Boxer Manny Pacquiao has rightly apologized to “LGBTQP” activists for saying, “Do you see animals mating with the same sex? Animals are better because they can distinguish male from female. If men mate with men and women mate with women, they are worse than animals.”

Homosexual Hollywood pontificator Perez Hilton responded, “There’s absolutely no call to demonize and denigrate gay people by comparing them to animals.” He is not alone in his criticism of Pacquiao.

The opposition expressed by homosexuals to being compared to animals is confusing because it is the homosexual community that has for years justified homosexual activity by pointing to its presence in the animal kingdom. In the Pacquiao kerfuffle, some have criticized him for not knowing that animals do, indeed, engage in homosexual activity. Apparently, homosexual activists do not take issue with the comparison of homosexuals to animals as much as they do to Pacquiao’s view that homosexuals are “worse” than animals.

Both Pacquiao and homosexual activists err.

Although God detests homoerotic activity, which mars the image of God imprinted on man, God does not think of humans who engage in it as subhuman. Rather, he views them as he does all  humans. He views them as fallen people in need of redemption.

“Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.”
~Psalm 8:5

“For all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God.”
~Romans 3:23

“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 Corinthians 6:11

This cannot be good for free speech and the open exchange of ideas. Not for Christians and conservatives anyway.

Twitter announced on Wednesday that it has assembled a new “Twitter Trust & Safety Council” to “ensure that people feel safe expressing themselves on Twitter.”

Who’s for safety?

Yay safety!

Still, we need only look to the so-called “safe space” craze on America’s college campuses to gain a glimpse into what Twitter undoubtedly means here. Understand that, for the left, the word “safe” has nothing to do with, well, safety, and everything to do with censorship.

Let’s define the terms:

Safe Space: noun, 1. progressive circle of self-entitled, everyone-gets-a-trophy basement-dwellers sheltered from critical thinking, differing opinions, reality and oxygen.

With its new initiative, Twitter says it seeks to “strike the right balance between fighting abuse and speaking truth to power.”

What, exactly, constitutes “abuse,” “truth” and “power” remains to be seen, but, based on Twitter’s long history of blacklisting and “unverifying” conservatives from its rolls, I think we all know who gets shafted on this.

“To ensure people can continue to express themselves freely and safely on Twitter, we must provide more tools and policies,” the company claims. “Twitter does not tolerate behavior intended to harass, intimidate, or use fear to silence another user’s voice.”

Color me über-skeptical, but as Daniel Payne observes over at The Federalist, “Twitter already allows its users to either mute or block anyone who is being bothersome or threatening. There is no practical necessity for a ‘council’ to make people feel ‘safe’ on Twitter. Blocking is an effective tool for anyone who needs it. You can always report to the Twitter staff the rare troll who just won’t give up.

“The seemingly superfluous formation of a ‘Trust and Safety Council,’ then, suggests a kind of procedural overhaul of Twitter’s internal speech policy,” concludes Payne.

I agree.

Indeed, to the fragile liberal mind, any disagreement with its rigid, and decidedly one-sided, brand of “tolerance” and “diversity” constitutes “behavior intended to harass” or “intimidate.” To those who cannot win an argument on the merits, the path of least resistance is to silence all dissent.

Yet, if there was any question as to whether Twitter will be adopting the above-referenced definition of “safe space” in its effort to make tweeters “feel safe,” that question is immediately resolved by virtue of whom it has deputized. While there are a handful of legitimate, left-of-center anti-bullying organizations on the “council,” the list is likewise comprised up a rag-tag gaggle of fringe “progressive” groups like Feminist Frequency and GLAAD (formerly the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation).

Conspicuously absent is even one conservative or Christian organization.

So, what will GLAAD and the rest of the “Tweet Police” be doing? It’s hard to say for sure since Twitter won’t, but, considering what GLAAD already does, we can venture a fair guess.

GLAAD is an extremist homosexual censorship group that, for its defamatory antics, was certified last year by the well-respected American Family Association as an “openly bigoted anti-Christian organization.” GLAAD’s primary purpose is to strong-arm the entertainment industry and news media into presenting unrealistically favorable portrayals of the homosexual and gender-confused lifestyles, while at once censoring positive portrayals of natural marriage and the natural family, and silencing those who hold biblical values relative to marriage and human sexuality.

One of GLAAD’s most troubling censorship efforts was its Orwellian “Commentator Accountability Project.” This was a desperate effort to “suppress the biblical worldview from media.” Various homosexual activists were conscripted to contact, badger and otherwise intimidate media outlets, such as CNN, Fox News, the New York Times, et al., into blacklisting leading Christian cultural analysts (yours truly included) from providing commentary and political analysis over the airwaves and in print.

While the smear campaign ultimately failed, it did betray, for all the world to see, GLAAD’s overt designs on anti-conservative, anti-Christian censorship. And now it has its grubby little rainbow-hued fingerprints all over one of the world’s largest and most popular social networking sites.

Enjoy your Twitter free speech while you can, conservative Christians. Your tweets are birds on a wire, and GLAAD’s got the pellet gun.

The American Civil Litigation Lawlessness Licentiousness Liberties Union (ACLU) wants to know if gender-dysphoric persons should be able to change the “gender marker on their birth certificates without proof of transition-related surgery.”

Take ACTION:  Please tell them by taking this 10-second poll: Click HERE.

First, birth certificates do not identify “gender markers.” Birth certificates identify objective, immutable sex.

Second, humans cannot change their sex, so there is no rational reason for any person—not those who like their bodies nor those who dislike their bodies—to change their sex on their birth certificates.

Third, no one—not even gender-dysphoric persons whose bodies have been mutilated in a deeply misguided effort to conceal their actual sex—should be able to change their sex on their birth certificates or any other legal document.

Fourth, the government has no vested in interest in how humans feel about their objective, immutable sex, so there exists no rational reason for any arm of the government or government document to ask citizens to identify the sex they wish they were.

There exists no more truly anti-science nonsense than that unstable pile of sand upon which the pro-“trans” movement is built. And they call conservatives science-deniers. What a hoot.

Please help the trans-fixed ACLU better understand scientific reality.

Support IFI

If you think our work is worthy, would you please consider a tax deductible gift to support the work of the Illinois Family Institute?

Your support is directly helping us establish a strong and consistent presence in the public square — representing your voice, and your values — proudly pro-life, pro-marriage and pro-family.

With distinctions between male and female students increasingly under attack by the Left, a suburban Chicago lawmaker is fighting back with legislation that would prohibit students in public schools from using restrooms and locker rooms designated for the opposite sex…

Worldview Conference with Dr. Wayne Grudem
We are very excited about our second annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Wayne Grudem on Saturday, February 20, 2016 in Barrington.

Click HERE to register today.  Seating is limited!

In the morning sessions, Dr. Grudem will speak on how biblical values provide the only effective solution to world poverty and about the moral advantages of a free-market economic system. In the afternoon, Dr. Grudem will address why Christians—and especially pastors—should influence government for good as well as tackle the moral and spiritual issues in the 2016 election.

We look forward to this worldview-training and pray it will be a blessing to you.

Click HERE for a flyer.

