Tag Archive for: gender identity

Transgenderism and Transhumanism: An Interview with Dr. Gerard Casey

/in , , , , , , , , /by

The Washington Stand recently had the opportunity to speak with author, legal scholar, and philosopher Dr. Gerard Casey on the subject of transgenderism, which he sees as a precursor to transhumanism. Casey holds law degrees from the University of London (LLB) and University College Dublin (LLM) as well as a primary degree in philosophy from University College Cork, an MA and Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame and the higher doctorate, DLitt, from the National University of Ireland. He led the Christian Solidarity Party in Ireland in the 1990s and has published several books, including “Hidden Agender: Transgenderism’s Struggle against Reality.”

The Washington Stand: It’s hard not to be inundated these days with pro-transgender propaganda. But transhumanism is not a word that most people are familiar with. Can you maybe explain to us, just clarifying terms, what that is?

Dr. Gerard Casey: You’re right. It’s a sort of a niche idea. Less niche than it used to be. It began in around the 1980s and 1990s in the sort of Silicon Valley area. And as might be expected, many of the people who were enthusiastic about it come from that sort of background. But generally speaking, what it means is if you take the two elements of the term trans and humanism, trans meaning across or beyond, it means beyond humanism. And the idea is that human beings, such as we are, are limited in our capacities, largely because of our embodiment. And there is a possibility, according to the Transhumanists, that we can go beyond what we are now to become something very different — in fact, almost a new species so that we can leave aside the limitations of our bodies which would allow us to go travel to other planets. We can enhance our cognitive and sensory capacities so that we can know more and know better and see and experience and hear better. We can, according to them, if we undergo certain changes — especially, for example, either meshing with machines, robots, or cyborgs, or, even better, leaving aside all reasonably concrete forms of embodiment. Obviously, we would not be biological because we want to leave that behind — that’s too fragile to subsist in some way, if you like, on some kind of internet, ethernet, as it were — so that we are effectively freed from all the limitations of embodiment, at all. And in so doing, live, as it were, forever, and so leave behind the limitations of humanity as it is now. That’s about as much as I can say, really.

TWS: And you see a link, a correlation, between transgenderism and transhumanism. What do you see as the key indicators, so to speak, of that link?

CASEY: Well, I suppose you might say the clue is in the word ‘trans.’ So transgenderism really is the idea that biology doesn’t determine what we are in terms of our gender and gender is — well, who knows exactly what it is? It’s a much-disputed term, but the one thing it’s not equivalent to (unless you want just to be pleonastic) is sex. Gender is, if you want to try and make sense of it … I suppose, your sense of masculinity or femininity along a sort of scale or a spectrum. And people can identify, obviously in an infinite number of ways along here, but the idea then that makes it radical is that our gender turns out to be more fundamental than our biology. And in fact, it needs to be protected and people need to have, if you like, legal protection for this and to be able to switch from one gender to another.

Now, what causes all the problems, of course, is that the terms “gender” and “sex” either mean something different or are the same. And what you see in all of the literature here and all the propaganda is a systematic switch back and forth between the two. Very often, in many cases, gender is taken to be the equivalent of sex. So a man who is said to be a trans woman is said to change sex, which is very strange, because whatever one might think about gender — whatever that is, and we can dispute it — it’s clearly not the case that somebody who is of the male sex can by any means become a member of the female sex.

And I’m not saying, of course, that somebody can’t simulate it or look like it or, you know, wear clothes or make up or dress their hair or even have surgery, which will alter the external features. But none of that is actually effective in changing sex for the simple reason that one sex, apart from the sort of obvious secondary characteristics that manifest themselves, what sex really has to do with is the role one plays in reproduction. And there is nothing whatsoever you can do to a man to change his role in reproduction. He cannot perform the role that a woman plays in reproduction. And there’s nothing that you can do to a woman to change her role in reproduction. She cannot do anything. Of course, you can simulate aspects of the bodily structure of males or females, if you like, by surgery.

But the thing is, it’s not just a question of what something looks like, it’s a question of what it can actually do and what it performs. That’s essential, right? And people sort of miss that. So it’s a very strange idea, but it’s one that has gone from being extremely niche, even more niche than transhumanism, to suddenly becoming, as it were, a flavor of the month in a whole host of organizations, governments, schools, universities, businesses — all seem to be buying into this with what degree of authenticity? I don’t know whether they’re doing it just to be hip and cool and fruity, as we might say. Whether they actually believe any of this is another question.

But whether or which, it’s having a remarkably destructive effect on a lot of things, particularly on children and children’s education. Indeed, for very young children who are in large measure being encouraged to think of themselves as being of a different gender/sex to what they are, especially at an age when they are vulnerable, to being unsure of what it is that they are. You can end up with a situation where these children are encouraged or given hormones which will affect their development, sometimes distorting their ability, their puberty and indeed preventing them from normal development, to the even more radical surgery, which can involve the detachment of body parts — penises in the case of men, breasts and so on, in the case of women, and then reconstructive surgery to simulate penises in women and vaginas in men. But, of course, that doesn’t it will work because all you get if you remove a man’s — I hope this isn’t gross for anybody — but if you remove a man’s penis and simulate a vagina, you don’t get one. You get a hole which, given the way the body works, tries to close. Okay. And therefore, it has to be permanently opened, kept open. That’s not the way a real vagina works and so on. Similarly, a penis isn’t just a strange appendage that a man has at the front of his body, but it works, as we all know in particular ways. And unless it’s doing that, it’s not really a penis. So it’s a very, very strange idea. But even stranger, as I said, is the rapidity and the extent of the, pardon the pun, the penetration into institutions.

TWS: And it’s everywhere. You can’t go anywhere without seeing it now. Aside from just the verbiage of it with “trans” that’s linked to transhumanism, you’ve drawn a series of correlations between the two, transgenderism and transhumanism. What are some of the distinct correlations?

CASEY: I probably wasn’t as clear as I might be about this. So both of them, what they really have in common, although they do it in different ways — the commonality is the rejection of the embodied nature of human beings. Transgender says this is not essential. We can have human beings that are essentially plastic. We can make ourselves to be anything that we want. And in that way, as it were, leave the body behind or diminish its significance. Transhumanists similarly think that human nature is not fixed or limited. It is for them limitless and the body is for them not so much plastic as rather an obstruction to their plans for the future development of a new species. So they reject embodiment in the end as well. They do it in different ways.

TWS: You recently spoke at a conference where you made a point about the dynamic between the body and the soul. How do both transgenderism and transhumanism reject that fundamental truth?

CASEY: Well, as I just said, they both, as it were, reject any essential connection between what it is to be human and being embodied. They do it in different ways, but that’s essentially what they do. So transgenderism rejects it by suggesting that our gendered nature is somehow given to us in a way that is completely independent of our biological structure, which is a really strange sort of thing. So that in fact, for the transgender ideologists, you can change your sex, but you can’t change your gender, which is really odd when you think about it, because you would have thought it would be the other way around. No.

Some transhumanists reject the body because of its limitations, its fragility, its inability to support what they think it is that we need to do. The limitations that are placed on our knowledge, our cognition, our relatively short lifespans. And for them, the goal is to do two things — one, a kind of immortality. I mean, they really do think that it would be possible for human beings, even embodied because of developments in nanotechnology and so on, to live for much more extended periods than we now do, maybe even by a factor of 10. But even more importantly, to live, as it were, without a body at all, because they, like the transgenders, think of human beings as being essentially minds. And therefore, these minds can be transposed, uploaded into machines, and so live forever.

And indeed, then the transcendent dimension of transhumanism, which turns it into a kind of religion, is that they see our task, as it were, of filling the entire universe eventually. And for that, the body really has to be left behind because there is no possibility of anything like extensive cosmological travels with a body we can hardly get off our own planet. Getting out of our solar system would be something major. Anything more than that clearly requires leaving the body behind.

TWS: In your view, what can Christians do to effectively confront or combat the transgender agenda? Or is it maybe already too firmly entrenched in our society? And as sort of an addendum to that question, would combating transgenderism help prevent or at least mitigate the onslaught of transhumanism?

CASEY: A good question. I think in the case of transgenderism, that it’s doomed to fail. It’s so blatantly crazy that it’s simply unsupported. And I see it as having, if you like, the evanescence of an intellectual fashion. Now, it can last a reasonably long time. And of course, its institutional installation will preserve it. But I think, in fact, I suspect there are signs already of a turn here. There is certainly mounting resistance in a way that there wasn’t even when I published my book in 2021. And since then, I’ve seen more and more and more — especially women, who feel themselves strangely, biologically disenfranchised more so than men — are beginning to resist. And again, because women have perhaps a greater day-to-day concern with the upbringing of their children and they’re beginning to see the effects that this is having on them.

So there are strong signs, as it were, of resistance mounting. And I do hope that in time there will be a return to something approaching normality. We’ll always carry the wounds of this particular movement, though. I mean, it won’t go without leaving damage behind. But I see that as being overcome-able. It may not be in my lifetime, but then I’ve got a relatively short number of years left. But I would think in the short, in the medium term, it’s something that will be defeated. It won’t go away on its own. And the resistance needs to mount and to be mounted and to get stronger. And we need to recapture law, we need to recapture the universities, we need to recapture government, we need to recapture churches, all of whom have sort of bought into this, many for reasons they think are good and nondiscriminatory reasons and so on. I mean, not necessarily bad intentions, but nonetheless foolish.

The transhumanist thing is a little different in that there are sort of three dimensions to transhumanism. One is that it does touch on something which it seems to me is perfectly in order, which is what we always have done as human beings, attempted to adapt ourselves to the world in which we live, not to freeze to death in the winter because we light fires. There’s nothing wrong with that. By cultivating the fields so that we don’t have to go trekking after animals all the time, so that we domesticate our animals and our food. So we’ve always used technology. And the history of mankind, in a sense, is almost a history of technology as we were. And of course, the most explosive one, of course, was the industrial Revolution, which has brought us in the space of 200 years from a situation where almost everybody in the world was living on the brink of starvation for almost all of their lives, to a situation where well over half the human population now is living at a level that even kings and princes would hardly have lived at in the not-so-distant past. In other words, the use of nanotechnology to preemptively prevent things like cancer or to treat people with microscopic surgery, all that sort of thing. None of that, it seems to me, is intrinsically problematic. We use remedial or prosthetic devices all the time to help our lives and help people live better and to live longer. And that’s not essentially a problem.

The second aspect of transhumanism, however, is enhancement. And on this one, I’m a little bit conflicted because in a way we already use enhancement. I mean, the books behind me are a form of enhancement. I could not in my lifetime produce everything that’s in those books, I could not think them up on my own, but they’re there for me to consult. And therefore, they’re a way in which the collective thoughts, wisdom, and sometimes stupidity — because not all books are great — are there for me to make use of and to make new things from. And that’s a good thing. And of course we have the electronic version of those now in terms of the internet and electronic communications, electronic access to libraries in a way we didn’t have. And all of that’s good, that’s a good thing. It can be used badly like any technology, but that’s the nature of technology.

What Transhumanists, of course, are thinking is, “Why don’t we move this inside?” So that you’re not just using a machine or looking at a screen, but rather that you build it into the individual. And this is where it starts to get a little bit problematic because now you’re talking about one of the key elements of transhumanism, which is the sort of meshing of machine and man in a significant way. And again, on the outer fringes of this, we already have this. I mean, somebody who’s using, say, a prosthetic leg, which is connected neurally to the brain, is already, as it were, doing something like this.

But the Transhumanists don’t see this as something which is going to be purely remedial, but they see it as a kind of enhancement so that the idea would be to kind of move from a biological body with all its limitations and its fragility to something, at least in the beginning stages, like a machine, which would be much more robust and the parts of which, of course, could be interchanged without affecting us. You know, just as you take your car in and you can change a part, okay, the car doesn’t die. And there’s no blood and guts. So you could, as a driver with your new mechanical machine body, as it were, if a part broke down, simply have it replaced, and so continue literally, you know, forever, if it could be maintained in this particular way.

And then finally, there’s the idea of moving away from any kind of embodiment at all, whether it’s in the biological structure that we now have. Or what they call the ‘Sims,’ these kind of mechanical substrates to living in what they talk about in computer terms is the cloud. And we live there as it were, electronically, and interact. Now the problem with all that is, of course, that apart from any technical problems — and those aren’t small, and there are people who are skeptical about whether they can ever be overcome. Anyway, I’ll leave that to one side. The problem is that this conceives of human beings as if they were simply minds. But we’re not. If you think about it, you take a phenomenon like anger, an emotion like anger or, indeed, any emotion. A phenomenon like anger is psychosomatic. It’s felt in, created by, located in a body. I mean, you can’t be angry without your bodily structures changing, without your pulse racing, without your heart beating faster, without becoming flushed and your eyes dilated. It’s just not possible. And so all our emotions are psychosomatic.

Even our love for other people is located in and expressed in bodily ways. It’s hard for us to think of it. And even if you come to something like pure intellect — think about it, it’s very hard — that is simply a part of what we are. It is not entirely what we are. So we’re not minds, as it were, with a kind of adventitious or accidental connection to a body that can be left behind, but we are essentially embodied creatures. And that for me, is one of the key insights of Christianity.

I mean, the whole Judeo-Christian tradition, in fact, and in my atheistic phase, I can remember being required to read some Aquinas. I wasn’t very happy about that particular project, but I read it and when I read his commentary on Corinthians 15 and he said, ‘Anima mea non est ego — My soul is not me.’ I was struck by the kind of bodily robustness of that and thought, ‘Oh, this is the kind of guy I could really get behind.’ I found that very interesting. … So we’re not simply minds attached to bodies. We are essentially embodied creatures.

