Common sense suggests that public schools should  separate girls and boys in locker rooms and restrooms on  campuses.

Target recently announced its new restroom policy, which embraces the absurd notion that in order to be inclusive, sex differences cannot be acknowledged or respected. In light of Target’s sex-integrated, co-ed restroom policy, I called my local Target and had this enlightening conversation with the store manager:

Me: Is it true that all Target restrooms are now co-ed?

Store manager: That’s not exactly how I would describe them.

Me: Well, are your women’s restrooms now open to people who are objectively male, and are your men’s’ restrooms now open to people who are objectively female?

Store manager: The restrooms are available to “transgenders” who identify as the opposite sex.

Me: But humans have both a “gender identity” and a sex, so your restrooms are now co-ed because co-ed means “having or including both men and women.”

Store manager: Our customers can use the restroom of the sex with which they identify.

Me: If a person who appears to be a man enters a women’s restroom, how do you determine whether he’s gender dysphoric or not.

Store manager: If a female customer reports that a man is in the women’s restroom, we would follow-up.

Me: What is your procedure for following up?

Store manager: I don’t know.

Me: So, if I and my three-year-old granddaughter are in the women’s restroom, a man enters, and I report it to store management, you don’t know what would happen next?

Store manager: Well, if this person were not bothering you, he could be in there.

Me: But sharing a restroom with someone of the opposite sex bothers me.

Store manager: Well, Target believes people should be able to use whichever restroom they feel comfortable in.

Me: What if non-gender-dysphoric men—you know, men who share the same sex as “transgenders”— feel more comfortable in women’s restrooms? May they use them? And how would you stop them anyway? You evidently have no procedures to determine if males in women’s restrooms have been diagnosed as gender-dysphoric.

Store manager: (silence)

Me: So, your restrooms are in reality co-ed because people have a sex that cannot change.

Store Manager: Yes, it can.

Me: Are you a science-denier? Even gender-dysphoric persons know they can’t change their sex.

Store Manager: I’m not going to argue with you. 

So, there you have it folks. If women don’t want to use restrooms with men, they will have to use the family restroom, but if gender-dysphoric men don’t want to use restrooms with men, they don’t have to use the family restroom. They get to use the women’s restroom. Gender-dysphoric men are permitted to use restrooms with only women, while women are not permitted to use restrooms with only women.

Many conservatives perplexed by the lies and dragooned by the tactics of body-rejecting activists and their “progressive” allies do nothing when there is much to be done. And they get little help from conservative punditry who seem not to grasp the significance of allowing objectively, immutably male persons in women’s restrooms and vice versa.

Last week the estimable Charles Krauthammer dismissed the so-called “bathroom wars” as “a solution in search of an issue,” suggesting that because those who suffer from gender-dysphoria are few in number, laws requiring that restrooms correspond to sex are silly. Astonishingly, Krauthammer blamed these laws on conservatives:

[D]o we really have an epidemic of transgenders being evil in bathrooms?

Krauthammer…said transgenders using public bathrooms has become a problem “precisely because Republicans in North Carolina decided it was a problem.”

Though it is true that Republicans proposed and passed the North Carolina law that Krauthammer was discussing, they were merely responding to the efforts of gender-dysphoric activists to access opposite-sex restrooms. In other words, Republicans didn’t “decide” that men in women’s’ restrooms was a problem. It is in reality a problem created by gender-dysphoric activists.

As a percentage of the population, there are few gender-dysphoric persons, and until recently, they were using restrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their actual sex, so of course we have no “epidemic of transgenders being evil in bathrooms.”

Further, the concern is not centrally about gender-dysphoric persons “doing evil,” but of male predators pretending to be gender-dysphoric in order to easily view, record, or assault women and girls.

The other and at least as serious concern is with what these policies teach about physical embodiment as male or female. Arguing that because few “transgenders” have been “doing evil in bathrooms,” there is no problem, Krauthammer ignores the fact that men in women’s restrooms is the problem, and it is evil.

An uncharacteristically superficial Krauthammer ignores the radical ideas that are embedded in and taught by liberal “bathroom” policies:

• Such policies teach that if people are uncomfortable with their sex, the problem is with their sex—not their feelings.

• Such policies teach the arguable belief that subjective feelings about one’s sex are more important, indeed more real, than objective physical embodiment as male or female.

• Such policies teach that while gender-dysphoric men should be permitted to use restrooms with only women, objectively female persons should not be permitted to use restrooms with only women.

• Such policies teach that in order to be compassionate, one must treat gender-dysphoric persons as if they are in reality the sex they wish they were.

• Such policies teach that feelings of modesty and the desire for privacy derive not from physical embodiment as male or female but from desires about one’s sex.

• Such policies teach that stalls and curtains provide sufficient privacy to separate women from gender-dysphoric men but not sufficient privacy to separate gender-dysphoric men from normal men.

If we define “evil” as reductively as Krauthammer seems to when he says there is no “epidemic of transgenders doing evil in restrooms,” he’s right. If evil is understood as direct physical harm to another, there is no epidemic. But for many, evil is defined as “morally wrong,” and “harmful” and includes doing violence (i.e., “injury, as from distortion of meaning or fact”) to the idea that objective, immutable biological sex carries profound meaning and is the source of feelings of modesty and the desire of privacy that men and women naturally experience. This epidemic of philosophical violence is infecting not just corporate policies but school policies and thereby the minds and hearts of children far too young to comprehend the evil being done.

Take ACTION:  So, here are three things that conservatives must do:

1.) Those with children in public schools must tell their administrators that under no circumstance are their children permitted to share restrooms or locker rooms with children of the opposite sex. If gender dysphoric children have the right to refuse to use locker rooms and restrooms with those whose “gender identity” they don’t share, then other children have the right to refuse to use locker rooms and restrooms with those whose sex they don’t share.

2.)  DO NOT use Leftist language. Language matters:

Do not call them “gender neutral” restrooms. Call them sex-integrated or co-ed restrooms to keep attention on the objective reality the Left seeks to deny.

Do not use the term “transgender.” Use gender dysphoria or gender-dysphoric persons.

Do not use opposite-sex pronouns when referring to gender-dysphoric persons. Using opposite-sex pronouns does not constitute an act of love. It constitutes participation in and facilitation of a destructive fiction.