The Leftist effort to sever objective immutable sex differences from both meaning and cultural recognition and to promote the fiction that one’s sex can change marches on. Within hours of the filing of the Pupil Physical Privacy Act (HB 4474) in Springfield, which would prohibit students in public schools from using restrooms and locker rooms designated for the opposite sex, Equality Illinois, an organization dedicated to the normalization of sexual perversion and confusion, flew into a paroxysm of deceit:.

HB4474…would stigmatize transgender and gender non-conforming youth by requiring them to use separate restrooms and locker rooms.

This bill is an attack on the well-being and dignity of transgender and gender non-conforming students. It says to them that they are not respected and valued in the very spaces where they should be safe and affirmed.

The only fair option is to ensure transgender students have access to the facilities that correspond to their gender identity.

Despite the demagogic rhetoric of Equality Illinois, policies and practices that acknowledge and respect objective, immutable, and important sex differences do not “stigmatize” or “attack the well-being” or “dignity” of gender-dysphoric students. Respect and valuation of humans does not require affirmation of all their feelings, beliefs, desires, or actions. In fact, sometimes respect and valuation of humans includes not affirming some of their feelings, beliefs, desires, or actions. Many would argue that allowing a boy or girl to deny the meaning and import of their sex through cross-dressing, rendering themselves sterile through the use of cross-sex hormones, and mutilating their healthy bodies is profoundly disrespectful—an egregious denial of their dignity.

The Left believes—sort of—that all reality is determined by the subjective feelings and desires of each individual. So a person’s maleness or femaleness is determined by their feelings not by their, well, maleness or femaleness.

But, it’s a horse of a different color, when other people “feel” that maleness and femaleness is inextricably linked to objective, immutable sex, or when they believe that it’s wrong to pretend people are the sex they are not, or that treating others with dignity requires affirming their wholeness. In such cases Leftists, who with alacrity and regularity violate the law of non-contradiction, claim their subjective feelings (and assumptions) should be considered immutable, absolute, objective truth—you know, unlike each person’s sex.

Certainly boys whom parents and schools foolishly permit to cross-dress at school are at risk for bullying in (and out) of restrooms and locker rooms that correspond to their actual sex, which is why the Pupil Privacy Act specifically allows schools to accommodate the disordered desires and behavior of gender-dysphoric students. The bill allows schools to provide single-occupancy facilities to gender-dysphoric students.

What government schools must never be permitted to do is affirm or espouse to students that compassion or respect for gender-dysphoric students requires society to pretend that their desire to be the opposite sex is more important than their actual sex. Government schools must never be permitted to allow students who don’t like their bodies to use opposite-sex restrooms or locker rooms. And government schools must never mandate that faculty, staff, or students lie by using opposite-sex pronouns. When administrators, teachers, and school board members no longer recognize something as fundamental as the immutable reality and meaning of sex differences, schools have lost the ethical right to teach. And people of faith must stop excusing, tolerating, and accommodating such ignorance and immorality.

To my knowledge, Equality Illinois has not explained why restrooms and locker rooms should correspond to students’ feelings about their sex rather than their actual sex. Equality Illinois has not explained why students who are gender dysphoric should not be compelled to use restrooms and locker rooms with those whose “gender identity” they don’t share while non-gender-dysphoric students (i.e., normal students) should be compelled to use restrooms and locker rooms with those whose sex they don’t share.

Conservatives need to be intellectually equipped to respond to the lies used to promote the utterly irrational and destructive effort of Leftists to redefine reality. Conservatives need to commit unwaveringly to speaking and acting in ways that comport with truth, including in even seemingly small things, because it is through acquiescence in seemingly small things that incrementalism changes culture. And they need to prepare to endure the persecution that is upon us.

Teachers in public schools: Tell your administrations that pronouns denote and correspond to objective biological sex, that you cannot lie, and that, therefore, you cannot refer to students by opposite-sex pronouns. Tell them too that you will not use newly coined pronouns (e.g., “zie,” “zim,” “zir”), because they embody false beliefs about sex.

Parents: Tell the teachers of your elementary and middle school-age children that under no circumstances are your children to be exposed to resources or activities that address gender dysphoria. Tell the teachers of your high school students that your children are not to be exposed to any resources or activities that address gender-dysphoria unless equal time is spent with resources that espouse dissenting views on the nature of gender dysphoria and the proper way to address it.

Parents: Teach your middle and high school students about gender dysphoria. Teach them about the immutability and goodness of objective, immutable sex differences. Teach them never to use opposite-sex pronouns when referring to gender-dysphoric persons.

People of faith: Ask your church, synagogue, or mosque leaders to teach on this issue.

Those who out of cowardice are predisposed to accommodation, know this, the Left does not seek merely the “right” of a few gender-dysphoric teens to use private stalls in restrooms and locker rooms. No siree, Leftists seek the “right” of any gender-dysphoric person of any age to have unrestricted access to any opposite-sex restroom, locker room, shower, or dressing room in any context. Leftists will not be satisfied until they have forced all society to treat gender-dysphoric persons as if they are in reality the sex they wish they were.

Leftists will oppose this common-sense bill to protect the privacy, dignity, and safety of students with the vigor, tenacity, demagoguery, and deceit with which they promote efforts to normalize deviance. Conservatives should support it with the same vigor and tenacity but without the demagoguery and deceit. Fortunately, we’ve got reality on our side.

Citizens of Illinois:  Take ACTION:  If your state representative is not yet a co-sponsor of HB 4474, click HERE to urge him or her to sign on.

Worldview Conference with Dr. Wayne Grudem

We are very excited about our second annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Wayne Grudem on Saturday, February 20, 2016 in Barrington.

Click HERE to register today.  Seating is limited!

In the morning sessions, Dr. Grudem will speak on how biblical values provide the only effective solution to world poverty and about the moral advantages of a free-market economic system. In the afternoon, Dr. Grudem will address why Christians—and especially pastors—should influence government for good as well as tackle the moral and spiritual issues in the 2016 election.

We look forward to this worldview-training and pray it will be a blessing to you.

Click HERE for a flyer.

State Representative Tom Morrison (R-Palatine) introduced the bi-partisan Pupil Physical Privacy Act (HB 4474), which if passed would require the following:

[A] school board to designate each pupil restroom, changing room, or overnight facility accessible by multiple pupils simultaneously, whether located in a public school building or located in a facility utilized by the school for a school-sponsored activity, for the exclusive use of pupils of only one sex. Defines “sex” as the physical condition of being male or female, as determined by an individual’s chromosomes and identified at birth by that individual’s anatomy. 

Signing on as co-sponsors are John D. Anthony (R-Morris), Mark Batinick (R-Plainfield), John M. Cabello (R-Loves Park), C.D. Davidsmeyer (R-Jacksonville), Mary E. Flowers (D-Chicago), Jeanne M. Ives (R-Wheaton), Dwight Kay (R-Glen Carbon), Sherry L. Jesiel (R-Gurnee), Bill Mitchell (R-Decatur), Reginald Phillips (R-Charleston), David Reis (R-Olney), Barbara Wheeler (R-Crystal Lake), and Keith Wheeler (R-North Aurora). Who knew Illinois had this many wise and courageous leaders willing to endure the deceitful epithets hurled at anyone who dares to dissent from the foolish views espoused by “progressives”?

If we lived in a rational society committed to sexual sanity, such a bill would be wholly unnecessary, and anyone who sponsored such a bill would be thought of as daft. But we don’t, and therefore the bill is necessary. These lawmakers deserve many thanks for their courage and wisdom.

