As of this writing, Governor Bruce Rauner has not yet taken action on HB 217, the bill that seeks to prohibit minors from receiving any counseling that involves efforts to change homoerotic desire, homoerotic activity, gender-confused feelings, and behaviors impelled by gender confusion.  If he does not take action, the bill will become law.

This bill makes no distinction between coercive, abusive therapies–which IFI opposes–and talk therapies. This bill would prohibit minors who may have developed same-sex attraction as a result of molestation from seeking counseling to help them align their feelings with their self-identity. While “progressives” fight for the right of gender-confused minors to access medical help in rejecting their physical embodiment, through this bill, “progressives” are fighting to rob other minors of the right to access medical help in rejecting their same-sex attraction or gender confusion.

Gov. Rauner has 60 days to act from the time a bill is sent to his desk. HB 217 was sent to the governor on June 26^th.

This anti-autonomy bill serves only the interests and profoundly selfish desires of adults committed to forcing the acceptance of their perverse sexuality ideology on the entire culture. It is not an effort to protect children.

Take ACTION:  Please call the governor’s constituent comment lines and urge him to veto HB 217. Calls are needed into both offices:

Springfield:  (217) 782-0244 and
Chicago: (312) 814-2121.

Please call today!

Please support IFI as we fight for liberty & work to advance the truth
about the sanctity of life & importance of marriage in our culture!

The results of a new national poll won’t likely appear in your local newspaper or mainstream media outlets.   Even though the Associated Press conducted the poll, their results don’t fit the media’s narrative and celebration of the U.S. Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage.

The new poll finds that support for same-sex marriage has dropped nine points since April to 34 percent, while opposition is up four points to 34 percent.  America is split right down the middle on this matter. More Americans oppose the Supreme Court’s ruling than support it (41 percent – 39 percent).

Just as important are the results finding that Americans do not think “gay rights” should overrule religious liberty.  Only 39 percent believe that businesses should be forced to provide wedding services despite religious objections.  By a wide 20-point margin, 59 percent of Americans believe that wedding related businesses should be allowed to say “no” to requests from homosexual couples.

Here’s one that Hoosier politicians should take note of as well. When such conflicts arise, 56 percent of Americans believe that the government should protect religious liberty rights over the desires of homosexuals.  So much for the RFRA “fix” rushed through the Indiana legislature and signed by the Governor implying just the opposite!

Written by Dr. Frank Newport

The two major decisions recently handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court have very direct relationships to public opinion. One of the decisions fits well with majority public opinion. The other, in a broad sense, does not. The first corresponds to public opinion that has shifted significantly over the past several years, while the second relates to public opinion that has been more fixed. One of these is an issue that has very much been tethered to or anchored by Americans’ underlying religious beliefs; the other is a purely secular issue unrelated to the usual concerns based on religion. But it is the religiously tethered attitude that has seen the biggest change and that ends up more in line with the U.S. Supreme Court decision, while the secular attitude has remained unchanged and is more out of sync with the court’s ruling.

The first of these two major SCOTUS decisions, of course, is the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling that in essence legalized same-sex marriage across the country. The second — albeit basically a ruling on a technicality — is the King v. Burwell decision that validated the continuation of the Affordable Care Act.

Obergefell falls in line with majority public opinion in the U.S. Americans’ attitudes toward legalizing same-sex marriage have shifted dramatically in recent years, as has been well-documented, with six in 10 in our latest Gallup reading (before the decision) in favor.

This dramatic change in attitudes has occurred despite the fact that the issue of same-sex marriage is one of a cluster of family and reproduction issues that traditionally are strongly connected to religious doctrine, and highly correlated with an individual’s religiosity. Given that religious beliefs are tethered to fundamental beliefs in a Supreme Being and in overall worldviews, one would thus hypothesize that religiously connected attitudes have a very fundamental anchor that would be resistant to change.

But that hasn’t been the case. In fact, attitudes concerning a list of moral behaviors and values traditionally linked to religious doctrines — including same-sex marriage — have shifted quite substantially in recent years, all toward acceptance of what may previously have been more negatively sanctioned behaviors. There are still marked religious differences in tolerance for these types of behaviors, but the shifts have occurred among segments that are both highly religious and not so religious. In short, attitudes connected to the type of family and reproduction issues most highly related to most religions’ normative structures have been the most labile.

We’ve seen relatively little change in terms of attitudes toward the Affordable Care Act, albeit over its fairly short existence and the brief period in which we have measured it. Less than half of Americans said that they approved of the Affordable Care Act in our latest measure, before the SCOTUS decision (we are updating this measure now). And there has been no rapid or significant change in those attitudes in recent years as the provisions of the healthcare law have become operational.

These attitudes about Obamacare are thus the ones that appear to be connected to an underlying anchor or foundation, certainly more so than is the case with same-sex marriage. (While attitudes about the Affordable Care Act are correlated with religiosity, I think that’s more of an artifact of the relationship between religion and politics than it is a representation of religiously driven attitudes.)

If it’s not religion, what is that anchor? One answer to that question is Americans’ fundamental attitudes toward government. It’s quite likely that the healthcare law has become symbolic of the role of government in people’s lives, and that in turn appears to be a very strong and apparently stable base issue in Americans’ minds.

Check out this trend on a core Gallup question asking Americans about their views of the role of government in Americans’ lives:

This trend graph does not show the same type of progressive change seen in moral attitudes since the mid-1990s. The one strong shift in the period immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks quickly dissipated, as attitudes fell back into the accustomed pattern shortly thereafter. If Obamacare is bound up with these fundamental underlying attitudes that are relatively stable and fixed, even though secular in nature, that could help explain why views toward Obamacare are not moving a lot. Government and its role in society, in other words, may be the type of bedrock or fundamental underlying attitude we traditionally associate with religion, while moral issues appear much more likely to be built on “shifting sand.”

There has been a good deal of discussion as to how the presidential candidates — particularly Republican candidates — will handle a changing environment in which their positions on moral issues and values are less mainstream than they were even just a few years ago. Many of the candidates will no doubt back off from a heavy focus on these issues, taking account of public opinion, unless they assume that the quickness with which attitudes changed in one direction means they could change back in the other just as fast — an unlikely possibility.

But a campaign focus on the Affordable Care Act is another matter. Unlike same-sex marriage, the healthcare law does not enjoy majority public opinion (unless that changes in new, post-decision measures). And the lack of a major shift in attitudes toward Obamacare or toward the underlying issue of the role of government in Americans’ lives suggests that these attitudes are strongly held.

Some commentators have assumed that expansion of the role of government is the simple and logical next step in the evolution of American society. Others still view government expansion as a strong evil. But if conservatives have the equivalent of a religious underpinning to their opposition to big government — and if liberals have just as strong an underpinning to their support for big government — then the debate has the potential to become a powerfully important fulcrum on which the election could turn.

If candidates on the left are going to focus on their conviction that the role of government needs to be expanded — say, in terms of intervening in the economic system to reduce inequality or create jobs by increased focus on infrastructure — they are going to have to try to understand why this provokes such a strong reaction from those who are more in the center or on the right. Similarly, if Republican candidates are going to focus on a call for reducing the role of government in Americans’ lives, they are going to have to try to understand why this is so strongly unacceptable to those more in the center or on the left.

I’ve pointed out before how these attitudes about government are two-pronged, involving both philosophic and practical concerns. Candidates are going to have to deal with both. The role of government — along with the usual suspects of the economy and international relations — could be the major playing field on which the coming election is played out. Moral issues and values may be less so.

Frank Newport, Ph.D., is Gallup’s Editor-in-Chief. He is the author of Polling Matters: Why Leaders Must Listen to the Wisdom of the People and God Is Alive and Well.

This article was originally posted at the Gallup.com website.

By Tony Perkins

When the President said he wanted to make over the military, lifting the ban on transgenders isn’t what most people had in mind.