3.) As much as possible, avoid using Target. It is not possible to boycott every business that violates true principles, but policies as egregiously offensive as Target’s sex-integrated restroom policy demand a response. And while you’re boycotting Target, call the store manager of your local Target to ask about their co-ed restrooms. Ask management the hard questions, and don’t use liberal language. Use precise, clear, reality-based language. And consider signing on to the AFA Boycott Target pledge.

In this brave new world remade in the image of the Godless, confused, solipsistic, and sexually anarchical, objective, immutable biological sex is meaningless. Please stand for truth and reality publicly, courageously, perseveringly, and unapologetically—and not just when it’s cost-free.

Homosexual activists have 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, they pursued the inclusion of homosexuality (and now “gender identity”) in anti-discrimination law. To that end, homosexual activists have relentlessly compared these two groups (i.e., blacks and homosexuals) who have been historically mistreated, suggesting without proving that since blacks have been mistreated and homosexuals have been 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 liberals think—or pretend to think—in the service of normalizing sexual deviance:

• Blacks were mistreated
• Homosexuals were 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 those engaged in bestiality, “minor-attraction,” “Genetic Sexual Attraction,” and promiscuity—all of whom are at times mistreated—are equivalent to blacks.

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 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 and 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 short this is what liberals 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 is part of identity.
• Therefore, homosexuality 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 bestiality, “minor-attraction,” Genetic Sexual Attraction, and promiscuity are immune from moral judgment.

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 (or is it conundra?) 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:

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 constitute the ontological equivalent of race. And if they do, then so do all other conditions constituted by subjective desires and volitional activities.

Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor illuminates the paltry nature of the new definition of identity and its similarly deformed corollary “authenticity”:

Only if I exist in a world in which history, or the demands of nature, or the needs of my fellow human beings, or the duties of citizenship, or the call of God, or something else of this order matters crucially, can I define an identity for myself that is not trivial. Authenticity is not the enemy of demands that emanate from beyond the self; it supposes such demands.

People of all faiths and no faith have the right to make moral judgments about subjective feelings 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.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

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While another case of religious discrimination rears its bigoted head, liberals with unseeing eyes and venomous tongues mock any suggestion that Christians are facing persecution. Worse still they virulently oppose the types of laws that would protect religious liberty—you know, the liberty guaranteed in our First Amendment.

The latest victim of religious persecution exercised by religious bigots is Dr. Eric Walsh, a physician who in his role as a lay minister in the Seventh Day Adventist church occasionally preaches sermons that affirm Seventh Day Adventist theological positions.

Dr. Walsh was offered and accepted a position as a district health director in Georgia, after which some employees in the Georgia Department of Public Health heard rumors that Dr. Walsh had preached sermons on, among other topics, homosexuality, Islam, and Catholicism. These sermons had created problems for Dr. Walsh in California, including a misguided call from Bill Donohue of the Catholic League for Walsh’s firing.

After hearing these rumors, officials at the Georgia Department of Public Health watched hours of Dr. Walsh’s sermons on YouTube, immediately following which he was gleefully fired in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which “prohibits employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin, and religion.”

This week, the First Liberty Institute (formerly the Liberty Institute) “filed a federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, alleging that the state violated Walsh’s rights under the First Amendment and Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, as well as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

Ironically, this is the state where cowardly, unprincipled Governor Nathan Deal just two weeks ago vetoed a bill that would have offered protection of rights that even the First Amendment seems impotent to protect in the face of homosexual activism in collusion with activist judges, huge corporations, and hypocritical, intolerant entertainers.

In light of Dr. Walsh’s firing, read the feckless words of Deal in defense of his veto:

[Our Founding Fathers] had previously proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that Man’s Creator had endowed all men “with certain unalienable rights,” including “Liberty” which embraces religious liberty. They made it clear that those liberties were given by God and not by man’s government. Therefore, it was unnecessary to enumerate in statute or constitution what those liberties included.

In light of our history, I find it ironic that today some in the religious community feel it necessary to ask the government to confer upon them certain rights and protections.

The irony is not that people of faith were seeking to buttress the First Amendment from the attacks of those who deem homoeroticism a First Principle. The irony is that Deal spoke these dismissive words shortly after Dr. Walsh had been fired by the state of Georgia because of his religious beliefs.

Why do “progressives” get so much wrong about conservative positions on both religious liberty and anti-discrimination laws?

“Progressives” either misunderstand or intentionally misconstrue the desire of conservatives to exclude the term “sexual orientation” from anti-discrimination laws and policies. “Progressives” allege that opposition to the addition of “sexual orientation” to anti-discrimination laws and policies is motivated by ignorance and hatred of persons who experience homoerotic attraction and place such attraction at the center of their identity.

“Progressives” are wrong.

Conservatives oppose the inclusion of “sexual orientation” in anti-discrimination laws for multiple reasons:

• The specious term “sexual orientation” erroneously conflates homosexuality and heterosexuality, which are, in reality, ontologically distinct. It should be obvious that the term “sexual orientation” is a political contrivance used to provide cover for the inclusion of homoeroticism as a protected category in law in that no one is “discriminated against” because of their heterosexuality. In objective terms, all humans are heterosexual.
• Unlike heterosexuality which is constituted by objective conditions (i.e., anatomical structures and biological processes), homosexuality is constituted solely by subjective sexual feelings and volitional acts that are appropriate objects of moral assessment.
• Homosexuality is wholly distinct from other conditions that are included in anti-discrimination laws, like sex, race, age, and nation of origin.
• Homosexuality—constituted as it is by subjective erotic feelings and volitional sexual acts—is, however, analogous to other conditions similarly constituted, and therefore, its inclusion opens the door for claims that polyamory and paraphilias should be included in anti-discrimination law.
• Once conditions constituted by subjective, fluid, erotic feelings and volitional sexual acts are offered special protections, the religious liberty of people of faith will be compromised.

Only fools and liars deny that religious liberty is eroding through the sullied efforts of homosexuals and their ideological accomplices.

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She was only 17 years-old when she died. Her father cut out her tongue and burned her alive.

What was her crime, and why did this man kill his own daughter in the most horrific imaginable way?

He was a Saudi Arabian official who worked with the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice – the religious police – and when his daughter became a Christian, he butchered and murdered her.

What does this have to do with Starbucks and Apple?

Both these companies blast Americans who stand for religious liberties and conservative moral values, even threatening states that will protect those liberties and values, claiming this discriminates against gays and lesbians.

Yet they have stores all over Saudi Arabia, a country where gays can be executed and where Muslims can kill their own family members if they convert to Christianity, as happened with this 17-year-old in 2008.

What sickening hypocrisy.

