Parents across the nation have said bittersweet good-byes to their college-bound children in the last couple of weeks. They send them off with the hope that they flourish in their education and find the path for their future. Their hopes and dreams, however, often come with a high price tag. Parents and students alike are concerned about how they will pay for college. The state of Illinois General Assembly and Governor J.B. Pritzker have decided the best way to deal with educational funding is to establish grants based on identity politics rather than merit.

The General Assembly and the governor signed the Retention of Illinois Students and Equity (RISE) Act in 2020. The act authorizes state grants to students that had previously not qualified for federal or state funding. The three main groups the grants now cover:

1) “undocumented” students

2) students that had attempted 75 hours funded by the Monetary Award Program (MAP) grant but had not yet achieved junior status

3) transgender students that do not qualify for other aid due to not registering with selective service.

College students yearly fill out the lengthy Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) hoping they meet the eligibility standards to receive government assistance for their education. Prior to the RISE Act, students filled out FAFSA, which determined their eligibility for the Illinois MAP grant. However, due to the new standards, illegal aliens and transgender students will no longer complete FAFSA. These students now complete the Alternative Application for Illinois Financial Aid at the direction of their college administration. The alternative application allows the state to bypass federal laws requiring male students to register with selective service and be a citizen of the United States. The establishment of the RISE Act means that Illinois will be rewarding lawbreakers.

According to the Illinois State Budget Fiscal Year Report for 2022, approximately 65 percent of community college students received MAP grants in 2021. Expectations are that the number of students receiving state grants will rise significantly. Governor Pritzker increased the budget for MAP by $28 million to bring the total budget for the grant to $479 million. The amount of funding allocated specifically to those filing for aid using the Alternative Application is unclear. It is also unclear how many illegal aliens and transgender students have opted to file under the Alternative Application for the 2021-2022 school year. Nevertheless, it is clear Illinois taxpayers are forced into funding education purely based on identity rather than need or merit.

The state of Illinois should reject identity politics and fund education on two factors: financial need and academic achievement. Society once rewarded achievement with the desire to help the best and the brightest. Now, Illinois reward illegal aliens and students that identify as one of the new 112 “genders.” Evidently, there is no need to have an accurate understanding of biology as long as you fit the definition of a so-called maligned sexual identity.

The decline of higher education continues down the slippery slope as we consistently reward students because they choose to defy laws and reject traditional moral standards. It is time for everyone with conservative values to stop supporting schools that are nothing more than indoctrination centers. Parents and students should stand up to the public universities and colleges by refusing to attend any school that accepts law-defying illegal immigrants and transgender students. It is time Christian colleges enforce our values, even if that means losing federal and state funding. Most importantly, voters must stop electing lawmakers who waste our tax dollars on policies driven by controversial leftist beliefs. We must vote for the traditional values that once made this a great and high-achieving nation.

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An Illinois Appellate Court just ruled that Hobby Lobby violated the Illinois Human Rights Act by refusing to allow a male employee who masquerades as a woman and goes by the name of “Meggan Renee” Sommerville to use the women’s restroom. If this decision is not appealed and overturned, it will mean the end of sex-separated private spaces in all companies in Illinois, including stores and restaurants.

Mark Thomas Sommerville was hired as the man he is and always will be by Hobby Lobby in 1998. In 2009, he began cross-sex hormone-doping to conceal his biological sex, and in 2010, he began cross-dressing. That same year, he legally changed his name and obtained a falsified driver’s license and Social Security card that wrongly identify his sex as female. He also “formally informed Hobby Lobby of her [sic] transition and her [sic] intent to begin using the women’s bathroom at the store.”

Hobby Lobby, justifiably and wisely, told him he could not use the women’s bathroom that was available to both female employees and female customers. Hobby Lobby, however, foolishly changed Sommerville’s personnel records and benefits information to reflect his “gender identity” rather than his sex.

Despite Hobby Lobby’s restroom directive, the self-absorbed Sommerville continued to use the women’s restrooms which resulted in Sommerville being written up. After “breaking down in tears,” he sashayed over to Illinois’ leftist Human Rights Commission to file a complaint. The Chicago Tribune reported,

The commission found Hobby Lobby violated the Illinois Human Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on gender identity in both workplaces and places of public accommodation, such as public restrooms. The commission determined that the company owed Sommerville $220,000 in damages, at the time the highest amount ever awarded by the commission for emotional distress.

The three Appellate Court justices, Ann B. Jorgenson, Mary S. Schostok, and Kathryn E. Zenoff, who decided this case are all Republicans. (But are they women? And what is a woman?)

So colossally self-centered is Sommerville that he was willing to forsake his marriage for his masquerade. By choosing an appropriated false identity over his marriage, Sommerville, who self-identifies as a Christian, clearly violated his marriage oath.

Forbes reports that “According to her [sic] lawyer, the decision applies statewide to every transgender individual and every public bathroom.”

The lawyer to whom Forbes refers is homosexual Jacob Meister, who is the founder of an “LGBTQ” advocacy organization. Meister ironically said, “To use the bathroom at work, without being humiliated and frightened … is a fundamental right.” Well then, are biological women entitled to use bathrooms free of the presence of biological men when the presence of those men makes them feel humiliated and frightened?

The Tribune also reported this:

There’s a woman’s restroom at the East Aurora Hobby Lobby where Meggan Sommerville works, but for 10 years, she’s [sic] been barred from using it because she [sic] is transgender. She [sic] has had to punch out of work and cross a parking lot in the rain or snow to access the bathroom at a fast-food restaurant, she [sic] said.

In 2013, Hobby Lobby installed a single occupancy unisex restroom to accommodate Sommerville’s ontological fiction, so he did not have to cross the parking lot in rain or snow for the past eight years.

The ruling by the triumvirate of female GOP justices includes this fanciful, science-denying statement:

Sommerville, who was born in 1969, was designated as male at birth.

Surely, three bright appellate court justices know that babies aren’t “designated” a sex at birth. Surely, even attorneys know enough science to understand that the sex of babies is identified and recorded at birth. And surely, they know that one’s sex never changes.

The triumvirs continued with their non-sense:

In 2007, Sommerville began transitioning from male to female. In 2009, she [sic] disclosed her [sic] female gender identity to some staff at Hobby Lobby

Do chemical and surgical cosmetic alterations really “transition” humans from male to female? If so, can such cosmetic alterations transition other mammals from male to female? Can such cosmetic alterations (e.g., human growth hormone injections, fillers, facelifts, knee lifts, tummy tucks, laser and chemical treatments) transition old humans to young? If not, why not?

The ruling inadvertently admits an inconvenient truth: The justices write that Sommerville felt “embarrassed and humiliated” by having to use the men’s bathroom because he identifies as a woman. If his embarrassment and humiliation when having to use a bathroom with those whose “gender identity” he doesn’t share is justification for the sexual integration of bathrooms, then why isn’t the embarrassment and humiliation of women when having to use a bathroom with those whose sex they don’t share justification for sex-segregated bathrooms?

Since the Illinois Human Rights Act that prohibits discrimination in places of public accommodation specifically exempts private spaces such as restrooms and locker rooms, many wonder how this queer, inequitable ruling came about. It came about via some rhetorical chicanery—some leftist sleight-of-tongue. Here’s what happened when too few were paying attention.

1.) Leftists passed laws that allow men and women to obtain legally falsified drivers’ licenses, birth certificates, and Social Security cards that misidentify their sex.

2.) The Illinois Human Rights Act that bans discrimination based on “sexual orientation,” declared that “sexual orientation” includes “gender identity”—something virtually no state had done and something which “progressives” ordinarily feverishly proclaim is wrong. They ordinarily proclaim that sexual orientation and gender identity are wholly different phenomenon. Any disagreement is considered ignorant, hateful bigotry. So, why did they make this queer conflation? We shall see shortly.

3.) The rights-trampling trio used the falsified drivers’ licenses, birth certificates, and Social Security cards—rather than objective reality—to define “sex.”

