurient desires of men and women unmoored from morality.

Equity used to mean to treat something or someone fairly, justly, or impartially. The left now uses it to mean either to treat unlike things alike or to ensure identical outcomes for dissimilar people, acts, or other phenomena. To treat men’s bodies different from women’s is not unfair, unjust, or a manifestation of partiality. Treating men’s bodies different from women’s bodies grows out of the recognition that men and women are different. They are different in their bodies, emotions, desires, and their sexual responses to one another’s bodies.

Men’s chests are wholly different from women’s breasts. This commonsense statement shouldn’t need to be spoken, but in this time when society is awash in or in thrall to foolish doctrinaire ideologies, commonsense has no purchase and no home.

“Trans” cultism is assaulting commonsense, children, and families at every turn, preaching the poisonous (Gnostic) lie that sexed bodies have no intrinsic meaning and that male and female bodies are interchangeable. So, ignorant (or wicked) Evanston leaders say that female-sexed bodies have no intrinsic meaning and are interchangeable with male-sexed bodies.

Not coincidentally, Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss—who is a member of the city council—is a “trans” cult collaborator. In June 2021, just a month after he became mayor of Evanston, he was asked, “What is your favorite charitable cause or causes.” Biss responded,

At the end of each year we sit with our kids and discuss what we want to focus on. We often donate to causes focusing on issues of racial justice or justice for the LGBT community especially transgender and non-binary people.

So, what do business owners and the Evanston Chamber of Commerce think about this ordinance? Will families stop taking their children to downtown Evanston, choosing instead to shop and go to restaurants in neighboring Winnetka, Glencoe, Highland Park, and Lake Forest, all of which have charming, family-friendly downtowns and plazas?

Will decent families want to move to Evanston? Will decent Evanston families consider moving out of Evanston?

What will happen to Evanston’s annual Art & Big Fork Festival held for three days every August? Will attendance by families decrease? Maybe the increase in attendance by anarchists and perverts will financially compensate for the loss of funds from decent people.

Where are Evanston church leaders on this issue? Do pastors and elders feel an obligation to lead on an issue of this magnitude?

What about Evanston Christians? Will they step up to oppose this assault on public decency?

Leftists don’t seem to understand that the structures of government have a purpose beyond facilitating the sexual desires of the deviant and transgressive among us. A good government protects the most vulnerable, promotes the public good, and maintains public order, in part by establishing boundaries that restrain the perverse impulses of fallen humans. Abandoning this function will make cities like Evanston unfit for human flourishing.

“Fascism: a political philosophy, movement, or regime that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

Days ago at a private fundraiser, our semi-pervy, semi-senile semi-president said that “not just Trump” but “the entire philosophy that underpins”—well, that’s where it gets a bit fuzzy, since our semi-articulate president broke off his semi-thought for a semi-moment as is his practice. When Biden-the-Unifier regained consciousness, he described “the entire philosophy that underpins”—presumably support for Trump—as “semi-fascism.” From Project Veritas’ stunning exposé, it sure seems leftists are the semi-fascists.

Watch the video below to see Jeremy Boland, assistant principal of Cos Cob Elementary School in the affluent community of Greenwich, Connecticut admitting that he won’t hire Catholics or older applicants as teachers because they’re likely to be conservative:

Boland said,

Protestants in this area [Greenwich, Connecticut] are probably the most liberal. But if they’re Catholic, [they’re] conservative. … You don’t hire them. … It’s like they’re brainwashed. You can never change their mindset.

I wonder if Boland is more open to changing his mindset than conservative Catholics are. If not, has he been brainwashed?

Boland illegally discriminates based not only on religion but also on age:

I need younger [teachers]. … So, for one position, I think we had 30 applicants. So out of all those applicants, I don’t think I interviewed anybody over the [age] of 30 … because sometimes the older you get, the more set in your ways, the more conservative you get.

Boland revels in his own semi-fascistic presumptuousness:

I can’t get past the parents. … So, the parents feels it’s their responsibility to shape the schools, which then shape the kids. So, since I can’t get past the parents, do I really have as much of an influence on the kids as … I want? I try in my own way. Right now, my job is to hire the right teachers.

Boland is too modest. He has—till now—been getting “past the parents” by hiring the “right teachers,” meaning semi-fascistic leftist teachers.

Boland admits that these “right teachers” are as devious as he is. They use “subtle” and “savvy” ways to persuade elementary school children that the “liberal” or “Democratic” way of doing things is just “the norm.” How might they do this? Well, for example, Boland shares that a teacher might say,

If 80% of the country is in favor of this law, but yet the Supreme Court just said “no,” what are you gonna do when it comes time to cast your vote, which then has a direct influence on who gets picked for the Supreme Court?

Leading young malleable minds down the semi-fascistic path is justifiable to semi-fascist Boland because he believes he does not work for the parents who pay his salary:

Do we work for the parent or do we work for the kid? We work for the kid.

But he’s not working for the kids either. He’s working for the semi-fascist leftist Hive.

To accomplish the Hive’s goal of severe social regimentation, which depends on ideological regimentation, Boland must filter out conservatives during the interview process, a task at which he is apparently very good. He proudly acknowledges that he hasn’t hire a single conservative yet.