And therefore, that’s why transgenderism and transhumanism in their varied and different rejections of embodiment, if you like, are false to what it is that we are. And I think both are destined to fail. Transgenderism in hopefully the medium term, preferably the short term, and transhumanism can keep going forever because they can always postpone. Well, the promises can always be pushed out 20 years, and 20 years is long enough to make it seem exciting in the near future, and long enough for people to forget what it is that you promised 20 years ago when we get to it. But we shall see. Well, somebody will see. I won’t see because I won’t be here.

TWS: Wonderful insight, Professor. Thank you again very much for your time. It’s been great talking with you.

CASEY: Okay, no problem. Talk to you again.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Don’t Say Gay, Say Groomer Instead

/in , , , , , , , , /by

It’s easy for conservatives to think of the LGBT activist crowd as constantly crying wolf over pronouns and “deadnames,” but when self-described “queer” people try to describe who they are and what they do, pay attention. A prime example of this principle occurred just this week: participants in New York City’s annual Pride Parade chanted, “We’re coming for your children.” Others shouted, “Five, six, seven, eight, don’t assume your kids are straight.” Other scenes included nude adult men exposing themselves to children — both in New York City and in Seattle.

None of this is a novelty. Back in 2021, the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus faced backlash for writing and performing a song entitled, “A Message From the Gay Community,” which repeats the phrase, “We’ll convert your children.” Another startling line goes, “You think that we’ll corrupt your children if our agenda goes unchecked / Funny, just this once, you’re correct.” Yet another says, “Just like you worried, they’ll change their group of friends / You won’t approve of where they go at night.” And another exclaims, “Oh, you’ll be disgusted when they start finding things online that you’ve kept far from their sight.” The singers initially took the song off YouTube in the face of criticism, but restored it days later, announcing they stand by the message.

Although LGBT activists once went into hysterics at the suggestion of homosexuality inevitably being pushed on children, now that the movement is firmly entrenched in American society, they retroactively admit they were always coming for your children — they just don’t want parents to be up in arms over the fact. A recent spate of bills passed in Florida — and, more importantly, the alphabet mafia’s reaction to those bills — revealed this facet of LGBT ideology well before this past week, and confirmed the connection conservative Christians have long noticed between homosexuality and child-predation.

Grooming is the act of deceptively building a relationship of trust with a child, most often utilizing a position of authority, in order to take advantage of a child sexually. The LGBT ideology is predicated upon grooming. But don’t take my word for it, take theirs.

The first half of the grooming process involves building a relationship of trust with a child, most often utilizing a position of authority (such as the role of a teacher), and progressively pushing the child to the point where sexual acts are accepted. When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) signed into law a bill last year forbidding teachers from telling elementary school students about gay sex, oral sex, gender fluidity, and a host of other homosexual propaganda, pro-gay activists were up in arms, labelling the legislation the “Don’t Say Gay Bill.” LGBT groups claimed that their very existence was being threatened simply because they weren’t allowed to talk to kids about anal sex. That law was recently expanded to ban all classroom promotion of the LGBT agenda, sparking further rainbow-colored outrage and claims that the ban on telling children about anal and oral sex is an attempt to “erase” the LGBT “community.”

We all know a man can’t impregnate another man, nor can a woman impregnate another woman. In other words, LGBT activists cannot reproduce — instead, they recruit. They groom. Children are taught that being gay or lesbian or bi or trans is not only acceptable but even cool, and, being but children, they believe it. This is grooming. The previous generation of LGBT activists were told (by the previous generation of groomers) that being gay or bi or trans isn’t acceptable but is cool and should be made acceptable. Now that same generation has taken up the groomer mantle and is telling children it is now acceptable, thanks to the hard work of previous generations, to be gay or lesbian or bi or trans — and it’s still cool.

Teaching children about sex is not the teacher’s role, ever. Although the teacher is, in theory, endowed with the parents’ authority to educate their children, there are certain things that only parents have the authority or right to discuss with their children: sex is chief among those things. A teacher violating that boundary and having those discussions with children usurps the role of parent, the ultimate physical manifestation of a trusted authority figure in that child’s life. In other words, by violating that boundary, an LGBT activist claims a child as his own. Remember, it’s not reproducing, it’s recruiting.

Banning LGBT activists from using the classroom to promote sexual abnormalities to children cuts them off from their most easily-accessible recruiting pool and makes grooming children more difficult; no longer are groomers put in a position of practically-unquestioned authority and given the role of mentor. When their capacity to groom children is taken from them, LGBT activists claim it’s an attack on their very existence. Why? Because they groom children. It’s how they carry on their lineage. Believe them when they say these things.

The LGBT activist reaction to Florida authorizing use of the death penalty for child rapists is even more disconcerting and even more revealing. This seemingly commonsense and surprisingly bipartisan piece of legislation is also, according to the activists, an attack on “LGBT rights.” The definition of grooming culminates in taking advantage of a child sexually. Raping a child would fit that definition. Yet LGBT activists are boo-hooing that legislation threatening child rapists with death “literally spells death” for them.

This time, the LGBT claim is backed up by studies. A 2013 study published by the Department of Health and Human Services stated, “Epidemiological studies find a positive association between physical and sexual abuse … in childhood and same-sex sexuality in adulthood …” A study last year by Vanderbilt University Medical Center found that adults identifying as homosexual reported childhood sexual abuse at more than twice the rate of their heterosexual peers. A 2001 report conducted by Judith Reisman of the Institute for Media Education estimated that adults identifying as homosexual are 40 times more likely to abuse a child than their heterosexual peers. While none of these studies prove causality, they do demonstrate a correlation that cannot be ignored.

Without grooming, the LGBT ranks are, if not generationally decimated, at least significantly diminished. Their own proclamations (“We’re coming for your children”) and actions, as well as their vehement responses to legislation limiting grooming tells us who they are. If we accept their own definition of themselves, we can only conclude that the LGBT “community” are, by their own admission, groomers.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Pride Messaging Down 40% from 2022 as Boycotts Explode

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

It was a normal Wednesday commute, crawling across the 14th Street Bridge with thousands of other frustrated D.C. drivers — until out the corner of my eye, I saw the metro glide across the tracks next to us. There, suspended above the Potomac, were eight cars — all wrapped in transgender and rainbow flags — speeding into the most powerful city in the world. Even now, weeks into this contrived celebration, it was a jarring picture of how insufferable the Pride movement has become. Deep into June, you can’t blame Americans for wondering: When will this train of extremism end?

Like me, Free Republic’s Kristinn Taylor was annoyed to see that even commuters can’t escape the LGBT oversaturation. “DC Metro cars [have] transformed into rolling ‘Pride’ struggle sessions,” she protested on Twitter. And according to a new poll, she’s not alone. Pride fatigue is real, The Trafalgar Group found, and it’s across the board.

In a new survey, Robert Cahaly’s group asked more than 1,000 people (who leaned Democratic by 4%) if they’re sick of the public LGBT pandering. A whopping 62% said yes, they just wished companies would stay neutral. Only 23% think corporations should continue on with their extreme political themes.

Equally as damning — at least for the CEOs still clinging to their offensive activism (think Nike, Target, Kohl’s) — are the massive swaths of consumers who are avoiding leftist brands. While 41% of all voters say they’ve “personally boycotted a company that took a public stance on a cultural or political issue they disagree with,” almost 70% are Republicans, who’ve refused to shop with “progressive” businesses. Forty percent of non-affiliated voters admitted to doing the same.

That’s a sizeable gap in pushback compared to Democrats, who are much less likely (45%) to punish “conservative or MAGA-leaning” businesses. Interestingly, 14% of Joe Biden’s party admitted to joining Republicans in abandoning overly woke companies — a surprisingly high cross-over rate that shows just how much radical CEOs have overplayed their hand on issues like transgenderism.

And the farther we get into June, the more intense the backlash has become. Shoppers everywhere have made punching bags out of Bud Light and Target — forcing several of American brands to reconsider just how much capital they’re willing to sacrifice. As the losses to those brands dip into the multi-billions, there’s a growing sense that businesses are getting the message.

According to Bloomberg, brands are dramatically toning down their Pride promotion from last year. In the wake of the Dylan Mulvaney scandal in April, “references to ‘Pride Month’ in filings, presentations and transcripts from April to June at more than 900 of the largest US companies dropped almost 40% from this time last year, the first decline in five years. Other LGBTQ terms showed similar declines, the analysis found.”

That’s a seismic shift for the U.S. market and an enormous victory for grassroots Americans who’ve finally put their dollars where their values are. As Dr. Ben Carson said on Wednesday’s “Washington Watch,” these big brands have finally been forced to reevaluate their purpose — and, just as importantly, their loyalties. “Corporate America has a very important purpose, and that is to reward their stockholders. Now, they can’t necessarily do that if they have another agenda — like being social manipulators. And I think they’re starting to recognize that. And I’m glad to see also that the people are pushing back.”

The Bud Light disaster, Target’s trans outreach, “all of these things,” Carson pointed out, “are wake-up calls for corporate America to get back to doing what they’re supposed to be doing and stop meddling. You know, one of the reasons that our country was established is because people wanted to come to a place where they could live the life that they wanted to live without it being manipulated and without all kinds of mandates. And whether those mandates come from the government or from corporate America, they still have a deleterious effect on the freedoms that people experience.”

“And the only people who can change that is we the people. … We have to put our foot down and say, this is America. This is where we are free to live the way that we want to, to worship the way we want to, to say what we want to say. And we’re not going to stand for government or corporate America to try to dictate [what we think and believe].”

No one has been in that bullseye more than Anheuser-Busch CEO Brendan Whitworth, who called the crashing and burning of his brand a “challenging few weeks” on Fox. And while he has yet to apologize for the firestorm that Bud Light started by embracing transgenderism, he does accept the blame for the devastating consequences of that decision. “We have to understand the impact that it’s had … on our employees, the impact on our consumers, and as well the impact on our partners,” he said. “One thing I’d love to make extremely clear is that impact is my responsibility and as the CEO, everything we do here I’m accountable for.”

“There’s a big social conversation taking place right now,” Whitworth acknowledged, “and big brands are right in the middle of it. And it’s not just our industry or Bud Light. It’s happening in retail, happening in fast food. And so for us, what we need to understand is — deeply understand and appreciate — is the consumer and what they want, what they care about and what they expect from big brands.”

What they expect, the polls have shown since 2021, is neutrality. When a good 40% of your consumer base ups and walks away, there should be plenty of motivation for corporations to sit down and rethink their politics.

“Most Americans respond to relentless, preachy marketing from businesses trying to virtue signal their progressive bona fides like they respond to street preachers thumping a Bible,” Family Research Council’s Joseph Backholm told The Washington Stand. “But the LGBTQ movement, like the street preacher, doesn’t care because they have simply decided anyone who rejects their message is going to hell. The LGBT movement has become what they claim to hate, but they haven’t recognized it yet.”

In the meantime, what they and everyone else can’t help but recognize is Americans’ buying power. May it continue to be the bridle that holds the woke in check.

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Idaho MassResistance forces city library to have NO “Pride” display this year. Unrelenting pro-family activism sent a strong message!

USAID’s Samantha Power: ‘A Big Pot of Money’ Not Enough for LGBT Programs

RELATED VIDEO: The Sick Reason the Alphabet Mafia is Coming After Children

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Weaponized HHS Takes LGBT Agenda on ‘Offense’

/in , , , , , , , , , , , /by

Biden’s Health Department is being weaponized to promote homosexuality and the transgender agenda. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra launched the department’s “Pride Summit” on Monday, stressing the importance of normalizing the LGBT agenda. He quipped, “Supporting the LGBTQI+ community is a top priority for me and HHS. Equity runs at the heart of every initiative we take on here.”

Numerous Biden administration officials participated in the event, including White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who identifies as a lesbian, and HHS Assistant Secretary Rachel Levine, a biological man who identifies as a woman. Several other non-governmental LGBT activists were present too, including American Civil Liberties Union “Trans Justice Strategist” Arli Christian and Casey Pick, director of Law and Policy for the Trevor Project, which has hosted sexually explicit online chatrooms for children and teens.

The Pride Summit served dual purposes: the first was to laud, in the words of an HHS press release, “the historic actions taken by the Biden-Harris Administration to ensure that LGBTQI+ communities … have the resources and support they need and deserve.” Under Biden’s tenure, the HHS has turned into a veritable LGBT cheerleading squad, with both Becerra and Levine marching in Pride parades and vociferously promoting gender transition procedures (including genital mutilation surgeries) for minors, flying the “Progress Pride” flag outside HHS headquarters, and hosting a pro-trans roundtable discussion — and that’s just this month’s activities.

The second purpose of the Pride Summit was to showcase future HHS endeavors to promote LGBT ideology. Among them are the planned release of a “Behavioral Health Care Advisory on Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth” for mental health experts to use in advocating for harmful gender transition procedures, mandating state child welfare agencies use federal funding to promote gender transition procedures, and efforts to force health care providers to violate their consciences and commit gender transition procedures.

Becerra said of the HHS’s efforts, “This game of defense can get tiring. We want offense. Let’s play on the offensive and let’s grow.”

The sentiment was echoed by Levine, who tweeted last week, “All summer long we will be celebrating the ‘Summer of Pride.’” He repeated the slogan at the Pride Summit, calling for not just a whole month dedicated to the LGBT agenda but a whole season: “Happy Pride Month, and actually — let’s declare it a summer of Pride.”