Here’s what they wrote:

Hobby Lobby contends that an individual’s “sex”—the status of being male or female—is an immutable condition. However, the plain language of the [Illinois Human Rights] Act does not support this conception. There is simply no basis in the Act for treating the “status” of being male or female as eternally fixed. … Illinois law has explicitly recognized in a variety of ways that gender identity is a primary determinant of a person’s “sex” for legal purposes. … under Illinois law, an individual’s gender identity is an accepted basis for determining that individual’s legal “sex.” … Given the interrelationship between “sex” and gender identity in Illinois law, the record establishes that Sommerville’s sex is unquestionably female.

Hobby Lobby contends that, rather than applying the definition of “sex” provided by the Act, the Commission should have imported a definition of “sex” found in a dictionary, namely: one of two “forms of individuals” that “are distinguished especially on the basis of their reproductive organs and structures.” …  However, it is unnecessary to resort to dictionary definitions where a statute itself defines a term. … Here, the Act provides a clear definition of “sex,” eliminating any need to look further.

While “sex” is not eternally fixed in the Upside Down formerly known as the Land of Lincoln, the Illinois Human Rights Act—our state bible—is.

When the justices say that the Illinois Human Rights Act does not recognize sex as an eternally fixed, immutable condition and when they say that Illinois law recognizes subjective feelings about maleness or femaleness (i.e., “gender identity”) as the determiner of “sex” for “legal purposes,” they have severed laws and the practices required by law from reality.

The justices make clear that objective reality has no bearing on their decision. Henceforth, leftist-constructed, science-denying statutory law determines what “sex” is.  No need to consult science or reality. No need to consult even a dictionary—well, not until our sex-impersonators change dictionaries. Then we will be free to consult them.

This constitutes a despotic attempt to manipulate language in the law to impose “trans”-cultic practices on all of America and results in dogmatic claims like this from “Ethan” Rice, senior attorney at the destructive law firm Lambda Legal:

Meggan Sommerville is a woman, full stop. … Well-established state and federal law says so, but most importantly, Meggan Sommerville says so.

Nope, not a woman, full stop. And saying so isn’t what determines someone is a woman. Science does. And that’s why “Ethan” Rice is a woman–a woman who pretends to be a man and is married to another woman who pretends to be a man. In other words, Rice is a lesbian in a faux-marriage.

The foolish justices wrote this foolishness:

The presence of a transgender person in a bathroom poses no greater inherent risk to privacy or safety than that posed by anyone else who uses the bathroom. …  In arguing that Sommerville’s use of the women’s bathroom will cause a legitimate intrusion upon privacy, Hobby Lobby “ignores the reality of how a transgender [person] uses the bathroom: ‘by entering a stall and closing the door.’” … We will not prioritize fears or discomfort that have no factual basis in the record. “Private biases may be outside the reach of the law, but the law cannot, directly or indirectly, give them effect.”

If the presence of a biological male who wishes he were or falsely believes he is a woman poses no greater inherent risk to the privacy of girls and women than that posed by women who use the bathroom, then why prohibit non-cross-dressing biological males from using women’s bathrooms? How does cross-dressing change women’s feelings about privacy?

Wouldn’t “entering a stall and closing the door” be sufficient to prevent intrusion of a “cisgender” man upon the privacy of women?

Why should the law give effect to the “discomfort” or “private biases” of women who oppose the presence of “cisgender” biological men in their private spaces?

The problem of where cross-dressing humans in cosmetically altered skin costumes engage in bodily functions is a problem of their own creation. The solution must not be demanding that normal girls, boys, women, and men relinquish their privacy to accommodate the disordered desires of persons of the opposite sex.

I hope by now, people realize that it is both foolish and dangerous to capitulate to the “trans” cult ever—not even in seemingly trivial things. Hobby Lobby agreed to change Sommerville’s sex on forms and then that capitulation was used against it by the justices:

[Sommerville’s] status of being female has been recognized not only by the governments of this state and the nation but also by Hobby Lobby itself, all of which have changed their records to acknowledge her [sic] female sex.

I hope by now, people also realize that once the terms “gender identity” and “gender expression” are included in anti-discrimination law, there remains no legal way to maintain any sex-separated private spaces for anyone anywhere. These laws spell the end of all public recognition of sex differences. If cross-dressing men must be able to use women’s restrooms and locker rooms, then so too can “cisgender” men. Why? Because prohibiting “cisgender” men from using women’s spaces while allowing biological men who identify as “transgender” to use women’s spaces would constitute discrimination based on both sex and “gender identity.”

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Hobby-Lobby-Loses-Right-to-Maintain-Sex-Separate-Bathrooms-80.mp3

Between now and Labor Day, you can double the impact of your tax deductible donations to IFI!

A group of donors are working with us to offer a $40,000 dollar-for-dollar matching challenge
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Here’s a statistic that may surprise many: It is estimated that less than 17% of U.S. doctors belong to the powerful leftist lobbying group, the American Medical Association (AMA). Remember that figure as you read on about the AMA’s role in promoting critical race theory and sexual anarchy.

In May 2021, the AMA issued a press release announcing its 86-page critical race theory-infused “ambitious strategic plan to dismantle structural racism” which acknowledges “that equity work requires recognition of past harms and critical examination of institutional roles upholding these structures.”

In the press release, the AMA makes clear its leftist leanings:

[T]he plan … is driven by the immense need for equity-centered solutions to confront harms produced by systemic racism and other forms of oppression for Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, and other people of color, as well as people who identify as LGBTQ+. 

The AMA’s ambitious plan seeks to eradicate “malignant narratives” like “a narrow focus on individuals,” the “myth of meritocracy,” and the “myth of American exceptionalism.” The AMA is committed to “rooting out racism and white supremacy in our workplace. … We must ‘get our house in order’ and direct significant focus on embedding equity within the management team.”

The 86-page plan makes even clearer that the AMA has abandoned commitments to equality in favor of collectivist notions of equity based on group membership. The plan is littered with quotes from far-left poets and activists like Ta-Nehesi Coates as well far-left jargon like this:

• “We must … ensure that we use the theories (intersectionality, critical race theory*, etc.).”

• “Equity solutions include … [e]liminating all forms of discrimination, exclusion and oppression in medical and physician education, training, hiring, [and] matriculation … by [m]andatory anti-racism … equity-explicit training … for all … staff [and] Publicly reported equity assessments for medical schools and hospitals … ensuring just representation of Black, Indigenous and Latinx people in medical school admissions as well as medical school and hospital leadership ranks.”

• “We operate in a carefully designed and maintained system that normalizes and legitimizes an array of dynamics … that routinely advantage white (also wealthy, hetero-, able-bodied, male, Christian, U.S.- born) people at the expense of Black, Latinx, Indigenous and people of color (also low wealth, women, people with disabilities, non-Christians, and those foreign-born).”

• “Where equality is a blunt instrument of ‘sameness,’ equity is a precise scalpel that requires a deep understanding of complex dynamics and systems with skill and practice in application. … Equity can be understood as both a process and an outcome. It involves sharing power with people … and redistributing resources to the greatest need.”

The AMA’s document includes this quote from “Sylvia” Rivera,” a deeply troubled drag queen who was homeless and working as a prostitute by age 11:

We have to be visible. We should not be ashamed of who we are. We have to show the world that we’re numerous.

The idea that no one should be ashamed of cross-dressing behaviors is a moral claim that falls far outside the purview of the American Medical Association, but grandiose moral and social engineering schemes is now apparently the business of the AMA.

At the end of June 2021, the AMA released a “resolution” created by a committee of homosexual activists and their collaborators calling for “Removing Sex Designation from the Public Portion of the Birth Certificate.” In a tortured effort to rationalize the AMA’s involvement in redesigning birth certificates to serve the desires of cross-sex impersonators, the activists wrote,

Gender is a social construct that describes the way persons self-identify or express themselves. A person’s gender identity may not always be exclusively male or female and may not always correspond with their sex assigned at birth.

To be clear, these medical doctors are just pretending that sex is “assigned” at birth. They know full well that obstetricians do not assign sexes—of which there are two—to newborns. Physicians identify the sex of newborns—an objective, immutable trait that never changes. There are a small percentage of babies born with disorders of sexual development whose genitalia at birth may be ambiguous, but those babies are not “transgender.”