With less than 18 months left in his mission of “fundamentally transforming America” President Obama is accelerating the effort to repeal the ban stopping men and women suffering from gender confusion from serving in the military.

In an announcement Monday, Secretary Ash Carter said, “The Defense Department’s regulations regarding transgender service members are outdated and are causing uncertainty that distracts commanders from our core missions.”

No, what distracts commanders from their core missions are ridiculous social experiments like this one.

As part of the statement, Carter launched a six-month study on the impact of repealing the ban — which, if it’s anything like “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’s,” will have no bearing whatsoever on the final decision-making. And, after five years of that experiment, support for the repeal isn’t exactly growing. Just a third (32%) of voters now think open homosexuality is a good thing for the military — an all-time low, Rasmussen found.

While LGBT activists cheer, others can only shake their heads in astonishment.

“Considering the abysmal condition of our military and a decline in readiness, why is this a top priority for the Obama administration?” our own Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin asked.

If the President were as focused on the world’s threats like he was focused on LGBT activism, America would be the safest, most powerful country in the world. Instead, the White House is so busy using the troops as carriers for his social engineering that our military can’t even confront the real enemy. It all confirms what former Defense Secretary Robert Gates wrote in his book — that the only time he sensed passion from the President about any issue involving the military was overturning “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

Meanwhile, U.S. veterans (if they aren’t on waiting lists for health care) watch helplessly as the blood they poured out to help stabilize the Middle East is lost while this administration pushes an agenda to persuade Americans that the country’s current policy is “discriminatory.” But the reality is, the military discriminates constantly in its attempts to find the best physical and mental recruits it can.

Why is this any different?

Otherwise qualified men and women are turned away from the military every day for bad eyes, flat feet, asthma, and a host of other truly immutable characteristics. Yet in the phony name of fairness, our leaders would willingly let people into the military whose mental state is not only unstable — but a detriment to their fellow service members? It’s illogical. Allergies can keep you out of the military, but gender dysphoria can’t?

The tension with China and Iran is escalating, and America’s strength is declining. Instead of Humvees, we’re buying hormones. A military whose budget was cut to bare bones will suddenly be forking over millions of dollars for surgeries, therapies, pills, and retrofitting of facilities. And for what? Certainly not to make the military more capable of performing its mission. It is time for our nation’s military leaders to put their stars on the line and tell the President “no.”

The thousands of men and women who serve in our military follow the orders flowing from the Pentagon, trusting that their leaders are doing what is necessary to accomplish the military’s mission — not the deviant agenda of this President.

This article was originally posted at barbwire.com

Ever notice how the secular left conveniently omits the fact that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a devout Christian minister?

While, historically, there have certainly been apostate “Christians” who, in the name of Christ, have abused and taken out of context certain biblical passages to support slavery, segregation, racism and other evils – it has been, without fail, true Christians, that is, Bible-believing Christians of every race, color and creed, who have led the charge in defense of all legitimate human (and civil) rights.

The Rev. King was one such Christian, and though he and other Christian leaders have, no doubt, welcomed aid and support from honorable and like-minded secularists over the centuries, it was and remains Christians – Bible-believing brothers and sisters like MLK, William Wilberforce, Harriet Tubman, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, et. al. – who have, indisputably, embodied the most effective and well-known of all humanitarian and civil rights activists.

Even so, in recent decades, sadly, and in what amounts to a sort of soft racism, a mostly white, hard-left movement of secular extremists has managed to hijack MLK’s Christian legacy and invoke his character-based “dream” to advance their own anti-Christian agenda and behavior-based nightmare. I am referring, of course, to homosexual activism (i.e., the push for so-called “gay marriage” and “gay rights”), which, by its very nature, and unlike MLK’s “dream,” is a wholly counter-biblical endeavor.

On all issues, particularly issues relating to morality and human rights, God’s word is the plumb line by which all truth is measured. “The moral law or the law of God,” as MLK called it, was, in fact, his exclusive guidepost and primary motivation. From a biblical standpoint, racism is objectively immoral, and Rev. King understood this – so he spent his entire life, gave his life in fact, working to secure civil and human rights for racial minorities.

Similarly, from a biblical standpoint, homosexual behavior, or “the sin of Sodom” as it’s oft referred, is likewise objectively immoral (along with its oxymoronic offshoot: counterfeit “same-sex marriage”). Jesus defined marriage for us. His definition is reflected in the spiritual, biological and in-every-other-way-self-evident order of His divinely defined design. “‘Haven’t you read,’ he replied, ‘that at the beginning the Creator “made them male and female,” and said, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh”? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate’” (Matthew 19:4-6).

Moreover, the very thing that defines “gay marriage,” the biologically and spiritually disordered act of same-sex sodomy, is, likewise, a counterfeit. It mocks God’s design for natural sexual intercourse.

Indeed, the Bible, throughout both the Old and New Testaments, unambiguously condemns as “vile affections,” as sin rising to the level of “an abomination,” all same-sex sexual conduct, be it, “loving, monogamous and committed,” or otherwise.

Homosexuality is mock sexuality.

And “gay marriage” is mock marriage.

So-called “gay rights” represent nothing more than moral wrongs. Homosexual sin has nothing whatsoever to do with civil rights and, based upon what we know of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., he would have wholeheartedly agreed. While he said little in public on the issue, what he did say made his viewpoint abundantly clear.

But don’t take my word for it. Unlike the “LGBT” lobby, I’ll let Dr. King speak for himself. In 1958, while writing an advice column for Ebony Magazine, Rev. King responded to a young “gay” man looking for guidance. To avoid being accused of “cherry-picking,” here’s the exchange in its entirety:

Question: My problem is different from the ones most people have. I am a boy, but I feel about boys the way I ought to feel about girls. I don’t want my parents to know about me. What can I do? Is there any place where I can go for help?

Answer: Your problem is not at all an uncommon one. However, it does require careful attention. The type of feeling that you have toward boys is probably not an innate tendency, but something that has been culturally acquired. Your reasons for adopting this habit have now been consciously suppressed or unconsciously repressed. Therefore, it is necessary to deal with this problem by getting back to some of the experiences and circumstances that led to the habit. In order to do this I would suggest that you see a good psychiatrist who can assist you in bringing to the forefront of conscience all of those experiences and circumstances that led to the habit. You are already on the right road toward a solution, since you honestly recognize the problem and have a desire to solve it.

No amount of leftist spin can muddy Dr. King’s lucid position on the homosexual lifestyle. He recognized it as a “culturally acquired” “problem” in need of a “solution” – a “habit” stemming from a series of negative “experiences and circumstances.”

Although homosexual activists desperately cling to the fact that, after his death, Dr. King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, did voice some level of support for the homosexualist political agenda, the undeniable reality remains that, based upon his own words, Dr. King supported neither homosexual conduct nor “LGBT” political activism.

Neither would he have supported same-sex “marriage.”

To be sure, in 2005 Rev. King’s daughter, Bernice King, led a march to her father’s graveside in support of a constitutional amendment to defend natural marriage. Sharing his position on the issue, she later said that her famous father “did not take a bullet for same-sex marriage.”

Indeed, it strains credulity to suggest that MLK, a man of the Bible, would have thrown his weight behind a political movement hell-bent on justifying unbiblical sexual appetites and behaviors that he properly identified as “a problem” demanding “a solution” – a “type of feeling” that requires “careful attention,” up to and including “see[ing] a good psychiatrist.”

No, MLK was a Christian minister who both embraced and articulated the biblical “love the sinner, hate the sin” model on homosexuality. Every Christian should follow his lead. After all, it is the lead set by Christ Himself.

And so, how would MLK have responded to the Supreme Court’s recent opinion presuming to invent a “constitutional right” to sodomy-based “marriage”?

It’s clear how he would have responded.

In his “letter from the Birmingham jail,” Rev. King famously declared, “One has not only a legal, but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”

“A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God,” he explained. “An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.”

As it was with the national sin of systemic racism, there can be few things more “out of harmony with the moral law” than the inherently immoral notion of sodomy-based “marriage.”

