Tag Archive for: gender ideology

Meta Employees Protest Removal of Tampons from Men’s Bathrooms

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, recently became one of the many organizations scrapping their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies. According to Breitbart, part of this move “back toward the lane of sanity” also included CEO Mark Zuckerburg’s executive decision to remove tampons from the men’s bathrooms in the Silicon Valley, Texas, and New York offices. The outlet added that these were “previously provided … for nonbinary and transgender employees who [used] the men’s room but [required] sanitary pads because they are women.”

Reportedly, there have been some trans-identifying employees who have decided to protest by bringing their own feminine hygiene products to the men’s restrooms. The New York Times wrote: “To protest Mr. Zuckerberg’s actions, some Meta workers soon brought their own tampons, pads and liners to the men’s bathrooms, five people with knowledge of the effort said. A group of employees also circulated a petition to save the tampons.”

Apparently, this is part of a larger series of “quiet rebellions that Silicon Valley workers have staged as they grapple with the rightward shift of their bosses.” But as the Times went on to highlight, in addition to Zuckerburg, several other Big Tech figures such as X CEO “Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google chief executive Sundar Pichai, Apple chief Tim Cook, and Google co-founder Sergey Brin have embraced” President Donald Trump and his shift away from left-wing agendas.

Regarding the Meta employees putting feminine products in the men’s bathrooms, Family Research Council’s Meg Kilgannon commented to The Washington Stand that she’d “prefer they donate these products to a woman’s shelter or prison in their local area.” However, she added, “If Meta employees feel the need to provide feminine hygiene products in the men’s room, I suppose it’s up to Mark Zuckerberg to decide if he is going to support employees’ use of opposite-sex facilities in his buildings.” And yet, as the Times noted, regardless of how Zuckerburg handles these protests, they do appear to be significantly less boisterous than the protests that emerged during Trump’s first term.

The outlet wrote, “The subtle resistance from tech employees these days contrasts with their much more vocal behavior during Mr. Trump’s first administration in 2017. When Mr. Trump ordered an immigration ban from a handful of predominantly Muslim countries that year, Silicon Valley workers held protests, circulated petitions and pushed executives to denounce the president.”

According to Joseph Backholm, FRC’s senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement, it may boil down to a lack of control, especially given the Republican majority within the federal government, and a sea of red voters who made it happen. These protestors “were empowered by the fact that all the ‘important’ people agreed with them,” Backholm told TWS, “but those who are truly committed to progressivism and not just what is possible find themselves, in some cases for the first time in their lives, feeling like they aren’t in control. This is certainly a sign of mood change, but it’s unclear whether it will last.”

Despite the progress that’s been made advancing conservative values, Backholm insists that the culture is “still far from healthy, and the ideas of the Sexual Revolution are still carrying the day. Generally, the public has discovered that progressivism is not able to deliver on its promises and actually makes the world much worse.” And yet, “this does not mean we know what is actually good for us.”

Backholm concluded that even though “we’re moving in a different direction … in order to ensure we move in a good direction, we have to recommit ourselves to the creation order and the idea that we are ‘One Nation Under God’ and not a nation of people just doing whatever feels good.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Trump Puts an End to ‘Preferred Pronoun’ Use in Federal Emails: ‘A Return to Sanity’

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is repulished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 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.

Transgender Surgeries for Kids Is ‘a Stain on Our Nation’: Trump Executive Order

President Donald Trump has protected U.S. taxpayers from funding “the chemical and surgical mutilation of children” by declaring the federal government will “not fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support” cross-sex hormone injections or transgender surgeries.

President Trump’s executive order “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” signed Tuesday, cuts off federal funding for the transgender industry, allows families harmed to sue, could institute new religious and conscience protections, and may open the door to criminal prosecution of any individual involved in certain transgender surgeries.

“Across the country today, medical professionals are maiming and sterilizing a growing number of impressionable children under the radical and false claim that adults can change a child’s sex through a series of irreversible medical interventions. This dangerous trend will be a stain on our [n]ation’s history, and it must end,” states the order. “Countless children soon regret that they have been mutilated and begin to grasp the horrifying tragedy that they will never be able to conceive children of their own or nurture their children through breastfeeding.”

The executive order requires that all medical institutions, including medical schools and hospitals receiving federal “research or education grants end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children” at once. The order also bars the funding of such procedures by the U.S. military’s health insurance policy, Tricare, as well as all other federal benefits providers. And it previews potential regulations, including placing conditions on Medicare and Medicaid funding.

The order foresees the prosecution of so-called “gender-affirming care” providers in civil or criminal courts. The order requires the attorney general to “prioritize enforcement of protections against female genital mutilation,” enacting criminal penalties for phalloplasty and vaginoplasty. The Biden-Harris administration decried the Islamic practice of FGM as “child abuse” at the same time it sued states for protecting residents from “bottom surgery.”

The Justice Department can also sue anyone “misleading the public about long-term side effects of chemical and surgical mutilation.” The DOJ will also “draft, propose, and promote legislation to enact a private right of action for children and the parents of children whose healthy body parts have been damaged” by transgender procedures, including “a lengthy statute of limitations.” Detransitioners including Chloe ColeCamille KiefelClementine BreenKayla Lovdahl, and others have held their doctors accountable for advising and carrying out transgender procedures that caused them lifelong, irreversible damage.

Significantly, Trump orders the government to consider prosecuting blue states that facilitate the “transition” of children without parental consent for kidnapping. The Trump-Vance administration will “take appropriate action to end child-abusive practices by so-called sanctuary [s]tates” such as Governor Tim Walz’s (D) Minnesota [and] Governor Gavin Newsom’s (D) California “that facilitate stripping custody from parents who support the healthy development of their own children, including by considering the application of the Parental Kidnapping Prevention Act and recognized constitutional rights.” The EO also repeals a 2022 guidance that states federal law “does not require covered entities and business associates to disclose” information about “an individual’s” health care to others without the patient’s consent. (Emphasis in original.)

The order defines “child or children” as “an individual or individuals under 19 years of age.” Although above the legal age of majority, the definition more closely comports with a recent paper from researchers at the Mayo Clinic showing that the human brain does not finish developing until nearly the age of 30.

The order could expand the religious liberty and conscience rights recognized by the U.S. government, by modifying section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, conventionally known as Obamacare. The Biden-Harris administration amended the provision last year to treat it as though it forbade medical providers of conscience from refusing to carry out transgender procedures.

It also orders the secretary of Health and Human Services “to end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children” and issue a report within 90 days on scientifically based best practices for minors suffering from gender dysphoria. President Trump’s HHS nominee, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., began Senate nomination hearings on Wednesday.

The January 28 order notes the politicization and poor quality of existing, pro-transgender studies. It points out the world’s largest “expert” body on transgenderism propounds advocacy-masquerading-as-science and notes that the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) “lacks scientific integrity.” All federal agencies will delete any policies based on WPATH’s Standards of Care Version 8. Biden’s HHS assistant secretary for health, who was born Richard Levine and now uses the name Rachel, lobbied WPATH to remove minimum age limits for transgender surgeries to serve political ends. President Trump’s new executive order requires the HHS secretary to “increase the quality of data” on these matters. Most studies supporting so-called “gender-affirming care” can be classified as “low quality/low certainty,” according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.

All federal agency heads will submit a report detailing their progress within 60 days.

‘A Refreshing Return to Sanity’

The measures should prove popular with the broader public: A majority (59%) of Americans believe no one should be able to carry out chemical or surgical transgender procedures on minors — a position supported by every demographic except registered Democrats.

Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) called the order “hugely important.” “President Trump [is] sounding the death knell for the gender mutilation industry that has been targeting our children.” Hawley took action to enshrine the executive order’s provisions into law, re-introducing the Protecting Our Kids from Child Abuse Act, which would grant victims and their families a private right of action to sue the predatory transgender industry and defund facilities carrying out these procedures.

State Rep. Fred Deutsch (R-S.D.), who introduced one of the earliest bills to protect children from transgender procedures statewide, said it was “about time these crimes against humanity were banned.”

“We applaud President Trump for fulfilling his promise to America’s families and taking these critical steps to protect children from harmful, experimental, and often irreversible medical procedures,” Matt Sharp, director of the Alliance Defending Freedom’s Center for Public Policy, told The Washington Stand. Sharp called the order “a refreshing return to sanity.” Now, “instead of being a global outlier, America will now ‘follow the science,’ like the U.K. and other European countries have done, to ensure that we are identifying safe and effective ways to help kids who experience distress over their biological sex.”

Dr. Jill Simons, the executive director of the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) called the executive order a “bold defense of vulnerable children from mutilating procedures in the name of gender ideology,” while ACPeds President Dr. Michael Artigues deemed the order “a major step toward ending harmful medical interventions on minors.”

“It reaffirms a commitment to healthy, ethical, and evidence-based pediatric care,” said Artigues. “It is essential to emphasize the importance of protecting youth and providing comprehensive, quality psychological support to all children struggling with gender dysphoria.”

“Thank you President Trump for protecting children!” said Simons. “Children are beautiful just the way they are. No child is born in the wrong body.”

Katy Faust of Them Before Us described the executive action as “a win for children’s rights.”

Trump Transgender Executive Orders Already Taking Effect

U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Acting Chair Andrea Lucas announced she had implemented President Trump’s Executive Order 14166, “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government,” when she:

  • Announced that one of her priorities — for compliance, investigations, and litigation — is to defend the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights, including women’s rights to single-sex spaces at work.
  • Removed the agency’s “pronoun app,” a feature in employees’ Microsoft 365 profiles, which allowed an employee to opt to identify pronouns, content which then appeared alongside the employee’s display name across all Microsoft 365 platforms, including Outlook and Teams. This content was displayed both to internal and external parties with whom EEOC employees communicated.
  • Ended the use of the “X” gender marker during the intake process for filing a charge of discrimination.
  • Directed the modification of the charge of discrimination and related forms to remove “Mx.” from the list of prefix options.
  • Commenced review of the content of EEOC’s “Know Your Rights” poster, which all covered employers are required by law to post in their workplaces.
  • Removed materials promoting gender ideology on the Commission’s internal and external websites and documents, including webpages, statements, social media platforms, forms, trainings, and others. The agency’s review and removal of such materials remains ongoing. Where a publicly accessible item cannot be immediately removed or revised, a banner has been added to explain why the item has not yet been brought into compliance.