While some persons may choose not to “identify” with their sex, they do have one and it never changes. The spanking new term “gender identity” was invented to disguise disordered feelings as something more substantive—something with a bit more ontological heft. While a “trans” identity—and every fanciful idea associated with it—is a social construct, biological sex is a material reality that cannot be erased by redesigning birth certificates, grammar, or bodies.

And while “trans”-cultists and their collaborators may believe that subjective feelings about maleness or femaleness (i.e., “gender identity”) are more important than objective biological sex, neither compassion, respect, nor justice obligates others to act as if such feelings are.

The committee cites a prior politically driven AMA policy that says,

“the AMA supports every individual’s right to determine their … sex designation on government documents and other forms of government identification.” The AMA supports policies that allow for a sex designation or change of designation on all government IDs to reflect an individual’s gender identity.

In other words, the AMA supports the bizarre notion that government documents should be falsified in order to conform to the socially constructed, science-denying belief that humans can be what they’re not.

Moreover, after the “trans”-cult has spent years establishing sex and “gender identity” as wholly severable and separate phenomena, they are now attempting to empty “sex designation” filling it with the socially constructed amorphous “gender identity.” George Orwell predicted this:

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. … 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.

The committee, a political interest group composed of self-identifying health providers, offers this pseudo-medical justification for their political effort:

For these individuals, having a gender identity that does not match the sex designation on their birth certificate can result in confusion, possible discrimination, harassment and violence whenever their birth certificate is requested.

Who may be confused? It seems unlikely that cross-sex impersonators would be confused, so how would the confusion of someone else be a health concern for cross-sex impersonators? What form of “possible discrimination”? Is harassment an issue that the AMA should address or the police?

And what about “trans”-agists, that is, people who identify as younger than their assigned birth date would suggest? If a 47-year-old man identifies as a 17-year-old, should he be able to change his birth date designation to reflect his age identity in order to avoid confusion, possible discrimination, harassment, or violence?

Come to think of it, if insurance companies are forced to pay for chemical and surgical procedures to make men look like women, shouldn’t they be forced to pay for chemical and surgical procedures to make old men look like the young men they identify as?

For some perspective on whose interest this resolution represents, a cursory look at the resolution process is in order. Resolutions are created by AMA Medical Student Sections (MSS), in this case the AMA MSS “Committee on LGBTQ+ Affairs,” which, to be clear, is an interest group.

The current Advisory Committee on LGBTQ+ Affairs has seven members, five of whom are homosexual. The remaining two are “LGBTQ+” collaborators. A committee’s resolution is voted on by the House of Delegates, which is the legislative and policy-making body of the AMA. The House of Delegates is composed of about 600 of the 240,000 AMA members. A two-thirds vote of the delegates present is required for adoption. So, the birth certificate redesign policy was conceivably created and passed by 400 of the 240,000 members of the AMA, and the AMA constitutes only 17% of all physicians in the U.S.

No further evidence is needed to prove that “progressivism” is an ideology of deceit than the spread of “trans”-cultic beliefs and practices throughout a society that purports to revere science and rationality. No sane person really believes men can be or become women. No sane person believes men can “chestfeed” or menstruate, become pregnant, or give birth. No sane person really believes that some women have penises and impregnate women—or men. Those who pretend they do are liars or cowards or both.

No further evidence is needed to prove that the ultimate goal of “progressives” is totalitarian political and social control than their tyrannical efforts to coerce Orwellian Newspeak. And no further evidence is needed to prove that America has become the land of cowards than the silence of many physicians on the chemical and surgical abuse of children by the medical community.

There are things that Americans can do to resist Big Brother and his apparatchiks and cowardly minions. Ask your pediatrician, obstetrician, gynecologist, and primary care physician if they support pseudo-scientific “trans”-cultic practices for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors. If they do, find new doctors. And if you’re a doctor who belongs to the AMA, cancel your membership and tell the AMA why.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/amaIsWoke_Audio.mp3

Just think of the upside down world in which we live today. Women and girls are relaxing in a California spa when a man walks in, naked and fully exposed, in full view of these mothers and daughters. Yet when a complaint is issued, the spa, along with the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times editorial board, defend the man. Do we need any more proof that we have lost our corporate minds?

A man commits full frontal indecent exposure in the presence of women and girls, and the Los Angeles Times chides the women for being upset while defending the man, since, after all, he’s actually a woman. And, you know, women can have penises too. That’s right. And men can menstruate as well as conceive and give birth to babies. That’s also why we must talk about “chestfeeding” rather “breastfeeding,” since the latter term would offend nursing fathers.

Have we not lost our minds?

Listen to this woman’s personal account of what happened:

“I went to the Wi spa in Los Angeles, California, and while I decided to go around the different jacuzzis, I decided to take a nap. After my nap, I got up and I wanted to get water. As I was walking, I noticed something that really was disturbing, something that caused me to feel that I must have been transported into the men’s locker room, the men’s Jacuzzi area.

“Yeah. A man, a full-on man, fully naked, completely exposed, showing his testicles, his penis. Slightly erected.

“I was appalled at what I saw. This was not normal. . . . Little girls are there, their mothers are there, other women are looking about, and they begin to put their robes back on them. I went to management. Management did nothing. I even told the guy he should leave, ‘This is not right,’ and he didn’t leave. We had no help whatsoever. I did not know what to do.

“Something has got to be done. This is not fair. It is not right. We as women have rights to be safe in public spaces, and they are being violated by men going into women’s spaces, claiming to be women to gain access, so that they can exercise their perversions.

“This is not right. We must do something about it.

“On June 23, I experienced what no woman or little girl should ever experience. I experienced what used to be called flashing or indecent exposure, which would result in a man registering to be a sexual offender for life.”

Yes, this used to be considered perverse and even illegal. But not today. Today, this is a “right” to be celebrated. And it is the women and girls who have a problem. They are the ones who are messed up in their thinking. The onus is on them to change.

As explained in the upside-down editorial in the Los Angeles Times, “As complicated as the opposing beliefs might be, it is clear where the rights in this matter land. Everyone — transgender customers, members of every faith and women who are upset by the sight of penises — all have the right to use the spa and other public accommodations.”

Indeed, the Times’ editors opined with some of the most convoluted thinking imaginable, “no one has an absolute right to feel comfortable all the time. People have a right to use the spa, but that doesn’t include with it a guarantee that they all will feel at ease with everything they see. They might prefer a spa where a certain amount of body covering is required.”

Seriously? No one has the right to expect that a biological male, naked and fully exposed, will not come marching into the women’s area? No one has the right to expect that their children will not suffer this kind of sexual and psychological abuse? Seriously?

This used to be called indecent exposure. You could go to jail for this.

But not today. Today it is just a needless “hullabaloo,” to quote the exact term used by the Times. We’ll get over it soon enough.

Yes, the Times editors tell us, “Young people are far more comfortable with the idea of shared spaces for people of all gender identities and sexes.”

Absolutely. I’m sure an 8-year-old or 12-year-old or 15-year-old girl, sitting naked in the steam room, is super comfortable with a 40-year-old naked man sitting down next to them. Of course!

To repeat: this is madness.

Yet the self-righteousness and moral perversion of the Times knows no bounds. To quote the closing words of the editorial, “In the meantime, customers of public-serving businesses should be prepared to share space with the public, in all our forms, varieties and customs. Antidiscrimination laws stand for the principle that all are welcome, whether we are comfortable or not.”

Tell that to the girls (and women) who feel violated and abused. Tell that to the people whose rights have been trampled.

But no, we can’t, because transgender activism trumps all. It trumps morality. And decency. And honor. And common sense. Just say, “I’m trans!” and anything goes.

And what about sexual predators who have already used these loopholes to enter ladies’ bathrooms and the like? That’s too bad, we are told, but the priority is protecting those who identify as transgender.

I ask again: what kind of madness is this? How and when did we entirely lose our minds?

And what an absolute and ridiculous farce to allow for these abuses to take place under “antidiscrimination laws.” Talk about legal mumbo jumbo. Talk about turning right into wrong and wrong into right.