Last year, when Indiana passed a religious freedoms bill, ensuring that its citizens would not be forced to violate their consciences and participate in things like gay weddings, Tim Cook, the openly gay CEO of Apple, wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post, stating, “There’s something very dangerous happening in states across the country.”

Cook opined that, “America’s business community recognized a long time ago that discrimination, in all its forms, is bad for business. At Apple, we are in business to empower and enrich our customers’ lives. We strive to do business in a way that is just and fair.”

His words sounded noble: “This isn’t a political issue. It isn’t a religious issue. This is about how we treat each other as human beings. Opposing discrimination takes courage. With the lives and dignity of so many people at stake, it’s time for all of us to be courageous.”

And so Cook, acted “courageously,” threatening Indiana with a loss of business if the state did not reverse itself, and in a matter of days, the governor and legislature caved in to the pressure, as Apple, along with other major players, succeeded in bullying the people of Indiana.

But when it comes to countries like Saudi Arabia, where adulterers are beheaded on Friday afternoons in city squares, where thieves have their hands cut off, where those who speak against the government can be lashed 1,000 times, where someone posting openly gay messages on social media can be imprisoned, and where the beheaded victims are hung on crosses and displayed publicly for days, Apple is silent, content to make its money and not rock the Muslim boat.

What “courage.”

Or, more accurately, what hypocrisy.

Starbucks has also been an outspoken advocate of “gay rights,” with CEO Howard Schultz telling those “who support traditional marriage over gay marriage that their patronage is not needed at the coffee chain.”

Earlier this month, Starbucks joined more than 100 companies (including Apple) in urging North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory to repeal the bathroom safety bill, which allegedly discriminates against LGBT rights.

How bold and courageous of Starbucks.

But when it comes to Saudi Arabia, not only does Starbucks operate all over this religiously-oppressive country, but the coffee giant completely capitulated to strict Islamic standards, removing the mermaid from its corporate logo.

Yes, you read that right.

Starbucks changed its logo so as not to offend Muslim sensibilities, since the mermaid image apparently displayed too much flesh.

But when it comes to offending Christians, Starbucks could care less, introducing “Holiday” cups last December in place of “Christmas” cups and trashing Christian sensitivities when they are in conflict with gay sensitivities.

Now, I don’t doubt that Cook and Schultz feel strongly about their views and actually believe that these important religious liberties bills are a threat to LGBT rights.

But their selective outrage is sickening and their moral hypocrisy glaring.

And so, when they pull their businesses from countries like China, with all its human rights violations, and Saudi Arabia, with its atrocities carried out in the name of Islam, we can take their indignation seriously.

Until then, the louder they protest here in America, the louder they shout their hypocrisy.

This article was originally posted at TownHall.com

Well known Christian radio host Mark Elfstrand, of WYLL’s “Let’s Talk,” often has Laurie Higgins on his program to discuss cultural issues in the news.  His show airs weekdays from 4 to 6 pm on 1160 AM in the greater Chicago area.

Last week Mark interviewed Laurie about a number of important issues, including GLSEN’s “Day of Silence,” which is a political hijacking of the classroom for the advancement of the LGBT agenda.

Mark also asked Laurie about the Left’s push to end sex segregation in bathrooms and locker rooms, and the proposed $80K fine of Christian businessman Jim Walder by the Illinois Human Rights Commission.  As you may remember, Mr. Walder simply declined to allow his Timber Creek Bed and Breakfast to be used for the celebration of a same-sex union. (Read more HERE.)

Mark wraps up their interview by discussing HB 6073, a legislative proposal under consideration in Springfield which would make it easier for men and women who wish they were the opposite sex to obtain falsified birth certificates by merely getting a declaration from any licensed medical or mental health professional stating that the person has undergone clinically appropriate “treatment.”  No surgeries or hormone treatments would be necessary to change their birth certificate.

I recommend that you stream or download the podcast of this program and take 12 minutes to listen to it in the near future, and then please consider sharing this interview with your friends, family and neighbors.  It will bless you and equip you in defending our faith.

Click on the button below to stream the MP3, or right click and “save link as” to download the file:

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Please consider making a donation to help us stand strong!

Were you aware that April is “STD Awareness Month”?

Neither was I.

STD, of course, stands for “Sexually Transmitted Disease” – also known as venereal disease or STI (“Sexually Transmitted Infection”).

Seems to me that with the virally disproportionate spread of STDs among practitioners of sodomy, it would make more sense to “raise awareness” about the natural consequences of sexual promiscuity during June, which President Obama regularly dubs “LGBT Pride Month.”

Nonetheless, and speaking of pride and promiscuity, you oughta head on over to Twitter and check out the left’s latest do-nothing hashtag: #ShoutYourStatus (meaning, sexual disease). You can thank me later.

While there, you will be treated to a stupefying spread of disbelief-suspension, rationalization and justification relative to how, and why, people contract these nasty bedroom bugs in the first place.

#ShoutYourStatus is evidently the similarly twisted sister of Planned Parenthood’s profligate #ShoutYourAbortion campaign. Therein, mostly “progressive” feminists joined together to brag on social media of having their own sons and daughters dismembered alive, and then parted out for profit, or tossed in the back-alley dumpster like so much trash – all so they could avoid paying the piper and keep on truckin’ loosey-goosey.

And now, like abortion, to these same “social justice” warriors, infecting themselves and others with herpes, AIDS, gonorrhea, syphilis and the like, isn’t just OK. It’s a personal accomplishment.

What I am now doing, that is, speaking bluntly and truthfully about things of which our leftist friends prefer to deny, is labeled “slut shaming” by these self-deluded proponents of Consequence-Free-Sex™ (something that does not exist).

Keep in mind that I would never use the word “slut” to describe one of God’s priceless feminine creatures. It has, instead, become en vogue among our younger feminist set, to loudly and proudly acknowledge themselves as such in order to “destigmatize” the slang term’s referent sexual promiscuity, along with said behavior’s entirely foreseeable outcome (i.e., any or all form of a wide variety of potential crotch cooties).

Political correctness is an STD.

For instance, feminist blogger Ella Dawson (@brosandprose), “shouted her status” by tweeting: “I’m not interested in playing identity politics. I’m a slut, and I have herpes. I am still a person who deserves respect.”

To Ms. Dawson, I would respond that no one “deserves” respect. Each one of us deserves, based upon our own merit, nothing short of eternal damnation. Respect is something earned, and eternal salvation, something freely given. As a daughter of God, created in His own image and likeness, she does, however, deserve to be treated respectfully – and with love and kindness.