Speaking on gender transition procedures for children — including puberty blockers, hormone drugs, medically-unnecessary double mastectomies, and genital mutilation surgeries — Levine declared, “We often say that gender-affirming care is healthcare, gender-affirming care is mental healthcare, and gender-affirming care is literally suicide prevention care.” There is no evidence to support Levine’s claims, and there is actually evidence which contradicts it.

In fact, Dr. Jennifer Bauwens, Family Research Council’s director of the Center for Family Studies, told The Washington Stand that “this is the most invasive ‘intervention’ that exists to treat any psychological condition and yet it has the least evidence to recommend it.” In a 2021 study authored by Bauwens, she noted that “despite the years of empirical study, there is no clear understanding of etiology in the suicide literature. In other words, there is no clear understanding of the individual and combined risks that cause a person to commit suicide,” yet transgender advocates consistently claim to know definitively, after a cursory period of usually inconsistent research, exactly why teens and adults identifying as transgender commit suicide.

Most U.S. studies on the link between gender transition procedures and suicide are largely inconclusive, admitting that there is not enough data available over a long enough period of time. The most thorough study on the subject comes from Sweden. The 30-year-long study found that the suicide rate amongst those who identify as transgender increased after gender transition surgeries, rising to at least 20 times the suicide rate of peers.

Back in 2016, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services refused to mandate coverage of gender transition procedures, citing an absence of evidence that such procedures are actually beneficial. That was undone by the Biden administration last year, and health insurance providers are now required to cover gender transition procedures. Conservative author and commentator Matt Walsh’s documentary “What Is a Woman?” also explores the question, highlighting the experiences of those who regret their gender transitions and the increased risk of suicide, especially since underlying psychological issues aren’t addressed by gender transition procedures.

Quena Gonzalez, Family Research Council’s senior director of Government Affairs, told The Washington Stand, “How much more aggressive can the Biden administration possibly get? We may be about to find out. Buckle up: Biden has another year and a half in this term.”

Monday’s Pride Summit doesn’t just mark the ideological weaponization of yet another federal agency under Biden’s guidance: since his appointment to head HHS in 2021, Becerra has turned the department into arguably the largest pro-abortion activism arm in the U.S. It should be no surprise that a man who considers the brutal, broadscale killing of unborn babies to be “health care” should also advocate for the sexualization and mutilation of children who aren’t killed in the womb.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Republicans Gut Biden’s Trans Extremism in Woke-Crushing Military Bill

UN Expert Argues Religious Beliefs Must Change to Accommodate LGBT Ideology

Rep. Mark Green to Introduce Bill Combatting ‘HHS Weaponization’ of Title X

BlackRock Abandons Term ‘ESG,’ Rebrands Due to Red State Boycott

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Children’s Hospital Charges Schools Thousands For Trainings On How To Teach About Gender Identity, Anal Sex

/in , , , , , , , , /by

An Illinois children’s hospital is charging school districts thousands of dollars for a sex education workshop that features lessons on how to teach kids about anal sex and gender identity, according to documents obtained through a public records request by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago is charging school districts up to $1,500 for a presentation to educators on “inclusive sexual health ed practices” that promotes the National Sexuality Education Standards (NSES), a K-12 sexual education curriculum, according to a copy of the presentation obtained by the DCNF through a public records request. The presentation recommends that fifth graders should learn several different sexual orientations, while eighth graders should be taught about anal and oral sex.

The NSES, which the presentation notes is in line with Illinois law if schools choose to adopt it, was created by a coalition of organizations part of the Future of Sex Education (FoSE) Initiative, including several LGBTQ activist groups and Planned Parenthood.

The Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago charges public schools for several services, including a “student facing” presentation for $150, a question-and-answer workshop for $750 and an “inclusive sexual health ed practices” seminar that can either be “$1500 for one 90 minute workshop or $1000 per 90 minute workshop for a series,” according to a November 2022 email from a hospital official to an administrator with Kildeer Countryside Community Consolidated School District 96.

The Community Consolidated Illinois School District 15 paid the Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago $3,150 in January 2023 for three “inclusive sexual health ed practices” professional development sessions, according to documents.

The hospital allows schools to customize its sample workshop for its “inclusive sexual health ed practices,” which includes different grade-level standards of the NSES, the hospital’s sexuality education program coordinator said in the November 2022 email. The workshop aims to provide school districts with “an overview of updated policy and resources” on sexual education curriculums while helping educators practice the use of “gender & LGBTQ+ inclusive communication for personal health & sexual health education,” according to the presentation obtained by the DCNF.

Under the NSES, by eighth grade, students should be able to define anal, oral and vaginal sex as well as explain several sexual orientation definitions including “heterosexual, bisexual, lesbian, gay, queer, two-spirit, asexual [and] pansexual,” the presentation states. The hospital presentation notes that the standards require fifth graders to be able to distinguish the difference between sex assigned at birth and gender identity.

The NSES notes that fifth graders should also be able to explain that “gender expression and gender identity exist along a spectrum,” as well as be able to evaluate how gender stereotypes may impact themselves and others, the presentation states.

Through the eighth-grade curriculum of the NSES, students should be able to analyze how their family and peers may “influence” their attitudes toward “gender, gender identity, gender roles and gender expression,” the presentation explains. Students should also be able to “access medically accurate sources of information about gender, gender identity and gender expression” by the end of eighth grade, the presentation states.

When talking about puberty with fifth and sixth graders, the presentation advises educators to use gender-neutral language such as “people who menstruate,” “people with penises,” “people with testicles” and “people with vulvas.” The presentation offers sample slides for fifth and sixth-grade sexual education lessons on testicle and vulva anatomy.

Another sample slide for fifth and sixth graders explains “wet dreams,” ejaculation and semen, the documents show.

The hospital’s “inclusive sexual health ed practices” workshop also includes a lesson on gender-neutral language, noting that individuals should avoid using phrases such as “ladies” and “gentlemen,” and instead use “friends” and “folks” in order to be more inclusive.

The Illinois legislature is considering a bill that would mandate K-12 school districts to adopt sexual education lessons in accordance with the NSES. Under current law, Illinois schools districts can voluntarily adopt NSES standards.

Representatives from left-wing organizations are listed as “creators and reviewers” of the NSES, including Planned Parenthood; the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ activist group; Gender Spectrum, an activist organization for gender diverse teens; and GLSEN, a nationally known LGBTQ activist organization that pushes policies to keep a child’s gender transition from their parents, the presentation shows.

“NSES come to us from a diverse group of professionals with expertise in sexuality, public education, public health, social justices, psychology, child & adolescent medicine,” the Lurie Children’s presentation says.

The hospital also recommends its “favorite books” for eight-year-olds including “Sex Is A Funny Word,” a comic book for kids about sexual orientation and gender identity, and “You Know, Sex” for 12-year-olds, a book that discusses sex education grounded in social justice, the presentation states.

The Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago recently came under scrutiny for a series of videos it created that feature adults talking to children about transgenderism and sexual orientation. In September 2022, it was revealed that the hospital was partnering with local school districts to promote sex toys and gender-affirming items.

The Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, Kildeer Countryside Community Consolidated School District 96 and the Community Consolidated School District 15 did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

AUTHORS

REAGAN REESE AND MEGAN BROCK

Contributors.

RELATED ARTICLE: Washington School Gave Elementary School Kids Sex Ed Lesson Pushing Puberty Blockers: REPORT

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Riley Gaines Demolishes Dems’ Trans Defense in the Senate’s ‘Protect Pride’ Hearing

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

Former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines was chased, threatened, and held hostage in a room for three hours while a mob of leftist students raged outside, but it’s trans-identifying “children” who are “in danger,” Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) told her. That was just one of the staggering statements made by Democrats in a Wednesday hearing full of phony victimhood. And judging by the Left’s desperation, they won’t be the last.

While Americans continue to put the hurt on pro-trans companies, Joe Biden’s party is right to worry that the script may have permanently flipped. In a nod to the defense the Left is now playing, the Senate Judiciary Committee hosted “Protecting Pride: Defending the Civil Rights of LGBTQ+ Americans” to sound the alarm on the shifting opinions of the country.

Some of the most dramatic moments centered around girls’ sports, where the Republicans’ witness, Gaines, expertly gutted the Left’s arguments. In an exchange with Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), she recounted the nightmare at San Francisco University earlier this year where students surrounded her and demanded a ransom “if I ever wanted to make it home to see my family again.” “I’m totally fine with people protesting,” she explained. “It’s their right to protest. But what I’m not fine with is when it does turn violent in the way that it did, because protesters afterwards, they rushed into the room, they turned off the lights, they rushed to the front. [We] were assaulted.”

Hawley acknowledged that the former NCAA All-American has been the target of “unbelievable amounts of abuse … intimidation, threats of violence.” He asked her to explain why. She said she believes it’s because she’s refused to take the erasure of women and girls lying down. “If we do speak up… they will call you everything under the sun — whether it’s transphobic, homophobic, racist, white supremacist, domestic terrorists. They will throw them all at you in hopes to deter you and hopes to silence you.”

For Gaines, who competed against male swimmer Lia Thomas, there was no other option. Apart from the injustice of competing — and losing — to a biological male, the things she and others were forced to endure in the locker room were demeaning and cruel.

“You were talking about just the incredible surprise, shall I say to put it gently, of finding a biological man, a 6-foot-4 biological man, in your locker room and having to accept that without being asked about it, without being told about it even,” Hawley said. “What was that like for you?”

Gaines explained that the girls “only became aware we would be undressing next to a man when we had to see a man undressing while we were simultaneously undressing.” An NCAA official told the women that Thomas was allowed because of a rule change that made the spaces “unisex.”

“And so I’m thinking to myself in these brief moments … you acknowledged that we do not share the same sex, first and foremost,” Gaines continued. “Secondly, unisex [means] any man could’ve walked into our locker room, any coach, any official, any man who wanted to would have had full reigns to and bare minimum we weren’t forewarned about it — and that’s the traumatizing part. Of course the experience in and of the locker room itself is traumatizing, but I think for me, it was so easy for them to dismiss our rights to privacy.”

Worse, she shared, Thomas’s teammates at the University of Pennsylvania “were forced every single week to go to mandatory LGBTQ education meetings to learn about how — just by being cisgender — they were oppressing Lia Thomas. They were told that they’re not allowed to take a stance because their school has already taken their stance for them. They were told, ‘You will never get a job,’ ‘You will never get into grad school,’ ‘You will lose your friends,’ ‘You will lose your scholarship and playing time if you speak out.’”

And yet, Durbin’s concern is not for America’s daughters, but for the trans-identifying children who might be listening. “When these young people, who are already struggling, hear … hateful rhetoric that denies their very existence, what message does it send?” he demanded to know.

Gaines took the senator head on. “… [M]y comeback to that is, what message does this send to women, to young girls, who are denied these opportunities? So easily, their rights to privacy and safety [are] thrown out the window to protect a small population, protect one group as long as they’re happy,” she said. “What about us? That is the overall general consensus of how we all felt in that locker room.”

Durbin didn’t answer her questions, instead firing back, “Since reference was made to my earlier statement, I would just like to add something for the record: There is no evidence that transgender athletes are an issue in certain levels of sports.”

Trans activist Kelley Robinson of the Human Rights Campaign tried — but failed — to give Durbin cover. When Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) asked the Democrats’ witness for an example of a woman playing in the NBA, Robinson replied with an incoherent answer about Serena Williams.

“There’s been this news article about men that think they can beat Serena Williams in tennis — that they think they can actually score a point on her,” Robinson said. “And it’s just not the case. She is stronger than them.”

Gaines immediately interjected, “Both Serena and Venus lost to the 203rd-ranked male tennis player.” As Breitbart pointed out, the swimmer was right. The famous sisters were both crushed by Karsten Braasch in 1998, who, at 31, was older than either of them.

More than a decade later, the world’s number one women’s player was open about the fact that women couldn’t measure up to men on the court. “So, if I were to play Andy Murray, I would lose, 6-0, 6-0, in 5 to 6 minutes, maybe 10 minutes,” Serena told David Letterman. When he disagreed, she shook her head. “No, it’s true. It’s a completely different sport. Men are a lot faster, and they serve harder and hit harder, it’s just a different game, and I only want to play girls, I don’t want to be embarrassed …”

And yet, four times Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) asked Robinson, “Do you believe there’s a difference between men and women?” Four times, the HRC chief refused to answer. “… [L]et me ask you this question then, why do women’s sports exist?” After all, Cruz said, “If you can’t find a difference between women and men, why not abolish women’s sports and just tell little girls to swim with little boys and see who wins?” Robinson replied that there were “many positive benefits to sports.”

Benefits, Gaines insists, that will vanish if the Democrats’ agenda succeeds. “Feminism is not a fluid term,” the swimmer insisted. And an overwhelming number of Americans agree. In an NPR, PBS NewsHour, and Marist poll released the same day as the hearing, 61% of the country — up 10% from May 2022 — agree “defining gender as the sex listed on a person’s original birth certificate is the only way to define male and female in society.”

“The original and the meaning of what it means to be a feminist is to uphold, respect, honor, embrace and celebrate women on our own physical ceilings, our own uniqueness.” No matter what the Left says, Gaines stressed. “That term has not changed.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED TWEET:

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

‘Really Bad Science’: Biden Admin Admits LGBT Lifestyle Produces Worse Mental Health and Addiction

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

Americans who identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual are far more likely to suffer from major depression, abuse illegal drugs, and are up to six times as likely to attempt suicide, according to a new report from the Biden administration. Although the report admits it cannot “explain the reasons” for these differences, it opens by blaming LGBT “invisibility and erasure” — a leap critics say is “just bad science” that obscures the real causes for their mental distress.