Of course, there already exists a federal law that specifically states that schools have the right to maintain sex-separated restrooms and locker rooms, but “progressives” never let little things like laws (or common sense, rationality, or decency) get in the way of advocacy for their sexual delusions:

[T]itle IX of the Education Amendments of 1972…is designed to eliminate (with certain exceptions) discrimination on the basis of sex in any education program….A recipient [of federal funds] may provide separate toilet, locker room, and shower facilities on the basis of sex, but such facilities provided for students of one sex shall be comparable to such facilities provided for students of the other sex.

District 211, the largest high school district in Illinois now facilitates confusion and undermines modesty by allowing gender-dysphoric students—that is, students who wish they were the opposite sex—to use opposite sex restrooms and locker rooms. Those students who rightly don’t want to use restrooms and locker rooms with students of the opposite sex risk being called hateful and ignorant if they express their feelings. And they most assuredly can’t expect policy to reflect their feelings and beliefs.

District administrators absurdly describe this policy as “upholding dignity,” when in reality, allowing students to use opposite-sex locker restrooms denies the dignity of gender-dysphoric students as well as those students whose privacy they’re invading. What the district is really doing is upholding the disordered feelings and perverse ideology of Leftists.

Out of compassion for students who suffer from gender dysphoria, HB 4474 provides for a rational accommodation of their desire not to use restrooms corresponding to their sex, while still respecting essential and immutable sex differences:

[HB 4474] Authorizes a school board to provide reasonable accommodations to a pupil to use a single-occupancy restroom or changing room or the regulated use of a faculty restroom or changing room if the pupil is an adult or an emancipated minor, or the parent or guardian of a minor pupil submits to school officials, in writing, a request to receive such accommodations and the pupil is a member of the male sex but does not identify as a member of the male sex or the pupil is a member of the female sex but does not identify as a member of the female sex

Parents and students who know truth

There are a remnant of wise and courageous parents and students whose minds remain unclouded by the toxic ideological stew that poisons our anti-culture. They know that physical embodiment is not only immutable but also good and that the natural modesty that derives from physical embodiment should be both respected and cultivated.

They know that students should be neither ordered, nor asked, nor permitted to use restrooms and locker rooms with those whose sex they don’t share.

They know that restroom stalls within restrooms and private changing cubicles within locker rooms do not provide sufficient privacy to separate properly boys from girls or women from men.

They know that objective biological sex is more meaningful and important than feelings about one’s objective biological sex.

To these parents and students, it makes no difference if the boy who seeks to use the girls’ restrooms and locker room likes his penis or loathes it. A boy does not belong in a girls’ restroom (and vice versa).

Gender Identity Disorder and Amputee Identity Disorder

What no school administrator or gender-dysphoric person has proved is that the mismatch between the sex of gender-dysphoric persons and their desires about their sex is a disorder of their healthy, properly functioning bodies rather than their minds. And how precisely is their discomfort with their bodies different from the discomfort of those with Amputee Identity Disorder (also known as Body Integrity Identity Disorder [BIID])?

Those with BIID identify with amputees. They believe they should have been born with missing limbs, and they have a persistent desire to have a limb or limbs amputated in order to achieve consonance between their feelings and their bodies. Because the medical establishment will not amputate healthy limbs, sometimes those with BIID will deliberately harm healthy limbs in order to force an amputation. Society and the medical establishment view this as a disorder of the mind—not the body. What rational sense does it make to view as barbaric the amputation of a healthy arm but therapeutic to amputate a healthy penis? Will schools allow those with BIID access to accommodations designed and intended for those without legs—an accommodation, by the way, that does not deny the privacy, feelings, or beliefs of others?

Remember, the Left says there are no behaviors, thoughts, or feelings that are intrinsically male or female. They believe all human phenomena are arbitrarily deemed male or female. Preferences in toys, activities, and colors are neither inherently or objectively male nor female. Ways of thinking and feeling are neither male nor female. So, all that exists immutably and objectively as male or female is biological sex. Gender-dysphoric persons cannot in reality have a male or female “identity” because there exists no such thing. Gender-dysphoric persons can’t have a male or female identity because male and female “identities” are merely arbitrary, phantasmic social constructions. The only true thing that can be said about gender-dysphoric persons with regard to maleness and femaleness is that they desire to change the one thing they cannot: their sex. Restrooms and locker rooms correspond to sex.

 “Transgender” restroom/locker room policies inculcate

Defenders of feckless, unethical, and irrational “transgender” restroom and locker room practices and policies dismiss the concerns of their opponents by claiming that most students don’t fully undress in locker rooms, or that normal students don’t mind undressing in front of gender-dysphoric students, or that there aren’t many gender-dysphoric students asking to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms. But none of those arguments are sound or persuasive. Policies that maintain sex-separated areas for students to engage in personal activities pertaining to physical embodiment not only protect the privacy, safety, and modesty of students but also teach important ideas about the immutability, meaning, and goodness of objective sex.

Conversely, policies and practices that allow boys (who will always be boys) and girls (who will always be girls) to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms teach controversial, subversive Leftist assumptions about objective biological sex, cross-dressing, modesty, compassion, and bigotry.

“Transgender” activists= 21^st Century alchemists

Like medieval alchemists, Leftists demand that all of society believe or pretend to believe that men can be transformed into women. Even some conservatives will argue foolishly that it would be acceptable for students to use opposite-sex facilities if they’ve had their penises or breasts amputated. It shouldn’t need to be said, but here goes: Men do not become women if their penises are amputated, and women do not become men if their breasts are amputated. Taking cross-sex hormones doesn’t change people into the opposite sex either. While elective amputations of healthy arms or legs actually do transform those with BIID into amputees, all that surgery and cross-sex hormones accomplish for gender-dysphoric persons is create elaborate and deceptive anatomical costumes—oh, and render them sterile.

What is coming

For now, school districts are willing to accommodate the Neanderthaloid beliefs of parents and students who know truth—I repeat, for now. The ultimate goal of “LGBTQQAP” activists and their allies, however, is to compel society to accept their subjective belief that objective biological sex is ultimately irrelevant—a meaningless, arbitrary anatomical trifle, like a birthmark or wart. To them, objective sex is meaningful only if one chooses to affirm it as meaningful. The subjective self determines the meaning and value of all phenomena. Therefore, in this brave new world, all restrooms, dressing rooms, and locker rooms will be co-ed/sex-neutral. There will remain no place in schools or public places for separation by sex.

This effort to subvert the cultural understanding of maleness and femaleness through government schools, rhetoric, law, and courts is as revolutionary and destructive as any issue in contemporary America. Americans should be at school board meetings in droves and preparing themselves for civil disobedience.

Take ACTION:

1.)  Many elementary, middle, and high schools are quietly implementing these practices with no parental notification or input. Parents: Contact your administrations and ask if they are permitting or would permit gender-dysphoric students to use opposite-sex restrooms and/or locker rooms. Further, tell your administration that under no circumstance will your child be permitted to use a restroom or locker room that students of the opposite sex are permitted to use.

2.)  If your state representative is a co-sponsor of HB 4474, contact him or her to offer your thanks.

3.)  If your state representative is not yet a co-sponsor of HB 4474, click HERE to urge him or her to sign on.

“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would” (Alice in Wonderland).