And truth.

Still, I wonder if Ms. Dawson has considered that the first aspect of her admission, “I’m a slut,” may at least be tangentially related to the second: “I have herpes.”

Alas, it appears no. As evidenced by a subsequent tweet, the causal connection between actions and consequences yet eludes our young friend’s tenuous grasp: “A few weeks ago, I told a cute guy at a bar that I had herpes. Then I slept with him. Hehehehe.”

Yikes, I wonder if Mr. Cute Guy knows that, much like John Kasich, herpes never goes away.

Anyhow, Ms. Dawson happily tweeted on: “An STD is not a reflection of your character or a consequence of poor choices. It’s an inevitability.”

Right.

Well, I guess it is inevitable to the same extent that when one gapes directly down the barrel of a loaded Glock .45 and pulls the trigger, one inevitably divests one’s cranium of a significant share of its hitherto undisturbed gray matter.

Speaking of disturbed gray matter (and diminished quantities thereof), Ella Dawson is not alone in adopting this false, morally relative, actions-without-consequences view of the world.

This mindset is progressivism personified.

Next up? #ShoutYoureNotTetheredToReality.

I decided to weigh in. “STIs are the natural consequence of sin,” I tweeted. “God’s perfect abstinence until man-wife marriage plan prevents 100% of STIs.”

“Dr. P,” with the Twitter handle, @Cataracthealer (evidently an actual M.D.), quickly rejoined, “Many people don’t want to be married, but also don’t want to be celibate.”

To which I responded, “Correct. Which is disobedience to God (aka, sin). ‘The wages of sin is death.’ Hence, herpes, AIDS, etc.”

He then asked, legitimately, I might add, “How about the non-sinners who get the diseases from the sinners? For Example: Ryan White or faithful wife of whoring hubby, etc.?”

Putting aside for a moment that there is no such thing as a “non-sinner,” I nonetheless replied, “Indeed, horrible situations each, wherein one party is victimized by the sins of another. Yet sin remains the root cause.”

Indeed, I would be remiss if I did not concede that, while a significant minority such instances may represent, there are times when, via drug transfusion or due to a wayward spouse, innocent people can, and do, become infected with STDs through no fault of their own.

Still, the vast majority of infections occur as the natural outcome of bad choices – of sin.

Choices like those made by “BadGrrrlMeat” (@lachristagreco), who, like Ms. Dawson, boasted of having contracted herpes. She responded to my original tweet with, “Sinning is the best. I’m a proud sinner!”

Which immediately reminded me of Philippians 3:10: “Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.”

Oh, how the Word of God is Truth.

“Don’t get me wrong,” I closed. “I’m not judging. I’m a sinner as bad as any other. Yet truth is truth. Truth, who is Christ, saved me.”

And I pray that Truth might save “ELD” (@eld3393), who asked the Twittersphere, “I kicked off #STIAwarenessMonth by sharing my herpes+ story w/ 7th grade human sexuality classes. How are you celebrating?”

Celebrating herpes? Seventh graders?

#ShoutYourStatus, world!

The world celebrates sin.

The world needs saving.

The Left is becoming even more entrenched in our taxpayer funded public schools. The April 15th Day of Silence is just one not-too-surprising example of that reality. Many indoctrinated students and even some teachers will keep silent Friday in classrooms to promote LGBT demands and intolerance.

If you’re a parent who opposes the Day of Silence, make it a skip day for your kids and have them  participate in the nationwide Day of Silence Walkout.

Support IFI

Your support of our work and ministry is always much needed and greatly appreciated. Your promotion of our emails on Facebook, Twitter, your own email network, and prayer for financial support is a huge part of our success in being a strong voice for the pro-life, pro-marriage and pro-family message here in the Land of Lincoln.

Please consider making a donation to help us stand strong!

Impossible to Believe: The Endgame of Secularism

In his important Massey Lectures delivered in 1991, Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor spoke of The Malaise of Modernity. The Modern Age, he argued, is marked by two great intellectual moves. The first intellectual move is a pervasive individualism. The second is the reduction of all public discourse to the authority of instrumental reason. The rise of modern individualism came at the cost of rejecting all other moral authorities. “Modern freedom was won by our breaking loose from older moral horizons,” Taylor explains. This required the toppling of all hierarchical authorities and their established moral orders. “People used to see themselves as part of a larger order,” he observed. “Modern freedom came about through the discrediting of such orders.”

The primacy of instrumental reason means the elimination of the old order and its specifically theological and teleological moral order. As Taylor explains:

No doubt sweeping away the old orders has immensely widened the scope of instrumental reason. Once society no longer has a sacred structure, once social arrangements and modes of action are no longer grounded in the order of things or the will of God, they are in a sense up for grabs. They can be redesigned with their consequences for the happiness or well-being of individuals as our goal.[1]

More recently, Taylor has written the greatest work yet completed on the secular reality of our times. In A Secular Age, he describes three successive sets of intellectual conditions. In the first, associated with the Premodern Age of antiquity and the medieval synthesis, it was impossible not to believe. There was simply no intellectual alternative to theism in the West. There was no alternative set of explanations for the world and its operations, or for moral order. All that changed with the arrival of modernity. In the Modern Age it became possible not to believe. A secular alternative to Christian theism emerged as a real choice. As a matter of fact, choice now ruled the intellectual field. As Peter Berger famously observed decades ago, this is the “heretical imperative,” the imperative to choose one’s worldview. The third set of intellectual conditions is identified with late modernity and our own intellectual epoch. For most people living in the context of self-conscious late modernity, it is now impossible to believe. That means, especially in terms of the intellectual elites and the culture formative sectors of society, theism is not an available worldview—if not personally, then at least culturally.

Significantly, Taylor pinpoints this unbelief as a lack of cognitive commitment to a self-existent, self-revealing God. Secularization is not about rejecting all religion. Taylor urges that people in the current hyper-secularized culture in America often consider themselves to be religious or spiritual. Secularization, according to Taylor, is about belief in a personal God, one who holds and exerts authority. He describes the secular age as deeply “cross-pressured” in its personal experience of religion and rejection of the personal authority of God.[2] The issue is binding authority.