As for the man who truly believes he is a woman, here’s a word of wisdom for you: you do not belong in the women’s spa, naked and exposed, even if to the core of your being you believe you are female.

Moreover, no one is making you go there, and your life will not be hurt if you stay out of a place where there are naked women and girls. (Let’s be realistic here. We’re not talking about withholding lifesaving treatment or essential medical care from someone who identifies as trans. God forbid. We’re talking about biological males not exposing themselves around women and girls. Please get a grip.)

Sir, male plumbing remains, and if you expose that plumbing in the sight of the opposite sex you should pay the penalty for indecent exposure.

The truth is that the spa should be ashamed for defending the man. Those members of the public who also supported his “rights” should be ashamed. And the Times should be ashamed.

Alas, in today’s upside world, where perversion is celebrated and common decency is denigrated, shame is hard to find.

Back in 2016, during a debate over transgender access to school bathrooms and locker rooms, the Charlotte Observer infamously opined that, “Girls must try ‘overcoming discomfort’ of seeing ‘male genitalia’ in bathrooms.”

I commented in response, “Transanity indeed.”

Is there any other way to describe it? Do we need any further proof that we have lost our corporate minds?

I rest my case.

This article was originally published at AskDrBrown.org.

I write often about homosexuality and “trans”-cultism because there are no more serious threats to fundamental speech rights and religious liberty than the efforts to use public education, the law, Big Business, Big Tech, the mainstream news media, and the arts to normalize homosexuality and gender confusion.

In addition, individuals and families are being incalculably harmed by the corrosive lies of “LGB” and “T” activism. Parents’ rights to oversee their children’s moral education and medical care are being undermined and even stripped by “LGB” and “T” activists and their collaborators. And the temporal and eternal lives of individuals who experience same sex attraction and/or gender dysphoria are being destroyed.

My professional goals center on exposing the specious arguments and rhetoric, goals, and consequences of the unchecked movement to normalize homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation in the hope that clarity will result in greater cultural participation by conservatives. I hope to generate a sense of urgency and obligation that will lead conservatives to overcome their fears in order to protect both individuals and society.

All decent people should feel righteous anger when teachers tell children that homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation are deserving of respect and affirmation. We do not embody the love of Christ when we remain silent while body- and soul-destroying lies are affirmed to and in children and teens.

The lies of activists must be exposed, but in so doing, we must not lose sight of the suffering of those who experience disordered sexual attraction to persons of the same sex or who feel unrelenting discomfort with their biological sex. They do not choose their feelings, and they often suffer in shame, fear, and silence as most of us do when we experience disordered, sinful impulses.

With most or many other sins, our culture affirms the truth that is written on our hearts. Our mothers, fathers, teachers, storytellers, pastors, priests, and political leaders in their diverse cultural roles affirm many moral truths. But something very different happens today with regard to sexual sin.

With sexual sin, our depraved, carrion-devouring culture swoops down and offers the bleakly deterministic lie that homoerotic desire and cross-sex identification are inborn traits akin to skin color. They tell children and teens that acting on those desires is not only morally good but also essential to fulfillment. They tell children and teens that refusal to act on such impulses is an act of futility that will result in utterly unfulfilled, lonely lives or suicide. And they tell young, confused people that anyone who dissents from those claims hates them.

And those claims are touted as the “loving” response.

Well, there are other claims–claims that offer hope for a life defined by real love and real peace. It is a peace that passes all understanding and derives from knowing that sacrificing our desires to God’s will pleases a good, holy, just, and merciful God.

God offered up his perfect son for our sins. Jesus died a horrific death on the cross to pay the penalty for the sins of all who trust in him. Those who experience homosexual attraction or gender dysphoria are no different from those who experience all manner of other sinful impulses: While God may not remove every last vestige of sinful impulses, he will give believers the power to refuse to act on them.

A personal relationship with God does not free us from all sinful impulses, but it does free us from bondage to sin. Full and absolute freedom from the experience of sinful impulses will not come until the end of history. The persistence and seeming intractability of sinful impulses do not mean that the impulses are gifts from God. It means that sin grips the heart of fallen man.

Jeff Mirus, founder of Christendom College and Trinity Communications, implores Christians to reject “an ethos rooted in a deep fear of the judgment of the world.” Instead, we “need to consistently apply Christ’s light and Christ’s truth in order to rescue souls from the overpowering snare that has been fashioned for us out of the dominant contemporary blend of mistakes, lies and temptations regarding sex.”

Our friends and loved ones should be told that joy and peace come from choosing to live a life that pleases the creator of the universe. What an amazing idea. We humans have the capacity to please the omniscient, omnipotent, eternally existing creator of all creation. Never hearing that truth is tragic.

And our dear friends and loved ones who may never experience heterosexual attraction deserve to be told that a celibate life lived in submission to God is not a lonely, unfulfilled life. They too can have rich, intimate, deeply loving relationships within the body of Christ. They can have deep, loving, chaste same-sex friendships that can help restore the brokenness in their pasts. They can serve as surrogate aunts, uncles, grandmas, and grandpas for children who too are experiencing brokenness and loss. They deserve to be told that they are loved—not because of their sin–but, like the rest of us, despite it.

Our depraved world swims along the surface of a world so deep and wondrous, it is beyond imagining. And our fallen, depraved world that has no eyes to see or ears to hear beyond this all-too-consuming temporal life, chatters cacophonously, filling the hearts and minds of people with beguiling lies that lead to eternal separation from a good and holy God. If we truly love our friends and family members lost in sexual darkness, we must tell them the truth, no matter what the personal cost to us, always remembering that our salvation came at the greatest cost of all.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Sexual-Sin.mp3

Last week, the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus (SFGMC) released a video on YouTube that has garnered widespread and justifiable condemnation for their admission that “LGBT” activists seek to convert your children. It begins with a smugly delivered introduction by Troy Iwata who says,

To those of you out there who are still working against equal rights, we’ve a message for you.

By “equal rights,” Iwata evidently means the unilateral right to impose the anarchical sexual beliefs of the “LGBTQ” community on the entire nation while censoring all dissenting beliefs. If, however, he is referring solely to the legal right to have intrinsically non-marital same-sex unions recognized as marriages, they’ve got that. (Oddly, homosexual social justice warriors are not griping about the denial of the “equal rights” of kin-lovers to marry—at least, not yet.)

Here’s the musical message from Iwata, Daniel Quadrino, and scores of homosexuals:

You think we’re sinful, you fight against our rights, you say we all lead lives you can’t respect.

But you’re just frightened.

You think that we’ll corrupt your kids if our agenda goes unchecked.

Funny, just this once, you’re correct.

We’ll convert your children, happens bit by bit,

quietly and subtlety and you will barely notice it.

You can keep them from disco, warn about San Francisco,

make ’em wear pleated pants, we don’t care.

We’ll convert your children. We’ll make them tolerant and fair. 

At first, I didn’t get why you’d be so scared of us turning your children into accepting, caring people, but I see now why you’d have a problem with that.

Just like you worried they’ll change their group of friends, you won’t approve of where they go at night—to protest.

Or when you’ll be disgusted—”so gross”—when they start learning things online that you kept far from their sight—like information.

We’ll convert your children.  Yes, we will!

Reaching one and all, there’s really no escaping it, cause even grandma likes RuPaul.

And the world’s getting kinder, Gen Z’s gayer than Grindr.

Learn to love, learn to vote, face your fate.

We’ll convert your children, someone’s got to teach them not to hate.

We’re coming for them. We’re coming for your children. … 

Your children will care about fairness and justice for others.

Your children will work to convert all their sisters and brothers.

Then soon we’re almost certain, your kids will start converting you.

The gay agenda is coming home.

The gay agenda is here. … 

Get on board in a hurry, cuz the world always needs a bit more pride.

Pridefully proclaiming their goal to transform the moral beliefs of other people’s children is how homosexual activists demonstrate their respect, compassion, tolerance, and commitment to diversity. Mocking the worry of parents about the effects of a toxic sexual culture on their children’s beliefs–including religious beliefs–is how homosexual activists show their “love.”