Worldview Conference with Dr. Wayne Grudem
We are very excited about our second annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Wayne Grudem on Saturday, February 20, 2016 in Barrington.

Click HERE to register today!

In the morning sessions, Dr. Grudem will speak on how biblical values provide the only effective solution to world poverty and about the moral advantages of a free-market economic system. In the afternoon, Dr. Grudem will address why Christians—and especially pastors—should influence government for good as well as tackle the moral and spiritual issues in the 2016 election.

We look forward to this worldview-training and pray it will be a blessing to you.

Click HERE for a flyer.

Written by Teri Paulson

Well, it’s official: Our girls are now getting undressed in the presence of a boy (with complete male genitalia) in the girls’ locker room at William Fremd High School in Palatine, Illinois. The overwhelming majority of over four hundred community members who showed up for two nights in December to beg the school board to tell “transgender” activists NO were powerless against whatever it was that compelled D211 Superintendent Daniel Cates and  five out of seven members of our school board to enact “transgender” morality into policy. Here’s what I know: The school board’s decision had nothing to do with truth, righteousness, reason, or logic. Male genitalia and XY chromosomes are simply irrelevant details to these facilitators of our brave new world.

The problem was not a lack of good arguments. Between the two meetings, there were at least four hours of public comment. The overwhelming majority of the community respectfully and passionately articulated compelling arguments demonstrating reason, logic, and good old common sense. It has become abundantly clear that the five out of seven members of the school board who voted for this disgraceful decision would have betrayed the community regardless of the arguments. Theirs was a spiritual decision rooted in the rejection of God himself. They are enacting rules that disregard the Ruler. Because this is a spiritual problem, it needs to be addressed spiritually.

Where have all the shepherds gone?

According to the yellow pages and depending on how you define a church, there are thirty churches in Palatine alone, not to mention Schaumburg and Hoffman Estates. On both nights when we were debating whether or not it is a good idea to force teenage girls to undress in the presence of a boy, our spiritual leaders (with a couple of notable exceptions) were missing in action. If this is not a spiritual battle I don’t know what is. If our pastors and elders, whose supposed mission in life is to help us understand God and encourage us to obey him, didn’t show up as witnesses for his will at these meetings, what would they show up for?

Jesus spoke these words when he was here on earth. Draw your own conclusions as to their possible application:

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it. The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. (John 10:11-13)

Where have all the shepherds gone?

I direct your attention to the Trojan Horse within the LGBT ranks. For those who are willing to do the hard work of analysis, the irrationality of what is being foisted upon the nation in the name of compassion will be more than apparent.

For many years now we have been told that the differences between the sexes are myth, mere social constructs, and that if we let children grow up without traditional norms, little boys and girls will like dolls or trucks, pink or blue, loud or quiet games alike. This is the fundamental basis for radical feminism and for the demand that we accept homosexuality as normal. According to liberals, there simply are no differences between the sexes other than genitalia.

However, in the midst of the cultural tsunami that has swept the nation over the last five years one group has gained notoriety as part of the LGBT community when in fact their perspective radically undermines everything the Left has been saying. They are heralded as the heroes of the sexual revolution, yet at the core of their demands is an unwavering conviction that there are absolute and inflexible differences between the sexes. I am referring to transgenders.

At the heart of their dilemma is their discomfort at being physically the opposite sex from their self- perception. The young man who perceives himself as a young woman claims he doesn’t feel “masculine.” Rather, he feels “feminine,” and that is a problem to him. Many who see themselves as “transgender” claim they have had these feelings since they were very young, meaning that their feelings were not learned. But, how can this be if there are no such things as masculinity or femininity? If there are no differences between the genders as we are being buffaloed into accepting, then with what are they uncomfortable? If, there are no inborn differences, then every person should be perfectly satisfied with whatever genitalia he or she is born with. In other words, their genitalia should be no more significant to their self-perception than their eye color.

If their only problem is their perception of themselves rather than the reality, why are they not encouraged by the Left and the LGBT community simply to alter their perception of themselves rather than their genitalia? Altering their self-perception is certainly far less radical and dangerous if, in fact, it is merely a perception. How can a young man perceive himself as a young woman if there is no substantive difference between the two? How can a boy “feel” like a girl if there are  no “feelings” that are inherently and exclusively female?

Understand this: when the LGBT community demands “sex change” surgery for transgenders they are publically admitting that there are specific attitudes, perspectives, feelings, etc., attendant to each gender. They are saying that there are certain attributes or feelings that are so absolutely and immutably feminine that a man who has them can only be content or fulfilled by having his  genitalia altered to match. They are actually declaring that the characteristics associated with maleness or femaleness are more intractable than bodies. That admission directly contradicts their entire argument that gender differences are merely cultural.

The facts are clear, and the transgender community has unwittingly exposed them.  There are inherent, immutable, significant, deeply rooted differences between the sexes that cannot be altered. These differences should be respected and honored.

I understand that this truth will have no affect on the small number of radicals behind the LGBT and “transgender” movements because truth, intellectual consistency, and equality of treatment are not really their objectives. They push their agenda because they desire a radical social licentiousness they know will undermine and destroy our culture and nation.

The facts are clear: There are real and significant differences between the sexes, and respecting those differences is essential to human flourishing. To say that women should be like men and men should be like women (besides belying the fact that they are in reality different) is to deeply disrespect both.

P.S. Our get-out-the-vote campaign is ramping up. We are preparing to distribute the IFI Primary Voter Guide to thousands of churches, civic groups and tea party organizations. Will you help to financially support our endeavor to educate Illinois voters and promote family values?

To make a credit card donation over the phone, call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.

Surprise, surprise, over the holidays, the anti-cultural coal mine emitted more noxious fumes. Unfortunately, people of faith continue to ignore the canary’s corpse.

Just before Christmas, New York City’s Commission on Human Rights released stunning speech code requirements regarding gender dysphoria that mandate that “employers, landlords, and business owners” lie or be fined up to $250,000.

The introduction to the spanking new “guidance” foreshadows oppressive things to come—everywhere:

 [T]he New York City Commission on Human Rights released new guidance that makes clear what constitutes gender identity and gender expression discrimination under the NYC Human Rights Law, making it one of the strongest in the nation in protecting the rights of transgender and gender non-conforming individuals. Although discrimination based on gender identity and expression has been illegal under the City’s law since 2002, previous guidelines never articulated the range of violations of the law. Today’s guidance provides bold and explicit examples of violations, sending a clear message to employers, landlords, business owners, and the general public what the City considers to be discrimination under the law. (emphasis added)

Lest IFI readers mistakenly think these strong, bold mandates have any connection to compassion or actual rights, here are just two of the violations that will result in hefty fines: 1. It is now a violation of anti-discrimination law to intentionally or repeatedly use correct pronouns rather than the pronouns gender-dysphoric people want others to use. 2. It is now a violation of anti-discrimination law to intentionally or repeatedly use correct titles, like Mr. for an actual man or Ms. for an actual woman.

Just as the unelected, non-lawmaking Office for Civil Rights unilaterally decided that the word “sex” in Title IX includes “gender identity,” the unelected, non-lawmaking NYC Commission on Human Rights unilaterally decided that grammatically correct pronoun-use now constitutes “discrimination.”

Ironically, in an anti-culture awash in obscene language—including in the materials recommended and taught by “teachers” in our middle and high schools—it’s correct pronoun-use that is banned.