Christians are the intellectual outlaws under the current secular conditions. Entering a discussion on the basis of a theistic or theological claim is to break a cardinal rule of late Modernity by moving from a proposition or question to a command and law and authority and to do so in the context of a culture now explicitly secularized, and a culture that either reduces such claims to something below a genuine theistic claim or rejects them tout court. Secularization in America has been attended by a moral revolution without precedent and without endgame. The cultural engines of progress driving toward personal autonomy and fulfillment will not stop until the human being is completely self-defining. This progress requires the explicit rejection of Christian morality for the project for human liberation.

The story of the rise of secularism is a stunning intellectual and moral revolution. It defies exaggeration. We must recognize that it is far more pervasive than we might want to believe, for this intellectual revolution has changed the worldviews of even those who believe themselves to be opposed to it. Everything is now reduced to choice, and choice is, as Taylor reminds us, central to the moral project of late modernity, the project of individual authenticity.

As he explains this project: “I am called upon to live my life in this way, and not in imitation of anyone else’s life. But this notion gives a new importance to being true to myself. If I am not, I miss the point of my life; I miss what being human is for me.”[3]

The pressing question is this: can any sustainable moral order survive this scale of intellectual revolution? We hear in the today’s intellectual and ideological chorus the refrains of Karl Marx’s threat and promise as stated in The Communist Manifesto: “All that is solid melts into air.” The melting is everywhere around us.

This is the third article in a four part serious.
Part 1  —  Part 2 

ARTICLE CITATIONS

Lake Forest, Illinois resident Dianne Casuto in a letter in the Chicago Tribune on Sunday criticized a previous commentary in which Elizabeth Edens expressed concern over the safety to women posed by female-impersonators being allowed in women’s restrooms. Cassuto wrote, “It is inconceivable to me why Edens would feel ‘unsafe’ in a restroom simply because a transsexual or transgender individual is present there as well.”

Let’s clean up the euphemistic language, eliminating the Newspeak and rewriting her sentence more clearly: “It is inconceivable to me why Edens would feel ‘unsafe’ in a restroom simply because a man is present there as well.”

If Casuto is unable to conceive of why women might be concerned for their safety when forced to share restrooms with men, she suffers from a serious imagination deficit.

Why she would place quotation marks around “unsafe” is baffling. “Progressives” feel “unsafe” if they see presidential candidates’ names written in disappearing chalk. They feel “unsafe” at the thought of voluntarily attending a talk by scholar Christina Hoff Sommers. They feel “unsafe” at the thought of a debate on abortion. They feel “unsafe” if Chick-fil-A is on their college campus. So, why are safety concerns about the presence of men in women’s restrooms “inconceivable”?

Leftists, recognizing the importance of language in cultural battles, insist that everyone use their dogma-drenched diction. Those “transgender individuals” about whom Casuto writes who are seeking to use women’s restrooms and locker rooms are actually men.

George Orwell warned about the abuse of language by cultural dictators, a warning that should teach us to resist social pressure to surrender to their imperious commands—while we can:

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible….Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever….

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I can barely contain my exuberance! Last week, IFI’s own Laurie Higgins recorded an interview with Craig Dellimore for his weekly “At Issue” news program to discuss religious liberty versus the radical LGBT agenda.  Make no mistake, this type of mainstream media exposure — an uninterrupted half hour examination of the issues from a conservative perspective — is exceedingly rare.  While the media usually misrepresents orthodox Christians and how we live our faith in the public square, this was an amazing opportunity to elaborate on the Judeo-Christian principles we seek to uphold.

Laurie hit a grand-slam in terms of articulating and explaining our position. This message was aired on WBBM radio, a 50,000-watt station, reaching a large secular audience in the greater Chicago area and beyond. It is likely that many listeners have never heard a conservative defense of these issues. I thank God for this rare opportunity.

Please pray that what Laurie was able to communicate would resonate with those who were listening, and bring greater awareness of the plight of religious liberty in our culture and a greater understanding of sexual morality.

Laurie is an invaluable member of the IFI team.  Anyone who reads her writings knows how extraordinary she is at composing thought-provoking and compelling articles that help us think through contemporary issues and godless worldviews that dominate the public square. These same skills came across winsomely in this interview as she answered tough but important and fair questions by Mr. Dellimore.  Few people are able to do what she did in this interview so effectively.

I highly recommend that you stream or download the podcast of this program and take 28 minutes to listen to it in the near future, and then please consider sharing this interview with your friends, family and neighbors.  It will bless you and equip you in defending our faith.

Click on the button below to stream the MP3, or right click HERE and “save link as” to download the file:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Higgins-At-Issue-Religious-Freedom-41020161.mp3

The interview aired on WBBM News Radio twice on Sunday, and is now available as a podcast on the “At Issue” webpage.  If you are as grateful as I am for Mr. Dellimore’s willingness to interview IFI, please take a moment to send an email to the station at wbbmnewsradioweb@cbsradio.com. To send a letter of encouragement to Laurie, please email us HERE.

Support IFI

Your support of our work and ministry is always much needed and greatly appreciated. Your promotion of our emails on Facebook, Twitter, your own email network, and prayer for financial support is a huge part of our success in being a strong voice for the pro-life, pro-marriage and pro-family message here in the Land of Lincoln.

Please consider making a donation to help us stand strong!

The upcoming National Day of Silence (DOS) On Friday, April 15, organized and promoted by the extreme leftist Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), urges students to refuse to speak for an entire school day including during class. The stated purpose of DOS is to encourage sympathy and support for students involved in homosexual and cross-dressing behaviors whose voices have been allegedly silenced by the disapproval of society. The unstated purpose is to undermine the true belief that homosexuality and cross-dressing (as well as quackish chemical and surgical interventions) are immoral. Parents should no longer passively countenance the political usurpation of public school classrooms through student silence.

Some school administrators assert that DOS merely seeks to promote “acceptance.” They fail to clarify, however, precisely what they want students to accept. While it is legitimate to teach students that there exist diverse opinions on the issues of homosexuality and gender dysphoria, it is not legitimate for an arm of the government to imply that one set of opinions is preferable to another. While it is appropriate to teach acceptance of people, meaning that we should treat all with civility, it is not appropriate to suggest that students should accept one set of beliefs about homosexuality and gender dysphoria and reject the other. One can accept persons while rejecting their beliefs, desires, and life choices. These important distinctions are never made in public school discussions of “acceptance.”

Another oft-repeated mantra is that the goal of DOS is to keep “LGBTQ” students safe—a goal all decent people share. The rhetoric of “safety,” however, substitutes speciously for the more accurate term of “comfort.” To suggest that in order for those who self-identify as homosexual (or “transgender”) to be “safe,” no one may disapprove of homosexual conduct is both absurd and dangerous. If this understanding of “safety” were to be applied consistently, all statements of disapproval of any behavior would be prohibited.