Adults who have sex with members of the same sex, or both sexes, experience a dramatically lower quality of life across numerous measures, the Biden administration reveals. Women who have sex with members of both sexes (bisexuals) were six times as likely to have attempted suicide within the last year as women who identify as straight, and three times as likely to abuse opioid drugs. Bisexual men were three times as likely to have had a serious mental illness in the last year, according to the survey from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

“A higher prevalence of substance use and mental health issues has been well-documented among people who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (also referred to as sexual minorities) than among those who identify as heterosexual or straight,” notes the report, which focuses on American adults’ behaviors during the 2021-2022 year.

Drug Abuse, Suicide, and Depression

The Biden administration survey documents the high rates at which “sexual minorities” suffer from the intertwined pathologies of drug abuse and negative mental health outcomes.

Drug abuse rates, spanning from methamphetamines to tobacco, were multiple orders higher among gay- or bisexual-identified people than heterosexuals. People who identify as bisexual, of either sex, had the highest levels of illegal drug use. Half of all bisexual men and women (49.5% and 49.7%, respectively) had used illicit drugs, as well as 42% of women who identify as lesbians and 41% of men who have sex with men (MSM) — double the rates of heterosexual men and women (27% and 20%, respectively).

Those living the LGBT lifestyle had a strong propensity to abuse the hardest narcotics. Lesbians were twice as likely, and bisexual women more than three times as likely to use “cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, inhalants, and methamphetamine,” or to abuse prescription drugs (19.4% of bisexual women compared to 13.8% of lesbians, and 6.7% of straight women). Lesbians were 253% more likely to use cocaine than straight women. Bisexual women were 360% more likely to misuse opioids than straight women over the last year. Gay or lesbian-identified adults were twice as likely to abuse hallucinogenic drugs than heterosexuals.

The trend continues to legal drugs, as well. “Sexual minority females” were twice as likely to smoke tobacco or “have been heavy drinkers in the past month,” according to the SAMHSA report, officially titled the “Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Behavioral Health: Results from the 2021 and 2022 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health.”

Similar numbers held true for males — although men have higher levels of substance abuse in general. “Gay males were about twice as likely as bisexual males and about 15 times as likely as straight males to have used inhalants in the past year,” reports SAMHSA. All men abused alcohol at the same rate.

Mental health also proved radically poorer among people who identify as LGBT. While women admit to higher levels of mental health challenges than men, LGBT-identified people of both sexes suffered significantly elevated levels of serious mental illness, major depressive episodes, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts.

People who identify as gay were twice as likely as straight people to have serious mental illness, and bisexuals were three times as likely. “Sexual minorities” were also twice as likely to suffer from any mental illness.

Homosexual or bisexual-identified people were more likely to suffer a major depressive episode — defined as at least one period during the past year that lasted two weeks or longer when the individual felt depressed for most of the day nearly every day, and “had problems with sleeping, eating, energy, concentration, self-worth, or having recurrent thoughts of death or recurrent suicidal ideation.” One quarter of bisexual women and one out of every seven lesbians experienced a major depressive episode, compared to 9.1% of straight women; discrepancies were higher among men, with bisexuals sidelined by depression more than three times as often as heterosexual men.

Self-identified homosexuals, lesbians, and bisexuals suffered from the most severe form of depression — suicidal ideation — magnitudes higher than their heterosexual peers. “The prevalence of making a suicide plan in the past year was highest among bisexual males, followed by gay males, then by straight males,” the survey says. Bisexual women were five times as likely, and lesbians were four times as likely, to have made a suicide plan as heterosexual females. Bisexual women were six times as likely to attempt suicide than straight women; lesbians have three times the suicide rate of straight women. Bisexual men were four times as likely, and gay men three times as likely, as straight men.

The report notes “sexual minorities” were more likely to suffer the twin pathologies of substance abuse disorder and any mental illness at the same time. “Sexual minority females were about 2 to 3 times more likely than straight females to have had both AMI and an SUD in the past year,” with LGB-identified men experiencing both conditions at twice the rate of heterosexual men.

Higher levels of mental illness and substance abuse in the LGB survey of adults mirror the results of a similar government study of LGBT-identified teenagers. “Female students, LGBQ+ students, and students who had any same-sex partners were more likely than their peers to experience poor mental health and suicidal thoughts and behaviors,” said a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released in February. “Nearly 70% of LGBQ+ students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness … and more than 20% of LGBQ+ students attempted suicide.”

This year’s SAMHSA survey included only sexual practice: homosexual, lesbian, or bisexual. The 2023 survey will include a category for people who identify as transgender.

‘Bad Science’ Ignores Childhood Trauma, Blames ‘Erasure’

Although the report concluded that its report does “not explain the reasons for these differences,” the opening asserted, “People who identify as bisexual may experience additional problems with substance use and mental health due to sexual orientation-based discrimination, bisexual invisibility and erasure, and a lack of bisexual-affirmative support.”

But a statistical report should not jump to conclusions it did not study, nor include “polemical language,” Dr. Jennifer Bauwens, director of the Center for Family Studies at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “The survey isn’t even about erasure,” said Bauwens. “The conclusion doesn’t match the nature of the report. It speaks to the fact that there’s a bigger agenda going on here. It’s just really bad ‘science’ all the way around.”

Expert researchers shared her views. “Speaking of ‘erasure,’ pro-LGBTQ elites will do anything to erase the reality of the pathologies that are invariably connected to ‘gay,’ lesbian, bisexual, and now transgender behaviors and lifestyles,” Peter LaBarbera, founder and president of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality, told TWS. “It’s been this way ever since ‘gay liberation’ began conquering American institutions and compromising their integrity from the inside out.”

Bauwens said the report’s authors ignored more likely underlying traumas. “One of the most glaring [omissions] has been documented over and over again”: Every segment of the population identifying as LGBT has “higher rates of adverse childhood events compared to the general population: They have so much more physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, and trauma in childhood.”

“That’s also evidence in the substance abuse research, particularly those who use opioids, almost always had sexual abuse,” Bauwens added.

A review of 75 studies on abuse among people who identify with the LGBT community found up to three out of four lesbians and 59% of men who have sex with men reported childhood sexual abuse. Sexual molestation victims often say their abuse informed their later sexual practice. A 2001 study found men who have sex with men were 657% more likely, and lesbians were 2,200% more likely to have been molested as children than their heterosexual counterparts. “[H]omosexually molested participants were more likely to say that the molestation had an impact on their sexual orientation than heterosexually molested participants,” according to a 2010 study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. (The perpetrator was a homosexual in 80% of abused boys and 95% of molested girls, the study found — conclusions that echo the work of Dr. Judith Reisman.)

In the U.K., the abuse rate of men who identify as gay or bisexual is 10 times the national average (49%). “LGBTs report childhood sexual abuse” and mental illness “at 3x-8x the rate of heterosexuals,” found Clayton Cramer.

In all, 83% of people who identify as LGBT reported experiencing at least one adverse childhood experiences (ACE), 20% higher than heterosexuals, and they were more than twice as likely to report experiencing three ACEs or more, according to a 2022 study published in the Journal of American Medical Association Psychiatry. The study’s author, Nathaniel Tran, is a graduate research associate at Vanderbilt University’s LGBTQ+ Policy Lab and uses they/him pronouns. Vanderbilt University operated a transgender facility that carried out procedures on minors — which Dr. Shayne Taylor explained are a “big money maker” — until a new Tennessee law restricted the procedures to adults on June 1.

All of these adverse impacts increase the likelihood of poor mental health and substance abuse.

“If I were coming to this data with eyes wide open, I would ask, ‘Did you have childhood sexual abuse?’” Dr. Bauwens told TWS. “That opens a whole other intervention diagnostic and intervention pathway.”

Unfortunately, “these types of surveys, and a lot of the LGBT research period, starts with this premise that some of these negative mental health reports or suicidal issues have to do with the stress that this population experiences” due to alleged homophobia. As a result the studies, and the psychologists who rely on them, are “never making an accurate assessment of the real problem and therefore, they’re never giving the right intervention.”

These ideologically driven misdiagnoses do “disservice to this community,” said Bauwens.

Yet the narrative continued as the media released the SAMHSA study, quoting Jeremy Kidd, a psychiatrist at Columbia University who teaches students how to “provide affirming healthcare for LGBTQ+ patients.” Kidd blamed low LGBT mental health on society’s allegedly overly conservative sexual views. “You can imagine being in environments that might be validating of people who have gay and lesbian identities but might either not recognize bisexual identity — so they are sort of invisible in that space.”

“LGBT individuals experience additional stress as a result of discrimination and stigma,” Kidd said during the middle of Pride Month.

Yet erasure could not explain why a 2016 study in Sweden concluded that people legally married to members of the same sex “evidence a higher risk of suicide than other married individuals, after adjustment for confounders.”

‘This Is the Moment for the Christian Remnant to Shine’

While Americans should demand honesty from government reports, LaBarbera said, “Christians and other truth-seekers can take some solace in sexual revolutionaries’ intellectually dishonest attempts to sanitize homosexuality and related immoral behaviors — because they’re telegraphing that they know the pathology is rooted in high-risk and destructive LGBTQ behaviors themselves. Like smart citizens living under lying communist regimes, we have to read through the lines, discern the truth, and spread it in the culture.”

“This is the moment for the Christian remnant to shine in a dying culture,” LaBarbera told TWS, “all the while giving hope to the sin-addicted by pointing out that there is a better way to live: God’s way through the grace and power of Jesus Christ.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Top Reasons to Dump the ‘Fag Flag’ and Restore ‘Old Glory’ from the school house to the White House

‘Enough’: Fewer Republicans and Democrats Believe Homosexuality is Moral, Poll Finds

Major League Baseball Is the Latest Brand Humbled by Anti-Pride Outrage

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Top Reasons to Dump the ‘Fag Flag’ and Restore ‘Old Glory’ from the school house to the White House

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

I remember that each and every single day that I was in elementary, middle and high school holding my hand over my heart with my teacher and classmates reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

I grew up loving my country. Each and every day I grew to love her more and more. Until the inauguration of Joseph Robinett Biden Jr.

Today young people seem to have forgotten America’s history, the basics of biology, and the science of DNA. It seems they feel comfortable, even devoted, to embracing myths like: America is racist, whites are supremacist, mankind can control the weather if we the people just submit to big government mandates, laws and regulations that take away our freedom of choices bit by bit and a male can identify as a female.

This has led to Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. flying the “Fag Flag” in front of the White House along with the American flag honoring pride month. BTW, remember that pride is one of the seven deadly sins.

Title 4, United States Code, Chapter 1, Paragraph 7 reads (c),

No other flag or pennant should be placed above or, if on the same level, to the right of the flag of the United States of America, except during church services conducted by naval chaplains at sea, when the church pennant may be flown above the flag during church services for the personnel of the Navy. No person shall display the flag of the United Nations or any other national or international flag equal, above, or in a position of superior prominence or honor to, or in place of, the flag of the United States at any place within the United States or any Territory or possession thereof: Provided, That nothing in this section shall make unlawful the continuance of the practice heretofore followed of displaying the flag of the United Nations in a position of superior prominence or honor, and other national flags in positions of equal prominence or honor, with that of the flag of the United States at the headquarters of the United Nations.

Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. has violated U.S. Code by flying the Fag Flag on the same level as the American Flag at the White House.