With the usual “progressive” hubris and willingness to violate speech rights and religious liberty in their tyrannical quest for ideological submission to their fanciful assumptions about human nature, the NYC Human Rights Commission has decided that pronouns no longer correspond to objective biological sex and those who disagree must be punished. While well-respected theologian John Piper says Christians should not use opposite-sex pronouns when referring to gender-dysphoric persons, the NYC Commission commands them to do so or risk a $250,000 fine. The stakes are getting higher for the inevitable cataclysmic collision between religious liberty and sexual libertinism unmoored from morality and the common good.

The new “guidance” (Does guidance usually come accompanied by draconian punishments?) also requires that all restrooms, locker rooms, and single-sex facilities in “employment, public accommodations, and housing” be open to men who claim to be women. The “guidance” specifically mentions women’s shelters. Apparently, the feelings of men who wish they were women take precedence over the feelings of women and children who have been victimized by men. Lesbian Carmelyn Malalis, who Mayor Bill DeBlasio  appointed commissioner of the NYC Commission on Human Rights, should explain to abused women why it’s okay to allow a man in the shelter bed next to them as long as he dislikes his penis.

It’s interesting to note that the new “guidance” requires employers who provide prostate cancer-screening for actual men to provide it for men who pretend they’re women. How ironic that pretend-women are demanding to be treated in all situations as if they are in reality women—except when it comes to their healthcare. A recent editorial about prescription drug-testing in the Chicago Tribune inadvertently acknowledged the inconvenient truth that men cannot become women or vice versa:

“Every cell has a sex,” Dr. Janine Clayton, director of the NIH’s Office of Research on Women’s Health, told The New York Times. “Each cell is either male or female, and that genetic difference results in different biochemical processes within those cells.”

It is neither discriminatory nor hateful to recognize those differences in drug-testing, health-screening, or grammar.

George Orwell named the dangerous game that “trans-activists” are now playing “Newspeak.” With a surprisingly un-liberal and not so-surprisingly unholy vigor, trans-activists are engaging in precisely the kind of activity about which Orwell warned:

Newspeak was the official language of Oceania, and had been devised to meet the ideological needs of IngSoc, or English Socialism….

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. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all… a heretical thought…should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. 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….

[T]he special function of certain Newspeak words… was not so much to express meanings as to destroy them….

[W]ords which had once borne a heretical meaning were sometimes retained for the sake of convenience, but only with the undesirable meanings purged out of them.

Why do “trans-activists” believe it’s wrong to continue using pronouns in the historical way in which they denote and correspond to objective biological sex? Because it hurts the feelings of body-rejecting men and women who need to have every cultural signifier that suggests the immutable, objective nature and meaning of physical embodiment erased in order to maintain their ontological masquerade. “Trans-activists” feel bad when they encounter actions that indicate a refusal to acquiesce to Leftist “identity” constructs.

But here’s the rub: The identity of orthodox Christians includes both opposition to lying (Ex. 20:16) and affirmation of the goodness and immutability of sexual differentiation (Gen. 5:2). Orthodox Christians “feel bad” when the state requires them to deny their identity in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17).

No one who is committed to truth and human flourishing should acquiesce to demands to refer to men as women and women as men. Though those who suffer from gender dysphoria may desire that everyone participate in their elaborate ruse, doing so is not, in reality, good for them.

The Left elevates subjective feelings over knowledge, wisdom, truth, and reality, arguing that compassion is determined solely by affirming the feelings of others. Well, that’s not precisely accurate. As usual, the Left does not apply their principles consistently. They don’t argue that society ought to affirm the subjective feelings and beliefs of everyone. Rather, diversity-lovin’ Leftists believe society must affirm—or pretend to affirm—only Leftist-approved feelings and beliefs.

If you think this fascist policy will remain limited to New York City or to employers, places of public accommodation, or housing, you’ve been living under a proverbial rock. Those who value libertinism will pound on the doors of churches, private schools and colleges, and radio stations demanding that everyone everywhere adopt the official language of the United States: Newspeak. So, make your commitment about language-use now, or you will yield to language-fascists later.

Worldview Conference with Dr. Wayne Grudem

We are very excited about our second annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Wayne Grudem on Saturday, February 20, 2016 in Barrington. Click HERE to register today!

In the morning sessions, Dr. Grudem will speak on how biblical values provide the only effective solution to world poverty and about the moral advantages of a free-market economic system. In the afternoon, Dr. Grudem will address why Christians—and especially pastors—should influence government for good as well as tackle the moral and spiritual issues in the 2016 election.

We look forward to this worldview-training and pray it will be a blessing to you.

Click HERE for a flyer.

After years of lobbying by homosexual activists, the FDA has lifted its lifetime ban on “men who have sex with men” (MSM)—which is the Centers for Disease Control designation—from donating blood. Homosexual activists view the ban as unjustly discriminatory, a relic from the beginning of the AIDS crisis when testing was far less effective. The change means that donations from MSM who claim not to have had homoerotic encounters for one year will be now be accepted.

While many homosexuals claim the lifetime ban was based on “homophobia,” they can’t explain why it didn’t apply to lesbians. Facts are such stubborn and inconvenient things.

While many cheer this decision as a victory for science, others are wondering if it’s a political victory for male homosexual activists.

The FDA explains that “its policies to date have helped reduce HIV transmission rates from blood transfusions from 1 in 2,500 to 1 in 1.47 million.” Further, the FDA cites an Australian study that showed no increase in HIV/AIDS transmission rates following their switching from a lifetime ban to a one-year deferral period.

News reports cite similar policy shifts in other developed countries. For example, the United Kingdom, Australia, Sweden, and Japan all have one-year deferral periods, and Canada and New Zealand have five-year deferral periods. It is interesting to note, however, the HIV/AIDS adult (ages 15-49) prevalence rates in these countries as compared to the United States:

• United Kingdom: .3%
• Australia: .2%
• Sweden: .2%
• Japan: <.1%
• New Zealand: .1%
• Canada: .2%
• United States: .6%

The United States has twice the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate as the country with the next highest rate.

The reason for a one-year deferral period is that during what is called the “eclipse” phase” or “window period,” the HIV virus has infected the first cell but is present at levels undetectable by current testing. The eclipse phase is estimated to last from 7-90 days. Therefore, the one-year deferral period is viewed as more than sufficient.

The ban on donations from MSM grew out of concern not just for HIV/AIDS transmission but also for the transmission of hepatitis. According to the CDC the risk of transmission of acute hepatitis, which is caused by the hepatitis C virus, is just under “1 chance per 2 million units transfused.” It has also been reported that the rate of hepatitis C among MSM is approximately 5%, whereas the rate among the general population is .78%. Since the rate of hepatitis C among MSM is over 500% higher than the rate among the general population, will the lifting of the ban on this high-risk group donating blood increase the number of people infected by hepatitis C?

The CDC also reports that “[a]mong adults, an estimated 10% of new hepatitis A cases and 20% of new Hepatitis B cases occur in MSM.” So, 10% of new hepatitis A cases and 20% of new hepatitis B cases come from a demographic group that the CDC claims constitutes 2% of the population. A 2011 study reports that the level of Hepatitis B infections per donations is “1:500,000 to 1:1,000,000.” Will this rate remain steady or increase now that MSM are permitted to donate blood?