And so the good reverend would have opposed it.

Quite likely, he would have led the charge against it.

Written by Charlie Butts

America’s largest retailer was among the corporate sponsors of recent homosexual “pride” events in New York City, including all-night parties and a vulgar parade down Fifth Avenue.

Activities the corporations sponsored last month included a “burlesque masquerade fantasy” on June 26 and a “VIP Rooftop Party” on June 27, the “NYC Pride” website reveals. A suggestive, school-themed party at the Hammerstein Ballroom, with male “bad teachers” and “hot cheerleaders” flown in from overseas, was also held on June 27.

Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality attended the June 28 “pride” parade. He tells OneNewsNow a Wal-Mart float was included in the event that featured public nudity and vulgarity – with children present.

“It’s really a mirror into the households of homosexual-led households,” LaBarbera says.

According to the pro-family activist, Wal-Mart was a major sponsor of the parade. OneNewsNow confirmed on the “NYC Pride” website (Caution: website has objectionable material) that the retailer is among the corporate “Platinum” sponsors of “Pride events” held by NYC Pride. Other sponsors at that level include Delta Airlines, AT&T, and Diet Coke. It’s unclear from the website how much those sponsors donated for the “Platinum” designation.

Other major brands listed as NYC Pride sponsors (other than Platinum) include such recognizable names as Hilton Hotels, Bud Light, Netflix, Wells Fargo, PBS, MasterCard, and Amtrak.

LaBarbera sees inconsistency in Wal-Mart’s handling of issues considered controversial. He points out that despite sponsoring activities in support of the homosexual lifestyle, the retailer recently decided that items displaying the Confederate battle flag were too controversial to appear on its shelves.

“But apparently a homosexual parade, which is celebrating beyond homosexuality – they celebrated sadomasochism, lots of perverted behavior, even open nudity in this parade – apparently none of this was too controversial for Wal-Mart to be involved in sponsoring this parade,” he adds.

LaBarbera encourages people to contact Wal-Mart to complain and to shop elsewhere.

OneNewsNow contacted Wal-Mart for comment but received no response.

This article was originally posted on the One News Now website.

Leonard Pitts is out in orbit —I mean, over the moon—over the CEO of the Girl Scouts of Western Washington’s refusal of a $100,000 donation to the Girl Scouts that stipulated the money could not be used to support “transgender girls.” Just to be clear in our increasingly cloudy culture, “transgender girls” are actual boys.

Pitts feels “indebted to [CEO Megan Ferland] for her…inspiring moral courage.” This act of “moral courage” will likely be celebrated by lesbian Krista Kokjohn-Poehler who is the “Chief Girl Experience Officer” (yes, that’s really her title) of the Girl Scouts of America.

Even the concept of courage has been perverted to serve perversion and confusion.

A courageous act entails at least the possibility of danger or suffering. It takes no courage to be carried along downstream in our deviance-swirling torrential current. Hollywood and the liberal mainstream press worship at the feet of every Tom, Dick, or Caitlyn who flounces about announcing their strange sexual proclivities. Even formerly conservative press outlets are filled with pundits who are ensconced firmly in the malodorous maws of “progressive” sexuality dogma. Ferland’s decision to reject the donation was cost-free. She may have lost the donation, but I can already hear the clink, clink of coins flooding the Western Washington GSA’s coffers right now from LGBTQQIAAP activists.

Imagine, however, if Ferland had accepted the donation with the stipulation that the Western Washington Girl Scouts remain single sex. And now imagine that some LGBT activists whose jackboots the press licks got wind of the story. That, my friends, would be a very dangerous situation for Ferland.

Pitts waxes comical, saying that the Girl Scouts “have made [inclusivity] part of their DNA.” So, in Pitts’ world, inclusivity is part of their DNA, but actual DNA is not part of their DNA. Girls who think being a girl is an objective, immutable human condition that deserves respect need not apply to the Girl Scouts.

But  I’m confused. I thought genetic (and therefore ontological) immutability was the central justification for the normalization of homosexuality?

According to “progressives,” homosexuality—for which there is zero evidence of genetic causation—is immutable, but sex—which is proven to be genetically determined—is mutable and can be changed via a new wardrobe, a few (or many) surgical snips, oh, and compulsory participation of the entire culture in an elaborate performance piece of subversive anti-art—a toxic retelling of the “Emperor’s New Clothes.” (Now there’s a story that should be taught in more schools: It warns of the danger of both pride and collective denial of reality.)

The Left has created a set of assumptions to justify the obliteration of the objective categories of male and female or to compel society to subordinate them to desire. “Progressives” have socially constructed a new categorical term, “gender identity,” to impute ontological and moral weight to what is, in reality, the aggregate of disordered thoughts and desires. In order to obliterate the meaning and importance of the objective categories of male and female, the Left had to construct an opposing set of ideas and then impose it on society through a host of fallacious arguments, social intimidation, and political chicanery.

Pitts trots out the poor, bedraggled race comparison, which has become the go-to analogy for “progressive” sexuality causes. Want to normalize homosexuality (i.e., homoerotic feelings and activity)? Just compare it to biologically determined race. Want to normalize the desire to deny biologically determined sex? Just compare it to biologically determined race—which can never be denied because it’s, well, biologically determined, you know, in the DNA.

The often-confused Left can’t seem to distinguish between objectively constituted conditions and conditions constituted by subjective feelings and volitional acts. The often-confused Left can’t seem to distinguish between conditions that have no moral implications because they’re intrinsically unrelated to volitional acts—like race, sex, and nation of origin—and conditions that are open to moral assessment because they’re constituted by subjective feelings and volitional acts—like polyamory, consensual adult incestuous love, homosexuality, and gender confusion.

What to do, what to do with the manifold incoherencies that emerge from the Left’s assumptions concocted to render desire preeminent over all other social and moral considerations? Be courageous.

What takes real courage (i.e., a willingness to suffer in the service of truth) is to say that the categories of male and female are objective, immutable, and good and that the term “gender identity” is a social construct invented to promote confusion as truth and elevate desire over reality.

What gender-confused children and adults need and deserve is genuine love, which is inseparable from truth. They need affection, community, and consistent affirmation of the good of their sex. It serves neither love nor truth to facilitate confusion.

Pitts cunningly appeals to equality by suggesting that opposition to gender-confused people using opposite-sex restrooms is tantamount to “segregating them…behind barbed wire of social rejection.” A commitment to equality demands that society treat like things alike. It does not demand that society treat different things as if they were the same. Bruce Jenner did not transform into a woman—as Pitts falsely claimed he did—and boys can never be girls. Such a truth is written even more firmly into the DNA of humans than inclusivity is written into the DNA of the former Girl Scouts of America.

Please support IFI as we fight for liberty & work to advance the truth
about the sanctity of life & importance of marriage in our culture!

If I had a nickel for every time a liberal said it’s a slippery slope fallacy to claim that the legalization of homoerotic marriage would necessarily result in the legal recognition of plural unions, I would be a very rich woman.

The juxtaposition of two recent Chicago Tribune editorials provides an almost-comical illustration of both “progressive” deceit and ignorance about marriage.

Eric Zorn inveighed against conservative claims about the inevitability of legalized polygamy, describing such claims as “desperate” and “sophomoric,” and then a few days later, Steve Chapman made the sophomoric claim that legalized polygamy is “not so scary.”

I guess this is how the Tribune demonstrates diversity. They’ve got far Left columnists and far, far, Left columnists.

Chapman writes that society should “reconsider” bans on plural marriage, arguing that “the case for legalizing polygamy builds on the case for legalizing same-sex marriage.”

He asks, “ If a man is living, procreating and raising children with two or three women, what do we gain by saying he can’t easily formalize his obligations to them?”

In an earlier attempt at deep-thinking about the moral imperative of redefining marriage to serve the desires of homosexuals, Chapman offered a journey through the history of marriage. He was attempting to show that marriage has never had a stable form, but ironically every form of marriage he presented had one constant feature: sexual complementarity.