“Biology is not bigotry. Biological sex is real, and it matters,” said Lucas. “It is neither harassment nor discrimination for a business to draw distinctions between the sexes in providing single-sex bathrooms or other similar facilities which implicate these significant privacy and safety interests. And the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County does not demand otherwise: the Court explicitly stated that it did ‘not purport to address bathrooms, locker rooms, or anything else of the kind.’”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

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

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 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.

Transgenderism Not ‘Honorable, Truthful’ or Compatible with Military Service: Trump EO


President Donald Trump has signed two executive orders reorienting the U.S. military away from liberal indoctrination by banning extreme gender ideology —including transgender pronouns — and DEI policies aimed at advancing critical race theory. The actions brand transgender ideology a “falsehood” that prevents its adherents from living an “honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life.”

President Trump’s new policy will “end invented and identification-based pronoun usage” and stop members of one sex from using the opposite sex’s “sleeping, changing, or bathing facilities” except under “extraordinary operational necessity,” such as in war zones. It classifies “gender ideology” and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) as “radical, extremist, and irrational theories” and will set about “abolishing the DEI bureaucracy.”

Transgender Identity Shows Dishonor ‘Even in One’s Personal Life’

President Trump signed an executive order “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness” on Monday night.

“It is the policy of the United States Government to establish high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity,” the transgender executive order states. “This policy is inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria. This policy is also inconsistent with shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex.”

Anyone “expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service,” states the executive order. “Beyond the hormonal and surgical medical interventions involved, adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life. A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”

The order cites existing military policy (DoD Instruction (DoDI) 6130.03) that enlistees must be “[f]ree of medical conditions or physical defects that may reasonably be expected to require excessive time lost from duty for necessary treatment or hospitalization.” It notes this would apply to “conditions that require substantial medication or medical treatment to bipolar and related disorders, eating disorders, suicidality, and prior psychiatric hospitalization” — comorbidities which tend to occur in greater preponderance among people who identify as transgender.

Transgender procedures took trans-identifying soldiers out of readiness about half the year, according to a comprehensive report authorized in the first Trump administration. The memorandum found the nation’s 994 active duty servicemembers who identify as transgender accounted for more than 30,000 mental health visits. In all, “transitioning Service members in the Army and Air Force have averaged 167 and 159 days of limited duty, respectively, over a one-year period,” constituting a “readiness risk.”

The new policy builds on a previous executive order which rescinded 78 Biden executive orders — including his transgender military service order: Executive Order 14004 of January 25, 2021 (“Enabling All Qualified Americans To Serve Their Country in Uniform”) — on day one.

Executive Order 2: Abolishing DEI in the Military

President Trump’s second executive order, “Restoring America’s Fighting Force,” refocuses the military on excellence, lethality, and deterrence rather than DEI.

“Unfortunately, in recent years civilian and uniformed leadership alike have implemented Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs and their attendant race and sex preferences within the Armed Forces. These actions undermine leadership, merit, and unit cohesion, thereby eroding lethality and force readiness,” says the order. With his latest action, Trump will wipe out “any vestiges of DEI offices, such as sub-offices, programs, elements, or initiatives established to promote a race-based preferences system that subverts meritocracy, perpetuates unconstitutional discrimination, and promotes divisive concepts or gender ideology.”

The move furthers his policy of rooting out “race-based and sex-based discrimination” throughout the government, including within the U.S. military. “No individual or group within our Armed Forces should be preferred or disadvantaged on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, color, or creed,” states the order. With this action, the federal government will no longer “violate Americans’ consciences by engaging in invidious race and sex discrimination.” The secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security will issue guidance for implementing this order within 30 days, then document their progress in carrying it out within six months. DEI programs cost the military $114.7 million in 2024 alone.

Trump Actions ‘Return the Military to Lethality’: Congressman

Conservatives and veterans praised the president’s decision to bleed social experimentation out of the military. “This is absolutely necessary. It was perfect tone by the president. We will return the military to lethality, to deterring our adversaries across the world,” said Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas), a retired Army lieutenant colonel who sits on the Veterans Affairs Committee and the Foreign Affairs Committee, on “Washington Watch” Tuesday. “This will help with recruiting. This will help with training. This will help with morale. This is the way it’s done.”

“Leadership makes a difference in the military. And our commander in chief demonstrated that leadership yesterday with these executive orders,” Self added.

“I was thrilled to see that he went back to the same policy that he enacted” in his first term, “one that we worked with him to get done, and that was to return our military to focusing on its mission to fight and win our wars, not modeling the latest cross-dressing camouflage,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, a Marine veteran.

“Wokeism, which comes in many forms, takes progressivism to extremes and imposes it with coercion, even if it hurts the institution,” Elaine Donnelly, president of the Center for Military Readiness, told The Washington Stand.

The move should prove popular with others who have served, as well. A YouGov poll found an overwhelming 94% of veterans oppose racial and gender preferences in military promotions.

But some decried the policy, which reverses secular progressive political grains. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), who chairs a congressional caucus dedicated to advancing LGBTQ radicalism, called the Trump policy “beyond shameful.”

Undoing Nine Years of Democratic Social Tinkering

Former President Barack Obama paved the way for the military crisis by allowing individuals with active gender dysphoria to join the military. He added “gender identity” as a protected class in the military’s non-discrimination policies. President Donald Trump authorized a report on the issue in August 2017. The 45th president ultimately adopted the February 2018 memorandum declaring gender dysphoria incompatible with military service, but grandfathering in those who began receiving transgender injections since Obama’s order or who had been “stable” for 36 months and could be deployed.

The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders Law (which sometimes brands itself “Glad Law”) filed a lawsuit, Jane Doe 2 v. Trump, but lost the judgment from Judge Stephen F. Williams, a Reagan appointee to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. “[T]here is no constitutional right for, say, biological males who identify as female to live, sleep, shower, and train with biological females. Whether allowing such flexibility in military service is a good idea or not is of no concern to the courts; that is a question for the people acting through their elected representatives,” ruled the late judge. The case never came before the Supreme Court before the Biden-Harris administration restored and expanded the Obama-Biden administration’s policies.

NCLR and Glad Law filed a new lawsuit on Tuesday asserting the military readiness policy is not “based on any legitimate governmental purpose.” Instead, “the ban reflects animosity toward transgender people.”

Additional Executive Orders Reinstate Soldiers Who Refused the COVID-19 Shot, Establish Missile Defense

Trump also signed an executive order reinstating all soldiers whom Joe Biden dismissed or left the U.S. armed services for refusing to take the COVID-19 shot. The more than 8,000 soldiers will “revert to their former rank and receive full back pay, benefits, bonus payments, or compensation.” The president’s action includes not only those forcibly removed from service but also those who voluntarily left the military rather than obey Biden’s order to take the controversial shot, which has been tied to heart problemsstrokesneurological disorders, and an as-yet-unnamed condition that mimics the symptoms of long COVID.

An inspector general’s report found Biden-Harris administration bureaucrats denied religious exemptions en masse to all but those already scheduled to retire or leave the services, spending just 12 minutes analyzing requests. Some 70% of the early servicemembers removed from service over the shot received the lower “general discharge,” rather than an “honorable discharge.”

President Trump’s new order gives the Defense and DHS secretaries 60 days to show they have followed through.

Trump also signed an executive order Tuesday authorizing the establishment of “The Iron Dome for America,” a missile defense system. “The United States will provide for the common defense of its citizens and the [n]ation by deploying and maintaining a next-generation missile defense shield,” states the order.

The executive order states the U.S. military will try to provide or enhance missile defense capabilities for U.S. allies. The executive order calls into question the Trump administration’s commitment to a non-interventionist foreign policy, stating it will “[i]mprove theater missile defenses of forward-deployed United States troops and allied [foreign] territories, troops, and populations.”

The policy captured public imagination thanks to Ronald Reagan’s televised address on Strategic Defense Initiative on March 23, 1983. Over stiff Democratic opposition and diplomatic pressure from the Soviet Union, the U.S. developed a limited missile-defense system in fits and starts over the next four decades. President Bill Clinton slow-walked the advancement of national missile defense, deferring it altogether late in his administration. In December 2001, President George W. Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and enhanced missile defense research.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

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

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 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.

Groundbreaking Troop Bill Heads to Biden’s Desk with First-Ever Rebuke of Trans Ideology

After a frustrating and bitterly divided year in Congress, one thing that will go down as a bright shining success for the GOP is the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). On Wednesday, the Senate voted to send the 1,800-page behemoth to President Joe Biden’s desk, where he will be forced to do something neither side ever thought possible: sign a bill protecting children from his radical transgender agenda.

It’s a stunning turn of events for both parties. For Republicans, the idea that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) could negotiate a deal that not only stopped taxpayer-funded gender transitions for military kids, but also erased the women in the draft provision and axed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts with his narrow majority still has insiders shaking their heads in amazement. On the flip side, it shows just how vulnerable Democrats are after the November elections — especially on the trans issue, which pollsters almost universally believe cost Kamala Harris the White House.

That’s not to say that some of Schumer’s extremists didn’t put up a fight. Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) was furious at the policy change, threatening — for the first time in her career — to vote against the NDAA, “a position I do not take lightly,” she insisted. “It’s flat-out wrong,” she fumed on the Senate floor, arguing that taxpayers should be forced to fork over their hard-earned dollars for the butchery of children.

In a move that was mostly for show, Baldwin fought to add an amendment to the NDAA that would reinstate the language for taxpayer-funded gender surgeries and hormones. “Let’s be clear: we’re talking about parents who are in uniform serving our country who have earned the right to make the best decisions for their families,” Baldwin and 20 senators wrote. “I trust our servicemembers and their doctors to make the best healthcare decisions for their kids, not politicians.”

The amendment to remove the protections for minors was backed by Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey (Mass.), Brian Schatz and Mazie Hirono (Hawaii), Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden (Ore.), Cory Booker and Andy Kim (N.J.), Dick Durbin (Ill.), Patty Murray (Wash.), Chris Van Hollen (Md.), Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Alex Padilla (Calif.), John Fetterman (Pa.), Martin Heinrich (N.M.), John Hickenlooper (Colo.), and Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal (Conn.).

FRC’s senior director for Government Affairs, Quena Gonzalez, dismissed the push as “rank political theater.” “The effort failed,” he pointed out to The Washington Stand, “because it was designed to fail. If the Democrats who run the Senate had really wanted to block protections for military kids from taxpayer-funded gender transition procedures, they could’ve done that before the bill was ever negotiated with the Republican-led House.”