The FDA assures the public that “[m]oving forward, the FDA will continue to reevaluate and update its blood donor deferral policies as new scientific information becomes available.” Let’s hope and pray that the new scientific information does not include an increase of even a small percentage in the HIV/AIDS or hepatitis transmission rates. And let’s hope and pray that when screened, men who have sex with men will be truthful about the duration of time since their last homoerotic encounter.

Support IFI

Please consider supporting IFI’s ongoing work to educate, motivate and activate Illinois’ Christian community.  Your donation will help us stand strong in 2016!  To make a credit card donation over the phone, please call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.  You can also send a gift to:

Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 88848
Carol Stream, Illinois 60188

School Board officials in Township High School District 211 — which includes Palatine, Schaumburg and Hoffman Estates — have implemented a controversial and dangerous policy to allow male gender confused student access to a girls’ locker room at a high school in the district, despite the overwhelming objections of parents, students and taxpayers.

Support IFI

Please consider supporting IFI’s ongoing work to educate, motivate and activate Illinois’ Christian community.  Your donation will help us stand strong in 2016!  To make a credit card donation over the phone, please call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.  You can also send a gift to:

Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 88848
Carol Stream, Illinois 60188

District 200

It’s not just District 211, the largest high school district in Illinois, that’s allowing gender-dysphoric students to use opposite-sex facilities. Rumors are circulating that gender-dysphoric students, enabled by their deceived parents, are asking school districts all over Illinois for permission to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms. School administrations are accommodating these requests (or demands) in diverse ways and doing so without community input, without parental notification, and without establishing policy. One of those districts is District 200, a K-12 district in DuPage County that serves Wheaton, Warrenville, and portions of Carol Stream, West Chicago, and Winfield, which has multiple gender-dysphoric students, at least one of whom—an actual girl—is allowed to use a curtained changing area in the boys’ locker room. This information has been withheld from the public.

Dr. Robert Rammer, assistant superintendent for administrative services, likens restroom and locker room accommodations for gender-dysphoric students to accommodations made for students who have reading problems. He posits the ludicrous claim that if school districts do not share accommodations made for students with reading problems with parents of District 200 students, then there is no reason to share restroom and locker rooms accommodations for gender-dysphoric students with district parents. His comparison works only if no other student is affected in any way by the accommodations made for gender-dysphoric students. But all students are affected by such a practice because it embodies and teaches a number of assumptions about the nature of the relationship between physical embodiment and “gender,” and about how society ought to respond to gender-dsyphoria.

Rammer also stated that the district has no policy regarding gender-dysphoric students. The district’s response depends on the particulars of each case. So, what happens if or when a gender-dysphoric student and his parents demand, as the ACLU demanded for the boy in District 211, that he be permitted unfettered access to the girls’ restrooms and locker room? What will District 200 do, and are there any accommodations of which they think other parents are entitled to be apprised?

Rammer, like many administrators, believes that the presence of stalls in restrooms provides sufficient privacy to justify allowing gender-dysphoric students in opposite-sex restrooms. When asked, “If stalls provide sufficient privacy to justify allowing gender-dysphoric students in opposite sex restrooms, why not make all restrooms co-ed,” Rammer admitted he has no answer. He did, however, acknowledge that the presence of urinals in boys’ restrooms creates a problem that is not present in girls’ restrooms. I guess there remains a line—now measured in micrometers—over which administrators are not quite ready to cross.

Rammer’s acknowledgement about urinal’s constitutes a tacit admission that the District 200 gender-dysphoric girl is not in reality a boy and that physical embodiment (i.e., maleness and femaleness) matters.

Another issue that will eventually arise is the problem of district-wide mandated lying. As all educators know, or should know, pronouns denote and correspond to objective biological sex—not to desires about one’s sex. Therefore, using opposite-sex pronouns to refer to or discuss gender-dysphoric students constitutes not merely a misuse of grammar but lying. When asked if the district requires staff and faculty to use opposite-sex pronouns when referring to gender-dysphoric students, Rammer responded with a definitive “Yes.”

When asked if the administration would make accommodations for faculty members who have either religious objections or non-religious moral objections to lying, he said, “Why would any conscientious teacher want to harm students?” Wow. No discussion of what constitutes harm, no attempt at an argument. Rammer simply assumes that using correct pronouns constitutes harm.

Others, however, believe that facilitating a delusion or unhealthy, disordered desire constitutes harm. And many believe that government employees have no ethical, legal, or constitutional right to require subordinates to lie.

Rammer then posited another absurd comparison, suggesting that a refusal to call a student named “Robert” by the nickname “Bob” is analogous to refusing to refer to a girl as “he.” He believes it’s a sound analogy because in both cases, a student would “feel bad.” This illustrates the feckless thinking that permeates public schools. Many administrators and teachers falsely believe that the subjective feelings of students determine what constitutes harm or benefit. This is, indeed, the fallacious foundation of the toxic environment on college campuses. “Progressive” thinking holds that the subjective feelings of hearers determine the ethical legitimacy of speech—well, the subjective feelings of those groups certified “oppressed” by “progressives.”

Rammer further shared that no teacher has complained about the requirement to participate in a fiction (i.e., to lie). And as everyone knows, since public schools are bastions of free speech, diversity, and “safe spaces” for all, conservative teachers always speak truth to administrators. This is also the near-universal rhetorical ploy of school administrators to silence critics: “Well, by golly, yours is the first complaint I’ve heard.”

Sooner or later a Christian teacher will muster the courage to live with integrity no matter the cost. They will do what theologian John Piper has said Christians should do:

[I]f in the office where we worked, I was compelled to identify every so-called transgendered person by the pronoun they preferred in all of my emails, or conversations…or I would get disciplined…, at that point I would say to my superiors, I cannot treat he’s as she’s and she’s as he’s….I would be lying to call a he a “she.” I am not lying to call a male “Sally.” That is a culturally arbitrary weird fluke. But I am lying if I say about a true Jim who wants to be called Sally, “she.” And it would be contrary to my understanding of sexuality and I would start looking for another job.

Questions for school administrators

Below are questions that every taxpayer should ask their local school administrators, including the administrators of elementary and middle schools, and then they should hightail it to the next school board meeting to request that policy be written mandating that restrooms and locker rooms correspond to objective biological sex. The specificity of the questions is necessary in order to ensure that accurate information is obtained, to make explicit the assumptions embedded in Leftist restroom/locker room practices, and to prevent administrators from obfuscating:

1.) What are your policies and practices with regard to restroom and locker room-usage by gender-dysphoric students?

2.) Do you allow gender-dysphoric students to use multiple-stall, opposite-sex restrooms?

3.) Do you allow gender-dysphoric students to use opposite-sex locker rooms?

4.) If gender-dysphoric students are permitted to use locker rooms, do they have to walk through any area where opposite-sex students may be changing or showering?

5.) If you allow, for example, an objectively male, gender-dysphoric student to use the girls’ restrooms and locker room, on what basis would you prohibit objectively male, non-gender-dysphoric students from using them? If school policy prohibits discrimination based on “gender identity,” wouldn’t the district be violating policy by prohibiting non-gender-dysphoric students from using opposite-sex restrooms?

6.) If gender-dysphoric students shouldn’t have to use restrooms and locker rooms with those whose “gender identity” they don’t share, why should other students be forced to use facilities with those whose sex they don’t share?