Of course, they dishonestly recast their presumptuous efforts to “convert” the beliefs of other people’s children as an attempt to “turn” them into “accepting, caring,” “kinder” people, which assumes—but does not prove—that moral objections to homoerotic acts are lacking in compassion. True compassion and real love, though, depend on knowing what is true.

If homosexual acts are, in reality, objectively immoral, if they mar the image of God imprinted on men and women, if such acts degrade the human body, then it is neither caring nor kind to affirm such acts. The SFGMC does not even attempt to prove that volitional homosexual acts are moral acts—nor could they do so even if they tried. Homosexual activists demand and expect everyone in society to just accept their sexuality dogma.

In mentioning acceptance, the SFGMC makes no distinction between acceptance of people and approval of beliefs, feelings, and acts. Do they believe that acceptance of people requires approval of all their beliefs, feelings, and volitional acts? Do members of the chorus approve of all beliefs, feelings, and volitional acts of theologically orthodox Christians? 

The idea that authentic identity is constituted by unchosen, powerful, seemingly intractable feelings is an arguable assumption. The belief that acting on all unchosen, powerful, seemingly intractable sexual feelings is necessary for fulfillment is not only arguable but also dangerous. If the unproven assumptions of “LGB” and “T” activists are applied consistently, then all of society will be expected to “accept” all forms of sexually deviant behavior.

The SFGMC blames “manipulation from anti-LGBTQ media figures” for the intense backlash against their project, claiming that the video was done “tongue-in-cheek.” Online supporters of the video suggest that objections demonstrate what ignorant rubes conservatives are in that they can’t recognize satire. When sexual regressives can’t make an argument, they resort to mockery and name-calling.

While references to pleated pants and discos are tongue-in-cheek allusions, their claims that homosexual activists seek to convert children’s disapproval of homosexuality to approval are genuine.

Their tacit claim that moral disapproval of homosexual acts and relationships constitutes hatred and injustice is not a tongue-in-cheek claim.

Their hope to use other people’s children to “convert” their parents’ moral beliefs is not a tongue-in-cheek hope.

Their proclamation that they are coming for the hearts and minds of other people’s children is not a tongue-in-cheek proclamation. If you think it is, you haven’t been paying attention to what’s going on in government schools for the last three decades.

The SFGMC isn’t saying anything new. They’ve just converted longstanding and pernicious “LGBTQ” plans into a prideful anthem. Daniel Villarreal admitted those same goals a decade ago on the website Queerty:

We want educators to teach future generations of children to accept queer sexuality. … Recruiting children? You bet we are. …

The younger generation doesn’t fear homosexuality as much because they’re exposed to fags on TV, online, and at school. And I don’t know a single lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender person who wants that to stop. I for one certainly want tons of school children to learn that it’s OK to be gay, that people of the same sex should be allowed to legally marry each other, and that anyone can kiss a person of the same sex without feeling like a freak. And I would very much like for many of these young boys to grow up and start f*cking men. I want lots of young ladies to develop into young women who voraciously munch box. I want this just as badly as many parents want their own kids to grow up and rub urinary tracts together to trade proteins and forcefully excrete a baby.

I and a lot of other people want to indoctrinate, recruit, teach, and expose children to queer sexuality AND THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. Hell, our opponents even do the same. … [N]ot educating our kids about queer issues makes them ignorant, hateful little morons.

Iwata apparently doesn’t know any of the people he accuses of working to deny “rights,” because what conservatives are working against is the unchallenged promulgation of a set of arguable assumptions about the ontology and morality of volitional homoerotic acts, and the teleology of sex and marriage, particularly in government schools.

If homosexual desire is not biologically determined—and there is no scientific evidence that it is—then, it is likely that environment—i.e., nurture—contributes to its development. Don’t be duped by the mockers who claim it’s absurd to think ideas about homoeroticism can create feelings. Ideas can create feelings that then shape actions. By allowing young children to be exposed year after year to homosexuality-affirming ideas, parents are playing with fire—the fire of sexual desire ripped from its moral moorings.

In the book Male Colors: The Construction of Male Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan, Gary Leupp demonstrates the effect of culture in constructing homoerotic desire:

Nanshoku [male homoeroticism] … arose largely to compensate for men’s lack of female companionship, but at some point, its culture came so to influence the structure of male desire that its vitality no longer required the absence of women. Indeed, it remained a vigorous tradition in Tokugawa [Tokugawa period: 1603-1868] cities even as the institution of the female courtesan throve. … The iro [sexual desire] of most Tokugawa men was bisexual.

This eros was specifically constructed to mirror the hierarchical relations specified in Confucian thought and in feudal society; males were socialized to desire to penetrate younger males and to be penetrated by older males.

Anyone who believes homoerotic desire cannot be constructed or created by culture is naïve or ignorant. Homosexual activists know this, and they are coming for your children’s hearts, minds, and bodies.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Homosexuals-AGAIN-Admit-Their-Goal-Is-to-Convert-Children.mp3

Writer Lauren Rowello’s peculiar perspective on attending a “pride” parade with her husband and young children five years ago was published in the Washington Post on June 29, 2021 and provides yet more evidence of the existence of the slippery slope leftists deny:

[O]ur elementary-schooler pointed in the direction of oncoming floats, raising an eyebrow at a bare-chested man in dark sunglasses whose black suspenders clipped into a leather thong. The man paused to be spanked playfully by a partner with a flog. “What are they doing?” my curious kid asked as our toddler cheered them on. The pair was the first of a few dozen kinksters who danced down the street, laughing together as they twirled their whips and batons, some leading companions by leashes. At the time, my children were too young to understand the nuance of the situation, but I told them the truth: That these folks were members of our community celebrating who they are and what they like to do.

Oh, what a merry image Rowello tries to rhetorically construct, but not even her references to playfulness, cheering, dancing, laughing, and twirling can conceal the grotesque event she seeks to defend.

On what does Rowello base her assertion that it is true that flogging is “who they are”? Does she just mean that the kinksters really, really, really like to flog each other? If so, do all intense, persistent, unchosen sexual desires constitute “who” people “are,” and, therefore, the acts impelled by those desires are intrinsically moral and should be publicly celebrated? Does that go for fisting, urophilia, and masturbation?

The mentally and morally unwell Rowello, who claims to possess “expertise” in “mental health” and “queer identity,” describes herself as,

a gendervague person who is married to a trans woman, topics related to gender and queer identity are an important focus of their [sic] work. Lauren is a former sex worker and teen parent. … A Philadelphia area native, Lauren is an autistic person raising two neurodivergent kids in South Jersey. They [sic]homeschool and spends lots of time in the garden.

Apparently, Rowello views “pride” parades as homeschool field trips, yet more opportunities to indoctrinate her children and all other children with perverse views of sexual morality:

[P]olicing how others show up doesn’t protect or uplift young people. Instead, homogenizing self-expression at Pride will do more harm to our children than good. When my own children caught glimpses of kink culture, they got to see that the queer community encompasses so many more nontraditional ways of being, living, and loving. … If we want our children to learn and grow from their experiences at Pride, we should hope that they’ll encounter kink when they attend. How else can they learn about the scope and vitality of queer life? … Children who witness kink culture are reassured that alternative experiences of sexuality and expression are valid.

“Kink” is an umbrella term that encompasses all manner of sexual deviance. Once again, the desperately wicked human heart is proving capable of inventing and enjoying the most peculiar, repulsive, and degrading uses of the human body, justifying such practices by deeming them integral to “authentic identity.” As long as an act is “consensual,” it is moral—in the view of sexual regressives.

Decades ago, leftists began the largely successful effort to normalize homoeroticism—to set it apart from other forms of sexual deviance. The disordered desire to engage in homoerotic acts morphed into “authentic identity”—that is to say, “who they are.”

Next came the effort to normalize cross-sex identification, which is still going gangbusters but finally receiving some serious pushback.

Largely behind the scenes but peeking out from its dark corner is the movement to normalize polyamory—or as its practitioners prefer to call it “consensual non-monogamy.” (There it is again, that tricksy little all-purpose term “consent.”)