If conservative parents, teachers, and administrators do not actively oppose the disruption of instructional time by DOS, it will metastasize from our high schools into our middle schools and then into elementary schools. Increasing numbers of students will participate, and increasing numbers of teachers who view themselves as “agents of change” will participate, emboldened by the ignorance and cowardice of colleagues, administrators, school board members, and parents.

Don’t believe me? Well, take a gander at how one middle school in New York—coming up on its fifth year of participation—has been celebrating DOS: Click HERE.

Worse still, some schools devote an entire week to promoting the normalization of homosexuality, culminating on Friday’s Day of Silence. While schools can no longer acknowledge Christmas, they may spend valuable class time celebrating life-destroying homosexuality, all the while misrepresenting it to gullible parents as an bullying-prevention effort.

Unfortunately, not even our private religious schools are exempt from the intrusive efforts of GLSEN. Last year five Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist nuns at Marin Catholic High School near San Francisco walked out of their classes to protest the intrusion of GLSEN through the Day of Silence.

The nuns were uncomfortable that GLSEN materials, which espouse positions that conflict with Catholic teaching, were being distributed to students on school grounds. Those who naively believe DOS is solely about bullying with no connection to conservative moral beliefs should peruse GLSEN resources, one of which identified “a house of worship that teaches homosexuality is a sin” as an example of oppression. In GLSEN’s perverse moral universe, churches are places of oppression, and oppressors are bullies. Eliminating bullying requires eradicating biblical beliefs about homosexuality.

The nuns were also troubled when they learned that “students were feeling pressured to accept and wear stickers” produced and distributed by GLSEN.

Those who oppose the Day of Silence will be maligned with the charge that opposition to the Day of Silence is proof of support for bullying. Of course, the truth is that it’s entirely possible to oppose both bullying and GLSEN’s Day of Silence.

Some dismiss the Day of Silence by claiming that there is only a small group of students who participate in it in their school, or that it’s only a few teachers. But does that matter? Would parents tolerate school administrations permitting a group of students to refuse to speak in class in support of consensual adult incest, promiscuity, polyamory, sadomasochism, or racism as long as the protesters were few in number?

For school administrations to permit student silence in class for DOS necessarily means they have come to prior conclusions about the nature and morality of homoerotic activity and relationships. How do I know this? Well, imagine there were a small group of students who identified as promiscuous or polyamorous and were bullied for their promiscuity or polyamory. Would any school administration permit a DOS during which promiscuity and polyamory were treated exactly as homosexuality and “transgenderism” are treated? Surely, neither school administrators nor teachers want promiscuous or polyamorous students bullied. Surely they want to create a “safe” space for them. So, what’s the difference?

The difference is school administrations know that the DOS doesn’t merely work to curb bullying. They know it has the effect (intended effect) of undermining disapproval of homosexuality and cross-dressing, but that’s okay because they have concluded that homoerotic feelings are 100 percent heritable, immutable in all cases, and that acting on them is intrinsically moral. School administrators have come to different moral conclusions, however, with regard to promiscuity or polyamory, and they realize that a DOS for promiscuity and polyamory would not merely end bullying but undermine moral disapproval of both—which they wouldn’t want to do. They would seek other means to curb bullying of promiscuous and polyamorous students.

Please muster the little courage it takes to email your middle and high school administrators and your children’s teachers to ask the questions below, and if the answers are unsatisfactory, keep your children home on the Day of Silence, Friday, April, 15, 2016:

Questions to ask administrators

• Do you permit students to refuse to speak during instructional time on the DOS?
• Do you permit teachers to refuse to speak during instructional time on the DOS?
• Prior to the DOS, do you notify all parents about it, including sharing complete information about GLSEN’s role in organizing and providing materials for it and informing parents about what will be permitted in the classroom?

Questions to ask teachers

• Do you create classroom assignments or activities that accommodate student-refusal to speak on the DOS?
• Do you teach lessons on oppression, censorship, or bullying in class on the DOS?
• Will you be using any information from GLSEN to shape or inform your activities on the DOS?
• If you accommodate student-refusal to speak and/or shape activities around ideas promoted by GLSEN for the DOS, will you be notifying parents ahead of time?

Cultural change rarely happens through dramatic single events. Rather, it happens through the slow accretion of little events that we dismiss as trivial. Gradual, incremental changes ignored eventually result in titanic cultural shifts. Those parents, teachers, and administrators who have known about the Day of Silence and have said and done nothing should feel ashamed of their acquiescence and cowardice. It is long past time that conservatives cease rationalizing their own passivity. The temporal and eternal lives of children are at risk.

Concerned about Common Core Standards?

Join us on April 8th in Orland Park for yet another IFI Forum, this time exploring The Case Against Common Core with Dr. Duke Pesta.  Click HERE for more information.

Click HERE for a flyer of the event.

I had no idea who the man was, but he ended his note to me on Facebook with these words: “You’re a monster, and you do not exhibit anything near ‘Christ’ like. You are a demon. You are a plague on this earth. And that is all I have to say.”

What had I done to provoke him to such anger?

His name was John, and he made things clear in his opening paragraph: “Oh Dr. Brown. Where should I start? You sir are a quivering fool. You express hate, and vitriol towards human beings. You protect individual rights to cause harm to members of a community within the United States. Your hatred has been seen, that you can’t stand the LGBT community, and that for some reason you feel that it is up to you to judge us, and save the world. Sadly sir, I have bad news for you. ITS NOT UP TO FILTH LIKE YOU. Your hate, and your ignorance, is what keeps fueling the fires, which keep this fight going.”

Writing as an openly gay man, he said, “I hope that one day you realize the world is actually a good place with the LGBT community in it. We thrive as individuals, and we are successful as a community. We strive for equal rights just as women did during the suffrage movement. We fight for equal rights just like African Americans did during the Civil Rights Movement in the 60’s.”

John stated that some of the greatest artists and leaders have been LGBT, along with “some of the greatest, kindest people on the earth.” In contrast, he claimed, when it comes to Christians, “None of you exhibit peace, and love.”

Of course, if John actually knew what I believed, he would know that I’ve said many times that, in the eyes of gay activists, this is a struggle for freedom and equality and respect and that, while differing deeply with LGBT goals, I understand their perspective.

He would also know that I’ve said countless times that some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet or work with identify as LGBT.