7.) If restroom stalls and privacy changing areas are sufficient to force students to use facilities with those whose sex they don’t share, then why aren’t restroom stalls and privacy changing areas sufficient to force a gender-dysphoric student to use facilities with those whose “gender identity” they don’t share?

8.) If restroom stalls and privacy changing areas are sufficient to allow a male student in the girls’ facilities, then why aren’t stalls and privacy changing stations sufficient to allow all male students in the girls’ facilities?

9.) If restroom stalls are sufficient to allow a male student in the restroom, would you also allow all male staff and faculty in the women’s staff and faculty restrooms that are equipped with multiple stalls?

10.) Do you agree that many, perhaps most girls and women prefer not to urinate and defecate in a stall next to an unrelated male doing likewise? Do you find something unnatural or pathological about those feelings? Do you think such feelings deserve to be respected and honored through policy and practice?

11.) Do you think it’s possible that policies and practices that allow gender-dysphoric students to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms may be communicating to other boys and girls that their discomfort with sharing facilities with opposite-sex students are wrong, ignorant, bigoted, or lacking in compassion?

12.) Why should girls care whether the boy in the restroom likes his body or not?

13.) If you allow gender-dysphoric students to use opposite-sex restrooms and/or locker rooms, do you notify all parents and guardians that their sons or daughters may be using facilities with opposite-sex students?

14.) How long have you allowed gender-dysphoric students to use opposite-sex restrooms and locker rooms?

15.) Do you require staff, faculty, and administrators to use opposite-sex pronouns when talking to or about gender-dysphoric students?

16.) Since pronouns denote and correspond to objective biological sex—not feelings about one’s sex—what if a staff member, teacher, or administrator views using opposite-sex pronouns for gender-dysphoric students as lying, and for moral and/or religious reasons object to lying or deception. Will you accommodate their objections to lying or deception?

17.) Many “trans-activists” argue that “gender identity” is not fixed. What will the school do when faced with a student whose gender identity is “bi-gender” or “genderfluid” and he/she demands to use whichever facilities correspond to his/her gender on any particular day or year?

18.) Liberal sex and gender researchers J. Michael Bailey at Northwestern and Dr. Eric Vilain at UCLA write that 80% of males—who constitute the majority of gender dysphorics—will accept their real sex by adulthood. They claim that “it looks like parental acquiescence leads to persistence.” In other words, if parents accommodate their children’s efforts to pretend to be the opposite sex, their children are more likely to persist in their rejection of their sex. Do you have concerns that by allowing gender-dysphoric students to use opposite-sex facilities, you may be increasing the likelihood that they will persist in their rejection of their sex?

Title IX specifically states that schools have the legal right to maintain separate restrooms, locker rooms, and showers for girls and boys. Further, case law confirms that right. Yet, school administrations are kowtowing to the Left. Evidence for that can be found both in school policies, school practices, and in the language administrators use. When parents and other community members talk to their local administrators, they should pay close attention to their rhetoric. If I were a betting woman, I would bet all my money that school administrators will use Leftist language, including “transgender” and opposite-sex pronouns for gender-dysphoric students.

Take ACTION:  Please email or call your local school administrators pronto. Let’s not be Johnny come-latelies to yet another culture battle. There is too much at stake for children—including gender-dysphoric children who are being harmed by schools that embrace the pernicious sexuality ideology of the Left.

Support IFI

Please consider supporting IFI’s ongoing work to educate, motivate and activate Illinois’ Christian community.  Your donation will help us stand strong in 2016!  To make a credit card donation over the phone, please call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.  You can also send a gift to:

Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 88848
Carol Stream, Illinois 60188

In our world of normalized perversion, erotic love is severed from sexual differentiation, marriage is severed from sexual differentiation, sex is severed from marriage, sex is severed from procreation, procreation is severed from marriage, and people are severed from their bodies. What unites all these subversive severances is untethered narcissistic desire. And tragically, normalized perversion is harming children and transforming education into anti-education.

A disturbing article about a San Francisco elementary school illustrates that reality and points to the future of all our schools unless those who know better, do better.

Last September SFGate told the story of Miraloma Elementary School which is doing away with sex-separated restrooms, starting first with the lower grades and working their way up through the higher grades. As we all know, the younger the child, the easier the indoctrination.

Two of the children featured in this troubling story are the six-year-old Braverman twins, Ari and Ella. Ari is a boy who, according to the article, “doesn’t fit boy stereotypes.” According to his parents, “He wears boys and girls clothes and doesn’t discriminate between pink and blue toys.”

His mother, Sarah Mattison-Earls, offered more detail about his binary-shattering history: “He wore dresses for a couple of years and now…‘still rocks the gold lamé stretch pants.’”

How his ability to rock gold lamé stretch pants interferes with his ability to use the boys’ restroom is still unclear.

Ari’s father, Gedalia Braverman, pontificated that “As parents, you eventually realize it’s not your job to change your child’s personality….It’s not my job to identify and pigeonhole my children’s genders, and certainly it’s not the school’s.”

What a sorry, diminished understanding of “personality” Mr. Braverman possesses.

If “personality” is merely the aggregate of a child’s untutored desires, and if it is not the job of parents to “change” their children’s “personality,” what precisely is a parent’s role?

Some might argue—if they could do so without risking the vitriol of the tolerant—that one part of a parent’s job is to help shape or direct their children’s desires, beliefs, values, and actions toward that which is good, true, and beautiful. More specific to the topic, it is the job of parents to help their children accept and view as good the sex in which their genes have pigeonholed them.

Further, it is properly the job of schools to recognize objective, scientifically verifiable sex. It is decidedly not the job of arms of the government to subordinate objective, scientifically verifiable sex to subjective, mutable feelings about sex.

Ari’s twin sister Ella expressed her happiness about the gender-neutral restrooms: “If someone doesn’t refer [sic]to either gender, they might not be sure which bathroom to use….I think it’s nice because then people don’t have to be separated just to go into bathrooms.”

“Just” to go into bathrooms? How does a six-year-old arrive at the notion that separate bathrooms for people of different sexes is trivial? And if it is trivial, then why won’t gender-dysphoric boys, girls, men, and women use the bathroom that corresponds to their sex?

A six-year-old who discusses “gender” and expresses a preference for gender-neutral restrooms has obviously been inculcated with a set of assumptions about sex and “gender identity.” And it seems unlikely that Ella has been taught that physical embodiment (i.e., maleness and femaleness per se) is both immutable and profoundly meaningful.

While Ella and Ari’s parents have the right to inculcate them with any nonsense they want, public school administrators do not have the right to inculcate other people’s children with nonsense using taxpayer monies.

Ari and Ella Braverman have a sad backstory that perhaps explains their precocious and perverse notions about maleness and femaleness.

Their father, Gedalia Braverman, is a 56-year-old single, HIV-positive, homosexual father who acquired the twins through a sperm donation from a friend who had leftover sperm from donating to a lesbian couple, and an egg donation from the niece of his best college buddy. This young woman was “in her 20s, the time in a woman’s life when the largest number of best quality eggs can be harvested. She also met Braverman’s criteria for health and intelligence.” Finally, Braverman had to rent a womb—a womb that the gestational surrogate ended up losing as a result of a difficult delivery of the twins Braverman wanted:

Braverman had dreamed not only of parenting, but of having multiple children. Having one pregnancy was costing him approximately $150,000. Not to mention the entire process takes about a year. For each additional pregnancy he would have to pay the amount and invest the time all over again.