And now we’re seeing the unholy effort to expand the infinitely elastic boundaries of “normal” and “identity” to include fetishes.

Every year, heated debates about the appropriateness of kink in “pride” parades take place within the “queer” community. Rowello counters,

Anti-kink advocates tend to manipulate language about safety and privacy by asserting that attendees are nonconsensually exposed to overt displays of sexuality.

Well, if that don’t beat all, a language-manipulating sexual anarchist accusing other sexual anarchists of manipulating language. Pot, meet Kettles.

Those leftists, including some homosexuals, perhaps sensing the intrinsic moral offense of kinky sexual practices, object to their presence in “pride” parades. The problem for the objectors is that decades ago, while working feverishly to normalize homoeroticism, they jettisoned any and all appeals to a source of objective, transcendent morality. They settled on “consent” as the only criterion that determines whether acts are moral or immoral.

Since they made “consent” the only constitutive feature of morality, they now have to stretch and twist it into knots to justify their moral opposition to children being exposed to kink. Their argument goes something like this: Children who are brought by their parents to “pride” parades don’t consent to seeing men wearing dog collars and buttless chaps being flogged. Lacking a framework or language to justify their moral intuition about the immorality of children being exposed to kink, they absurdly resort to appeals to consent.

Other than an intuitive sense that men flogging each others’ bare arses is wrong, what would account for the belief of leftists that consent is necessary for children to see such public displays? Why is consent necessary for seeing displays of sadomasochism but not necessary for seeing public displays of homoerotic relationships or cross-dressing?

Rowello continues her counter-attack against those who want to ban kinksterism at “pride” parades:

The most outrageous claim is that innocent bystanders are forced to participate in kink simply by sharing space with the kink community, as if the presence of kink at Pride is a perverse exhibition that kinksters pursue for their own gratification. But kinksters at Pride are not engaged in sex acts—and we cannot confuse their self-expression with obscenity. … anti-kink rhetoric echoes the same socialized disgust people have projected onto other queer people. … Kink visibility is a reminder that any person can and should shamelessly explore what brings joy and excitement. We don’t talk to our children enough about pursuing sex to fulfill carnal needs that delight and captivate us in the moment.

Her objection to obscenity sounds downright puritanical compared to her advocacy of shameless self-indulgence in carnality.

One could make a reasonable case that the public flogging of bare buttocks by kinksters actually is an exhibition pursued for sexual gratification. And why should that bother Rowello? Rowello implies that engaging in public sex acts would constitute “obscenity” and would, therefore, be inappropriate at a “pride” parade.

But what if consensual public sex acts constitute for some “nontraditional ways of being, living, and loving”? What if engaging in public sex acts is “who they are and what they like”? What if some people delight and are captivated by public sex? By excluding those whose identities include public sex acts, wouldn’t Rowello be guilty of “policing who shows up” and “homogenizing self-expression”? In opposing public sex aficionados/identitarians isn’t Rowello expressing the “same socialized disgust people have projected onto other queer people”?

“Brenan Duffy”

One of those “queer people” that Rowello likes to talk about is her 31-year-old, cross-dressing, cross-sex hormone-doping husband and the father of her two children, Brenan Duffy. In Vogue Magazine, Duffy (whom Rowello refers to as a “trans” woman) describes his struggles growing up with both a verbally abusive alcoholic father and gender dysphoria, which Duffy recasts as  his “true identity.” He shares his escape into his mother’s closet, wearing her gowns, swimsuits, and tight black skirts:

[H]er closet. … allowed me to step out of the constraints of my own literal and figurative closets into a world where I could safely explore what it meant to be me. … [T]his nook provided valuable refuge throughout my childhood and offered much-needed comfort in times of hardship and isolation. When my best friend died unexpectedly, when neighborhood bullies became unbearable, and during the worst of my father’s alcoholic episodes, it was my retreat.

Duffy attributes his own battles with “debilitating depression, cynicism, and alcoholism” to “false shame and decades of repression,” but could the impulse to reject his sex, like his depression and alcoholism, be caused by his father’s abuse and other factors? We aren’t supposed to ask questions like that. The disordered “queer” community to which Rowello and her unfortunate husband belong command the world—including all children—to affirm them and every deviant sexual practice they enjoy.

Don’t be deceived by the hollow faux-indignant howls that the slippery slope doesn’t exist. It does, and the howls you hear come from ravenous wolves.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/The-Slippery-Slope-Leftists-Claim-Doesnt-Exist.mp3

I recently read a very interesting, and brave, editorial from Bill Donohue of the Catholic League. It appeared on AFA’s national news service – One News Now. He points out the contradiction in the efforts to remove statues all across America because of how the culture now views the words or actions of certain individuals which can often cloud how they are remembered today for their larger contributions.

The “woke” liberal culture has now even questioned statues of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and some abolitionists who worked to end slavery because they may have said things in certain ways reflecting their era about race or slaves that are frowned upon today. This cancel culture movement has even questioned Martin Luther King’s teachings and gone after people like Christopher Columbus and George Washington.

Donahue applies this new revisionist view to the homosexual movement. He wonders why corporations went over the top in promoting June as “Pride Month” when so many founders of the Pride movement were child molesters, supportive of child molestation, or other abhorrent behaviors.

For example, Harry Hay who is considered the founder of the modern gay rights movement supported adults having sex with minors stating that “young males would love it.” Hay admitted that he was molested by a 25-year-old adult male when he was 14, referring it as a “most beautiful gift.” He criticized homosexual parade organizers who tried to exclude NAMBLA (the North American Man Boy Love Association which advocates for pedophilia and the repeal of all age of consent laws) stating, “NAMBLA walks with me.” Hay also had connections to the Communist Party including setting up an organization of homosexual communists in the early 1950’s called the Mattachine Society.

Brenda Howard, who organized the first gay pride march in 1970 and was known as the “Mother of Pride” was an open advocate for sadomasochism, bondage, and polyamory.  Larry Kramer, founder of ACT-UP was also an advocate for NAMBLA. Gilbert Baker, the creator of the rainbow flag, was anti-Catholic and also reported to be a member of NAMBLA. Harvey Milk, a San Francisco politician memorialized in a Hollywood movie, and praised by President Barack Obama, was known to have had a live-in relationship with a young, runaway, 16-year-old boy when Milk was in his 30’s.

Donahue opposes the removal of many of our historic figures’ statues but wonders why these morally compromised founders of the gay rights movement are not held to similar standards when their beliefs and actions are far more problematic. “Why is it OK to trash Harry Truman but not Harry Hay?” Donohue asked.

It’s not a pretty subject, but it is a contradiction that our culture does not want to consider as it rushes to embrace an “anything-goes” ethic of sexual behavior.

(Note: In 2008, the Centers for Disease Control reported that homosexual and bisexual males were abused as children at a rate three times higher than heterosexual males. Other studies have found higher rates of childhood abuse among lesbian and bisexual women.)

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.

Written by Steve Bruns

It seems like every year I see more and more people who identify as Christians siding with the LGBTQ agenda.  This seems to be even more prevalent this month, considering that it’s “pride month,” with many who identify as Christians showing their pride in homosexuality.

As a Christian, I will never take pride in something the Bible clearly says God detests.

As a Christian, I believe that there is a war between good and evil, between God and Satan, and as a Christian, I will never turn my back on God and His Word to side with what the Bible says is a sin. In doing so, I’d be siding with Satan himself.

Unfortunately, that is exactly what I think is happening not only on a personal level with many who identify as Christians but also with an ever increasing number of our churches as well.

The Bible is very clear that homosexuality is a sin and that marriage is between a man and a woman. The unfortunate reality, though, is that many who consider themselves Christians deny or ignore this.

In Genesis 19, you’ll find the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, in which God destroys both cities as well as everyone living in them due to rampant homosexuality.

Jump ahead to Leviticus and you’ll find the following:

“You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.” (Leviticus 18:23)

“If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination.” (Leviticus 20:13)

Some people will dismiss those verses, saying that it’s just Old Testament law, or claim they are no longer applicable. Yet in the sermon on the mount, Jesus says the following:

“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished.