Instead, he points out, “language to protect kids was included in the base House text and in the base Senate text, even before it was negotiated. So to complain now — and file an amendment that won’t get 60 votes and is therefore doomed to fail — is pure posturing. Why did they wait until now, when it’s too late to do anything meaningful?” Gonzalez wondered. “Maybe they knew they didn’t have the votes. Or maybe they understood that it’s a political loser, but feel they have to keep pandering to their hard-core radical base. Two House Democrats, Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) and Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), wasted no time blaming the Left’s extremism on the related ‘gender identity’ issue of boys being allowed in girls’ sports, restrooms, showers, and locker rooms, etc.”

Fortunately for the Democratic Party, Schumer wouldn’t allow his senators to press the issue. Rather than let his members take a politically damaging vote that puts them on the record for a policy that Americans are very much against, he quietly shelved the amendment, telling the press brightly, “The NDAA is now on a glide path to final passage.” Throwing a bone to his far-Left caucus, he added, “Of course, the NDAA is not perfect. It doesn’t have everything either side would like. … But of course, you need bipartisanship to get this through the finish line.”

To most observers, this is one of the biggest signs yet that the country is at a tipping point on extreme gender ideology. “The passage of this NDAA is a huge loss for the Left,” Gonzalez insists. “Democrats ran for president and for Congress in part by calling conservatives who stood up to the woke mob ‘transphobic.’ For the longest time, we Christians have been told that we’re ‘on the wrong side of history,’ but we are on the right side of truth. This should give Christians courage,” he underscored. “When we stand up univocally for truth, even when it’s not culturally popular, we stand for unchanging principles that will ultimately be vindicated by a much higher authority than Congress, the president, or the Supreme Court.”

By way of background, the speaker explained to Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “This Week on the Hill,” that the NDAA is usually passed with broad bipartisan agreement — a rarity in a city that can barely agree on anything. This year, he said, “We had some unnecessary controversy. One of the things that we were really focused on is … return[ing] the emphasis of our national defense policy to national defense. And so, we really were on guard to make sure that a lot of the woke progressive agenda was not part of that policy prescription. And we prevailed in that.”

Jubilantly, Johnson pointed out, “We, for the first time in federal law, will be preventing [the funding of] trans surgeries on minors. … You know, there [are] about two million-plus children that are [in] military families that are insured by Tricare, which is the big federal insurer. And we wanted to make sure that those taxpayer-funded dollars don’t go in any way to the provision of any kind of ‘gender-affirming care,’ as they call it. That would do dramatic harm — permanent harm — to these young people.”

Asked what it says about the Democratic Party that they’d pursue this cultural obsession at the expense of our military, the speaker could only shake his head. “I wish I could tell you,” he said. “I think that there [are] some on the Left [who] want to use every institution of the government to advance their woke progressive socialist policies [and] experiments, [hoping for] the transformational kind of change that they always brag about that they want to hoist upon America. But I can tell you what this election cycle affirmed for us, and that is that the American people are not having that. I mean, I think that’s one of the large reasons why President Donald J. Trump got reelected with the large mandate he has and why we won control of the Senate and the House for the Republican Party, because we’re advancing common-sense ideas. These traditional ideas that have made our country what it is are still held by the American people.”

At the end of the day, Johnson believes, “We’re still a center-Right country — in spite of what they’ve been trying to convince us of for the last several years, that we’ve gone progressive Left. We have not. And the American people demand common sense. They demand and desire and certainly need a military that is focused on lethality and protecting our national interest.”

Now, he celebrated, “This experimental, non-scientific nonsense that’s been going on everywhere will no longer be a part of the federal health care of our military servicemembers. So that was a big win. And we did a lot of other things as well,” he wanted people to know. “We’re trying to root out the DEI education nonsense in the military academies. And it goes on and on. But in addition to all of that, we also included the largest pay increase in many years for active-duty service members, enlisted members, a little over 14% pay raise. And that’s desperately needed. And we also added a lot of things to help with the quality of life for those who put on the uniform to serve our country, their families, and those related to them. So a lot of great, great wins in this policy, and we’re really excited that it got over the line.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

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

RELATED ARTICLE: Disney Leaves LGBT Activism on Cutting Room Floor in New Series

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 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.

Jaguar Rebranded: The Woke War against Normal

Marketing campaigns are, it is generally recognized, an attempt to sell a particular product or service. This can be done in any number of ways, from presenting a product as enticing to showcasing the necessity of a product to using humor or star power to generate appeal. In almost all cases, however, it is advisable to feature the product itself in one’s marketing campaigns. World-renowned automobile manufacturer Jaguar has, as of late, opted to disregard this latter standard — or, indeed, any of the aforementioned standards — and debuted a new marketing campaign comprised solely of the bizarre.

In addition to unveiling a new logo — which noticeably does not feature the company’s iconic, eponymous, pouncing big cat — Jaguar launched a new ad this week. The ad featured a host of androgynous individuals clad in brightly-colored outfits of a design so strange that the denizens of the Capitol in “The Hunger Games” appear commonplace and well-adjusted.

The ad features an Asian man wearing a yellow tank top and matching vinyl tutu, a black man (I am presuming that it is a man, anyway) sporting an afro that seems to be missing an entire quarter of itself and wearing a skintight red bodysuit with furry boots that look as though they could have been designed by Dr. Seuss in delirium, a black woman with a shaved head wearing a dress that resembles badly-arranged tissue paper sticking out of the top of a gift bag, a man who looks alarmingly similar to actress Tilda Swinton and is clothed in a garish orange dress seemingly made of rubber, and a whole cast of other bizarre figures of unsettling appearance and uncertain gender. The ad also features large pink rocks, upside-down rooms, and the brightest yellow elevator doors one could envision. What the ad does not feature is a Jaguar.

It wasn’t always this way, of course. Jaguar was once reputed for making the coolest cars ever, and everyone knew it. James Bond drove a Jaguar (2002’s “Die Another Day” and 2015’s “Spectre” are prime examples); a Jaguar made a memorable appearance in the “Fast and Furious” franchise; and pop stars from Jay Z to Lana Del Rey have featured the car in their glamorous music videos.

In 2015, less than 10 years ago, Jaguar launched an ad campaign headlined by English movie stars Ben Kinglsey, Mark Strong, and Tom Hiddleston, all three of whom are known for playing villains. As Strong and Hiddleston race to a luxurious mansion, Strong behind the wheel of a Jaguar and Hiddleston being outpaced in a helicopter, the trio of actors discuss the English heritage of the Jaguar and why Brits make such excellent movie villains. As Strong and Hiddleston arrive at the mansion, Kingsley, having freshly donned a sleek bow tie and dinner jacket, intones, “Oh, yes. It’s good to be bad.”

That ad campaign understood who the buyer is and what he’s looking for. Nobody buys a Jaguar because it’s affordable or convenient or fuel efficient. People buy Jaguars because they’re cool, sleek, seductive, and powerful. Movie villains, especially the sort portrayed by the likes of Kingsley, Strong, and Hiddleston, exude the very elegance, power, and affluence that Jaguar was once synonymous with. Besides, watching three big-name actors race helicopters and luxury cars to a veritable palace laden with high-tech security measures is simply cool.

In another series of ads, Hiddleston compared the revving of a Jaguar’s engine to the authority of an English movie villain’s voice and the car’s advanced technology to the sort of gadgetry that one would expect from a Bond film. In an age where patriotism and national pride are practically verboten, especially in Europe, it seems almost shocking to think that Jaguar’s ads even included a monologue from William Shakespeare’s “Richard II,” praising the English nation and the men who made her.

The simple fact is that Jaguar used to be cool. Whatever the company’s new logo and ad campaign may be — bizarre, indecipherable, amorphous, woke — they are not cool. Woke is the opposite of cool. Cool sells, woke doesn’t. Countless corporate titans have evidently learned their lessons when it comes to handling the poison known as woke. Bud LightTractor SupplyJohn DeereLowe’sRip Curl, and numerous other brands and retailers have discovered that vociferously promoting LGBT ideology is a death sentence for corporate profits. Jaguar may simply be late to the game, but the car manufacturer will also learn this lesson.

James Bond speeding along the cliffs of the Amalfi coast with a truckload of armed and uniformed villains in hot pursuit is cool. Bruce Wayne leaving his Gotham City penthouse and racing through the streets to reach the Batcave is cool. Jason Bourne evading CIA goons and tearing through downtown New York City is cool. Dirty Harry chasing a crazed criminal down the California freeway is cool. A man in a dress is not cool. A morbidly obese woman is not cool. Woke is not cool. Jaguar has chosen to abandon its heritage and the image of “cool” with which the company has become almost synonymous in favor of woke.

At its core, woke is the infantile, futile attempt to subvert and alter reality without any real effort. A man declaring himself a woman can never change the incontrovertible fact of his biological makeup by donning a pair of high heels and lecturing others about his new pronouns. This is also why woke is so obnoxious, so blatant, and so “in your face.” Reality needs no filter to be understood as reality; a six-foot-tall man with a big beard and a burly chest does not need to clarify that he is a man, it is simply understood.

But a six-foot-tall man in a ballgown has to tell others that he identifies as a woman and demands to be called “she” and “her,” because his subversion or alteration of reality is so clearly contradictory to reality; he cannot just be a six-foot-tall man in a dress, which is what reality denotes to the casual observer. Woke needs filters, it must filter reality through its own series of lenses in order to present its own distorted replication of reality; it can never simply rely on reality.

Cool, on the other hand, is rooted in reality. Unlike woke, it needs no filters. One need not be lectured about the emotional science of sound to get a slight thrill when a powerful engine roars to life beneath the hood. One need not have gone through excitement management training courses in order to cheer when an athlete pulls off a seemingly impossible feat. Cool is unafraid of itself, it presents itself simply, as part of the fabric of reality. Another thing: cool sells.

Whether it’s Jaguar or some other corporation, any conglomerate that goes woke is not doing so in order to market a product. This is a common (although well-meaning) misconception among many on the Right; we assume, based on our own mindset and goodwill, that these corporations and companies mistakenly believe that they will appeal to an evolving population of consumers and increase profits. This is not correct. These companies are, with few — if any — exceptions, not hurting for money, and most have the experience and history to know how to maintain and increase profits.

They are not promoting a product, they are promoting an ideology. Retail department stores do not sell rainbow Pride flag onesies because market research shows a sudden demand for LGBT-themed apparel among two-year-olds: they do so in the hope that the moms and dads who actually shop for their two-year-olds will believe that introducing toddlers to LGBT ideology is normal — or at least popular. Children’s entertainment companies do not introduce new characters with “they/them” pronouns and same-sex partners because they believe that five- and six-year-old viewers are craving LGBT representation: they do so in an effort to introduce children to ideas that would have otherwise never occurred to them, and to invite the children to question the ideas with which they have been raised.