Reasons to Dump the Fag Flag

There are many reasons to dump the Fag Flag, including but not limited to:

  1. Remove the Fag Flag from the White House in accordance with Title 4, United States Code, Chapter 1, Paragraph 7 (c).
  2. In a video recently unearthed from 2019, Chasten Buttigieg, “husband” of Department of Transportation diversity hire Pete Buttigieg, is seen leading children in a pledge of allegiance to the Gay Pride flag. Buttigieg had the young children recite: “I pledge my heart to the rainbow of the not so typical gay camp, to the gay agenda for which it stands. One camp, full of pride, indivisible, with affirmation and equal rights for all.” Doing this harms children and grooms them for pedophiles and pederasts.
  3. The U.S. Air Force Twitter account posted a tweet celebrating pride month with an image of a soldier saluting the alphabet rainbow flag. Read some of the comments WOKE Air Force received on this official tweet they sent out. So bad that the U.S. Air Force shut off  all comments. This harms the health, welfare and morale of our men and women in the armed services. It is an existential threat to our national security.
  4. A Colorado school district encouraged its physical education (P.E.) teachers to don LGBT pride gear and use preferred pronouns in an effort to display their support for the LGBTQ community, according to documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation through a public records request. On March 8, a group of Jeffco Public Schools high school teachers were trained on how to make the district’s P.E. programs “even more inclusive,” where all students feel welcome regardless of their “race, ethnicity or sexual orientation,” according to a presentation obtained by the DCNF through a public records request. Teachers were trained to engage in “public visibility” by sporting some sort of rainbow pride gear such as a pin or t-shirt, plan or participate in pride events and practice using preferred pronouns. Having any teacher forced to don Fag Wear is both demeaning and a threat to the emotional health and well being of students.
  5. Bosch Fawstin wrote, “It might be news to some, especially to the left’s useful idiots on the left and the right, but the “LGBT Pride movement” is a communist movement. Same with the “Black Lives Matter movement,” the “Feminist movement,” etc. Because a naked communist movement might wake up too many Americans, and leftists know that, they hide behind race, sex and sexuality to push communism…In sum, the LGBT movement is a gay communist movement that now expresses a triumphalist attitude about their position in 2023, where they moan about how “marginalized” they are, while shoving their lifestyle in our children’s faces. As one of these gay supremacists put it the other day, ‘Straight sex is just not natural. Those are biological facts.’ I would tell this gay supremacist that without natural straight sex, he and billions of people wouldn’t exist.” Communism is anti-American.
  6. Jim Hoft, on September 24, 2022 reported, “Earlier this week investigative journalist Christopher Rufo reported on the teacher’s union promoting how-to guides on ‘anal sex’ and ‘fisting’ to children. This is shocking news to most Americans that the nation’s largest teachers’ union is promoting such material to America’s children. “It All Started with Obama: Barack Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” Pushed Books that Encouraged Children to Meet Adults at Gay Bars for Sex”>But this trend of perversion did not start during the Joe Biden regime. Back in January 2010, The Gateway Pundit reported on Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” Kevin Jennings. “Safe Schools Czar” Kevin Jennings and his organization GLSEN was encouraging children to meet adults in gay bars for sex. From our 2010 report: This story just gets freakier and weirder and the fact that the mainstream media completely ignores this dangerous man working in the Office of Safe and Drug-free Schools makes the story even more scandalous. You’d think the AP could peel away a few of its reporters from Going Rogue to investigate this radical czar. This avoidance by the democratic-media complex won’t keep us from reporting the truth. Our goal of protecting children is greater than our desire to protect a political party. Kevin Jennings’ was the founder, and for many years, Executive Director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) until he left his post in 2008. GLSEN maintains a recommended reading list of books for children that the radical organization believes all kids should be reading. The books on the list promote all kinds of radical ideas from child rape, to first graders having sex to the joys of prostitution. Recently it was discovered that these books were not only on GLSEN’s reading list but that Kevin Jennings personally promoted several of these books during his career. One of the books he promoted encouraged children to go to gay bars for sex with adults to see if they like it.
  7. One of the queerest myths is the use of the Fag Flag by the LGBTQ+ community to symbolize pride and equality. The truth is that the Fag Flag rainbow was created by God after the great flood and first seen by Noah and his family. The rainbow in the clouds was a symbol of hope that civilization would begin anew in His Image. Genesis 9: 15-17 read, “[A]nd I will remember my covenant with you and with all living creatures. Never again will the floodwaters destroy all life. When I see the rainbow in the clouds, I will remember the eternal covenant between God and every living creature on earth.” Then God said to Noah, “Yes, this rainbow is the sign of the covenant I am confirming with all the creatures on earth.”
  8. A Professor from Bethlehem College & Seminary named Dieudonné Tamfu wrote in a July 18th, 2015 article titled What Does the Rainbow Mean for Gays?, What do you think of when you see the rainbow flag? Most likely, you think of homosexuality or the wider LGBT movement. Gilbert Baker, the man credited with pioneering the celebratory rainbow flag flying over the gay movement, recently lauded his craft, noting that it’s something beautiful. He answers those who think it’s not, saying, “The rainbow’s in the Bible. It’s a covenant between God and all living creatures.” According to Baker, the God of the Bible knows the struggle of gays and lesbians, and that is where he finds hope. God does indeed know the internal and social battles of gays and lesbians, but the question is, Does he approve of their practice? Would God approve of their use of the rainbow to symbolize this movement? The Supreme Court’s decision on gay “marriage” has made the rainbow symbol ubiquitous. Those who celebrate so-called same-sex marriage are painting social media with rainbow colors. Even the White House was lit up the with red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. God designed the rainbow to symbolize something far greater and far more glorious than homosexuality, and if those in the homosexual community truly understood and embraced the symbol they are waving in their hands, they would experience true freedom and peace. [Emphasis added] Read more. The Fag Flag is anti-Muslim, Christian and Jew.

But there are rays of hope.

The Bottom Line

ChurchMilitant.com reported,

The U.S. ambassador to Poland has become embroiled in the battle between militant homosexual campaigners and traditionalist Catholics after tweeting her support for the gay lobby on Thursday, as anti-Catholic blasphemy by LGBT activists continues to escalate before the fall general elections.

Over 30 town councils in Poland declared themselves “free from LGBT ideology” after anti-Catholic LGBT parades blasphemed the Blessed Sacrament and the icon of the Black Madonna and Warsaw’s mayor signed a pro-LGBT declaration in February calling for gay sex education in schools.

[ … ]

Swidnik councillor Radoslaw Brzozka said his town issued its anti-LGBT statement in response to Warsaw’s declaration, which was “against good moral values.”

“Let children have a father and a mother, not such deviations. Otherwise there will be fewer and fewer children, and Poland will shrink,” 83-year-old Teresa Drzewiecka, who witnessed Nazis and Communists battling for control of her town Swidnik, told Reuters.

Tom Perkins, from the Guardian on June 17, 2023 reported,

In 2015, many liberal residents in Hamtramck, Michigan, celebrated as their city attracted international attention for becoming the first in the United States to elect a Muslim-majority city council.

They viewed the power shift and diversity as a symbolic but meaningful rebuke of the Islamophobic rhetoric that was a central theme of then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign.

This week many of those same residents watched in dismay as a now fully Muslim and socially conservative city council passed legislation banning Pride flags from being flown on city property that had – like many others being flown around the country – been intended to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community.

Muslim residents packing city hall erupted in cheers after the council’s unanimous vote, and on Hamtramck’s social media pages, the taunting has been relentless: “Fagless City”, read one post, emphasized with emojis of a bicep flexing.

The Washington Stand’s Ben Johnson on June 20, 2023 reported,

In the latest sign the LGBT agenda is losing support, the number of people who view same-sex relationships as “morally acceptable” tumbled last year — a sign “people are beginning to connect the dots” between legalizing same-sex marriage and indoctrinating schoolchildren in the LGBT agenda, a prominent pro-family leader says.

Overall, support for homosexual relationships fell this year by 7%, the largest decrease of any of the moral issued posed by Gallup pollsters in their annual Values and Beliefs poll, conducted each May. In 2023, 63% of Americans say they see nothing wrong with “gay or lesbian relations.” Fewer Republicans and Democrats said they found homosexual relations morally neutral this year.

“People are beginning to connect the dots between these agendas,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch” Monday. “We were told all this is just about live and let live, just being able to marry the one you love.” Disengaged voters “didn’t realize that it was going to involve the indoctrination of their children, the infiltration of every media outlet in America,” or that “different professions will be forced to affirm these same-sex unions” or go out of business.

It’s time for America like Hamtramck, Michigan to become a “Fagless” nation.

The first step on the road to reality would be taking down every Fag Flag in every classroom, board room, and from the school house to the White House.

Then purge media centers and school curriculum K-24 of all references to Fags and their Communist ideology.

Finally, The Washington Stand’s Ben Johnson reported,

Americans who identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual are far more likely to suffer from major depression, abuse illegal drugs, and are up to six times as likely to attempt suicide, according to a new report from the Biden administration. Although the report admits it cannot “explain the reasons” for these differences, it opens by blaming LGBT “invisibility and erasure” — a leap critics say is “just bad science” that obscures the real causes for their mental distress.

Adults who have sex with members of the same sex, or both sexes, experience a dramatically lower quality of life across numerous measures, the Biden administration reveals. Women who have sex with members of both sexes (bisexuals) were six times as likely to have attempted suicide within the last year as women who identify as straight, and three times as likely to abuse opioid drugs. Bisexual men were three times as likely to have had a serious mental illness in the last year, according to the survey from the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

“A higher prevalence of substance use and mental health issues has been well-documented among people who identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual (also referred to as sexual minorities) than among those who identify as heterosexual or straight,” notes the report, which focuses on American adults’ behaviors during the 2021-2022 year.

Time to save the children before they become fags to keep them from abusing drugs, preventing their mental illnesses and stop the suicides.

As for corporate CEOs across America warning, go Fagless or your company goes broke. Hey, Bud Light did you get the message to go Fagless?

©2023. Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLES:

White House accused of US Flag Code violation over Pride Month display

‘Really Bad Science’: Biden Admin Admits LGBT Lifestyle Produces Worse Mental Health and Addiction

Glenn Youngkin Slams School Board For Promoting Gender Ideology In ‘Pride Month’ Resolution

Conservatives React To NPR Father’s Day Article About ‘Pregnant Dad’

Mayor thrown out of office after objecting to Pride flag raising outside township hall

RELATED TWEET:

With Our Kids at Stake, There Is No Retreat from Here

/in , , , , , , , /by

It’s a battle best known for Tennyson’s “The Charge of Light Brigade.” For the British, that deadly skirmish often overshadows what was the bright spot of that grim October 1854 day: the heroism of a single regiment who managed to thwart a Russian cavalry charge, against all odds. With a key British port under siege, and the Crimean War at a pivotal point, only the 93rd Highlanders were left to fend off the wave of enemy horses and soldiers. A war correspondent, William Russell, reported that their commander, Colin Campbell, looked down the thin red line and shouted, “There is no retreat from here, men. You must die where you stand.”

Russell watched the Scottish, their ranks two deep instead of four, muster every ounce of courage to do what they were told. Stand. After several long minutes, fighting with everything they had, the Highlanders saw the Russians do the improbable — they withdrew. It was an amazing feat, a testament to how a few brave souls can change the course of war.

A century and a half later, Americans are facing another evil on a wide-open field of battle — and the cavalry is coming. Armed with lies and wielding the weapons of government, they claim to have children’s best interests at heart. “They’re all our kids,” their general insists from the White House, “they belong to all of us.” From Hillary Clinton’s “It Takes a Village” to Terry McAuliffe’s “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” their siege has been decades in the making.

Out in California, where the battle rages fiercest, the nation has watched with horror as radical Democrats come for the state’s sons and daughters. At this very moment, a bill called the Transgender Diverse and Intersex Youth Empowerment Act (AB 957) is making its way through the state senate that would radically alter California’s family code, turning gender identity into an actual custody issue. Incredibly, this proposal would mean that any parent who doesn’t affirm their child’s false identity risks losing their son or daughter.

“We’re talking about three-year-olds, toddlers, young kids who play make believe,” California Family Council Director Greg Burt told me. “A parent will be required to affirm whatever gender identity they come up with. And if they don’t, they could lose custody of their kids.”

Under this extreme rewrite of California’s Family Code, it would be considered a violation of a child’s “health, safety, and welfare” not to embrace a minor’s gender identity. In plain terms, it would be child abuse. It doesn’t matter if the parents have legitimate religious objections, or if their belief system says gender is determined by biology. If this policy becomes law, Bible-believing Christians will be considered a threat to their children in California, and officials will threaten to remove their kids from the home because of it.

Unfortunately for Americans, this isn’t the movement of a few unhinged progressives. It’s the fruit of radicalism that we see at the very top of the Democratic Party. When the president of the free world calls parents’ opposition to this dangerous ideology “hysterical,” “ugly,” and “cruel,” we are in treacherous times indeed.

“The state’s duty to your children is to protect them from violence and abuse,” David Harsani insists. “Those who allow that cruelty, even celebrate it, do not, in fact, have ‘your back.’ Yet the White House hangs a flag that implicitly endorses this barbarity, and then demands you do too.”

Of course, there will be some who shrug and say — as former House Speaker Paul Ryan did — “I’m not a culture war guy. I think it’s really polarizing. … I’m worried about a debt crisis. I’m worried about the future of our country…” But let me tell you, there is no future without a moral foundation. That’s the reality. America’s problems aren’t material; they’re moral and spiritual. If you want to know why our financial crisis is getting worse, it’s because the foundation of America has eroded, and our economy has nothing to stand on. Lawlessness runs rampant in our streets. And while the rest of the world dials back their rush to transgenderism, America’s Left is marching on.

Believe it or not, what’s happening in California is not isolated. This month, the governor of Maryland and mayors in New York and Wisconsin declared their borders a state sanctuary for the gender mutilation of minors. Nevada signed a bill into law ordering health insurance companies to pay for these surgeries that do irreversible harm. Illinois openly embraced sexually explicit material in schools.

So while some moms and dads may be tempted to think, “It’s not going to happen to my kids,” it’s time to wake up. This is coming — if it’s not already there — to your community. It’s coming for your children, your grandchildren.

Now is the time for every Bible-believing, God-fearing Christian in America to draw a bright red spritual line. You cannot be a spectator watching this and remain in step with the Lord and His word. In this, President Biden is right: There is a battle for the soul of this nation and its children, and we need to realize that it has eternal significance and consequences.

Frankly, we live in a time that’s unprecedented in all of human history. Never has the world seen this type of attack on children and on the rights of parents to protect them, as God has intended us to do (Proverbs 22:6, Deuteronomy 11:18-20) — to teach them, to train them, to nurture them.

The time has come for parents to rise up and reclaim their rightful role. “This is the hill we have to die on,” Burt urged. “We cannot let them take our kids.”

In other words, “There is no retreat from here. You must fight where you stand.”

AUTHOR

Tony Perkins

Tony Perkins is president of Family Research Council and executive editor of The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Biden State Dept. Engaging in ‘Ideological Colonialism’ with Worldwide LGBT Agenda: Report

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

President Joe Biden ramped up his LGBT advocacy this week with the largest celebration of Pride Month in White House history. Biden reiterated his unabashed support of the LGBT community, stating the community brings “hope and light” to society, and that its members “set an example for the nation and, quite frankly, for the world.”