And he would know that I tell parents whose kids come out as gay to show those kids unconditional love, even while making clear that they will not compromise biblical standards and truths.

Somehow, however, this gentleman had a very different impression of me, and this is what fueled his fire.

John wrote, “In fact you exhibit violence. You make claims that the entire LGBT community is not only infected with diseases, but that the LGBT community is a disease itself. And that we’re wildly promiscuous.”

Again, wild exaggerations (although, on average, gays and bisexuals, especially malesare more promiscuous than heterosexuals, but this certainly does not describe every gay man or woman).

And then this: “I live my life day to day dealing with people like you. Who would like to see my community exterminated. And removed from the earth. I have gone through beatings. Rapes. I have been drug behind vehicles. I have everything done to me that you can imagine.

“And all of those things you condone, and accept.”

This is why he called me a monster and a demon and a plague.

John actually thought that I condoned violence against gays (nothing could be further from the truth), and that I would commend those who beat up a gay man or dragged him from a vehicle.

Ultimately, we had to block him from our Facebook page because he violated our guidelines (using profanity and wishing for violence against others), with posts to others like these: “A man who supports the Kill the Gays movement however, like Dr. Brown, has no morals.”

And, “I can’t wait for you to feel the physical hate that the gay community has felt. I think it’s high time Christians started getting beat for who they are. Drug behind trucks. Tied to fences and left for dead. They deserve it. Filthy bigots.”

And, “You are just the same as Hitler. He said the same thing about Jews as you say about the lgbt community.”

And, “I can’t wait for the Christian persecution to start. They deserve it.”

When someone asked, “John, why are you so hate filled. Can you name something that a true Christian has done to you?”, he replied, “My father, a Christian pastor beat me almost to death and dumped me in the middle of the desert. Claiming god told him to do it. He spent the rest of his life in prison.

“He was a Christian. So now it’s the Christians turn. I hope they all feel as much pain as they dish out.

“His church even tried to get him out of it. Claiming ‘religious freedom.’ (expletive) that. (expletive) him. (expletive) Christianity. And (expletive) your God.”

Tragically, that says it all: Behind the seething hatred and anger, behind the false accusations and lies, is a massive open wound. The pain is raging through his words.

Of course, I have no way to verify his story, but even if it is embellished, it is representative: Many who identify as LGBT and spew venom against Christians, against God, and against the Bible have been wounded by professing Christians – by their words, their attitudes, and their actions.

And while people like John are responsible for their ultimate decisions, we do well to remember that behind the anger there is often pain, and if we respond to the anger and ignore the pain, we will not be able to help them find wholeness in the Lord.

Since early 2005, I have sought to live by the dictum of “Reach out and resist,” meaning, reach out to LGBT’s with compassion; resist the LGBT agenda with courage.

And as much as I am hated and vilified by many LGBT leaders, branded one of the nation’s most vicious homophobes (among a multitude of other epithets, many too rancid to repeat), my heart continues to go out to them, longing for their repentance, longing for them to encounter the Father’s love, and longing to see them come into the fullness of God’s plan for their lives.

May the love of God touch John, and may he come to know the Father he now reviles.

Why not offer up a prayer on his behalf?

This article was originally posted at ChrarismaNews.com

In an act of extraordinary hypocrisy, PayPal, which last month announced its plans to expand into Cuba, has decided not to expand into North Carolina because the state is determined to keep its public bathrooms and locker rooms safe.

PayPal has now sent a loud and clear message to America: The common sense values of conservative Americans should be scorned; the destructive values of Cuban Communists, including decades of human rights abuses that continue to this hour, should be embraced.

I say it’s time to send a message to PayPal. Perhaps we can communicate most clearly to them through our money?

According to PayPal’s president and CEO, Dan Schulman, North Carolina’s HB2 is a violation of his company’s “deepest values.”

As he explained in a written statement, “This decision [not to open new offices in Charlotte] reflects PayPal’s deepest values and our strong belief that every person has the right to be treated equally, and with dignity and respect. These principles of fairness, inclusion and equality are at the heart of everything we seek to achieve and stand for as a company. And they compel us to take action to oppose discrimination.”

Schulman’s statement is not just dripping with hypocrisy. It is absolutely saturated with it.

First, PayPal made its plans to open new offices in Charlotte many months before the Charlotte bathroom bill was passed in February (and subsequently overturned). In other words, six months ago or one year ago, when all the laws were exactly as they are today, PayPal was quite happy to do business in Charlotte.

HB2 simply reversed a wrong-headed, potentially dangerous bill and put things back exactly as they were two months ago.

This begs the question: If the current law, which is identical with previous statutes, is so bad, why was PayPal so eager to do business in Charlotte before? Why is today different from one year ago? And who was stopping PayPal from setting up whatever standards it wanted in its own buildings and among its own employees?

Second, HB2 ensures that men cannot use women’s bathrooms and locker rooms in public buildings, meaning that heterosexual predators cannot use transgender bathroom access as a means to carry out their own voyeuristic (or worse) acts. (For those who deny that such things take place, please take a few minutes to watch this video.)

In short, because of HB2, a man cannot claim to be a woman and walk into the women’s locker room of the local YMCA where women and girls are showering and changing. Yet PayPal wants to defend the “rights” of the gender-confused male rather than protect more than 99% of the population that does not identify as transgender.

What kind of madness is this?

And what about the rights of the all-too-many female rape victims, some of whom have expressed horror at the thought that biological males who identify as females could share their bathrooms or, even worse, locker rooms and shower stalls? (Stop and think about the insanity of all this. How can this even be an issue?)

Mr. Schulman, I urge you to take a minute to read this article, “A Rape Survivor Speaks Out About Transgender Bathrooms.” Then come back and tell me that you are really concerned about treating everyone equally with dignity and respect. In fact, look this rape victim in the face and tell her.

Third, HB2 protects the Constitutional liberties of the people of North Carolina by not forcing a Muslim or Christian or Mormon or Jew to violate his or her religious convictions.

Consequently, just as no one would think that a Muslim caterer should be forced to cater a wedding with pork or a religious Jewish baker should be forced to photograph a wedding on the Sabbath, under HB2, a Christian baker could not be forced to bake a cake for a homosexual “wedding” ceremony.

What could be more basic than this? And would anyone dare argue that when our Founding Fathers guaranteed our religious liberties in the very first amendment of the Bill of Rights, what they really meant was, “Your liberties are guaranteed unless they come in conflict with homosexual activism”? Really!