Much of Eric Zorn’s “argument” consists of a thicket of epithets and generalizations. To him anyone who believes marriage has an ontology central to which is sexual differentiation necessarily regards same-sex couples with “contempt” and “disgust.”

Conservatives in Zorn’s evidently insulated world are “Bible-thumpers and hankie-twisters” who seek to “engage in poisonous debates.” That unseemly crowd includes, I guess, Princeton University law professor Robert George.  Surely, Zorn knows that no defenders of true marriage twist hankies with the kind of vigor that homosexual activists do.

Zorn’s real knee-slapper is his claim that “legalizing plural marriage” would be a “far bigger leap” than the legal recognition of homoerotic unions as “marriages.” He argues that there is a “vast difference between same-sex marriage and plural marriage when it comes to social and legal implications and…civic reverberations.”

That he believes this is astounding.

Jettisoning sexual differentiation from the legal definition of marriage is a leap of far greater enormity than eliminating the criterion regarding numbers of partners. It is, in fact, the most radical redefinition of marriage in history. Its civic reverberations have been already and will continue to be profound, shaking the very foundations of America. At no time in our history have First Amendment religious, speech, and assembly protections been threatened as they are now.

Zorn goes on to spew more foolishness:

[T]his is not one of those rare issues like abortion that will never resolve and fade away no matter what the Supreme Court says. It’s more like the issue of integration of public schools, an idea that was deeply polarizing at the time of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling but opposed today only by the most virulent racists.

There are, indeed, parallels to be found between Brown v. Board of Education and Obergefell. Both Court majorities were wrong. The majority in Brown erred in affirming a false and destructive understanding of race. The majority in Obergefell erred in affirming a false and destructive understanding of marriage.

Zorn predicts that the marriage issue will “fade away.” Other “progressives” predict that the marriage issue will not fade away for the same reason that controversy over abortion has not faded away. Those liberals believe that because the democratic process was usurped and because the legal reasoning was deeply flawed, division over Obergefell will remain.

Both Zorn’s prediction and the other “progressive” prediction are wrong.

The marriage controversy will remain, and it will remain only in part because of the usurpation of the democratic process and lousy legal reasoning in Obergefell. It will also remain because eradicating First Amendment protections tends to provoke conflict.

But more fundamentally, cultural turmoil will remain because the philosophical assumptions that justify the legal recognition of non-marital unions as marriage are wrong. Just as preborn babies have a nature that sophistry can never fully conceal, so too does marriage. As with legalized feticide, opposition to same-sex faux-marriage will continue because the assumptions upon which it depends are false.

Homosexuality is not analogous to race. Zorn continually compares homoeroticism to race but doesn’t explain what constitutes either. Until recently, most people understood that race was a biologically heritable condition that carried no inherent implications regarding feelings or volitional acts. In contrast, homosexuality is constituted centrally–if not solely–by subjective feelings and volitional acts. Moreover, as conservatives learned over the past year, even homosexual scholars assert that “sexual orientation”–unlike race–is fluid.

The post-Dolezal understanding of race as a social construct opens up a can of intellectual worms for “progressives” because if homosexuality is analogous to race and, therefore, merely a social construct, one cannot appeal to biological immutability as a strategic way to condemn moral disapproval of homoeroticism. Clearly not all social constructs—which are self-evidently constructions of flawed humans—can be inherently good.

Oh those darn tangled webs.

So, why oh why do progressives get away with perpetually exploiting race as an analogue for homoeroticism? Why aren’t the Zorns of the world compelled to explain precisely the points of correspondence between race per se and homoeroticism per se? Do they even care if there are no ontological points of correspondence so long as they are winning in the public square?

I think we all know the answer to that. They don’t care any more about intellectual soundness than they do about the natural right of children to be raised by a mother and father.

The cool kids are wrong again.

If only liberals would listen to Pope Francis on marriage.

Plural marriage is a’comin’, folks. No doubt about it. Time to teach your children well.

Please support IFI as we fight for liberty & work to advance the truth
about the sanctity of life & importance of marriage in our culture!

Written by Rabbi Steven Pruzansky

Last week was not a particularly good one for jurisprudence, integrity, marriage, morality, common sense and even the United States’ viability as a nation. Two court cases undermined traditional notions of morality and marriage, respectively, and enshrined in law – or at least purported to – draconian limitations on the pursuit of self-help as well as a dramatic redefinition of marriage that will hasten the decline of the American family if not the American polity itself.

First, a New Jersey jury found JONAH liable for consumer fraud. JONAH (Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing) is a referral agency that helps people struggling with unwanted same sex attraction. It was sued by a number of patients – all instigated by the Southern Poverty Law Center, ranging far afield from its stated mission – who were unsuccessfully treated and could not overcome their same sex tendencies. The victims claimed that they were guaranteed recovery if they did the hard work necessary and protested some of the unconventional methods used by some of the therapists. They sued for recovery of the fees they paid – as well as substantial damages that now threatens the very existence of the organization. And they won.

The fix was in even before the trial started. There is no conceivable way JONAH could have prevailed.  The trial judge ruled that the court would not allow any evidence that homosexuality can result from a mental disorder or youthful trauma – that such science had been settled and was no longer under discussion. Of course, the case effectively ended there because if homosexuality is not the result of any disorder, then why would anyone treat it? Why would anyone try to cure what does not need to be cured or attempt to abandon what the court ruled is a normal, healthy expression of sexuality? Why, indeed.

The dark secret is that many mental health professionals continue to maintain that homosexuality can result from some disorder but they are petrified to say it publicly or to put it in writing. Once the psychiatric establishment amended the DSM over forty years ago to declassify homosexuality as a mental disorder – a decision based not on science but on politics and pressure – the expression of any dissenting views has been chilled. There is real fear of ostracism and employment termination, and so professionals play along. But once the court here ruled that it would not even entertain any evidence that homosexuals need or can benefit from therapy, even if the patient wants it, there was no way JONAH could prevail. Psychologists do not treat people to change their eye color or their right-handedness, so of course, under these parameters, the jury found JONAH liable for consumer fraud.

The jury was left with no real choice, notwithstanding the hundreds of people who have been helped by JONAH and were able to marry (or remain married) and parent children and notwithstanding JONAH’s own assertions that its “success” rate is consistent with that of successful therapy from other afflictions or addictions, a rate of perhaps 15-20%. It is not as if the desires disappear and the person is completely reoriented; rather, patients were urged to face the reality of their condition and sometimes in harsh ways, and then received behavioral tools to sublimate the desires and lead a heterosexual life. It won’t work for everyone – JONAH never made such a claim – but it has worked for many. So who are you going to believe –the jury, “science,” or these lying eyes?

Only a layman can fairly ask: how is it possible for a man to change into a woman – and be honored, feted and praised as courageous for doing so – but a homosexual cannot change into a heterosexual? Indeed, the possibility itself must be suppressed and denied, and all who participate shunned by civil society. Here is one answer: it is because the manipulators of morality and the debauched social engineers have decided that homosexuals are a protected class and homosexuality the equivalent of a religion, that it is normal and that the rest of society must accept it as normal, and change therapy challenges all those notions and must be repudiated. Sex changes also must be protected because they also challenge conventional society. Everyone else must kowtow to them and live on the defensive, afraid to speak the truth we all recognize. Thus, there is a bill pending before Congress that would ban even talk therapy for unwanted same sex attraction. Can anyone name another condition for which therapy is banned even for someone desperate for it?

It is a strange world we live in.

Like the American Psychiatric Association’s waffling on this issue, the court’s ruling, which informed the jury that homosexuality both should not and could not be treated, was politics and populism, not law, unsuited to a courtroom and unfair to the defendants. It is also unfair to religious Jews: the only options recognized by halacha for the homosexual are therapy (if possible) or celibacy. The verdict is therefore an outrageous assault on individual freedom and the pursuit of happiness.