Therefore whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 5:17-20)

Jump ahead a few more books in the New Testament and you’ll find that Paul says,

“For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.”  (Romans 1:26-27)

Jump ahead one more book in the New Testament and you’ll find this:

“Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10)

If you are going to call yourself a Christian, how can you ignore what the Bible says?

Go back to Romans, and you will read,

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” (Romans 12:2)

If you ignore God’s word in the Bible, and instead side with the sinful ways of the world today, whatever they may be, are you not going against Romans 12:2?

I fully understand that the Bible teaches us to love our neighbors as ourselves and I absolutely agree with that. However ,if we are going to follow this, should we not also follow a biblical definition of love?

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-6)

If you are going to love someone with a Biblical definition of love, you cannot rejoice in their sin. You cannot “celebrate pride.” I am not saying you should hate anyone who practices homosexuality, as we shouldn’t hate any human being. However, we shouldn’t rejoice or take pride in their sin, just as we shouldn’t rejoice or take pride in theft, adultery, or any other sin. None of those are being promoted as normal, unlike what we see with the LGBTQ issues.

Ultimately, if you are going to believe in God and be a Christian, part of that is the hope of someday going to Heaven through our faith in Christ. In the book of Matthew, you’ll find the parable of “The Narrow and Wide Gates.” Those verses say the following;

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” (Matthew 7:13-14)

In other words, not everyone who calls himself a Christian will get into heaven. That is why it’s important to try to follow all of God’s Word and not conform to the wicked ways of the world, as mentioned earlier. If you do you risk that, Jesus says,

“On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name? And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.” (Matthew 7:22-23)

In today’s world, the Democratic Party and other left-wing activists present themselves as social justice warriors as they engage in a constant push of this perverse agenda. It floods our newsfeeds on social media, perverting the minds of our children by pushing the LGBTQ agenda in classrooms, TV shows, and movies. We hear of men pretending to be women and unfairly competing against women in otherwise all-female sporting events. We even have churches teaching their members to ignore God’s word and to celebrate what God Himself is clearly against. All this is being done in the name of social justice, making the following come to mind:

“Even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no wonder that his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. In the end they will get the punishment their wicked deeds deserve.” (2 Corinthians 14-15)

I’m a firm believer that we as Christians, as well as our churches, need to speak out against this. By remaining silent while the constant push of the LBGTQ agenda is the only voice that is heard, we are helping it to be normalized within a generation. I am done being silent.

“….As for me and my house, we will serve the lord.” (Joshua 24:15)

By all means, share this post if you agree.

Final thought: unfortunately, many will have issues with what I’ve said and will likely try to use it against me or insult me as a result of it. They do that to try to silence those whom they disagree with. That is almost always the case anytime you disagree with those on the Left. However I have zero issue with this, as Jesus spoke of it as well:

“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:11-12)

Steve Bruns is Christian husband, father, village trustee, and a thoughtful gardener. He and his family live in the southern suburbs of Chicago.

It’s all but impossible to miss. LGBTQ pride is being pushed on us from every angle and on an endless array of websites.

The Rotten Tomatoes movie review site is celebrating the “200 Best LGBTQ+ Movies of All Time.” (Yes, the best 200. I can remember when the first gay kiss on TV caused a massive uproar.)

Amazon points to a constant stream of gay-themed programming along with gay-themed publications. As an Amazon website announced, “Amazon enters June bursting ‘with Pride.’”

Indeed, we are told, “Pride Month is all about celebrating love and equality, and today, glamazon, Amazon’s LGBTQIA+ affinity group, raised the new Progress Pride flag, at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters. The new flag includes pink, white, and blue to represent the trans community, and black and brown to represent people of color. The design celebrates the many intersections and facets of identity within the LGBTQIA+ community, and its raising is just the start of dozens of activities and events Amazon has planned for June.”

Not to be outdone, an ad running on the ESPN app (and, presumably, on the TV network) during a live sporting event not only features gay and lesbian couples but also a dancing, obese, bearded woman.  (Is this a biological man who has transitioned to female, or the reverse? Either way, is this something to celebrate?)

As expected, there have been major, gay-related announcements, including the news that NFL player Carl Nassib became the first active player to announce his homosexuality. And then this, from our military: “The Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada recently hosted its first-ever drag queen show at one of its on-base dining and entertainment clubs, according a base spokesperson.”

Surely, this is why people enlist in the Air Force and train at Nellis, where Air Force pilots on the base’s Warfare Center “undergo the most demanding advanced air combat training in the country.” They enlist to see the Drag Queen shows!

Even while filling out a short response form for a new tech company, I could not avoid being confronted with LGBTQ+ activism. (I don’t think this was because of Pride month. It’s just symptomatic of the times.)

One of the survey questions was, “How would you describe your gender?”

At one point in the not too distant past, this was a no brainer, with two simple choices: Male or Female. But not today, when not even Male or Female are simple.

Instead, these were the choices offered (and I quote them verbatim): “Female (including transgender women); Male (including transgender men); Prefer to self-describe as ______ (non-binary, gender-fluid, agender, please specify); None of the above.”

So, not only must we be told that “female” includes men who identify as women and “male” includes women who identify as men (and who was this for, since those who identify as such will already fill out the form accordingly). But we must be given examples of the various ways we can self-describe in case we needed some hints. And then, if none of that works – which is quite mystifying, since you can fill in any self-description you want – just say, “None of the above.”

Is this not gender madness? Is this not a complete departure of biological reality?

And what of the news that “Laurel” Hubbard, a biological male weightlifter, will be competing against biological women in the Tokyo Olympics, representing New Zealand?

While Hubbard be getting a lot of attention in the days ahead, let’s be careful not to forget the name of New Zealand’s “Kuinini ‘Nini’ Manumua, the woman who was ultimately displaced by inclusion of Laurel Hubbard. She’s 21, and it would have been her first Olympics.”

Getting back to Gay Pride month, there was the announcement that transgender reality star Jazz Jennings has gained “almost 100 lbs. in a little less than 2 years.”

As he explained, “I suffer from binge-eating disorder, a disease in which I’m not only addicted to food, but I eat it in large quantities. My binging, along with an increased appetite I experience from some of the meds I’m on, has caused me to gain almost 100 lbs. in a little less than 2 years. I’m posting this photo because it’s time for me to address my weight gain and hold myself accountable.”

For those unfamiliar with Jazz, he became famous as he transitioned from male to female on reality TV. The “meds” he referenced are related to his attempt to live as a woman. And while Jazz used this moment to announce that his TV series would be resuming, that it is not what caught my attention.

Instead, it was the reference to his weight gain, attributed in part to his meds. But, Jazz was excited to announce, he was now able to be even more open and forthcoming because there are now so many out and proud transgender teens.

For Jazz, this was a cause of rejoicing. For many others (including me), it was a cause of pain. And that’s what leads to the “sobering moment” referenced in the title of this article.

As reported on the Daily Wire, “A new documentary released earlier this week by the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network seeks to expose how some in the medical industry are pushing hesitant parents to medically and surgically transition their children.

“‘Trans Mission: What’s the Rush to Reassign Gender?’ . . . explores the sobering consequences of gender transition on children by interviewing 17 doctors, parents, activists, and adults who sought medical affirmation of their gender identities.”

Sobering consequences indeed.

I encourage you to take 51 minutes to watch for yourself and come to your own conclusions. And if you’re not really interested in the subject, then watch it for the sake of the children. Here’s the video:

Let this be what we remember about LGBT Pride Month in 2021.

Just in time for LGBTQ Pride Month, the Illinois Senate passed House Bill 2590 requiring county clerks to issue new marriage certificates upon request to reflect legal name changes for transgender and non-binary individuals. It passed by a vote of 82 to 28 in the House on April 22, 2021 and by a vote of 49 to 5 in the Illinois Senate on May 28, 2021.

State Senator Sara Feigenholtz (D-Chicago), the sponsor of the bill, also sponsored Senate Bill 139 which passed in both the Illinois House and Illinois Senate a few weeks earlier and allows the removal of “gendered” language from marriage certificates. This proposal passed out of the Illinois Senate on April 21, 2021 by a vote of 44 to 13, and out of the Illinois House on May 19, 2021 by a vote of 78 to 30.