According to a new Family Research Council white paper, Biden is certainly the LGBT community’s biggest cheerleader around the world. “The [Biden] administration has systematically elevated the importance of LGBT ideology in American foreign policy,” reads the report, “Exporting LGBT Ideology: The Biden Administration’s Foreign Policy Priority.” The paper, authored by Arielle Del Turco and Chris Gacek, notes the administration’s activist stance is reflected in the use of the “resources and platform of the U.S. government to promote LGBT policies abroad.”

“The mark of this ideological push is widespread, and the harms will be as well,” writes Del Turco, director of the FRC’s Center for Religious Liberty, and Gacek, director of Regulatory Affairs at FRC. “The Biden administration is choosing to use the institutions and mechanisms of U.S. foreign policy to promote sexual orientation and gender identity as human rights issues,” the paper notes.

“President Biden and his State Department are using your tax dollars to force this ideology on poor nations who are desperate for American aid dollars,” FRC President Tony Perkins said June 13, accusing the Biden administration of “engaging in cultural imperialism against countries that have no interest in flying the Pride Flag or redefining marriage or human sexuality.”

More often than not, these nations have traditional values, Perkins stressed, noting this blatant advocacy “flies in the face of what they believe and what they want for their children and for their country.”

An FRC assessment of the websites and social media platforms of U.S. embassies revealed the State Department actively advocates LGBT ideology. “In 2022 at least 132 U.S. embassies released Pride Month statements via social media or their website, at least 99 U.S. embassies flew Pride or Progress flags, and at least 49 embassies had staffers who participated in Pride parades,” according to the report.

In an appearance on “Washington Watch,” Del Turco said the contrast between the State Department under Biden and former President Trump is sharp. Under Trump, the State Department was focused on pushing tenets of religious freedom around the world, including speaking up for those being persecuted for their faith, she noted. “After President Biden came into office, I just saw all of that fall off,” Del Turco said, noting the emphasis flipped to pushing LGBT policies on countries around the world who have no interest in it.

The Biden administration is using the nation’s human rights apparatus to condemn other countries that have not embraced pro-LGBT policies like marriage and legal gender recognition, Del Turco said. “[The U.S. government] is being hypocritical by taking many of these policies the [U.S.] adopted very recently,” she added, noting different cultures do not appreciate this “ideological colonialism.”

Del Turco suggested the Biden administration is using these nations’ reliance on America’s foreign assistance as leverage “to coerce countries around the world to start adopting some of these radical LGBT policies.” In their research, she and the study’s co-author, Chris Gacek, discovered a “systematic effort to infect all aspects of American foreign policy with LGBT policies.”

There are policies equally offensive to many people of faith that might rival LGBT activism for the top spot in the Biden administration’s agenda, the pair acknowledged, citing the promotion of abortion and population control.

The white paper states it was during the Obama administration that LGBT principles began to be woven into America’s foreign diplomacy. The report notes that in December 2011, then-President Barack Obama issued a memorandum to cabinet and agency heads entitled, “International Initiatives to Advance the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Persons.” The memo begins with this statement: “The struggle to end discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons is a global challenge, and one that is central to promoting human rights.”

According to Del Turco and Gacek, the presidential memorandum required all U.S. agencies working overseas “to ensure that U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons.” The duo’s groundbreaking report provides ample proof that “LGBT rights are at the pinnacle of the administration’s State Department agenda.”

The report details the State Department’s seeming obsession with the promotion of LGBT ideology, noting at least nearly 50 embassies had staffers participate in Pride parades or marches last year, while U.S. embassies hosted Pride receptions, roundtable discussions, LGBT movie nights, or webinars with local LGBT activists. On National Coming Out Day, the Deputy Chief of Mission to the U.S. embassy in Luxembourg made a video telling his own coming out story. The U.S. embassy in India promoted a video of a young transgender-identifying activist.

As further evidence of the State Department’s commitment to promote LGBT ideology in other nations, Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a “first-of-its-kind” briefing to LGBT reporters in June 2022, telling the group he had consistently raised concerns about human rights conditions for LGBT-identifying people with Saudi diplomats.

Since Obama’s actions — and through each of the three most recent presidential administrations — the research reveals “permanent foreign policy bureaucracies appear to have become committed to advancing LGBT ideology and other social justice agendas under the guise of development and human rights policy.”

Yet the study’s authors state the Biden administration ramped up the promotion of the ideology. In issuing a memorandum entitled, “Advancing the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Persons Around the World” in February soon after his inauguration,” President Joe Biden raised the prominence of the issue by tying it to “national security.”

The authors summarize the memorandum: “It shall be the policy of the United States to pursue an end to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or sex characteristics, and to lead by the power of our example in the cause of advancing the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons around the world.”

More recently, the U.S. State Department applauded its own work in “promoting and protecting the human rights of LGBTQI+ people around the world through our diplomacy and foreign assistance” by releasing a 130-page document in April 2022, the white paper notes. The report, which the State Department labeled as a “first of its kind progress report,” acknowledged the U.S. government’s efforts to date, but insisted more needed to be done in this area: “It is clear we must be doing more, and we will continue to strive for additional progress.”

Del Turco told Perkins that she and Gacek know pro-family activists who are very disheartened when they see the U.S. embassy participating in Pride marches in their countries. “It sends a message that the strongest country in the world is marching through their capital city and supporting an agenda that condemns their laws,” she continued.

“It’s really, really condescending,” Del Turco lamented.

They note the push by the Biden administration is much more than an indication of the president’s concern for the rights of citizens in other nations: “LGBT-identifying persons are already, rightly, protected by international human rights treaties by virtue of their personhood, not their sexual orientation or gender identity. Pushing LGBT-specific policies around the world is a coercive attempt to change foreign cultures and laws from afar and displaces human rights like religious freedom.”

AUTHOR

K.D. Hastings

K.D. Hastings and his family live in the beautiful hills of Middle Tennessee. He has been engaged in the evangelical world as a communicator since 1994.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Study: LGB+ Sexual Orientations Are Fluid

House Bill Would Notify Parents When Underage Girls Seek Abortion

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Far-Left Jurisdiction Appalled When Middle Schoolers Revolt against Pride Day

/in , , , , , , , , /by

Two hundred and fifty years after the Boston Tea Party, middle schoolers in a Boston suburb channeled its spirit against a new form of tyrannical oppression, LGBT Pride. Teachers, parents, and even administrators of the far-Left jurisdiction were “shocked,” “horrified,” and “extremely disheartened” by these middle schoolers’ solid grasp of basic biology, and naturally they retreated into platitudes of unity to justify their preferring a divisive principle to a unifying one.

Marshall Simonds Middle School (MSMS) in Burlington, Massachusetts approved a Pride Month Spirit Day on June 2 (their school year ends on June 16), which was requested and sponsored by Spectrum Club, a student organization “for LGBTQ+ students and allies,” as The Boston Globe described. Spectrum Club decked the school out in full-blown carnival regalia — rainbow streamers, Pride flag banners, handmade Pride Month signs, and “educational” — a.k.a. emotionally badgering — posters with messages like, “Why it’s not ok to say ‘That’s so gay’” and a quote by gay playwright Tennessee Williams implying that no human heart is straight. Spectrum Club members handed out rainbow stickers, and school personnel invited all students and faculty to wear rainbow clothing to demonstrate their support.

Some students not only refused to bow to the rainbow idol, but also organized a counterprotest. “This became evident in the lunchroom, where several groups of students wore red, white, blue, or black, including face paint,” wrote school principal Cari Perchase, in a letter to parents. “Groups of students were heard chanting, ‘U.S.A. are my pronouns,’ and students glared intimidatingly at faculty members showing pride.”

Although no hard numbers have been cited, the insubordinate faction seemed to include no insignificant portion of students. “Students were shamed into removing their stickers or covering their clothing with rainbows,” Perchase complained (although the sentence is ambiguous, “with rainbows” must modify “clothing,” not “covering” to make sense). In other words, the middle schoolers responded to peer pressure to celebrate LGBT Pride with peer pressure against celebrating LGBT Pride — and they succeeded. Peer pressure doesn’t work unless nearly “everybody is doing it.”

With costumes, face paint, and the resolve to agitate for liberty, the only element these middle schoolers needed to completely imitate the demonstration’s 1773 precedent was a little tea unboxing. In fact, at least some of the miffed middle schoolers performed an equivalent act by destroying the symbols of an imperious policy foisted upon them without their input — tearing down decorations, ripping them up, and stuffing them in water fountains.

Perchase was “extremely disheartened” by this behavior, she wrote. “I fully respect that our diverse community has diverse opinions and beliefs. I also respect individuals’ right to express their opinions through clothing choices and freedom of speech. When one individual or group of individuals’ beliefs and actions result in the demeaning of another individual or group, it is completely unacceptable.” Thus began the theme of Burlington adults rebuking the rebellious middle schoolers by wrapping affrontive Pride displays in the language of tolerance and inclusivity.

Middle schoolers are not widely known for knowing where to draw the line of acceptable behavior, and destroying the property of others crossed it. But, if that’s what Perchase meant by the three sentences above, that’s not what she said. Instead, Perchase undermined her lip service to free opinion and expression when she said that even beliefs are “completely unacceptable” if they demean others.

The problem is, the boundaries of “demeaning” beliefs have become exceedingly blurred with regard to LGBT+ identities. Earlier this year, another Massachusetts middle schooler was suspended for wearing a shirt that stated a biological fact, “there are only two genders,” because it allegedly made some people at his school feel “unsafe.” If middle schoolers don’t know where to draw the line for acceptable behavior, Massachusetts schools sure aren’t helping to clarify it for them.

Perchase then apologized to Marshall Simonds students who identify as LGBT. “I am truly sorry that a day meant for you to celebrate your identity turned into a day of intolerance,” she said, groveling as if she had torn down the decorations herself. “Schools are supposed to be a safe place for ALL students and faculty. Some community members’ actions created an unsafe environment for many of our students, caregivers, and faculty.”

There’s that word “unsafe” again. But what safety incident provoked its use? Did a student arrive at school with a gun, or at least a knife? Did a counterprotesting student threaten, push, or even slap any LGBT-identifying classmate? If such an incident had occurred, surely that lede would have headlined every news report. Yet, based on available news reports, the school did not even call the police.

Thus, the available facts lead us to conclude that Principal Perchase was implying that language — and even opinions — critical of excessive Pride celebrations amounts to violence against people who identify as LGBT. This untenable philosophical position was echoed in a letter by Burlington Public Schools (BPS) Superintendent Eric Conti, who insisted that “The rise in anti LGBTQ+ violence across the country is unacceptable and has no place in our schools.” Burlington Equity Coalition also peddled the “violence” mantra in a statement expressing solidarity with “members of the school community who were harmed by these acts of intolerance.”

Conti’s June 4 letter to parents was the second berating the protesting middle schoolers. He made a few good points, such as noting that spirit day “participation is optional,” but “respectful behavior … is non-negotiable.”

But Conti’s letter made clear that the school system insisted upon overtly favoring certain perspectives, while denying that they were showing favoritism. “We embrace everyone for who they are and for what they bring to our schools and larger community,” said Conti, but then he promised to train staff to “identify and respond to identity bigotry and discrimination.” Suddenly, the “embrace everyone” platitude is superseded by an “except bigots” caveat. In case any reader was uninitiated as to which identities and opinions are unquestionable, and which ones make you a bigot, Conti invited all readers to “join us in taking a stand against homophobia.”

Conti expressed no reservations about choosing a side, even as a public employee of a diverse community. “I recognize that discussions and celebrations of individual identity are complex and impacted by individual values, religions, and cultural norms, the result of which may include expressions of racism, anti-religious hate, ableism, and in this case homophobia,” he warned. Instead of respecting those values, religions, and norms, he intolerantly insisted that they stand aside if they opposed his sacred ideal of toleration.

Conti knows who butters his bread, because community members overwhelmingly endorsed his intolerance of any LGBT+ criticism at two snowflake struggle sessions this week — a Burlington Select Board meeting on Monday and a BPS School Committee meeting on Tuesday.

“I thought Burlington was a safer place than Texas or Florida. Obviously I was wrong,” complained parent and former school committee member Cara Foss. She called on local officials to suppress the middle schooler revolt head-on, “there’s some undercurrents in Burlington that town administration and school administration need to address more directly and more firmly.”

“The issue of Pride at schools is very controversial, I understand that,” Foss continued. “I think we need to start at a place of commonality.” But she urged officials to stamp out any LGBT skepticism, no matter how long it took. “I think it will take some time. It takes a lot of hard work and conversation, but I believe in Burlington, I believe we can get there.”

Other public commenters expressed concern over the organization the middle schoolers demonstrated. “It was an unruly disruption that was organized ahead of time,” noted Burlington resident Joanne Frustaci. “I was shocked and horrified,” said parent Nila Almstrom. “They organized themselves; they came to school wearing outfits and face paint. And if they’re big enough to do that, then they’re big enough to have this conversation.” By “big enough to have this conversation,” Almstrom apparently meant that middle schoolers should allow the adults to dictate their opinions for them, and that they should lie down and accept their verbal lashing like good little sheep. Her objective, she said, was that the students could “take responsibility for their actions and still become allies” of the LGBT community.

“How many children felt power yesterday by committing an act of intimidation?” intoned librarian and former high school teacher Andrea Bono-Bunker Monday. “How many children had a seed of homophobia planted in them yesterday? How many children now feel worse about themselves because of what they witnessed or experienced yesterday? How many children now think that being part of or supportive of the LGBTQIA+ community is un-American?”