The ruling should also terrify mental health professionals who now are subject to lawsuits if therapy fails, and especially if the malady being treated can be deemed by some to be normal, healthy and worthy of celebration. (Maybe the alcoholic is just an unusually thirsty fellow…so why treat alcoholism?)  No one maintains that homosexuality must be treated – but to deny the right of someone with homosexual tendencies to seek treatment is bizarre, unjust and dictatorial. Such is the power of the homosexual lobby to intimidate, threaten and harass anyone who disagrees with its agenda.

Thus, it was quite predictable that the Supreme Court would find in the US Constitution a “right” to same sex marriage and even more predictable that Justice Kennedy would provide the deciding vote and write the majority decision. It was classic Supreme Court jurisprudence, in the worst sense – placing an arrow on the target and then drawing a circle around it. Bull’s eye! The scathing dissents are all worthy of reading because they underscore the sorry state of the American judiciary and the utter absence of any semblance of constitutionality, democracy and legal coherence. It is telling that none of the other four justices in the majority wrote a concurrence; can one add gossamer to already thin air?

Obviously, the Constitution makes no reference to marriage (a purely state issue) and so it can contain no “right” to same sex marriage. It is all made up, and for the crass purpose of social engineering. Kennedy gamely wrote that the legitimate, natural expression of love is limited to two people. Why that is so is a mystery; and even a first week law student could explain that such a sentiment is dicta and not binding on anyone. The fact is that there is no logical reason Kennedy or any supporter of this decision can offer as to why polygamy, polyandry or polyamory should not also be constitutionally protected for those who wish to practice it, nor incest for consenting adults. There is a father and daughter in Kentucky, for example, currently incarcerated, as they – both consenting adults – have sired several offspring together. ACLU, where are you? Why can’t they express their love for each other as well, or must they too be victimized by such obsolete Biblical inhibitions?

Even further afield, those who object that bestiality should remain illegal because it does not involve two consenting adults seem to miss the point that one can slaughter an animal without the animal’s consent. Surely if slaughter is permissible, a romantic evening together –steak dinner by candlelight followed perhaps by some dancing – should not be the subject of state action.

That is a joke (I think) – and of course this is not meant to equate all sexual sins – but what is no joking matter is the threat to religious liberty posed by this decision. All of Kennedy’s protestations notwithstanding, people of faith – people who believe in G-d’s Bible and its objective moral laws and attempt to incorporate those laws in their daily lives – will suffer as a result of this decision. Wait – it won’t be that long – for a same sex couple to demand their right to hold their wedding in a church or synagogue. A refusal will result in prosecution, lawsuits and/or loss of tax exempt status. Wait – perhaps a little longer – for a rabbi, priest or minister to be sued for refusing to officiate at a same sex wedding. The homosexual lobby masterfully (and disingenuously) conflated same sex marriage with interracial marriage; consequently, religious institutions or individuals that continue to object to same sex marriage will be no better than racists. Recall that Bob Jones University lost its tax exempt status in 1983 because its policies banned interracial dating (it rescinded the policy in 2000). Get ready, people of faith. Our heads are now on the chopping block.

That is the invariable next step now that individuals have already lost their religious liberties and rights of conscience. The Mozilla CEO was hounded out of his position because he contributed to a ballot initiative in California that – successfully but now futilely – opposed same sex marriage. Bakers, caterers, photographers, and florists have all refused to lend their personal services to same sex weddings on grounds of religious conscience, have all been sued, and have all lost. A New Jersey church refused to allow its beach front property to be used for a same sex wedding, was sued and lost. A couple in northern New York was sued and fined $13,000 for refusing to rent their farm for a same sex wedding. To top it off – right out of the playbook of North Korea and Communist China – that couple was ordered by the court to undergo sensitivity training in order to regain the good graces of civilized society. The Communists always called those facilities “re-indoctrination camps.” Such is the new America, land of the unfree and home of the depraved.

And here’s the secular danger to the decision: it will result in the collapse of the family, already under siege in this hedonistic society. American youth, already bedeviled by gender confusion and late to marry, if at all, will grow up in a society in which there is no preferred family structure – no vision of an ideal family unit that has the best chance of rearing healthy, well-grounded, and productive children. The radical homosexual activists would have us believe that it does not matter whether one is raised by a mother and father, two mothers, two fathers, one mother, one father, or any other permutation thereof. But, of course, it does, and G-d – and common sense – teaches us otherwise.

Do not believe any study that claims that it doesn’t matter; all purported studies will be politicized, fabricated and dishonest. Indeed, this process has been fraught with such studies. One much ballyhooed study was recently exposed as a fraud. The WSJ two weeks ago reported the following: A UCLA graduate student, one Michael LaCour, released a study last year entitled “When Contact Changes Minds,” which claimed that people’s opinions on same sex marriage dramatically shifted when they were visited by homosexual activists. Opponents were converted into supporters after one twenty minute conversation. Only the report was a fake! Others tried to duplicate his results and could not, and now the former student (Princeton revoked its offer to him of a professorship) is claiming that he discarded his raw data. Sure…and that is what passes for “science” today.

The homosexual activists are not seeking equal rights but wish to upend the social order. They don’t want to live and let live, or conscientious objectors would not be pilloried or harassed out of business. (See Jonathan Last’s “You Will Be Assimilated” in the Weekly Standard of June 22, 2015.) It would not be surprising if teaching parts of the Bible will soon be construed as hate speech, if those parts are not altogether excised from the Bible.

This agenda is fueled by a classic tactic of the left in America that has gained traction in last decade: the depiction of any dissenting opinion as “bigotry” and any dissenter as a “bigot” whose views are unworthy of discussion. This is never meant sincerely or earnestly but as a trick intended to stifle debate, as if the public square needs to be sanitized of the arguments of their adversaries. (Read the new “End of Discussion,” by Mary Katherine Ham and Guy Benson.) And this stratagem works! That is why expect it to be used against anyone who rejects the Supreme Court decision and continues to oppose same sex marriage; it is why there has been such relative silence from rabbis and others, with the focus not on the immorality of the decision and its consequences but on the reasonable need to safeguard religious liberties in the wake of such a decision. Good and decent people are afraid of being called bigots.

Of course, there are no greater anti-religious bigots today than the homosexual activists. (Can two play the same game? Probably not!)

There are compelling secular arguments that have been made in the failed attempt to preserve the traditional definition of marriage. (See “What is Marriage” by Girgis, George and Anderson, in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Volume 34.) Marriage is not primarily an emotional union of two people but a bodily union (with an emotional component) that can produce children. An emotional union only is really just a glorified friendship that renders marriage inherently unstable, as friendships come and go. This is already a problem in traditional marriages, as is the tendency to veer away from committed monogamy, but this situation will now be exacerbated. Marriage shapes and is shaped by the cultural cues that are extant; transforming the institution will transform it even for heterosexuals. And, as noted above, traditional marriage also reinforces the ideal of opposite-sex parenting, while same sex marriage threatens the religious freedoms that Americans have long cherished and that have made America unique in the annals of mankind.

The bitterness, acrimony and censorship that the homosexual activists have inserted into this discussion – and with which they prevailed – have already made us more fearful and less free. And if you doubt that, just ask the businesspeople pestered by the new McCarthyites and ask the well meaning people at JONAH as well.

But the moral dimension transcends all. Russell Kirk wrote:

“True law necessarily is rooted in ethical assumptions or norms; and those ethical principles are derived, in the beginning at least, from religious convictions. When the religious understanding, from which a concept of law arose in a culture, has been discarded or denied, the laws may endure for some time, through what sociologists call “cultural lag”; but in the long run, the laws also will be discarded or denied.”    This is precisely what has happened to American society.

It is thus the rampant secularism that has been an affliction since the 1960’s that now defines American society. It accompanies the mindless pursuit of hedonism that in part is also responsible for America’s retreat from global leadership. Relatively few Americans are interested in the critical issues of the age, and of those who are interested many of them are not particularly helpful. All this greases the slippery slope down which the United States is sliding. There is hope for a renaissance, but it is faint and dimming.