However, Feigenholtz didn’t believe SB 139 went far enough. “Non-binary and transgender individuals should be able to have a marriage license that lists their correct name,” she said.

Hence, the introduction of HB 2590, which bars any additional markings alluding to the individual’s former name from appearing on the new marriage certificates. The bill only allows county clerks can only change names on marriage certificates when the marriage occurred in Illinois and legal documentation of the name change is provided.

People in the nonbinary and transgender communities along with their allies’ say the use of their former names, called “deadnaming,” is offensive and causes them trauma. That is why Feigenholtz and others say they pushed for HB 2590s passage.

Another bill, HB 9, also supported by the LGBTQ community, narrowly missed passage in the spring legislative session. HB 9 would have required the State Registrar of Records to establish a new birth certificate when receiving a signed statement (called self-attestation) that an individual has undergone treatment for the purpose of gender transition. Under current law, a treating doctor must sign off on the change.

While the bill passed in the Illinois House by a vote of 66 to 45, it failed to pass by one vote in the Illinois Senate and was placed on postponed consideration. The bill can be brought back up for another vote at any time the Senate convenes during this session.

House Bill 9 was introduced by State Representative Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz (D-Glenview) who describes it as aligning “with the requirements for driver’s licenses in Illinois that do not require a doctor’s note.”

Proponents of the bill claim the change is needed to aid transgender and binary persons secure vital documents even if they have not transitioned medically. So, if the bill were to pass, an individual would only have to state that they are different gender to have their gender changed on their birth certificate. No medical proof of medical intervention would be necessary.

Capitol News Illinois (CNI) reported Myles Brady Davis, press secretary and director of communication at Equality Illinois, told a House Committee, “Access to a birth certificate is the first step in securing important identity documents needed for many aspects of daily life.”

Outrageous Tweet ‘o’ the Month is this from Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel on June 2, 2021, in honor of “pride” month:

@GOP is proud to have doubled our LGBTQ support over the last 4 years, and we will continue to grow our big tent by supporting measures that promote fairness and balance protections for LGBTQ Americans and those with deeply religious beliefs.

Let’s break that down into all its troubling pieces for a close analysis that should reveal why McDaniel must step down:

• The chair of the RNC is celebrating the month dedicated to sexual sin, thereby revealing her moral, social, and political ignorance.

• “@GOP” makes clear that McDaniel is speaking for the GOP.

• McDaniel and her collaborators with their big fat noses in the now-purple tent intend to support policies, practices, and laws that homosexuals and cross-sex impersonators want and create.

• McDaniel believes that “identities” constituted by disordered subjective sexual feelings and perverse sexual acts must be treated in policy, practice, and law like objective, non-behavioral, morally neutral conditions like race (or skin color). Which other deviant sexual desires and acts does McDaniel think should be treated “fairly?” Should the GOP grow its colossal tent by supporting measures that promote fairness for Zoophiliac Americans? Polyamorists? Kin-lovers? Infantilists? Sadomasochists? If not, why not? Why just homoeroticism and cross-sex impersonation?

• McDaniel and her collaborators evidently believe there exist policies, practices, and laws that treat homosexuals and cross-sex impersonators unfairly. What does “fairness” mean to McDaniel? How specifically does she define it? In what specific ways does McDaniel think those who are sexually attracted to members of their same sex or who pretend to be the sex they aren’t are treated unfairly? What policies and/or laws would tent-expander McDaniel change?

• McDaniel inadvertently revealed that she is definitely not one of “those with deeply religious beliefs” to whom she referred—at least not one of those with theologically orthodox religious beliefs. No person with theologically orthodox beliefs would assert or imply that homosexuals and cross-sex impersonators are treated unfairly in law or public policy. No theologically orthodox person believes that Christians, Christian churches, Christian parachurch organizations, or Christian educational institutions should be prohibited from living in accordance with biblical precepts on sexuality, whereas “LGBTQ” activists do. And to be clear, believing homoerotic acts and relationships or cross-sex impersonation are immoral acts and making decisions based on those beliefs is not unfair to anyone.

• Word to McDaniel: There is no way to balance the desires (euphemistically renamed “protections”) of “LGBTQ” Americans and protections of the religious liberty of theologically orthodox Christians. It is a zero-sum game, and right now, religious liberty is losing to sexual libertinism.

To have the head of the Republican Party celebrate the egregious sins of homosexuality and cross-sex impersonation should shock and outrage Republicans. “LGB” and “T” activism pose the greatest threat to First Amendment protections of speech and religious exercise ever posed in American history. The normalization and celebration of homoeroticism and cross-sex impersonation are destroying individual lives, the bodies of children, families, privacy rights, the safety of girls and women, women’s sports, churches, government schools, colleges and universities, and the arts. And we have the head of the only party ostensibly committed to protecting life, the family, and religious liberty celebrating that which is destroying America.

With unprincipled, myopic pragmatists like that, who needs enemies.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to GOP leaders (state and nation) urging them to call for Ronna McDaniel to step down for her ignorance and failure to uphold foundational principles critical to the health and future of America.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Ronna-McDaniel-Must-Go.mp3

Don’t think for a minute that Springfield Dems are done genuflecting to homosexuals and cross-sex impersonators with the passage of the “Perversion Positive” sex ed bill, the “Free Tampons for Boys” bill, and the “Babies for EVERYONE” bill, which forces insurance companies to pay for “infertility” treatments for single people without sexual partners and homosexuals in naturally non-reproductive relationships. Oh, no, no, no. Morally fluid Springfield decree-makers have barely gotten started.

They also passed along partisan lines a bill (Illinois General Assembly – Full Text of SB1730 (ilga.gov) that amends the Business Corporation Act of 1983, which was written to address the underrepresentation of women and racial minorities on corporate boards. If signed into law, it will take effect this coming January and will require that “public corporations … report the self-identified sexual orientation and self-identified gender identity of its directors.”

If Governor J.B. Pritzker signs this bill into law, any publicly held domestic or foreign corporation with its “principal executive office in Illinois” will be required to submit an annual report to the secretary of state that includes the homoerotic predilections and “trans”-cultic practices of members of its board of directors.

The secretary of state will then send this information to the University of Illinois, which will issue a Chinese-social-credit-like “rating” to each corporation and issue edicts “identify strategies” to coerce corporations to get more homosexuals and cross-sex impersonators on their boards pronto.

Why—some Illinoisans are wondering—is Big Brother constructing ways to force corporations to procure more board members who prefer erotic relations with persons of the same sex and more board members who fancy themselves to be the sex they aren’t and never can be? Silly people, the reason is obvious. Corporate ethics and profitability are constituted by the number of homosexuals and cross-sex impersonators sitting on corporate boards.

There is, however, a problem with this law. This short but powerful tool for “equity” mentions “demographic diversity” three times, and yet, there is no mention of polyamorists—also known as consensual non-monogamists—autogynephiliacs, transableists, or cupiosexuals? Do any corporate boards in Illinois have members who identify as polyamorists, autogynephiliacs, transableists, or cupiosexuals? Does the secretary of state or University of Illinois have that information? If not, why not?

Despite portraying themselves as warriors for “demographic diversity” and “inclusion,” Springfield Democrats apparently want to remain mired on the wrong side of history.

Pulling my tongue out of my cheek, I will try to clarify the intellectual waters that leftists muddy with redefinitions and bad analogies: Neither “sexual orientation”—which really only means homoeroticism—nor cross-sex impersonation is analogous to biological sex or race. Whereas biological sex and race (or skin color) are non-behavioral, objective, 100% heritable, and in all cases immutable conditions, both homoeroticism  and cross-sex impersonation are constituted by subjective and often fluid feelings and volitional behaviors—like polyamory, autogynephilia, transableism, and cupiosexuality. There remains no rational or ethical justification for lawmakers to coerce companies to base board membership on potential board members’ sexual feelings.

The Great Awokening in Illinois continues, and while it does, let’s see how many more corporations and families flee Illinois.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Springfield-LawmakersGenuflect-to-LGBTQ-Communitym4a.mp3