This further underscores the extreme hypocrisy of PayPal, along with quite a few other major American companies, since they express their righteous indignation against HB2 while announcing their partnership with countries like Cuba.

How, pray tell, does Cuba treat its LGBT population?

And what of PayPal’s working relationship with many countries in Africa and Asia that forbid homosexual practice and imprison or even execute practicing homosexuals?

It seems that what really matters to PayPal is money and political correctness, and while we can’t stop them from acting hypocritically, we can send a message by directing our business elsewhere. Why not send a PayPal a loud and clear message by taking action with your money today?

The safety and security of our women and children and the protection of our most fundamental liberties will not be scorned without consequence.

This article was originally posted at TheStream.org.

“Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” Aleister Crowley, Satanic priest and paragon to Alfred Kinsey, father of modern sex education

Order and anarchy. Good and evil. Truth and lies. Natural sexuality (within marriage) and homosexuality (of any kind).

The contrast is bright as day is to night. While Christ repeatedly condemned all “sexual immorality” as defined in the Old Testament Jewish moral code (which includes homosexual behavior), God’s Word, throughout both the Old and New Testaments, specifically denounces as evil rising to the level of “a detestable sin” all same-sex sexual conduct – be it “loving, monogamous and committed,” or otherwise.

Leviticus 18:22, for instance, admonishes, in no uncertain terms: “Do not practice homosexuality, having sex with another man as with a woman. It is a detestable sin.”

1 Corinthians 6:9 warns: “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.”

Yet deceived they are, and without the Kingdom of God they remain.

Indeed, today there persists a burgeoning racket of apostate biblical revisionists who rationalize sexual sin. Notwithstanding a level of deception rooted in a deeply heartfelt and genuinely emotional variety of wishful thinking, the Holy Bible, thousands of years of history and uncompromising human biology nonetheless remain incontrovertible: Unrepentant homosexual behavior is, always has been and always will be 100 percent and irredeemably wrong.

Still, few people realize that there is a “Bible” that not only affirms homosexuality (all forms of sexual immorality, in fact), but that goes so far as to make sin the centerpiece of its doctrine – its “golden rule,” if you will.

In his fantastic new book, “Gay Awareness: Discovering the Heart of the Father and the Mind of Christ On Sexuality,” author and minister Landon Schott devotes an entire chapter to this “gay”-affirming “Bible.” “[O]ut of the 31,102 verses in the Bible,” he writes, “not one supports a homosexual lifestyle in any way – not one. If you are still looking for a scripture that supports homosexuality you need to close your Holy Bible and open The Satanic Bible!”

That’s right. The Satanic Bible is the only “gay-affirming” Bible in existence (save a handful of heretical and intentionally mistranslated Bible counterfeits).

Schott quotes The Satanic Bible verbatim:

“Satanism condones any type of sexual activity which properly satisfies your individual desires, be it heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or even asexual, if you choose. Satanism also sanctions any fetish or deviation which will enhance your sex life, so long as it involves no one who does not wish to be involved.”

Satanism? Sounds more like the “values neutral” “comprehensive sex education” curriculum pushed on children in most of today’s public schools.

Contrast this with Christianity. Romans 13:13-14, for example, commands, “Let us behave properly as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and sensuality, not in strife and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts.”

“Satan’s existence is consumed with a mission,” continues Schott, “to defy and mock God, to defy His order of creation, and to mock His governing orders. … The Church of Satan reverses the order of the Lord’s Prayer, saying it backwards as they begin their services, to defy God. God says love; the Church of Satan says hate. God says heterosexual relationships; the Church of Satan says homosexual relationships. God says monogamous marriage between a man and woman; the Church of Satan says polygamous and sexually open relationships. God gave the Ten Commandments; the Church of Satan established their version, called the Nine Tenets, shown below:”

1. Satan represents indulgence instead of abstinence!
2. Satan represents vital existence instead of spiritual pipe dreams!
3. Satan represents undefiled wisdom instead of hypocritical self-deceit!
4. Satan represents kindness to those who deserve it instead of love wasted!
5. Satan represents vengeance instead of turning the other cheek!
6. Satan represents man as just another animal, sometimes better, more often worse than those that walk on all-fours, who, because of his “divine spiritual and intellectual development,” has become the most vicious animal of all!
7. Satan represents all of the so-called sins, as they all lead to physical, mental, or emotional gratification!
8. Satan has been the best friend the Church has ever had, as He has kept it in business all these years!
9. When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask him to stop. If he does not stop, destroy him.

Consider The Satanic Bible’s following sex-centric passages. They read like the mission statements of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) or GLSEN:

• Each person must decide for himself what form of sexual activity best suits his individual needs.
• Satanism ENCOURAGES any form of sexual expression you may desire so long as it hurts no one else.
• If all parties involved are mature adults who willingly take full responsibility for their actions and voluntarily engages in a given form of sexual expression – even if it is generally considered taboo – then there is no reason for them to repress their sexual inclinations … you have no cause to suppress your sexual preferences.
• It is important to point out here that spiritual love and sexual love can, but do not necessarily, go hand in hand.
• The Satanist realizes that if he is to be a sexual connoisseur (and free from sexual guilt) he cannot be stifled by the so-called sexual revolutionist any more than he can by the prudery of his guilt-ridden society.

“That last verse from The Satanic Bible,” observes Schott, “reminds me of a powerful proverb on the adulterous woman. Proverbs 30:20 says, ‘This is the way of an adulterous woman: She eats and wipes her mouth and says, “I’ve done nothing wrong.”‘ Again and again The Satanic Bible tells its readers that there is nothing wrong with giving in to your natural sexual desires. The Bible tells us to resist the sexual desires of the flesh,” he concludes.

Schott points out, and I agree wholeheartedly, that homosexual practitioners are not necessarily demonic (or demon possessed) and that they are desperately in need of Christ’s Truth, in love, as well as much prayer.

Even so, it remains true that homosexual sin is demonic.

All good things come from God the Father, and all wickedness comes from the father of lies. If God designed biblical marriage and natural human sexuality, and He did, then we are left no doubt as to who designed its counterfeit – as to who fabricated pagan “gay marriage” and otherwise perverted God’s perfect purposes for human sexuality.

Sin is from Satan. Homosexual behavior is sin. Therefore, homosexual behavior is from Satan.

Yes, “gay marriage” is evil.

Yes, homosexuality is evil.

For the Bible – and The Satanic Bible – tells me so.