The Talmud (Masechet Chulin 92b) states that even the antediluvian degenerates who practiced homosexuality did not go so far as to “write marriage contracts between men.” The familial system set up by G-d establishes opposite sex parents as the natural and most effective people to raise children. Such an arrangement is best for human beings, for children, and the most stable for society. It is normal and proper. But we have long moved past slouching towards Gomorrah and have already lurched past Sodom.

Even worse, there are nominally Orthodox rabbis (even serving nominally Orthodox synagogues, although both designations will have to be revisited in the near future) who celebrated the Court’s decision, one gushing that “it is not good for man to be alone” (Breisheet 2:18; he was likely unaware that G-d then presented the first man with the first woman as a spouse and not with the second man. Sometimes, you just have to read on!). Another opined that Facebook has paskened that homosexuality is now permissible and it doesn’t matter what the rabbis say. Well, actually, it doesn’t matter what he says; but the breathtaking shallowness and intellectual vacuity of some people aspiring to the rabbinate is shameful and alarming. Is ordination of such empty vessels worth anything? Not that I can see.

Personally, I am saddened by anyone who is suffering from these problems, and all the court decisions, parades, weddings and hijinks change nothing. It is important to reiterate that no person should be persecuted, assaulted, bullied, etc. for any reason, and certainly not because of predilections of one sort or another  – nor should people of faith be bullied, assaulted or persecuted for their adherence and commitment to G-d’s immutable law. And we should distinguish – as the Torah does – between sins of the flesh (which reflect human weakness) and sins of the mind, ideological sins that come from a rebellious soul. The latter are far worse. Indeed, it is far worse to deny that the Torah forbids homosexuality than it is to engage in homosexual activity, especially if the latter is performed out of compulsion. We should not deny the sin, nor should we ever celebrate the sin. We should see them as part of the class of sinners, which, unfortunately, to one extent or another, includes all of us.

But civilization will pay a heavy price for this aberrant decision, as other departed civilizations already have.  Those who think that the homosexual activists will rest now that they have won the right to marriage are gravely mistaken. They will continue to press their agenda until all people are forced to consider homosexuality a moral and legitimate expression of human longings, and until all notions of objective, Biblically-based morality are a dead letter. And those who supported the homosexual agenda thinking that it was all about love and freedom and live-and-let-live will soon realize that they have been the greatest victims of consumer fraud.

May G-d have mercy!

Originally published at rabbipruzansky.com.

Written by By Laurie Higgins

I would love to hear Melissa and Aaron Klein’s answer if some “LGBTQIAAP” activist or intrepid, “unbiased” journalist asked, “How would the legalization of gay marriage affect you?”

Oh wait, no one can hear their answer because Oregon Labor Commissioner Brad Avakian has ordered them to “cease and desist” from publicly discussing how it’s affected them.

In addition, he has fined them $135,000 for the “emotional distress” they allegedly caused two lesbians whose wedding cake the Kleins declined to make because of their true religious belief that there exists no such thing as a homoerotic “marriage.”

Melissa and Aaron Klein are the former owners of a small, independent bakery in Oregon who exercised their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion and declined to make a wedding cake for a lesbian anti-wedding. Avakian in his foolishness and arrogance described this as a refusal to serve the lesbians based on their sexual orientation.

Here is Avakian’s statement on the astonishing abrogation of First Amendment protection that he has commanded:

“The Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor and Industries hereby orders [Aaron and Melissa Klein] to cease and desist from publishing, circulating, issuing or displaying, or causing to be published … any communication to the effect that any of the accommodations … will be refused, withheld from or denied to, or that any discrimination be made against, any person on account of their sexual orientation,”

The Kleins did not refuse to serve homosexuals. They refused to make a particular product for an event that offends the God they serve. The Kleins had no opposition to selling baked goods to homosexuals. They objected to baking a cake for an event that celebrates something that the God they serve detests.

The Daily Signal explains the tortured reasoning of Avakian:

The cease and desist came about after Aaron and Melissa Klein participated in an interview with Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins. During the interview, Aaron said among other things, “This fight is not over. We will continue to stand strong.”

Lawyers for plaintiffs, Rachel and Laurel Bowman-Cryer, argued that in making this statement, the Kleins violated an Oregon law banning people from acting on behalf of a place of public accommodation (in this case, the place would be the Kleins’ former bakery) to communicate anything to the effect that the place of public accommodation would discriminate.

So now feckless state laws can be used to undermine constitutionally protected First Amendment rights.

For true followers of Christ, the exercise of their religion extends beyond their pews and homes. It encompasses or should encompass the entirety of their lives. This is something that our Founding Fathers—including even the deists—understood, but contemporary liberals reject with disdain.

The Kleins, parents of five children, were forced to close their bakery, their sole source of income. Their significantly diminished income comes from Aaron’s current job as a garbage collector. To help this family in need, A GoFundMe campaign started which raised $109,000 in a matter of hours. Then, under pressure from tolerant disciples of diversity, the GoFundMe website shut it down. Nothing says tolerance quite like impoverishing families for their religious beliefs.

Here is a list of just some of the (unverified) 88 feelings and/or effects for which the two lesbians sought financial remuneration:

• acute loss of confidence
• degradation
• demeanment
• depression
• disappointment
• disbelief
• discomfort
• distrust of men
• doubt
• excessive sleep
• exhaustion
• felt mentally raped, dirty and shameful
• felt stupid
• less talkative
• loss of appetite
• nervous appetite
• impaired digestion
• weight gain
• moodiness
• pale and sick at home after work
• shocked
• stunned
• surprise
• uncertainty
• worry

This wowzer list of ailments purportedly resulted from not being able to purchase a wedding cake from one bakery. How, pray tell, do these two function in a diverse world?

Perhaps, just perhaps, their ailments were caused by their own wrongdoing and not by the right actions of the Kleins.

Here are some things that I hope happen:

• I hope Avakian’s profoundly boneheaded decision is appealed.
• I hope Avakian—who holds an elected position—is recalled.
• I hope the Kleins do not pay one red cent of the $135,000.
• I hope the Kleins speak everywhere about this injustice.
• I hope conservatives everywhere come alongside this family in prayer and with financial help.

And on July 4, while we celebrate the freedoms we enjoy in America—chief among them the right to speak and the right to exercise our religion freely—perhaps we should pause for a moment of silence to mourn the denial of those rights to the Kleins.

Please support IFI as we fight for liberty and work to advance the truth
about the sanctity of life and importance of marriage in our culture!

Hold on.

Courage, Matt, courage.

Breathe.

OK, I’m ready.

This is it. I’m coming out. I want the world to know. I’m a black, lesbian platypus trapped in a white, straight guy’s body. This is my truth. It’s my experience. It’s how I identify. It’s my reality (actual reality notwithstanding). Transracial, transgender and transpecies lives matter (#TransLivesMatter), and I’m declaring myself an out and proud member of the LGBTTT community.

Crazy, you say? Don’t judge me, hater. This is my race-species-gender identity and expression, whether real or perceived, and if you refuse to play along, then you’re violating my civil rights.

This is my struggle. I demand admission to the wrong bathrooms and showers, the right to play for the other sports teams and unfettered access to your children so I can indoctrinate them till they can’t see straight, or I’ll ruin you.

Identify me by whichever stupid pronoun I invent, you cisgender, cisracial, cisspecies bigot, or I’ll glitter bomb you so bad that you’ll be slightly inconvenienced.

Move over, Caitlyn Jenner.

You’re yesterday’s news, Rachel Dolezal.

I’m here! I’m, er, whatever! Get used to it!

It’s my turn. I want my reality show. I want my heavily-Photoshopped, little duckbilled mug on the cover of National Geographic posthaste.

Call me Mrs. Wiggles.