What psychobabble! She tacitly admits the former powerlessness felt by middle schoolers uncomfortable with in-your-face Pride celebrations, while at the same time wrongly asserting a child’s self-worth should be the most important consideration. She feigns surprise that force-feeding middle schoolers — now beginning to think for themselves — such undigestible fare would cause them to spew forth a putrid yet instinctive response. She seems unable to comprehend the Left’s campaign to turn young people into political activists had already sown every “seed” necessary for the outburst, or that the LGBT ideology’s intolerance of free speech or criticism — not to mention its adherents’ disdain for America itself — had already driven into these middle schoolers’ minds a mental wedge between supporting the “LGBTQIA+” community or supporting America.

“While these students are culpable, the underlying issue is where did they get the idea to do this in the first place?” said Bono-Bunker. Other speakers also held the parents responsible for their children’s rejection of LGBT Pride. “This type of intolerant rhetoric starts in the home,” insisted one father intolerantly.

Others demanded action. “It would be naïve of us to think that what happened at the middle school won’t escalate to something more tragic in the future. It isn’t going to go magically away; it will get worse,” parent Jessika Dubay-Dang forecasted. Apparently, wearing red, white, and blue to school on Pride Day is “tragic” now. If the adults don’t intervene immediately, such malformed children might grow up standing for the Pledge of Allegiance, living productive and happy lives focused on others, and even — perish the thought! — owning a gun.

In all seriousness, Dubay-Dang likely meant that these middle schoolers would move from lesser violence to greater violence. Again, this presumes the middle schoolers committed violence, which, apart from trashing decorations, they didn’t. But to take her argument on its own terms for a moment, Dubay-Dang argues that their violent thoughts and words show that these young students have been radicalized, and that they will progress to further violence as their radicalism develops. If that’s true, the proper cure would be identifying the source of the radicalization and removing it. To the extent that these youngsters were radicalized — again, only in the terms of her argument — they are reacting to the oppressive, suffocating celebration of LGBT ideology, with no dissent tolerated. What do Dubay-Dang and other parents propose? More of the same!

Dubay-Dang wasn’t alone in calling for action. Burlington Equality Coalition also called on school administrators to “provide consequences” for counter-protestors and “take an active stand against hate under the guise of ‘free expression.’” (Where did those students get the notion that supporting the LGBT agenda is un-American?) “Without any direct and concrete action, these incidents will occur again and increase in severity,” they warned. Shutting down the free expression of students was “a chance to remind residents that every person is important and welcome in our town,” said the LGBT advocacy organization.

In addition to punishing demonstrators, Burlington Equality also demanded school administrators fill a DEI director position that has been “unfilled for almost a year” and that the town board “reinstate the recently disbanded Diversity, Equity and Inclusion subcommittee” (its funding was redirected to other DEI training initiatives). Additionally, Perchase said they would hold listening sessions to hear students’ concerns, create a form whereby students could anonymously report each other for hateful conduct (does anyone else see a problem with this?), and prepare additional curriculum to teach students tolerance, acceptance, and respect (which rings of the SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance curriculum).

Town officials responded to community gripes by affirming them. “A bad light has been cast over our town,” agreed Select Board member Mike Espejo. “I was very upset. I’ve lost sleep over it. It kind of shocked me to my core. I didn’t think something like that could happen in Burlington.” At least two other board members agreed with the sentiment, and the board promised to consider how to address the issue over the summer.

For their part, school officials seem reluctant to discipline students for the disruption. At the Tuesday meeting, Burlington School Committee Chair Martha Simon stressed that the offenders were only middle schoolers. “Middle school should be a safe place for all students to express themselves, to make mistakes, and to learn from each other,” she said.

School officials may also not relish the responsibility of sniffing out which protesting students had actually destroyed property. “Some of the kids threw the stickers on the ground,” said Christine Steiner, mother of one girl who protested. “But I can only speak for my daughter, she just didn’t want to wear that to school. It’s not that she wanted to hurt anybody’s feelings.” Such a remark suggests the students may have felt more pressure to wear rainbow attire beforehand than school officials have admitted to after the fact. Steiner added that her daughter felt coerced to join the celebration of Pride and was offended by some of the messages, such as the Tennessee Williams poster implying no one is straight.

Conti had taken a position similar to Simon in his earlier letter, “The Burlington Public Schools are obligated to provide a safe environment for all students to feel safe, seen, and respected without retaliation.” But school officials making not-so-subtle digs as politically incorrect ideas is totally cool.

The more thoughtful responses preferred discussion to punishment. “It is not enough to publicly denounce these incidents,” said Conti. “As a school system we have a unique opportunity to educate our community on the nature of these events.” He probably means indoctrination, but at least he isn’t punishing students as the local LGBT coalition demanded.

“I think what we need to do is turn down the temperature,” said Espejo, “and instead of talking at each other, look each other in the face and talk to each other, hear each other’s concerns, complaints and try to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes and I think that would go a long way.” As Conti put it, “Let us all work on being kinder to each other.”

It didn’t take much listening to locate the source of student anger. “Perchase said she received some feedback that the counter message was in response to the school not recognizing the observance of Memorial Day,” reported local news station WHDH. Perchase said the lack of recognition was an “oversight” and reiterated, “respect for the observance of Memorial Day and respect for the LGBTQ community are not mutually exclusive.”

Kind of a big oversight, no? The school ignored a federal holiday, for which classes were cancelled, but foamed at the mouth to convert their building into a temple to LGBT Pride. So, in theory, Perchase is correct that respect for the official holiday and the unofficial debauchery month are “not mutually exclusive.” But in actual practice, the school got so excited about celebrating a divisive niche that they completely overlooked a generic and unifying American institution in the very same week. No wonder the students wore red, white, and blue. Instead of correcting this grave error, the school district responded to the incident with more DEI programs, not more American unity.

The incident reached such a pitch that it attracted the attention of Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey (D), who identifies as a lesbian. “I hope it becomes a teaching moment for the young people who were involved in that,” said Healey. “It doesn’t represent who we are as a state.” That may be true for today’s voting populace, but these middle schoolers — the next generation — are recalling an earlier Massachusetts tradition that responded to oppression and tyranny by dumping tea in Boston harbor.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

I Am Non-Man, Hear Me Roar

/in , , , , , , , /by

There’s an old proverb that says there are two kinds of people in the world: men, and non-men.

Except there’s no such proverb. Such thinking can only come from the academic crème de la crème at one of America’s elite universities. Enter Johns Hopkins University’s “LGBTQ Glossary.” The glossary purported to be, “an introduction to the community, and […] not the definitive answer as to how everyone understands these terms.” Did you get that? It’s a list of definitions that are not definitive. Welcome to college, folks — where hell hath no fury as a non-man scorned.

Controversy ensued when this definition was highlighted by critics on Twitter:

Lesbian [sexual orientation]: A non-man attracted to non-men. While past definitions refer to ‘lesbian’ as a woman who is emotionally, romantically, and/or sexually attracted to other women, this updated definition includes non-binary people who may also identify with the label.

If you’re scratching your head a bit, you’re not alone. As “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling keenly observed:

“Man: no definition needed.

Non-man (formerly known as woman): a being definable only by reference to the male. An absence, a vacuum where there’s no man-ness.”

While it’s true that men the world over have difficulty understanding women, defining them only in the context of men might not be the best approach. As often happens when gaffes get too much attention, Johns Hopkins — at the time of this writing — must be rethinking things. They took down the entire glossary, and replaced it with this statement:

“Upon becoming aware of the language in question, we have begun working to determine the origin and context of the glossary’s definitions. We have removed the page from our website while we gather more information.”

Oops. In other words, they apparently had no idea where these non-definitive definitions came from — they simply posted them on their website. To Johns Hopkins’s credit, they didn’t double-down on absurdity — at least not yet. A day later, they revised the page yet again, saying:

“While the glossary is a resource posted on the website of the Johns Hopkins University Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI); the definitions were not reviewed or approved by ODI leadership and the language in question has been removed pending review.”

Someone (if they ever find who did this!) is likely to get re-educated in a bad way. However the university’s diversity and inclusion episode eventually rewrites the glossary, it’s clear that what was briefly a cultural battle over pronouns has abandoned the “pro” and now moved squarely to the nouns. Are verbs next on the chopping block?

Absurdities like this could easily be overlooked but for the fact that really educated people are really thinking that the best way to describe a woman is a “non-man.” Never mind that it’s a term that could encompass almost anything. Would a serpent qualify as a non-man? Check. Would a forbidden fruit qualify? You bet.

Man’s first recorded words in the Bible are of appreciation for the woman God had made:

“Then the man said, ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.’” (Gen 2:23, ESV)

The woman was certainly “not him,” but that was far from a defining characteristic. While Supreme Court justices may have difficulty defining women, the Bible’s unfolding definition paints a picture of a being created in God’s image and a display of his glory. Contrast that with Hopkins’s definition that’s merely a breath away from calling women “nonpersons.”

There’s a long history of dehumanization in the world, and it never turns out well. This clumsy glossary dehumanizes and erases women, but those of us who are “non-women” should be just as concerned. The never-ending redefinition of terms and relabeling of people ultimately devours even those who are doing the redefining. To be sure, no one is man enough or non-man enough to withstand the all-consuming nature of this lie.

For those of us who know the truth, we have an opportunity to counter the madness with the stark simplicity of the biblical worldview. God created us in his image. Male and female he created us. It’s simple, it’s true, and it reflects the reality of God’s order. And a God who orders things deserves to be listened to. And thankfully, he has spoken to us in his word through his son, who was born of a woman and grew up a man (nothing non- about either of them).

A step toward the man Jesus offers us the hope of new creation for both man and woman. “Behold, I am making all things new.” To be defined by him is our only hope. His is the only glossary in which we will find humanity, both man and woman. Non-men need not apply.

AUTHOR

Jared Bridges

Jared Bridges is editor-in-chief of The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Republicans Gun for Biden’s Pride Flags

/in , , , , , , , , /by

While the White House races to distance itself from the impromptu strip show on its South Lawn last Saturday, the bare-breasted trans display was only one part of the taxpayer-funded circus that Joe Biden brought to the most sacred residence in America. “Add this to the list of ways Biden has degraded the prestige and decorum of the office of president,” Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) fumed. A list that also includes his decision to make the controversial Progress Flag the balcony focal point during his Pride fest, centered in a place of honor that should be reserved for our nation’s colors.

Most Americans still can’t get over the image of the transgender baby blue and pink draped over one of the most symbolic buildings in America. The president’s brazen endorsement of a movement that’s mutilating children and splitting up families was like a slap in the face to a country already burning with rage over the Democrats’ trans fixation.

“The flag of the United States of America placed in equal stature on the flank of the alphabet cult battle flag,” Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) seethed. “The Biden administration is a disgrace.” Others pointed out the flagrant violation of the U.S. Flag Code, which White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre brushed off. “Did anybody notice that or fail to notice that,” a reporter asked, “or was it an intentional statement?”

Jean-Pierre was defiant, insisting the president was “proud” to display the Progress Flag, even calling it a “historic” moment for a day “centered around love and family.” “… [W]e’re not going to let anyone distract us from that, what was the meaning of the day. … I’m certainly not going to get into protocols from here. … I’ll leave that to others.”

Those “others” may soon be House Republicans, who’ve wasted no time putting the Biden administration on notice for its anti-American displays. On Wednesday, Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) used Flag Day “to remind everyone that the Stars and Stripes is the ONLY flag that displays our nation’s shared values.”

His Senate colleague, Roger Marshall (R), introduced a bill called the One Flag for All Act Wednesday to make it illegal to “fly, drape, or display any flag other than the American flag on federal buildings or properties, with limited exceptions.” “We have a duty…” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) agreed, “[to stand] up in defense of this country instead of a radical Leftist ideology that results in a pride flag being hung at the same level as the US flag on the front of the White House.”

Together, Republicans refuse to sit by and let the president insult the brave men and women who’ve fought and died under the colors our leaders should be flying. They’ve been especially irate over Secretary of Veteran Affairs Denis McDonough’s directive to fly the rainbow and Progress Flags above, beside, or even in lieu of the stars and stripes at VA facilities. The GOP’s Mississippi delegation fired off an indignant letter over the rainbow colors at Biloxi National Cemetery, which they say shows “deep disrespect” to our nation’s servicemembers.

“Replacing the United States flag with a flag that promotes a particular sexual or gender identity goes against the very mission of our national cemeteries. … Cemeteries should be places for reflection and respect, not public virtue signaling.

“This political stunt is yet another example of this Administration’s willingness to promote its political agenda rather than focus on its mission as the executive branch. Our veterans expect the Department of Veteran Affairs to provide services, not controversial ideologies.”

The controversy is one of several triggered by McDonough’s decision to allow the Pride flag at every VA facility — a move that’s sparked protests in cities like Fresno. One of the demonstrators, John Cline, a combat medic who served in Vietnam, told reporters, “That flag is now being flown in a spot that we hold very sacred, and no organization should be put above any other organization in that area.” Cline explained that he’d “even spoken with some of our gay veterans, and they also believe that the Walk of Honor is not the place where it should be flown.”

If the grassroots fury doesn’t get McDonough’s attention, maybe Congress will. On Tuesday, House Republicans raised the stakes — passing an amendment to the VA spending bill that would not only forbid the agency from flying the Pride flag, but also rolls back the administration’s outrageous taxpayer-funded abortions and gender transition surgeries for veterans.