Boland says that if a prospective hire were to indicate she doesn’t believe “kids have enough knowledge” about themselves to make decisions about “transitioning,” then that teacher is “out,” she’s “done.”

Sounds like severe social regimentation and forcible suppression of opposition to me.

Last time I checked, it is leftists who stand for a much bigger centralized government that can tax Americans into oblivion and redistribute their hard-earned money as leftists see fit, which means in the service of creating a society unfit for human flourishing. It is leftists who stand for severe economic regimentation via increasing socialist policies that take from everyone and leave all but the elite suffering.

It is leftists who exalt race (and deviant sexual interests) above the individual and individual merit.

While conservatives of all stripes do love America, they don’t “exalt” it above individual rights. Rather, they better understand than leftists/semi-fascists what constitutes an individual right as well as the origin and source of our inalienable individual rights.

Leftists/semi-fascists believe they are the source of individual rights and that individual rights include the right of powerful humans to slaughter innocent powerless humans.

It is leftists who have decided all Nazi-like that imperfect humans have lives unworthy of life (Lebensunwertes Leben).

It is leftists who have assumed all Nazi-like, a semi-fascistic right to experiment on the bodies of children, sterilizing boys and girls, and cutting off the breasts of girls.

It is leftists who have decided that the government may sever fit parents who reject Hive beliefs from the children they love and want to protect from bodily mutilation.

It is leftists who treat people as representatives of a group as opposed to individuals.

It is leftist public school teachers—the slimy tentacles of an octopean Big Brother—who have decided they have a right to conceal critical information from parents about their own children.

It is leftists who fascistically, covertly, cunningly, and illegally discriminate in hiring against men and women based on their religion and age.

It is leftists who control what materials and ideas children will be exposed to and who ban books that challenge, critique, or dissent from leftist “gender” and sexuality ideologies.

It is leftists—not Trump voters—who seek severe social regimentation via publicly subsidized indoctrination camps.

It takes prodigious hubris, a mountain of ignorance, a dollop of deceit, and a heaping helping of hypocrisy for any leftist to call those who voted for Trump in 2016 and/or 2020 “semi-fascists.”

A plague of biblical proportions and grotesque unsightliness has descended on America: drag queens.

Just eight years ago, drag queens were a smallish plague found only in weird clubs catering to weird adults with weird “entertainment” tastes. Then lesbian/unfit mother Michelle Tea’s darkened mind spawned a dark idea that she mistook for a brilliant one: drag queen story hours for preschoolers at public libraries. The dark idea has swept the nation in a movement that only a father of lies could love. And now it’s landed in Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo, giving new meaning to the zoo’s motto: “Lincoln Park Zoo. For Wildlife. For All.”

The zoo’s event planners decided that Sunday, October 2, at the beginning of the zoo’s October Fall Fest, would be the perfect time for cross-dressing men to read stories to preschoolers. The planners apparently aren’t worried about that millstone hanging around their necks.

Longtime zoo member and mother of three Ruth Timlin has called for a boycott of the zoo until zoo leadership commits to no longer hosting divisive, inappropriate, and family-unfriendly events like the upcoming Drag Storytime. Timlin writes,

[B]y hosting Drag Queens as entertainment for children Lincoln Park Zoo ostracizes and damages its relationship with Christians, Sunday schools, church youth groups, among many other faiths within the community that have been supporting the zoo for years.

Donors and members should take their dwindling discretionary income and use it for better causes.

In November 2016, The New Yorker published a short piece about the lesbian mother behind drag queen story hours:

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

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

…

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

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

This was not my first unpleasant virtual encounter with Tea and her lesbian “wife” (now ex-wife) Lippman. Earlier in 2016, I wrote this about the couple:

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

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

Here’s a bit more about the troubled former prostitute Michelle Tea who has spawned the plague of drag queen child-groomers. According to Wikipedia, Tea “was in a relationship with Katastrophe” a woman who very convincingly masquerades as a man. Then in 2013, Tea married lesbian Dashiell Lippman, who pretends to be “nonbinary.” Tea gave birth to a son, the product of a drag queen friend’s sperm and Dashiell’s younger egg that Tea incubated. She and Lippman divorced. In 2021, Tea became engaged to TJ Payne, a woman who masquerades as a man. Lesbian Lippman went on to marry another woman.

Those who don’t live near Lincoln Park may want to choose a visit to the Paramount School of the Arts in Aurora, Illinois that is “proud to present Drag Queen Story Hour with Drag Queen Story Hour Chicago,” featuring “Alexis Hex” and “Coco Sho Nell” on the very same Sunday, Oct. 2. There are two sessions available, one for 6–9-year-olds and one for 10–12-year-olds.

It turns out that when society subsidizes, affirms, and celebrates a phenomenon—including even a depraved phenomenon—it spreads. So now, drag queens are as prevalent as locusts, frogs, and (monkeypox?) boils in Egypt. Drag queens are swishing and sashaying about in libraries, zoos, park districts, Main Street parades, churches, bookstores, children’s television, and theaters.

Pray for our nation’s emotionally, spiritually, psychologically, and intellectually malleable little ones. If they manage to survive the womb, they may end up one day at their local library, zoo, or theater where depraved adults will serve perversion to them on glittery platters.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to sign Ruth Timlin’s petition calling for a boycott of Lincoln Park Zoo.