Oh, and transwealthy. I’m that, too. I really need to get my mortgage transpaidoff, so, yeah, I’m transwealthy.

Well? Don’t just sit there. Get busy. Suspend disbelief. Bend the space-time continuum and otherwise adjust your life to accommodate my moonbat pathologies, you microagressive transphobe, or I’ll have your job.

Black, lesbian platypi of the world, unite!

Merriam Webster defines “reductio ad absurdum” as “disproof of a proposition by showing an absurdity to which it leads when carried to its logical conclusion.”

You’ve just experienced reductio ad absurdum. “Species identity,” “racial identity” and, to no lesser extent, “gender identity” each represent comically absurd contrivances.

Yet here we are.

Seriously, thank you Bruce and Rachel for making this rant possible. Thank you, secular “progressives” and mainstream media for overplaying your hand on the whole “transwhatever” twaddle to the extent that Americans at large are beginning to sit up and, with a bold, unified voice, declare, “Um, say what?”

These past three weeks have served to set your extremist agenda back years, and that’s fantastic. People get it. Putting the “trans” prefix ahead of some objective truth that you oh-so-very-much-wish weren’t so, does not reverse that truth and make your personal fantasy become everyone’s reality.

Ever heard of a “transabled” person? “Transgender” activists have long distanced themselves from the “transabled” community because the two clinical psychoses are effectively different manifestations of the same disorder. The “transabled” person has a sincere, deep-seated belief that he or she is a disabled person trapped in a perfectly healthy and able body. In an effort to align their false identity with objective reality, “transabled” people have amputated healthy limbs, intentionally blinded themselves, had their legs crushed and worse.

Ironically, the transabled person who saws off a perfectly healthy arm, pokes out an eye or deliberately cripples healthy legs can actually achieve success. If he does one or more of these things, he will, in fact, become disabled.

The “transgender” person, on the other hand, can never enjoy this same success. If one who tragically believes that he or she is trapped in the wrong-sexed body goes through with cosmetic “gender reassignment” surgery and maims his or her body by mutilating perfectly healthy reproductive organs (or by having healthy breasts cut off if female), then that person remains as that person began – male or female. “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female (Mark 10:6).”

The pitiful paradox here is that, rather than being transformed to the opposite sex (or “gender” as “progressives” prefer) the “transgendered” will, like his or her similarly situated “transabled” counterpart, simply become physically disabled (and sterilized).

Or consider the anorexic. This is the emaciated person who, misperceiving herself to be grossly overweight, will starve herself to death. You don’t help the anorexic by affirming her delusion, calling her “transfat” and giving her liposuction. You feed her. And then you get her therapy.

Leftists love to say that race and “gender” are social constructs. Clever little buggers, aren’t they? This is a classic example of George Orwell’s doublethink. It’s a deliberate tactic by which relativists are able, with a straight face, to call up down, white black and male female. They muddy fixed, objective truths by labeling them “social constructs,” while, at the same time, socially constructing the rhetorical tools needed for fascism. Pretendoids like “gender identity,” “transphobia,” “sexual orientation” and “homophobia” are just a few examples of such social constructs (yes, I made up “pretendoids.” If they can do it, then so can I).

For relativism to work – and that’s what we’re talking about here; relativism – reality must be undone, adherents to objective truth pilloried and all dissent stifled.

This is classic cultural Marxism. It’s a bizarre and despotic world in which the left’s upside-down version of “inclusivity” trumps authenticity – a society wherein any recognition of objective truths that “progressives” cannot (more properly, will not) abide, are labeled offensive “microagressions” that, when uttered even offhandedly, demand swift punitive measures.

While penning the infamous majority decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a decision that upheld the phantom “constitutional right” for a mother to have her own child dismembered alive, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

This, of course, is abject nonsense. Still, it is illuminating. It’s the rationale that undergirds, to the extent that anything devoid of substance can undergird anything else, the moral relativist worldview responsible for the postmodern “trans” phenomenon.

But it’s much more than all that.

Justice Kennedy is widely expected to be the swing vote in the Supreme Court’s imminent “gay marriage” decision, Obergefell v. Hodges, which will come down within the next couple of weeks. He will presume to dictate whether black is white, up is down, and whether we must all pretend, under penalty of law, that a man can somehow “marry” another man.

Kennedy thinks people have the “right” to redefine the universe.

This is “transsane.”

Which does not bode well for marriage.

Or reality.

Written by Cliff Kincaid

“Homo is Healthy” was one of the signs on the official gay pride website for the big march celebrating the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage on Sunday, June 28, in New York City. It was brought to you, in part, by Walmart, a high-level Platinum sponsor that happens to be America’s largest private sector employer. The giant retailer was among a “Who’s Who” of corporate America that also included sponsors Coke, Netflix, Hilton, PBS, Macy’s and Comcast Universal (NBC).

Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth covered the event, publishing photos of nearly naked men and a “leather” contingent on a truck, among other scenes of debauchery. He said hundreds of children could be seen either marching in or watching the parade. “This is the evidence of why gay marriage and gay parenting are wrong,” LaBarbera told Accuracy in Media.

One photo showed a big rainbow flag being unfurled as the Walmart logo could be seen in the background.

LaBarbera said the scenes of nudity and vulgarity that he photographed at the pride march in New York City provided evidence of how the homosexual lifestyle is something America should not celebrate or make into protected status under law.

For its part, Comcast celebrated June as gay pride month with short films targeting “LGBTQ youth” and “LGBTQ teens.”

Comcast boasted, “In 2013, 2014, and 2015, the company earned a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index and was named a Best Place to Work for the LGBT community.”

Nowhere is homosexual influence more pronounced than Hollywood. However, a new film on homosexual influence in Hollywood, “An Open Secret,” is having a hard time getting distributed, with those involved with the film saying that financial interests in Hollywood have been trying to suppress it. This film, however, does not celebrate “gay pride.” Rather, it exposes victims of sexual abuse in the entertainment industry. The homosexual pedophiles exposed in the film include Marc Collins-Rector, a major figure in the entertainment business who is a convicted child abuser and now a registered sex offender. The film is directed by Amy Berg, who also directed the 2006 American documentary film about a pedophile Catholic priest, Oliver O’Grady, called “Deliver Us From Evil.”

The decision by Walmart to embrace the homosexual rights movement is a case study of how the powerful interests who run the movement have worked their will on corporate America.

Quartz, a digital native news outlet, noted that “When Sam Walton started the company [Walmart] in 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas, he imbued the chain with a certain small-town conservatism. For instance, it long drew ire for its reluctance to sell music with explicit lyrics.”

Although Walmart still portrays itself as family-friendly, LaBarbera points out that the company is now publicly pro-homosexual and has been giving major grants to homosexual/transgender events and organizations, including $25,000 – $50,000 in 2014 to the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, a group that helps elect “out” homosexuals to political office. (Most of them are Democrats.)

The group’s 2011 annual report reveals that openly gay Obama ally, Terry Bean, co-founder of the major homosexual lobby, the Human Rights Campaign, has been a major supporter of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund as well. Bean took a leave of absence from the Human Rights Campaign after he was arrested on sexual abuse charges involving sex with a minor.

Corporate supporters of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund in 2011 included Pacific Gas & Electric Company, Bank of America, Southwest Airlines, AT&T, Shell Oil Company, Microsoft, Wells Fargo and the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Wells Fargo achieved notoriety this year by becoming the nation’s first bank to run a national ad including a homosexual couple.

Labor union sponsors of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund included the Service Employees International Union, the National Education Association, and the AFL-CIO.

Meanwhile, open homosexuals in the media, such as Edward Snowden mouthpiece Glenn Greenwald, have opened fire on Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia for exposing the Court’s gay marriage ruling as a “judicial Putsch” that stole the democratic system away from the American people.