In the end, woke is not a marketing technique or ploy, it is an act of ideological warfare. Jaguar is not on a sudden quest to sell its cars exclusively to they/thems and androgynous ethnic minorities. No, the automobile manufacturer is trying to replace its carefully-curated cool image with woke, and is hoping that everyone will mistake the former for the latter. If Jaguar is cool and Jaguar is woke, then woke must be cool, right?

But the filters have been falling over the past few years, like scales from one’s eyes. Jaguar may find that it has arrived to the woke party a little too late. While it’s true that none of these major corporations is quite hurting for money, everybody who’s sick to their stomachs of the incessant whining, labeling, and filtering necessitated by woke may just decide to make these corporations hurt for money.

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. ©2024 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.

Pete Hegseth Must Reform ‘Woke’ Military: Congressman

As Democrats deride President-elect Donald Trump’s choice of Pete Hegseth to lead the Department of Defense, one congressman says Hegseth is just the man to turn the Biden-Harris administration’s “woke and weaponized” military into a “strong and focused” fighting force. The president’s proposal to remove underperforming or politicized generals would actually depoliticize a Pentagon that once again failed its annual audit, he added.

Hegseth, an Ivy League graduate who served in the military, has been “wrongly criticized” as a lightweight, Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) told “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” on Monday. “We’re going to get a strong and focused military. Pete Hegseth has written books about it. He’s a well-educated, very successful combat veteran as an infantry officer, and I think he’s the right kind of leader. We have to get him confirmed.”

Trump’s Warrior Board Will Cut ‘Bloated’ Military

Democrats and the legacy media lumped in criticism of Hegseth with concern over President-elect Trump’s proposed executive order establishing a Warrior Board to review, and possibly remove, three- and four-star generals who moved up the ranks due more to their political views than their military prowess.

“Our senior ranks are already bloated. We have one officer for every nine enlisted soldiers. When we won World War II, we had one officer for every 30 enlisted soldiers,” Davidson told Perkins. “We’re very top heavy.”

Removing military officers has occurred numerous times under Democratic presidents. Barack Obama purged 197 military officers over five years. In 1941, during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s third term, General George C. Marshall removed 600 officers over age or physical fitness concerns.

The Left has tried to portray this as part of the president-elect’s “war on democracy” and “norms.” On Sunday, “ABC This Week” host Martha Raddatz asked if Trump plans to “fire or arrest” generals “he considers woke, or those close to former Chairman Mark Milley.” Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), just elected Michigan’s next senator, dismissed the tribunal as a “kangaroo court” that would, for the first time, introduce politics into the military. “I think we’re really at risk of politicizing the military in a way that we can’t put the genie back in the bottle,” said Slotkin.

But Davidson says the board would reverse the damage done by the Biden-Harris administration.

Observers Say Clinton, Obama-Biden-Harris Politicized the Military, Not Trump

The Clinton and Obama-Biden-Harris administrations politicized the military by using it as a tool for social experimentation, critics say. Bill Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy allowed closeted homosexuals to join the military for the first time in 1993. Barack Obama liberalized the policy, and the Biden-Harris administration extended it to transgender-identifying Americans. The Democratic administrations forced soldiers to sit through LGBTQ political propaganda at each step of the way. Biden-Harris also emphasized critical race theory and so-called Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

The U.S. Navy produced a widely mocked video in 2022 schooling soldiers on how the “proper” use of pronouns helps create “a safe space for everybody.” A video in the Navy’s online recruitment pilot program the following May featured a drag queen who uses the name “Harpy Daniels” (2nd Class Petty Officer Joshua Kelly). The entire DOD referred to male and female service members with the gender-neutral pronoun “themself” in its Manual of Military Decorations and Awards last August 7, before reversing itself weeks later.

“One of the key woke elements they created is this three letter acronym, DEI: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” said Davidson. But DEI officers “are really just political officers” who “politicize every department, and they’re clearly doing it in the Department of Defense.” The Biden-Harris administration requested $114.7 million for the Pentagon to teach “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” (DEIA) to the U.S. armed forces and deeply embed “DEIA values, objectives, and considerations in how we do business and execute our missions” last year.

That built on the administration’s commitment to critical race theory (CRT). As The Washington Stand’s Dan Hart reported, in 2022, “more than 600 documents were uncovered showing that West Point cadets are being immersed in CRT, with lessons on how ‘whiteness’ is ‘a location of structural advantage, of race privilege,’ how ‘racism is ordinary’ and ‘White Americans have primarily benefited from civil rights legislation.’” The materials directed cadets to use CRT principles to form their answers.

The Washington Stand’s Suzanne Bowdey produced a list of 25 incidences of the military promoting the woke agenda in the Biden-Harris administration’s first 21 months:

  1. January 2021: Biden Welcomes Transgenderism back into the Military, Scrapping Trump Policy
  2. January 2021: Army Punishes Chaplain for Opposing Transgenderism in the Ranks
  3. March 2021: Pentagon Launches Extremist Stand-Down
  4. March 2021: White House Announces Taxpayer-Funded Gender Reassignments for Troops
  5. March 2021: Navy under Fire for Reading List that Promotes America as ‘Systemically Racist’
  6. May 2021: Space Force Suspends Lt. Colonel for Denouncing Marxism
  7. June 2021: DOD Asks for Money to Combat Climate Change
  8. June 2021: Critical Race Theory Infiltrates U.S. Military Academies
  9. June 2021: Military Defends Drag Show at Largest Training Center as ‘Essential to Morale’
  10. June 2021: Pentagon Warns Chaplains to Affirm the LGBT Lifestyle
  11. February 2022: Army Introduces Strategy to Fight the ‘National Security Threat’ of Global Warming
  12. April 2022: Military Offers ‘Compassionate Reassignments’ for Service Members in Red States
  13. April 2022: Defense Secretary Considers Adding Nonbinary or ‘Polygender’ Troops to Ranks
  14. May 2022: Air Force Library Forced to Cancel Drag Queen Story Hour after GOP Pressure
  15. June 2022: Marines Celebrate Pride Month with Rainbow Bullets
  16. June 2022: Gratuitous Pride Tweets Circulate across the Branches
  17. June 2022: Pentagon Hosts ‘Transgender Visibility and Progress’ Event
  18. June 2022: Langley Air Force Base Hosts a Taxpayer-Funded Drag Queen Show
  19. June 2022: Democratic Leaders Resurrect Push for Women in the Draft
  20. June 2022: Navy Launches Training Video on the Correct Use of Personal Pronouns
  21. June 2022: Army Investigates Chaplain for Celebrating the End of Roe v. Wade
  22. June 2022: Pentagon Expands Access, Leave, and Travel for Service Member Abortions
  23. September 2022: Veterans Affairs Announces the Start of Taxpayer-Funded Abortions
  24. September 2022: Military Accused of Indoctrinating Kids with Woke Gender Ideology, CRT in Base Schools
  25. September 2022: Air Force Cadets Warned Not to Use ‘Gendered’ Words like ‘Mom,’ ‘Dad’

The Biden-Harris administration also denied religious exemptions for those who refused to take the COVID-19 jabs, firing thousands of soldiers who refused to take the then-experimental shot.

Biden officials “know that, by and large, the vast majority of men and women who serve in the military lean to the Right. And those 260,000 soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who did not take the vaccine are probably far more conservative,” said Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) at the time. Only 43 of the roughly 8,000 soldiers dismissed for refusing to take the untested injection had sought to reenlist in the armed forces, according to military data furnished to CNN last October, the last full fiscal year of the Biden-Harris administration.

All of these ideas have impacted recruitment. The Army exceeded its 2023 recruitment goal of 55,000 by a mere 300 enlistees. The other service branches posted similar numbers. The number of men volunteering for military service has declined by 35% over the last decade, much of it during the Obama-Biden-Harris years.

Slotkin acknowledged in passing that “there’s issues with recruiting” but felt the Pentagon’s “equity” agenda remains worthwhile, because “we want a diverse force.”

“You inherently build a diverse unit [when] you take the most talented people at each of the skill sets required to succeed,” replied Davidson, “and the unit flourishes.” Unit cohesion and “the ability to shoot, move, and communicate lethal force is what makes our military strong.”

The news comes as the Pentagon has once again failed its audit.

Defense Department Fails Seventh Audit in a Row

On Sunday, the Biden-Harris administration’s Defense Department announced it had failed an audit for the seventh time, failing to account for how it spent its $824 billion budget. Of the 28 components of the Pentagon’s audit, only nine passed with an unmodified opinion; more than half (15 of 28) received a failing report with disclaimers.

Administration figures dismissed claims they were guilty of nonfeasance. “I do not say we failed,” said Michael McCord, the Biden-Harris administration’s undersecretary of Defense comptroller and chief financial officer, last Friday. “We have about half clean opinions; we have half that are not clean opinions. So, if someone had a report card that is half good and half not good, I don’t know that you call the student or the report card a failure.”

A 50% grade is, indeed, a failing grade even under the most generous grading system.

The DOD, which has never passed an audit since they became legally mandated in 2018, is the only major government agency not to pass an audit.

McCord says passing an audit by 2028 is achievable — but not at the DOD’s current performance. “If you draw a trend line … back from when we started, from year one to year seven, I don’t think it’s going to show you’re getting there in time if you don’t continue to pick up the pace,” said McCord.

Concerns have percolated for years about Pentagon accountability. Liberal comedian Jon Stewart broached the topic during an April 2023 interview with Biden administration Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks, calling it a potential sign of “waste, fraud, and abuse.”

“The fact that DOD has not passed an audit is not suggestive of waste, fraud, and abuse. That is completely false right there,” deflected Hicks. “It’s suggestive that we don’t have an accurate inventory of what we have where.”

“So, in my world, that is waste,” replied Stewart.

As Hicks laughed dismissively at his argument, a staid Stewart replied, “I’m not looking to pick a fight with you, but I am surprised that the reaction to these questions is, ‘You don’t know what an audit is, Bucko.’”

The 2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) requires the Pentagon to have a clean audit by 2028. “The fiscal and national security benefits that will come with the Pentagon finally being able to account for all of its assets are literally immeasurable and will continue to be until it gets its financial house in order,” said U.S. Taxpayers for Common Sense. “Congress should help push it over the finish line.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

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

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 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.

U.N. Election Interference, Abortion Facilities Freak Out, and More: The 4 Stories You Missed This Week

As the nation reacts to the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election and looks forward to how the incoming Trump-Vance administration will shape up, numerous other important stories have slipped under the media’s radar.