“This is something that should be handled by Congress, not by the executive branch,” Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) argued about the president’s woke social policies. As of February, reports show the VA has taken 34 unborn lives — all at Americans’ expense and all in violation of the Hyde Amendment.

As for gender transition treatments, the VA has been plotting for two years to add “surgical procedures” and “hormone therapies” to its list of covered services, insisting it would “save lives.” Republicans voted 34-27 to strike the policy, a move that Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) called a waste of time. “This committee … should be focused on issues that face the veterans community every day: ending veteran suicide, decreasing the claims backlogs, ensuring the VA can attract and retain clinicians. But we are instead focusing on non-issues to bow down to the demands of the far-right wing of the Republican Party.”

These “non-issues,” as Wasserman Schultz calls them, are at the heart of a raging national debate that Democrats are soundly losing. At a time when backlash to Pride is at a fevered pitch, most Americans would agree it’s not too much to ask that our veterans aren’t exploited in Biden’s political games. Under this latest House amendment, the VA would be barred from flying any flag “other than the flag of the United States, the flag of a state, territory, or District of Columbia, the flag of an Indian tribal government, the flag of the department, the flag of an armed force, or the POW/MIA flag.”

It would guarantee that the “work and the message of the VA is not divisive,” Rep. Michael Guest (R-Miss.) insisted, “is not controversial, and is not promoting a particular gender ideology, but rather is respect[ful] of our veterans.”

As Family Research Council’s executive vice president, Lt. General (Ret.) William Boykin said, “So many Americans have given so much — including their lives — to give all Americans the right to be proud of who we are as a nation and not just a special sub-group. The actions by the Veterans Administration to put the LGBT flag on par with the American flag is an ill-conceived and disgusting action which cannot be justified. It leaves me wondering: Is anyone in charge of the VA?”

As Boykin emphasized to The Washington Stand, “It is important for us as a nation to continually remind ourselves of the sacrifices that have been made by these men and women in uniform in helping to preserve our liberties.”

In the meantime, he insisted, “Someone needs to be held accountable for this disgusting display of anti-American and anti-veteran behavior.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Radical LGBT ‘Pride’ Is Full of Extreme Violence

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

Over the last several years, the United States has seen a disturbing uptick in K-12 schools protecting the instigators of assault against other students in the name of solidarity with the LGBT community. Children are being abused in school bathrooms, and leftist school administrators and the liberal media are covering it up because it doesn’t fit their narrative.

We are living in a world where political agendas are often placed ahead of protecting innocent youth in their places of education. Just last week, Fox News reported the account of a 15-year-old girl from Oklahoma who was attacked and beaten by a 17-year-old male who identified as transgender in the girls’ bathroom.

The trans-identifying male not only violated the young girl but also violated state law, which directs students to use the bathroom designated by the gender on their birth certificate. The school was quick to defend its position, even though the male student had been targeting the girl previously, to the point of being searched by police for weapons. The girl had told school administrators that the trans-identifying student was in fact a male, but the school later claimed in a statement that it had no previous reason to believe the abuser was a male. Lawyers for the girl have pushed back, stating the school did know and are responsible for failing to pursue the matter.

Because of the school’s failure to investigate multiple red flags and comply with state law, a young girl was brutally beaten in the bathroom. In March, a school in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin came under fire when three 14-year-old girls complained to school administrators that an 18-year-old male student who identified as a transgender entered the communal shower in the girls’ locker room and exposed himself.

The school did not notify its Title IX coordinator, nor did it launch an investigation into the incident. According to a local report, the adult male had not been in the PE class with girls and they were surprised to see him in the locker room. The girls asserted they were aware the male identified as transgender and were uncomfortable with his presence, but they received no protection. According to the girls’ account, the male entered the shower space after them and proceeded to disrobe, exposing his male genitalia and commenting, “I’m trans, by the way.”

Regardless of how some folks feel about the issue of transitioning genders, everyone should recognize the moral and legal problems of a biological adult male exposing himself to underage girls. And, in this case, the emotional problems associated with it happening against their will. Protecting indecency and sexual abuse isn’t progressive, it’s regressive. For centuries, women and allies have been fighting for equal opportunities and equal protections. Permitting and protecting sex abusers and pedophiles (by definition) is a dangerous, illegal, and disgusting slope.

There are countless examples of young girls and boys being assaulted in places that would have traditionally been protected, such as changing rooms, bathrooms, and locker rooms. Instead of ensuring the safety of young girls, schools are allowing boys to enter private spaces and create an increased risk of harm and sexual abuse. All children should be protected from sexual aggression but instead, it’s often adult administrators who are protecting the assailants rather than the victims. Girls in particular are being beaten, sexually assaulted, and even raped in school bathroom stalls.

And what are schools doing? Preserving the abuser and delegitimizing the victims. Schools frequently and intentionally withhold the assault of minors from parents, and many of them are failing to comply with state and federal reporting laws. Why? To protect the supposed “minority” LGBT-identifying students who are perpetuating the violence.

And it isn’t just happening in our schools — there is an entire movement within the LGBT community that is promoting violence as a means of revenge. Just two months ago, a trans-identifying woman entered a Christian elementary school and opened fire, slaughtering three nine-year-old children and three staff members. Leading up to the shooting, a “Trans Day of Vengeance” had been planned. Following the shooting, a group called the Trans Revolutionary Action Network issued a statement JUSTIFYING the actions of the shooter, stating that “hate has consequences.”

This was met by support from other LGBT community members and allies, essentially asserting that the so-called suffering of trans-identifying individuals is bound to cause violence.

And the Covenant School shooter is not an outlier. In November 2022, an LGBT night club in Colorado Springs was attacked by a male who identified as non-binary. In Denver, a school was attacked by a gunman who identified as transgender, leaving one student killed and another eight seriously injured.

As Christians, we should not be surprised by the increased violence coming from individuals who refuse to recognize or fear God. And while they blame others, the truth is that rejection of God results in greater depravity. Solomon, the wisest man the world has ever known, described it perfectly: “Do not enter the path of the wicked and do not proceed in the way of evil men. Avoid it, do not pass by it; Turn away from it and pass on. For they cannot sleep unless they do evil; And they are robbed of sleep unless they make someone stumble. For they eat the bread of wickedness and drink the wine of violence” (Proverbs 4:14-17 NASB).

Leftist politicians and media have contributed to the radicalization of the LGBT movement. The ever-increasing instances of privacy violations, violent assaults, and death resulting from the outrage of the LGBT community cannot and should not be tolerated.

Accepting the beliefs of a person is one thing, condoning immoral behavior or violence is entirely different. Something must be done to stop the radicalization of LGBT individuals and to protect children in schools. Let’s begin by allowing God and morality to be taught and embraced by our culture. Obviously, this will require the church to be more intentional at fulfilling Christ’s call to be “salt and light.” Then, we must enforce laws that protect people from violent individuals, and stop children from being exposed to sexualized material or people against their will — and then purposefully hiding the details from their parents.

We are on the verge of losing the next generation. It’s time for biblical morality, common sense, and legal ramifications to be reintroduced to our culture. Let’s protect our children.

AUTHOR

Jody Hice

RELATED ARTICLES:

With Order Making Maryland a Gender Transition Sanctuary, Governor Aids Sex Traffickers

Opposition Grows as Biological Men Continue to Claim Women’s Sports Titles

A Sticky Situation at Cracker Barrel, Not Involving Syrup

Women-Only Spa Must Admit Naked Biological Men, Judge Rules

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

‘Pursuing His Twisted Agenda,’ Biden Puts Progress Flags on Par with Old Glory

/in , , , , , , , , , , , /by

People visiting Washington, D.C. this weekend probably expected to see a white house on Pennsylvania Avenue. Instead, the president’s residence was plastered in rainbow and transgender colors, an over-the-top display of the current resident’s LGBT fixation. It was a stark contrast to the mood in the rest of America, where the fury over Pride displays has reached a deafening roar.

That all seems lost on Joe Biden, who hosted the largest Pride event in White House history on Saturday. The South Lawn event came just two days after the president savaged the Americans opposed to his wildly irresponsible agenda of transgenderism. In a scripted response to a PBS reporter, the president unloaded on parents who are up in arms about the indoctrination of their sons and daughters, calling the opposition to child mutilation “hysterical” and “cruel.”

In a coordinated exchange, PBS News White House correspondent Laura Barrón-López framed the conversation this way: “All over the country … Republican led states are passing laws — passing anti-LGBT, anti-transgender laws that restrict rights and medical care. Intimidation is on the rise. This week, anti-LGBTQ protesters turned violent in California.” She claimed to have spoken to parents who are considering leaving the U.S., because local governments are cracking down on barbaric child sex change procedures.

“Sir,” she asked Biden, “why do you think this is happening? And what do you say to parents like the ones that I spoke to — to those families who are contemplating leaving the country because they don’t feel safe anymore?”

The president replied by proudly ticking through all of his LGBT activism, like throwing open the military to people who identify as the opposite sex and signing the sweeping same-sex marriage law earlier this year. But, he pivoted, “our fight is far, far from over because we have some hysterical and, I would argue, prejudiced people who are engaged in all that you see going on around the country. It’s an appeal to fear, and it’s an appeal that is totally, thoroughly unjustified, and ugly.”

“It’s wrong,” Biden ranted, “that extreme [GOP] officials are pushing hateful bills, targeting transgender children, terrifying families, and criminalizing doctors. These are our kids. These are our neighbors. It’s cruel and it’s callous. They’re not somebody else’s kids, they’re all our kids. They’re the kids, and our children are the kite strings that hold our national ambitions aloft. It matters a great deal how we treat everyone in this country.”

The “they’re all our kids” line drew a unique kind of scorn, since it marks the third time the administration has tried to claim Americans’ children as their own. Biden himself argued, “There’s no such thing as someone else’s child” in April, which was encored by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre in May who said the country’s trans-identifying children “belong to all of us.”

Outraged Republicans like Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) fired back that “Contrary to President Biden, the nation’s children do not belong to him, and it’s good to oppose unnecessary and irreversible medical procedures for kids. If Joe Biden wants to see an extremist, there are mirrors all over the White House.”

Other conservatives can’t understand why the president is leaning into an issue that’s sparked such a nationwide uprising. Even last week, polling showed just how far outside the mainstream the Democratic Party is when it comes to this hot-button debate. An astonishing 71% of Americans reject Biden’s suggestion that there are more than two genders in the latest Rasmussen Report — including 67% of his own party. To strategists like Matt Whitlock, the Democrats’ 24/7 Pride parade is a “[h]uge political miscalculation,” because “the overwhelming majority of Americans support banning transgender surgeries for kids. … This is such a bizarre hill for them to fight on,” he told Fox News.

That political divide has never been more obvious than the two camps’ approaches to 2024. While Democrats use drag queens to rally voters, every declared GOP presidential candidate is united in their opposition to harmful, irreversible gender treatments for children. “It’s sad we even have to say this,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) said in last week’s tour of Iowa, “but it is wrong for physicians to perform sex change operations on minors. That is mutilation and physicians who commit such acts in Florida not only lose their medical license, they go to jail.”

Meanwhile, at the Biden White House, contestants on “RuPaul’s Drag Race” performed (presumably on the taxpayer dime) and the radical progress flag flies in equal footing with Old Glory. “We need to push back against the hundreds of callous and cynical bills and laws introduced in states, targeting transgender children terrifying families, and criminalizing doctors and nurses,” the president insisted Saturday. “These bills and laws attack the most basic values and freedoms.”

Biden’s backwards logic continues to incense everyday Americans, who are sick of the administration demonizing parents and voters who don’t share his fanatical, unhinged ideology. “The default position for the Left,” Congressman Bob Good (R-Va.) argued on “Washington Watch” Thursday, “… is whenever you disagree with them or you challenge their narrative, you challenge their agenda, you challenge their position, then you’re a racist, you’re a homophobe, you’re a transphobe — and they target you.”

Right now, he argued, people who “dissent or disagree” with the radical agenda of the Biden administration, those who “dare to question the efforts to indoctrinate our children in schools with anti-American ideology, with racist ideology, with transgender ideology … [t]hose are the people that this administration considers to be the greatest threat to the country. [They are] to be threatened, intimidated, harassed, arrested, even imprisoned for standing up for what they believe in, for exercising, frankly, their First Amendment protected rights to petition their government with their grievances, to protest peacefully and just to stand up for the protection of their own children.”

In the meantime, Biden’s flagrant allegiance to the LGBT progress flag is not only putting him at odds with most Americans but potentially, critics argue, with the U.S. Flag code. “The flag of the United States of America should be at the center and at the highest point of the group when a number of flags of States or localities or pennants of societies are grouped and displayed from staffs,” Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton said. More than that, he insisted, “To advance revolutionary transgender agenda targeting children, Biden … disrespects every American service member buried under its colors.”

Members of Congress were equally disgusted. “Pursuing his twisted agenda, Biden dishonors the flag and breaks American law,” Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) posted. “Shameful that our flag is being replaced by leftist imagery at the White House,” Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) tweeted. “Anyone wondering why drag shows and other woke nonsense dominate our government? Here it is: orders are coming directly from the top.”

“This is a disgrace,” Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) agreed. “Not only is it in breach of US Flag Code, but it’s a glaring example of this White Houses’ incompetence and insistence on putting their social agenda ahead of patriotism.”

If Biden thinks flaunting his obsession with LGBT extremism will help him at the polls, someone in the White House might want to check the value of Bud Light and Target stocks. If people will vote against this agenda with their dollars, how much more will they vote with their ballots?

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.