Writing on the website of First Look Media, financed by billionaire French-born Iranian-American Pierre Omidyar, Greenwald hailed the ruling and noted that “Harry Hay created the Mattachine Society,” the first homosexual rights organization in the U.S. However, Greenwald failed to point out Hay’s membership in the Communist Party and support for the North American Man-Boy Love Association. Greenwald is one of several media figures on Out Magazine’s list of “most influential LGBT people in American culture.” Others include Anderson Cooper of CNN, Shepard Smith of Fox News, Robin Roberts of ABC, Don Lemon of CNN, Harvey Levin of TMZ, Rachel Maddow and Thomas Roberts of MSNBC, and Kara Swisher of CNBC.

On the conservative side, support for homosexual marriage seems to be growing—or at least coming out of the closet. Mary Katharine Ham, a Fox News commentator and editor-at-large of HotAir.com, has declared herself in favor of same-sex marriage. She has written a book with homosexual political commentator Guy Benson, a Fox News contributor who serves as political editor of the TownHall.com website.

HotAir and TownHall are owned by Salem Media Group, a Christian firm. Salem has refused to respond to questions about its employees becoming advocates for or activists in the homosexual movement.

Originally published at AIM.org.

The speed with which same-sex “marriage” has been both accepted and then promoted in American culture has surprised even its proponents.  It shouldn’t have surprised us at all.  Rather, when we consider the weakness of the churches’ spiritual backbone it is actually surprising that it took this long.

The majority of Americans claim only a nominal relationship to God and religion, and the Scriptures make it clear that only those who are born of the Spirit understand spiritual principles.  Those who do not know Christ as Savior have no reason to take a stand for any biblical principle, and they certainly have no appetite for the tidal wave of animosity that the same-sex juggernaut has launched against the traditional morality that once characterized America and those who still profess it.

It should come as no surprise that the culture’s opposition to same-sex “marriage” evaporated so quickly.  The world is in rebellion against God and His Word, and its rebellion is only exacerbated by the reality that many of God’s people no longer respect His Word.  Seeking a message palatable to the world, (never an objective of God) has brought churches into direct conflict with the Word of God.  The world is merely following in the churches’ steps.

The origins of America’s moral collapse can be traced directly to the moral collapse of the churches.  Someone once noted regarding corruption in the church, “If gold rust, what shall iron do?” It is no secret that America’s churches in general are careless regarding sin.  Whereas God states His unequivocal hatred for divorce, most pastors and churches rarely if ever address the subject.  While Paul notes in his  epistles that a pastor must be a “one-woman man,” it is now quite common for a pastor who violates his marriage vows to face few if any sanctions and he often goes on to minister as if nothing happened.

Churches have largely adopted the world’s views on materialism, pleasure, music and even sexuality.  To a large extent the church has adopted the world’s contention that happiness is the goal of life.  Many American Christians live as though this world is all there is, and, sadly a vast number of our spiritual leaders are leading the charge! It has been reported that during large ministers’ conventions the hosting hotels see an uptick in the use of pornographic cable channels.

When King David sinned in the matter of Bathsheba and Uriah, Nathan the prophet rebuked him saying, “Why have you despised the commandment of God?”  The grave sin underlying David’s adultery and murder, the fundamental crime of the king was not the adultery and murder, but his careless disregard for God’s Word!  He thumbed his nose at God! When today’s spiritual leaders soft pedal biblical texts that offend current “sensibilities,” or refer to the opening chapters of Genesis as “myths,” are they not despising God’s Word?

God repeatedly calls His church to purity, but the church is selling its soul for pleasure.  While Christ and the New Testament writers warned that those who lived for Christ could expect persecution, church leadership across the nation, and most notably pastors of so-called “mega-churches” and “seeker-friendly” churches offer a message designed to attract the unregenerate, and is thus free of any demands for holiness.  Paul wrote in I Corinthians that “the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit, neither can he know them for they are spiritually discerned.”  These churches and pastors offer a message acceptable to the world, which James reminds us is in fact at war with God!  He calls this pandering to the world “adultery.” Fear of “offending” the lost has become the determining factor in many churches’ message and  methodology.  How few there are who fear offending God!

The problem is not just that large numbers of Christians have failed in their marriages, in their child-rearing responsibilities, or in other areas of integrity.  It is that we have failed in our fidelity to Christ and His Word!  These specific failures demonstrate that we have despised God’s Word!  And, if we who claim to belong to God despise His Word and thus His Law, why are we surprised that the world, with glee, disregards God’s Word as well and everything we say, especially anything that even hints of God’s holiness?  In simple terms: why should the world believe God’s Word when we don’t?

America’s restoration, if it is to come, will come not when the world yields to God’s authority, but,  by God’s grace, when His people, His churches, His pastors yield unquestionably to His Word, His Law, and His holiness!  Christians can expect no mighty work of God so long as we trample under foot His clear demands for holy, godly living.

Written by Diane Medved

President Barack Obama was so romantic when commenting on the U.S. Supreme Court 5-4 ruling that same-sex marriage be permitted nationally.  “Love is Love,” he declared, in a puzzling statement of the obvious.

Yes, love is love. But it is not marriage, though the president implied that’s so. Do all people who deeply love each other naturally want to marry?

The nursery rhyme that “love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage” is as outdated as the horse and carriage. Nowadays more Americans are single than married. Many live together; many just hook up. Others cultivate relationships for years but don’t marry.

Love is love. It is a feeling. It can waver and wane and disappear. More marriages based on how spouses feel will mean more divorces, and divorce is inevitably sad, divisive and, when children are involved, becomes difficult, uncomfortable and complicated.

Redefining institutions is a dangerous business. Changing an institution into a feeling is absurd, but it has happened. Marriage, in every culture, through all time, was the setting designated as the procreative, child-rearing core of societies. Without the purpose of man and woman creating offspring that they together raise, marriage would not have endured. Why would the world’s major religions sanctify–set aside–marriage as a glorified institution if societies have no stake in its welfare? Marriage would have faded or morphed thousands of years before if it was defined as a declaration of feelings.

But now that the Supreme Court has decided love is the legally recognized criterion for marriage, they’re going to have a tough time upholding other criteria. Triplet sisters with a close bond certainly deserve to marry as much as two strangers! And should they decide to obtain sperm and become pregnant, isn’t it nicer for a child to have THREE mothers rather than merely two? Doesn’t a child deserve more legally recognized love, rather than less?

Love is love, and now it’s marriage. Love comes in many different types, none more than a mother for her child. I know many who claim their mothers are their best friends. That bond cannot be surpassed; who is to say it is less permanent than those of the same generation? Children should be able to marry their mothers. At age 4, my son Danny pledged to marry me. I remain solidly married to his father and Danny chose a brilliant wife, but we continue our commitment to each other, so why not marriage?

Love is love, so if someone currently married to another–or others–finds a willing person to add to his/her constellation of love, then clearly under the new definition, he should not be denied marriage. Isn’t it better for children if Mom and Dad or Moms and Dads, remain together? Why should the government require divorce? Isn’t that bad for children? Isn’t divorce economically disruptive? Love is love. How dare the government limit one’s love to just one other person?

Ahh, but government makes many inconsistent laws. When logic dictates one thing, legislators often ignore it. Love is marriage for gay and straight unrelated couples. Love as marriage is forbidden if you love too many people, or love family members or have no divorce.

There are many ways to show respect for those with all sexual orientations. Government does not impede private relationships between people. But like every other culture at every other time, our nation retains a stake in children being born and raised in the environment that offers them the best opportunity to thrive.  That is the only relationship that should be encouraged. Every person is worthy of respect, but not every relationship is worthy of marriage.

The American version of the English language is confused when love is defined as marriage and marriage defined as love. Feelings make poor basis for reliability and predictability, and so with this change, all marriages become tougher to uphold and defend.

This article was first published at the Micheal Medved blog.

Written by Dr. Erwin W. Lutzer

The decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage in all fifty states is not only a direct violation of Scripture, but is contrary to natural law. This decision will accelerate the disintegration of the family, the sexual confusion of our children, and our continuing descent into moral bankruptcy.