On the eve of the 2024 election, the United Nations issued a report suggesting anything the U.N. deems “anti-LGBT rhetoric” — from political candidates and religious believers — be considered “hate speech” and to present LGBT-identifying people “as role models.” A Democratic campaign in the nation’s most significant swing state has sued to count the votes of unregistered voters. And late-term abortion facilities are worried that the 2024 election means they will soon have to close their doors.

1. Foreign Election Interference? U.N. Slams Politicians For ‘Hate Speech’ and ‘Gender Persecution’ on Eve of Election, Threatens Religious Liberty

The Biden administration praised a United Nations report dedicated to portraying the mainstream view of transgenderism as “hate speech” and encouraging social media platforms to silence politicians, and Christian believers, who espouse traditional Christian views of gender. It also asked for election observers dedicated to LGBTQ issues to patrol polling places.

“The human rights related to the electoral participation of LGBT persons may be violated in myriad ways,” including “bias-motivated … hate speech,” says the report.

“Intolerant rhetoric, based on animosity, fear-mongering and hate speech, may be directed at different targets … LGBT persons may be targeted specifically in campaign rhetoric, or hostility may be expressed in more general xenophobic terms,” says the report. “Discrimination and hostility are exacerbated when an LGBT individual is additionally targeted on the basis of other characteristics, such as race or religious beliefs, or as a migrant.”

President-elect Donald Trump leaned hard into advertisements showing that Kamala Harris supported taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for inmates and illegal immigrants. As a presidential hopeful in 2019, then-Senator Harris boasted that she changed the law to offer taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries to prison inmates when she was California attorney general. Former President Bill Clinton reportedly warned the Harris-Walz campaign of their vulnerability on the issue, and the Democratic polling firm Blueprint found no issue so motivated swing state voters as the notion that “Kamala Harris is focused more on cultural issues like transgender issues rather than helping the middle class.” Other candidates picked up the theme, and “Republicans spent $143 million on the transgender campaign to cast Democrats as out-of-touch” in the 2024 election, reported “60 Minutes.”

The U.N. objects when voters democratically make their voices heard on extremist transgender proposals via ballot initiatives. “Referendums, often with provocative or misleading questions, are one mechanism used to radicalize political discourse, or to distract voters from other pressing issues,” it says.

The U.N. seeks to portray all discussion of extreme transgenderism as beyond discussion. It describes even the use of “the term ‘gender ideology’ as ‘part of an anti-rights discourse by political and religious leaders seeking to limit the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and gender-diverse persons.’” The term “‘gender ideology’ has emerged as a dominant catch-all phrase that falsely implies a sinister attempt to undermine the social order by tampering with gender norms. It is used to oppose reproductive rights and the rights of LGBT people,” claims the report.

The U.N. calls on governments and social media companies to crack down on religious objections to radical LGBTQIA+ ideology. “In one submission, it was noted how anti-LGBT rhetoric was sometimes positioned as religious speech protected by freedom of expression and freedom of religion or belief. Profiling LGBT issues in campaigns, in order to generate a negative response and enhance political prospects, is often planned and purposeful.”

Among its 19 recommendations, the report calls on governments to:

  • “Promote the development and refinement of social media company policies on anti-discrimination”
  • “highlight the participation of LGBT persons in politics and to increase their perception as role models”
  • “educate the public on gender and sexual diversity and the human rights of LGBT persons”
  • Engage in “the proactive, prompt and efficient investigation and prosecution of hate crimes”
  • “Repeal laws against consensual same-sex conduct and review disenfranchisement based on criminal convictions”
  • “Adopt laws to guarantee legal recognition of gender identity on the basis of self-declaration”
  • “Develop guidelines and procedures for election day that promote the participation of LGBT persons, especially trans and non-binary persons”
  • “Support the capacity-building of civil society organizations focused on LGBT rights in election observation and advocacy”
  • “Support the capacity-building of international election observers on LGBT rights issues”
  • See “LGBT persons as a key component of international electoral assistance”

These proposals would at least smear all faith-based objections to extreme LGBTQ ideology as a form of hate speech. At worst, they would suppress the traditional, biblical doctrines of sexuality and gender held by nearly all the world’s Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox Christians.

The report — titled “Electoral participation and protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity” and written by U.N. Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Graeme Reed — came out on July 15. Yet C-FAM noted that the United Nations insisted on addressing the issue on Monday, November 4, the day before the U.S. presidential election. How did the U.S. administration greet it?

“Your report is very timely, as it comes during the so-called global ‘year of elections’ including in my own country tomorrow,” said Dylan Lang, a U.S. delegate to the U.N. General Assembly. “Sadly, the United States is not immune from homophobia and transphobia in election campaigns.” He also noted the administration’s record of appointing “[p]eople like Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, the first out Senate-confirmed Cabinet Secretary; Karine Jean-Pierre, the first openly queer White House Press Secretary; and Admiral Rachel Levine and Shawn Skelly, the highest-ranking openly transgender government officials in United States history.”

The timing seems anything but coincidental. Does this constitute foreign election interference?

2. Bob Casey’s Election Denial Would Count Ineligible Voters?

Senator Bob Casey (D-Pa.), who has devolved from a “pro-life Democrat” to just another pro-abortion liberal, lost his reelection campaign to Republican Dave McCormick this year. While the election’s razor-thin margin triggers an automatic recount under Pennsylvania law, it is unlikely to change the state of the race. In some cases, McCormick has actually gained votes. But not winning a majority of legal votes seems to be no reason for Casey to relinquish his vice-grip on power.

As of this writing, Casey — who regularly chided President Trump to accept the outcome of an election in advance — has not only refused to concede; he’s waging a legal battle to count the “votes” of unregistered voters. Several election boards in the state have voted to count mail-in ballots that have no date, in violation of state law and a recent state Supreme Court ruling. That’s not enough for the Casey campaign, which is fighting a court battle against the Republican National Committee to count the “votes” of unregistered voters, unsigned ballots, and those who do not live in the county in which they voted.

The Casey for Senate campaign sent a letter to one board declaring that it “challenges the rejection of provisional ballots based solely on the Board’s staff’s failure to find voters’ names on registered-voter lists.” This is apparently what the Left means when it claims it seeks to defend “Our Democracy.”

“Casey and the Democrats are sore losers. And they’re disrespecting our democracy,” says a 30-second ad crafted by the Fair Election Fund. “Tell Bob Casey it’s time to concede.”

3. University Turns on Democratic Rep, Then Flip-Flops

As online videos of blue-haired TikTok users show, Democrats are not handling the results of the 2024 election well. But some on the Left have at least the good sense not to let their convictions get in the way of receiving vast tranches of taxpayer dollars.

Tufts University threatened to cut all ties with the office of Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) after he dared to question whether the Democratic Party had gone too far in embracing extreme transgender ideology during the 2024 election.

After the results came in, Moulton — who briefly ran as a presidential hopeful in the 2020 Democratic primaries — committed what a U.N. observer might deem “hate speech”: He affirmed biological differences between men and women. “I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that,” said Moulton.

Tufts University decided not to wait for guidance from the U.N. It cut ties with Moulton’s office within 24 hours. “David Art, a Tufts professor who chairs the political science department, then called Moulton’s office Friday and threatened to block student internships” for students to work in Moulton’s office for credit, “according to internal Slack messages Moulton’s office shared with NBC News,” the outlet noted.

But backlash came swiftly, with calls to tax university endowments or take other legal measures against liberal universities. “We have reached out to Congressman Moulton’s office to clarify that we have not — and will not — limit internship opportunities with his office,” announced the university in a social media post on Tuesday.

“Imagine if one of these Tuft students actually wants to intern in a Republican office!” said Moulton.

4. Abortion Facilities Freak Out, Fear Going Out of Business

Among the constituencies that views itself as hardest hit by the 2024 presidential election is the abortion industry, especially those who carry out late-term abortions. But a fascinating, pre-election article in a liberal news outlet shows independent abortion facilities face their greatest economic squeeze, not from the incoming Trump administration, but from competitors in the abortion industry.

Shortly before the election, The New Republic carried an abortion industry fundraising letter posing as a news story warning that, even if Kamala Harris won the presidency, some abortionists who carry out third-trimester abortions may have to close their doors. Try to suppress your tears as you read:

“There are thought to be seven all-trimester clinics in the entire country. DuPont Clinic, an all-trimester provider in Washington, D.C., said it has lost more than $500,000 since July 1 after national groups put strict caps on patient funding. Karishma Oza, DuPont’s director of care coordination, said if that rate of loss continues and they don’t get support to close the funding gap, the clinic will have to close by the end of the year.

“‘Even though technically the clinic is a for-profit, we were never profitable,’ Oza said of the clinic, which opened in 2017. ‘But now with these cuts, we are going from pay period to pay period.’”

The story reveals what’s actually at play: a long-running turf war inside the abortion industry. Planned Parenthood has long sought to expand its abortion franchise locations, often in the same neighborhoods as non-affiliated abortion facilities.

“These clinics’ financial devastation is an upstream consequence of the National Abortion Federation and Planned Parenthood capping patient funding at 30 percent of their bill instead of 50 percent,” notes the story. The story hopes to keep these abortionists in business at your expense. One of the late-term abortionists — Dr. Diane Horvath of Partners in Abortion Care in College Park, Maryland — “expressed optimism that Maryland lawmakers could increase the amount Medicaid health insurance reimburses providers for abortion.”

The Trump administration should move swiftly to defund all abortionists, including Planned Parenthood. To use the abortion industry’s logic: Taxpayers have no responsibility to carry abortionists before the point of financial viability.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

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

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 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.

‘What Are You Talking About?’: Harris Confuses, Shouts Down Host during Fox News Interview

Vice President Kamala Harris tried to cram a stream of anti-Trump allegations into her Fox News interview with Bret Baier, frequently talking over him before concluding the interview in a litany of shouted claims about how former President Donald Trump presented an existential threat to democracy. Meanwhile, she dodged questions about taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for prison inmates and illegal immigrants, amnesty for potentially tens of millions of illegal immigrants, how she would differ from Joe Biden, and whether her open borders policies contributed to the deaths of numerous young American women.

Harris attempted to brush off Baier’s efforts to receive an answer to his questions by implying that he secretly knew she was right, at one point leading the top-rated news anchor to reply, “What are you talking about?”

News consumers hoping to get a concrete idea of what a President Harris would do in office were sorely disappointed on issue after issue. “Are you still in support of using taxpayer dollars to help prison inmates or detained illegal aliens to transition to another gender?” asked Baier at one point.

“I will follow the law,” she replied — an answer she gave to numerous policy questions, ignoring the fact that presidents pass, interpret, and enforce the law.