He was starting the process at 48, and would be 49 when a child was born, if all went well. “I didn’t want to have another child at 51, 52. I also didn’t know whether I was going to get pregnant the first time,” he said. In some cases, if things don’t all go smoothly, it can take years to successfully conceive and carry a term. “So given that, I really wanted to have as many kids as possible, as quickly as possible, within reason.”

In their effort to mimic true marital relations whose natural end is children, those in naturally sterile unions (or as in Braverman’s case, in no union) resort to purchasing eggs and/or sperm, and when necessary renting wombs, thus turning children into commodities. Many of them believe their desire and extraordinary efforts to procure what they have no moral right to make them better parents than “breeders.”

What concerns those in intrinsically sterile sexual relationships (or in no relationship) less are the needs, rights, and desires of the children they acquire who will be hurt in numerous ways:

• They will be intentionally deprived of their birthright. They will be intentionally deprived of their right to know, be known by, and be raised by both their biological mother and father. It should go without saying that the desire to know and be connected to one’s biological lineage is powerful and universal. Libraries, genealogical organizations, and even a popular television show testify to this enduring human desire.

• They will be intentionally deprived of their right to know, be known by, and be raised by both a mother and father. Mothers and fathers are as different by nature as women are from men—a truth which even homosexuals acknowledge when they claim to be attracted only to persons of their same sex. Children deserve to experience those differences—some of which play a role in their very creation.

• These children will suffer when mothers and fathers in normal relationships prohibit their children from spending time in homes in which perversion is embraced and affirmed. Homosexual activists will try to blame conservatives for the sadness children raised by homosexuals will feel when their friends cannot play at their homes. But the ultimate cause for their sadness will rest with the selfish decisions of homosexual adults who insist not only on embracing perversion as identity but also on acquiring children. No responsible parent ought to allow their young children to spend time in a home in which homoeroticism is affirmed. Prohibiting young children from being exposed to such wickedness is not hateful even though, tragically, other young children will feel sad. Homosexuals intuitively know that young children and even teens have a limited capacity for moral reasoning. Homosexuals know that if children perceive someone as kind, they are predisposed to think of everything they do as good. Through their relationships with other people’s children (including in public schools), homosexuals seek to transform their moral views of homoerotic relationships.

• These children will suffer because they will not be taught truth about the essential connection between physical embodiment and self-conception and between both of those and human flourishing. They won’t be taught properly about modesty, privacy, and compassion. And they won’t be taught the truth about marriage and sexuality.

Homosexuals take umbrage at any suggestion that children ought not be placed with or purchased by homosexuals. They view good parenting as constituted solely by the capacity to love and provide for the needs of children. But such a claim raises the question: What are the needs of children?

Consider an end of year tax-deductible gift

If you think our work is worthy, would you please consider an end of the year tax deductible gift to support the work of the Illinois Family Institute?

Your support is directly helping us establish a strong and consistent presence in the public square — representing your voice, and your values — proudly pro-life, pro-marriage and pro-family.

Perhaps I owe an apology to District 211.

While District 211 is guilty of egregiously poor judgment in allowing gender-dysphoric students to use opposite-sex restrooms and in agreeing to allow a gender-dysphoric boy into the girls’ locker room to use private changing areas, perhaps the district was neither incompetent nor dishonest with regard to the statements they made about the agreement with the Office for Civil Rights (OCR). Perhaps it is the ACLU and the OCR that are incompetent, dishonest, or both. Untangling who’s inept or lying may require Solomonic discernment. All that’s certain at this point is that there’s a tempest raging between District 211 and the devilish OCR.

Superintendent Daniel Cates has issued an angry statement in which he accuses the OCR of negotiating in bad faith and of inaccurately portraying the requirements of the agreement. Further, he demanded a full public retraction, which the OCR has thus far refused to issue. Therefore, Cates has called for an emergency board meeting on Monday night to decide whether the district will pull out of the proposed agreement.

The district is outraged that the OCR publicly claimed that the district is in error in claiming that the boy must use the privacy changing areas, and that the OCR has said this agreement applies to all gender-dysphoric students. The ACLU posted this statement:

We also remain disturbed by the inaccurate, misleading and fundamentally troubling language used by the District, even as they adopt this agreement. For example, the District said last night that transgender students who are provided access to locker rooms consistent with their gender identity “will utilize a private changing station when changing clothes or showering” and will not be allowed unrestricted access to the locker room. This is not what the agreement with OCR provides. The agreement specifically says that “based on Student A’s representation that she will change in private changing stations in the girls’ locker rooms, the District agrees to provide Student A access to locker room facilities designated for female students at school.” Nowhere does the agreement require Student A to use a private area to dress and such a requirement would be blatantly discriminatory. [emphasis added]

Superintendent Cates issued this blistering response on the district website:

On the heels of what was an appropriate and balanced approach to resolving an important issue of access to our locker rooms by one transgender student, we are outraged by the mischaracterizations in the press by Catherine Lhamon of the Office for Civil Rights (OCR), and her blatant disregard for the facts of the negotiated agreement.

The OCR appears to be stating to the media what they wish was in the agreement, rather than what was actually agreed upon by both OCR and the District 211 Board of Education – and this, after countless hours of listening, reviewing and careful consideration.

It is wrong, it is an act of bad faith, and our school district will not let it stand.

To be clear, what was agreed upon between District 211 and the OCR struck a critical balance for safeguarding the privacy of all students, recognizing the dignity of all students, and allowing all students to participate fully in our education programs.

The resolution agreement’s provisions on locker room access, approved by our School Board just 36 hours ago, apply ONLY to the student who lodged the complaint. It does not apply district-wide, nor set precedent for other school districts in the country. It gives this student access to the gender-identified locker room with this student’s stated assurance that privacy curtains will be used. And, if this student doesn’t comply, access will no longer be allowed. The agreement also removes the threat of the loss of federal funds and states that no violation of Title IX or discrimination by the District has occurred.

We communicated to the OCR that we expected a full retraction of their inaccurate portrayal of the agreement in the media. They refused. Failing that, we will convene an emergency board meeting to discuss taking action, including retraction of the agreement because the OCR acted in bad faith. Citizens have a right to expect more from a federal agency than smoke and mirrors.

The date, time, and location for the emergency Board of Education meeting will be posted on the District 211 website once it is established.

It is farcical to claim that allowing a boy in the girls’ locker room even to change in “private changing areas” is “appropriate” or “balanced,” but we have to give credit where credit is due: Steadfastly refusing to allow an objectively male student unfettered access to the girls’ locker room is a very good decision on the part of District 211.

All concerned community members should make it a priority to attend the Monday school board meeting and express their view that no students should be permitted access to opposite-sex restrooms or locker rooms. Restrooms and locker rooms should correspond to objective, scientifically-verifiable sex—not subjective feelings about sex.

Support IFI

Please consider supporting IFI’s ongoing work to educate, motivate and activate Illinois’ Christian community.  Your donation will help us stand strong in 2016!  To make a credit card donation over the phone, please call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.  You can also send a gift to:

Illinois Family Institute
P.O. Box 88848
Carol Stream, Illinois 60188

(Gifts to IFI are tax-deductible.)