She later claimed the controversial policy of inflicting transgender procedures on federal prisoners is “a law that Donald Trump actually followed.” The Trump administration actually watered down the Obama-Biden administration’s interpretation of federal law which called transgender “transitions” for prisoners “necessary.” The first transgender surgery carried out in federal prisons took place in 2022, during the Biden-Harris administration.

“Kamala Harris has forcefully advocated for transgender inmates to be able to get transition surgeries, President Trump never has,” clarified Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.

In fact, candidate Harris bragged to a transgender pressure group that, as California attorney general, “I pushed for that policy” to assure inmates had “access to the medical care that they desired,” adding she may have been the “first in the country” to do so.

On Wednesday, the vice president brushed aside the Trump campaign’s attempts to distance itself from the prison procedures.

“Well, you know what? You got to take responsible [sic] for what happened in your administration,” declared Harris.

Observers predicted the line would come back to haunt the incumbent vice president, who has presided over 40-year-high inflation rates, long periods of wage deterioration, historically unprecedented numbers of illegal border crossings, the invasion of U.S. apartment buildings by transnational criminal gangs, and record-breaking numbers of American deaths from drug overdoses.

Harris’s eyes darted back-and-forth when asked, “When did you first notice Joe Biden’s mental faculties were diminished?”

“He has the judgment and the experience to do exactly what he has done,” Harris replied.

“Joe Biden is not on the ballot,” she added. At one point, Harris responded, “Let me be very clear: My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency.” But she failed to specify a single policy she would change or to list any mistake of the hyphenated Biden-Harris administration.

The two also clashed over the open border policies enacted during Harris’s tenure in office, which kicked off with more than 90 executive actions undoing Trump administration border security policies. An unprecedented wave of more than 10 million illegal border crossings followed, in addition to new amnesty and “parole” programs, such as the one that placed tens of thousands of Haitians in Springfield, Ohio.

“Looking back, do you regret the decision to terminate Remain in Mexico at the beginning of your administration?” asked Baier.

Harris referenced two pieces of legislation that bookend the Biden-Harris administration, without any mention of the years in between. In an answer that nearly mirrored a response she gave to Charlemagne Tha God earlier in the week, Harris noted that among her administration’s first actions was the introduction of a mass amnesty bill. The administration supported the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, which would have granted amnesty to at least 11 million illegal immigrants over eight years. Despite Democratic control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, the bill never came up for a vote.

She also alleged that Donald Trump bears responsibility for the border situation for opposing a bill negotiated by Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.), which would have allowed 1.8 million illegal immigrants into the country each year, among other proposals that border hawks disliked.

Baier repeatedly attempted to turn the interview back to Harris, her record, and her policies. He noted that among the six million or more illegal immigrants released into the U.S. homeland by the Biden-Harris administration were those who assaulted and killed U.S. citizens Jocelyn Gary, Rachel Moran, and Laken Riley. When Baier asked if Harris owed their families an apology, she replied she felt “sorry for their loss.”

During a Fox News town hall with Harris Faulkner, Trump laid down a radically different immigration plan. “We’re going to end all sanctuary cities in the United States, and we’re going to go back to normalcy, and we’re going to have law and order,” he said, to massive cheers. The former president has also promised a mass deportation of illegal immigrants, a policy supported by the majority of Americans.

Baier kept up the pressure, citing a recent poll which found that 79% of Americans believe the nation is on the wrong track, and “that track follows three and a half years of you being vice president,” said Baier. “If you’re turning the page, you’ve been in office for three and a half years.”

“And Trump has been running for office,” replied Harris, echoing her response that she had “never been to Europe” during her disastrous interview with NBC News host Lester Holt.

When Baier pushed Harris over her responsibility for her actions, she replied, “You and I both know what I’m talking about. You and I both know what I’m talking about.”

“I actually don’t. What are you talking about?” replied an inquisitive Baier.

He later asked Harris about the eight out of 10 Americans who believe Biden-Harris administration policies have sapped American strength. “Are they misguided? Are they stupid?” asked Baier.

“No, God, I would never say that,” replied Harris, apparently taking the Lord’s Name in vain.

Harris then accused Donald Trump of “suggesting he would turn the American military on the American people.” Harris Faulkner asked Trump about that allegation earlier in the day. “I’m not threatening anybody,” he replied, noting that he has “been investigated more than Alphonse Capone. It’s called weaponization of government.”

As the interview came to a conclusion, Harris began yelling, waving her hands, and screaming at Baier while insisting it is Donald Trump who is “misguided,” “unstable,” and “mentally not stable.” Harris filibustered Baier, refusing to yield as he tried to redirect her to the original topic. “I have a lot more to say” about Donald Trump, Harris complained.

Baier expressed his regret that the interview lacked substance, to which Harris replied “I invite everyone to go” to her campaign website.

“I tried to redirect numerous times without interrupting too much,” said Baier after the interview. He also noted the Harris campaign tried to shorten the interview significantly.

“We were supposed to start at 5 p.m. This was the time they gave us. Originally, we were going to do 25 or 30 minutes. They came in and said, ‘Well, maybe 20,’ so it was already getting whittled down. And then the vice president showed up about 5:15. We were pushing the envelope to be able to turn it around for the top of the 6 o’clock” hour. “I had a lot of other questions,” Baier added.

Baier also revealed that Harris’s campaign aides pushed him hard to “wrap,” or end the interview early. “I’m talking, like four people, waving their hands like, ‘It’s gotta stop!’” he said.

The interview went so poorly that shortly after its conclusion Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance advised his “Democratic friends: maybe you should consider swapping Kamala Harris for Joe Biden.” The Trump War Room retweeted the entire interview with the message, “Our newest ad just dropped.”

“Kamala’s not used to real interviews. It shows,” said Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah). “She is melting under the spotlight,” said Stephen Miller, a senior adviser to President Donald Trump and founder of America First Legal.

Democrats and members of the liberal media tried to defend Harris’s performance. Harris campaign senior adviser and former adviser to Barack Obama David Plouffe called the exchange “an ambush.” MSNBC hostess Mika Brzezinski posted on X that “@KamalaHarris did a great job” during “a rude and misleading interview.” Brzezinski also accused Baier of “performing for an audience of one,” implying Baier tailored his questions to please Trump — although MSNBC hosts have reported receiving texts from Democratic White House officials live on the air.

CNN’s Brian Stelter predicted, “A lot of viewers are going to come away saying, ‘Wow, she’s willing to do that. That’s a sign of toughness and strength.’” The host of “The Situation Room,” Wolf Blitzer, agreed with Stelter that Harris’s performance was “impressive indeed.”

Media headlines repeatedly referred to the interview as “testy.”

“It was a little tense,” Baier told Sean Hannity, adding the video — which showed Harris pausing, stuttering, and looking around frantically at times — was unedited. “I think she had a mission,” said Baier. She wanted to have a viral moment … and I think she might have gotten that.”

Harris, who has attempted to pitch her candidacy to the relatively narrow slither of Never Trump Republicans who lined up behind former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in the primaries, has also discussed interviewing on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

“Maybe she’ll come back,” said Baier. “I don’t know whether she will or not, but I hope she does.”

“I think I understand why they don’t want tough interviews, and this will probably be the last one,” replied Hannity.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

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

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 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.

Harris Supported Taxpayer-Funded Trans Surgeries in 2019, Called ‘Transition Treatment … a Medical Necessity’

The Kamala Harris campaign kept her policies (and person) away from the mainstream media for so long that the media went snooping through the past. On Monday, CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski first reported Harris’s support for taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries on federal prisoners and detained illegal immigrants, revealed in a candidate questionnaire she filled out for the ACLU during her abortive 2019 presidential campaign.

On the questionnaire, Harris marked the “yes” box in answer the following question: “As President will you use your executive authority to ensure that transgender and nonbinary people who rely on the state for medical care — including those in prison and immigration detention — will have access to comprehensive treatment associated with gender transition, including all necessary surgical care? If yes, how will you do so?”

The questionnaire also allowed candidates to explain their answer in 500 words or less. In the space provided, Harris wrote, “It is important that transgender individuals who rely on the state for care receive the treatment they need, which includes access to treatment associated with gender transition. That’s why, as Attorney General, I pushed the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to provide gender transition surgery to state inmates.”

She continued, “I support policies ensuring that federal prisoners and detainees are able to obtain medically necessary care for gender transition, including surgical care, while incarcerated or detained. Transition treatment is a medical necessity, and I will direct all federal agencies responsible for providing essential medical care to deliver transition treatment.”

“This questionnaire is really an interesting snapshot-in-time of that 2019 Democratic primary,” said Kaczynski. “Kamala Harris was trying to get to the left of [Independent Vermont Senator] Bernie Sanders. She was trying to get to the left of [Massachusetts Democratic Senator] Elizabeth Warren, and you really see that in a lot of these answers.” In a now-archived ranking, GovTrack.us rated Harris as the senator with the most liberal voting record in 2019.

Some snapshots can be consistent across time, as this one appears to be. Harris’s 2024 campaign finally published a page on policy issues on the eve of the one-and-only presidential debate (to quote Edna Mode, “Coincidence? I think not”). In a section on “fundamental freedoms … at stake in this election,” the Harris campaign touted their candidate’s record of LGBT advocacy as far back as 2004.

In particular, the Harris campaign said their candidate would “fight to pass the Equality Act to enshrine anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQI+ Americans in health care, housing, education, and more into law.” This extends the continuity because, as a senator in 2019, Harris was an original cosponsor of the Equality Act. While the campaign website elaborates no further, this far-reaching legislation would “virtually do away with sex-segregated spaces” by allowing “biological men into women’s private spaces,” Family Research Council director of Federal Affairs for Family and Religious Liberty Mary Beth Waddell warned in 2019.

This means that, under the Equality Act, male prisoners who identify as women would have a statutory right to be housed in a women’s prison, wrote Abigail Shrier. This is already law in Harris’s native California, where at least 47 biological males, including violent criminals and sexual offenders, were housed in women’s prisons, as of March 2023. Harris’s pledge to provide gender transition procedures to trans-identifying prisoners at taxpayers’ expense not only implies such a permissive housing policy, in which inmates get to self-define their gender, but it takes it one step further by placing the state’s endorsement behind their gender transition.

While Harris’s policy-light campaign has not explicitly reaffirmed her 2019 endorsement of taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries for trans-identifying prisoners, its brief comments are consistent with that position. Fellow Senate progressive Sanders said Sunday that Harris was not “abandoning her ideals” but merely “trying to be pragmatic and doing what she thinks is right in order to win the election.”

Even if Harris wanted to change her mind, the transgender lobby would not let her. This summer, left-wing activists poured out their wrath against the Biden-Harris White House over a statement softly opposing gender transition surgeries for minors. The administration quickly folded to the pressure and backpedaled from that position to appease the transgender lobby. If Harris became president, nothing in her record suggests that she would respond differently to pressure from the transgender lobby.

In her 2019 questionnaire, Harris also promised to provide taxpayer-funded gender transition surgeries to detained illegal immigrants. However, at the rate the Biden-Harris administration is releasing detained immigrants into the U.S., this seems like a moot point. It would be rendered even further irrelevant if Harris fulfilled another pledge from her 2019 questionnaire, namely to “end … immigrant detention facilities.”

Also in 2019, Harris also pledged to codify abortion-on-demand, “eliminate the Hyde amendment,” “legalize marijuana,” end cash bail, defund ICE, provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and oppose legislation to impede or prohibit anti-Israel protests.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 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.

The Difference between a Christian Conscience and a Secular Conscience

The Trump conundrum is now well understood. Though his positions and decisions as president were surprisingly good in some ways, his self-centeredness, history of crudeness, and penchant for insults have led many to say their Christian conscience won’t allow them to vote for him. A growing number claim their Christian conscience is so offended by Trump they feel compelled to vote for Kamala Harris to ensure Trump doesn’t take office. “Evangelicals for Harris,” a group that recently hosted a Zoom call attended by 200,000, declares on their X bio they are “voting for someone who better reflects Christian values.”

To her credit, Harris doesn’t have an insulting nickname for everyone she perceives as a political obstacle, but she is the most radically pro-abortion presidential candidate our country has ever seen. She is in favor of taxpayer-funded abortion up to the point of birth and favors no restrictions of any kind. When, as attorney general of California, she learned the abortion industry was illegally harvesting and selling aborted baby body parts, she did nothing to the people who dissect babies but aggressively went after David Daleiden, the man who exposed it. She is also the first vice president to visit an abortion facility, a move intended to demonstrate just how supportive of abortion she is.

Unfortunately, abortion is just the beginning of her joyful war on the Imago Dei. Harris has aggressively opposed state legislation protecting minors from chemical and surgical mutilation. She staged a photo op in the White House with a bearded man in a dress as if men in dresses and six-inch heels have always been discussing important ideas in the White House. She is also the first vice president to appear on “RuPaul’s Drag Race” to show her solidarity with drag queens.

Not only was she an early proponent of same-sex marriage, she refused to defend California’s natural marriage law as AG even when it was her sworn duty to do so. Though Harris talks about the importance of following the law, she doesn’t follow laws she doesn’t like either.

America’s vice president formally opposes everything God said was good. She denies God made us male and female. She denies God ordained marriage to be a relationship between a man and a woman. She denies we should be fruitful and multiply but believes people are a threat to the planet, part of the reason she is an evangelist for reducing the population generally. But never mind all that, she laughs a lot.

Christians are forced to navigate the reality that perfect people are never on the ballot, so we’re always picking sinners — and it’s appropriate to have minimum qualifications for our leaders. But not all sin is the same. Yes, all sin separates us from God and requires forgiveness, but not all sin is equally harmful. This is part of the reason Jesus warns us not to neglect logs in favor of specks and mentioned that those who delivered Jesus to Pilate were guilty of “greater sin” (John 19:10-11). It’s also the reason Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for straining at gnats while they swallowed camels (Matthew 23:24). Indifference to grave evil because you’re busy being outraged over real but less serious matters is its own form of sin.

We do not want our children speaking disrespectfully to their teacher, but even more than that we don’t want them planting pipe bombs in the school bathroom. “Evangelicals for Harris” is overlooking the pipe bomb in Johnny’s backpack so long as he promises not to talk back to his teacher.

Kamala Harris works to advance the agendas of people who dissect babies and sell their organs for profit. Other things are also evil, but there is nothing worse than that. However bad you think January 6 was, it’s less bad than dissecting babies. Just because good-looking people in expensive suits are telling you it’s not a big deal doesn’t mean it’s not a big deal. If you can get over baby organ harvesting because it’s done with joy, but you can’t get over the fact that Trump is insensitive, that’s not a Christian conscience in operation.

Yes, Trump has made repeated, awful statements about women — including jokes about assaulting them. There’s no excuse for it. But if your moral outrage compels you to affirmatively support someone who facilitates the mutilation and sterilization of children in response, that’s a cultural conscience, not a Christian one. That’s a conscience formed by “The View,” not the Bible.

People have convinced themselves that because they agree with God slavery is wrong, they’re on God’s team. Not so fast. While we have fortunately reached a consensus about the evils of slavery, the test of whether you have a Christian conscience or a cultural conscience occurs when the culture and God disagree. There’s no cost to taking God’s side on the issue of slavery, but there is a cost to taking God’s side on gender, marriage, identity, sexuality, sin, and a host of other issues. If you take sides with the culture against God every time there’s a conflict, you don’t get to claim to be on God’s team just because you also want to help the poor. Everyone wants to do that. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved.

A blessing of living in a free country is that we get to vote for anyone we want or abstain entirely. Obviously, I have opinions, but this is less an effort to persuade you to agree with me and more an effort to get us to stop lying to ourselves. Efforts like “Evangelicals for Harris” are lying to themselves and others. Take your “better reflects Christian values” nonsense elsewhere. Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart. There are a lot of people in the process of straining out gnats and swallowing camels right now. Kamala Harris is at war with God, and I’m not joining that war.

AUTHOR

Joseph Backholm

Joseph Backholm is Senior Fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement at Family Research Council.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 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.

Revised 2024 Democratic Platform More Extreme than the Draft

The final version of the Democratic Party’s 2024 Platform has added references calling transgender procedures “medically necessary,” claiming that Christian schools may further “discrimination,” shifting blame on the U.S. border to the previous administration, and promising American children a more “multilingual” education. The platform maintains its promises to keep “fighting” parents’ efforts to keep pornographic books out of children’s hands, expanding abortion nationwide, and promoting transgender procedures for children and prisoners.

Delegates to the 2024 Democratic National Committee in Chicago adopted the revised platform last week inside Chicago’s United Center. The final version contains minor modifications from the draft platform, which was released on July 13 and obtained by Politico. At that time, Joe Biden remained the presumptive Democratic Party presidential candidate.

Curiously, the 2024 Democratic Party Platform did not update that previous version’s references to the nominee’s name: It contains 20 references to 2024 being an election for Joe Biden’s “second term.” For example, the 2024 platform states, “In his second term, President Biden will continue to support access to FDA-approved medication abortion” and “stand with Ukraine.” It contains less than 10 references to Kamala Harris in an individual capacity, rather than conjoined with Joe Biden or as part of the “Biden-Harris administration.”

Yet the alterations made between the two drafts indicate a Democratic Party moving ever further to the Left. The revised platform added a brand new promise — not to average citizens but to the transgender industry: “Democrats will vigorously oppose state and federal bans on gender-affirming health care and respect the role of parents, families, and doctors — not politicians — in making health care decisions.”

Yet Minnesota Governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz (D) signed a bill disrespecting the role of parents in their children’s health care by allowing children whose parents will not allow them to undergo transgender procedures to flee to Minnesota, a “sanctuary” where the state will reassign custody until the child has undergone a transition against his/her parents’ wishes. Walz also signed a bill outlawing so-called “conversion therapy,’ even if parents and children want it.” The 2024 Democratic Party Platform doubles down on transgender procedures, adding that Biden “protected transgender Americans’ access to health care and coverage, including medically necessary gender-affirming care” (emphasis added).

The platform also strengthened promises to come after individuals accused of holding the wrong positions on hot-button issues. The revised platform changed its promise of “protecting LGBTQI+ children from bullying and assault” to stopping anti-LGBTQI+ “bullying and discrimination” (emphasis added). The platform still mentions the party’s intent to prosecute “hate crimes,” noting, “The Justice Department is taking an all-of-department approach to protecting LGBTQI+ rights.”

That promise may be directed at Christian schools, which may lose federal funding for holding to biblical morality under the vague language of the 2024 Democratic Party Platform. A new section added to the platform states: “We oppose the use of private-school vouchers, tuition tax credits, opportunity scholarships, and other schemes that divert taxpayer-funded resources away from public education. Public tax dollars should never be used to discriminate” (emphasis added). Teachers’ unions and LGBTQ pressure groups have accused Christian schools of “discrimination,” because they do not allow teachers who flout biblical morality to set that example for their students, or because they do not allow GSA Networks clubs like the one Tim Walz founded in his high school, which promotes transgender transitions without parental notification. Traditional Christianity teaches that one’s biological sex is unalterable, a gift from God, and should be treasured, as well as opposing all sexual activity outside biblical marriage.

The revised platform also deals with language, promising a greater cacophony inside public schools: “[W]e’re working to provide every student with a pathway to multilingual education, while ensuring equitable access to a high-quality education for English learners, who’ve historically been underserved.”

The revised platform pledges to tax U.S. citizens and their communities to facilitate giving U.S. citizenship to non-citizen immigrants. A new sentence states the Harris administration “will also help to fund community-based organizations that host clinics to assist with immigration cases.”

Seemingly, the revised platform added references to the LGBTQIA+ movement wherever possible. The revised platform adds that, not only did President Joe Biden pardon gay veterans, but he “pardoned approximately 2,000 gay,lesbian, and bisexual veterans who were convicted years ago just for being themselves” (emphasis added). Again, “President Biden … expanded funding for campus sexual assault prevention and is keeping students safe on campus by restoring and strengthening protections under Title IX, including explicit protections for LGBTQI+ students” (emphasis added). At other times, it worsens the reputation of those who disagree. It notes that Biden and Harris “reversed Trump’s un-American ban on transgender service members and ended the disgraceful and discriminatory ban on blood donation by gay and bisexual men” (emphasis added). It also replaced the term “gay” with the ever-more expansive “LGBTQI+.”

The platform still contains its promise to expand taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand nationwide: “With a Democratic Congress, we will pass national legislation to make Roe [v. Wade] the law of the land again. … We will repeal the Hyde Amendment. And in his second term, President Biden will continue to support access to FDA-approved medication abortion, appoint leaders at the FDA who respect science and appoint judges who uphold fundamental freedoms.”

A second abortion-related plank invokes the so-called Equal Rights Amendment, a relic of the 1970s feminist movement led by Gloria Steinem. “Democrats will fight to make the Equal Rights Amendment the law of the land,” although the never-ratified ERA has been interpreted to codify both a constitutional right to abortion and women’s eligibility for the military draft.

At times, the revision nods toward reality. It edits a sentence saying “the cost of living can still feel too high” to say the cost of living “is too high.”

The revision specifies that national rent control is coming in a Harris-Walz administration. A new sentence states that their housing policy “offers corporate landlords a basic choice for the next two years: either cap rent increases at 5 percent, or lose a valuable federal tax break.” The new platform added another line on housing policy: “and we will go after negligent landlords who don’t maintain basic habitability standards. We will also crack down on those who violate the Fair Housing Act, and on landlords who discriminate against low-income and minority renters and people with housing vouchers.” The Obama-Biden administration ignored written law and interpreted the Fair Housing Act as though it applied to people who identify as transgender. If you are renting out a room in your home but do not want your children sharing a bathroom with a trans-identifying male, you could become the target of a federal lawsuit.

A new section also alleges that former President Donald Trump “and his allies benefit directly from the housing shortage.”

The language does soften some of its anti-Trump rhetoric in light of the July 13 assassination attempt. Rather than saying, “Trump is a greater danger to democracy than ever,” the revised platform states, “Trump refuses to defend core tenets of our democracy: the Constitution, the rule of law, our system of checks and balances.” In two other instances, the platform changes some variant of the word “threat” to softer language (e.g., “The stakes in this election for the soul of our nation are profound.”). It also deletes a sentence stating Trump “has never respected service because he does not understand sacrifice.”

Yet it seeks to blame Trump and others for an historic influx of illegal immigrants over the last four years, and away from the Biden-Harris administration, discussing “a broke immigration system decades in the making” (emphasis added).

The revised platform contains the pledges made in the previous draft, as well, to continue “fighting” alleged “book bans.”

Since delegates did not revise the nominee’s name — or pronouns — the platform gives an insight into what a Joe Biden reelection campaign might have looked like. Until her rebranding as the candidate of “joy,” Kamala Harris was seen as the weaker link on the ticket, with major publications calling on her to drop out so Biden could choose a stronger running mate in articles with titles such as “The Case for Biden to Drop Kamala Harris,” in New York Magazine last September, or “For the country’s sake, Vice President Harris should step aside” in The Washington Post this March.

The Republican National Convention in Milwaukee adopted a slimmed-down document containing only a handful of campaign promises that resonated with Donald Trump’s campaign. Notably, the 2024 Republican Party Platform jettisoned its traditional language vowing to protect life from the moment of conception until natural death. Over the weekend, vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance indicated that President Donald Trump opposed any federal legislation to protect life, leaving the matter entirely to the states.

That is, however, significantly less pro-abortion than the 2024 Democratic Party Platform.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

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

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand c0lumn is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 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.

Michelle Obama Endorses Porn in Schools and Transing Kids on DNC Day 2

Former First Lady Michelle Obama celebrated “children” identifying as transgender, vilified concerned parents’ efforts to remove pornographic books from children’s sections of school libraries, and embraced life-destroying fertility methods during the most celebrated speech of the Democratic National Convention to date Tuesday night. Her husband, former president Barack Obama, promised a Harris-Walz administration would sign a bill extending abortion to all 50 states. Kamala Harris made a virtual appearance to accept the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.

Here are the most notable events of the second day of the Democratic National Convention.

Michelle Obama Supports Transing Kids, Porn in Schools, Abortion, Bible Verses

Democratic delegates gave the warmest welcome of the evening to former First Lady Michelle Obama, who supported transgenderism for children and derided parental efforts to safeguard underage children from exposure to pornography — often LGBTQ porn — in graphic novels aimed at pre-teens and adolescents as “banning our books.”

“Demonizing our children for being who they are and loving who they love, look, that doesn’t make anybody’s life better,” she declared, using euphemisms to endorse child transgender confusion. The vast majority of Americans believe children should not be subjected to the experimental products of the predatory transgender industry — including potentially-sterilizing puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone injections, and life-altering surgeries.

“Shutting down the Department of Education, banning our books — none of that will prepare our kids for the future,” Michelle declared as an audience of Democratic VIPs roared in approval. Nationwide, parents have objected that minors should be able to check out books like “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe — which features “detailed illustrations of a man having sex with a boy,” as well as “fellatio, sex toys, masturbation, and violent nudity” — and “Lawn Boy” by Jonathan Evison, which “describes a fourth-grade boy performing oral sex on an adult male” and remembering the experience fondly.

Parents have asked public school administrators to return these books to an age-restricted part of the library, where minors cannot be exposed to them without parental permission. Yet in recent years liberals have so objected to protecting children’s innocence that beleaguered parents have felt forced to defend themselves.

“I’m not looking to ban books or burn books,” one such parent, Bruce Friedman, told “Washington Watch” host Tony Perkins. “It’s not Kristallnacht.”

On Tuesday, Michelle Obama also made one of her first public statements that she conceived one or more of her children through in vitro fertilization. “Cutting our health care, taking away our freedom to control our bodies, the freedom to become a mother through IVF, like I did — those things are not going to improve the health outcomes of our wives, mothers and daughters,” said the former first lady.

She was one of several Democratic speakers who attacked a non-existent “ban” on IVF. “If they win, Republicans won’t stop at banning abortion. They’ll come for IVF next,” averred Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) earlier in the evening. “They’ll prosecute doctors. They’ll shame and spy on women. If you think that’s far-fetched, just look up what happened in Alabama this year.” In reality, the Alabama Supreme Court did not ban IVF. Its 8-1 ruling allowed grieving parents to file a civil lawsuit against an IVF clinic where unauthorized personnel killed the frozen embryos of wanted children the parents had stored in the facility under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.

Most children conceived by IVF are abandoned or destroyed in time. Statistics show “93% of the embryos created through IVF never result in a live birth,” noted Mary Szoch, director of the Center for Human Dignity at Family Research Council.

Michelle Obama’s abortion-affirming comments came moments after she praised late mother, Marian Shields Robinson, who taught her “that all children, all people have value,” as well as to “do unto others” as you would have them do unto you and to “love thy neighbor.” The Obamas and others also supported sexual liberation. “We believe the government should help you prosper, not police who you’re sleeping with,” declared Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker.

As the crowd hooted its approval, conservative critics bristled at her remarks. “Michelle Obama is a gifted orator. But she’s fanning the flames of race and class conflict, and hurling some really unfair accusations,” assessed Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah). “She’s railing on those who ‘go small’ and ‘hit low,’ but that’s exactly what she’s doing. She’s doing everything she purports to oppose.” Brigitte Gabriel, a former host of Pat Robertson’s “World News,” called Michelle Obama “[t]he most divisive and hateful First Lady in U.S. history.”

Barack Obama: Harris Will Sign a National Abortion Expansion Bill

Michelle Obama concluded her speech by introducing her husband, former President Barack Obama, who promised that, if elected, Kamala Harris will sign a bill expanding abortion-on-demand to all 50 states.

Barack Obama said Kamala Harris, whom Michelle Obama called “my girl,” is “running for president with real plans” beginning on day one. She will “sign a law to guarantee every woman’s right to make her own health care decisions,” the Democratic Party’s preferred euphemism for abortion. Harris has not endorsed any protection for unborn children at any moment until birth. Barack Obama called this a sign of “freedom.”

“We believe that true freedom gives each of us the right to make decisions about our own life — how we worship, what our family looks like, how many kids we have, who we marry,” he thundered. “And we believe that freedom requires us to recognize that other people have the freedom to make choices that are different than ours.” Obama later opined that former President Donald Trump “doesn’t seem to care if more women lose their reproductive freedoms since it won’t affect his life.”

Abortion, under the term “reproductive rights,” recurred throughout day two of the DNC. “Do we want a Republican Senate that assaults reproductive freedoms?” asked Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). Schumer attempted to deflect allegations that the Democratic Party has a problem with Jewish voters, pointing to a tiny blue patch pinned to his blue suit. “Donald Trump, this is a guy who peddles anti-Semitic stereotypes,” insisted Schumer about Trump, whose daughter, Ivanka, converted to Judaism before marrying Jared Kushner and giving their three children a Jewish upbringing.

Obama, who retains an oversized impact on the administration’s policy, apparently filled in part of the Harris-Walz foreign policy agenda. “We shouldn’t be the world’s policemen,” said Obama, who sent U.S. troops to fight in Libya without congressional authorization, an operation that resulted in Muammar Qaddafi being replaced by terrorists affiliated with ISIS. The issues tab of Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential election website remains empty.

Shortly before slamming politicians who “scold and shame and out yell the other side,” Obama made a hand gesture apparently intending to minimize the size of President Donald Trump’s genitalia.

DNC Abortion Toll Reportedly Climbs to 25: ‘Satan Is Pleased’

These events transpired as the death toll at Planned Parenthood’s mobile unit outside the Democratic National Convention reportedly climbed to 25. Multiple sources on the ground said Planned Parenthood officials told them the number of free abortions they carried out had risen by 15 on Tuesday.

“CONFIRMED: 25 babies have been killed by Planned Parenthood at the DNC,” reported Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life of America at 7:38 p.m. EST Tuesday evening.

Riley Gaines mourned the loss of the first day, posting, “10 child sacrifices on day 1 of DNC. Satan is pleased.” Author David Limbaugh posted the words of Romans 1:18-25, which begins by declaring, “the wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness.”

“Planned Parenthood is at the DNC, handing out chemical abortions that kill a baby by starving the developing child of nutrients. Share the Abortion Pill Reversal hotline 877-558-0333 and help save a life!” implored Lila Rose, founder of Live Action.

Harris Appears to Accept Presidential Nomination, Skips Husband’s Speech

Even though Democratic delegates formally nominated Kamala Harris for president with a virtual vote last month, the second evening of the DNC featured delegates going through a roll call vote, complete with a DJ soundtrack.

One of the New Jersey delegates — a man dressed in drag who announced he uses “pronouns she/her/hers” as he took the mic — stated, “I’m proud to stand with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, because they stand with the LGBTQ community!” California Governor Gavin Newsom (D), thought to be a leading rival to Harris had the Democrats held an open primary instead of allowing President Joe Biden to coronate Harris last month, declared California “the great state of Nancy Pelosi.” He went on to insist that “Kamala Harris has always done the right thing,” including advancing “LGBTQ rights, the rights of women and girls” before casting his state’s votes for Harris.

Harris, who made a brief in-person appearance at the first day of the DNC, made a virtual appearance from Milwaukee on day two to accept the redundant nomination.

Harris did not show up at all for the speech of her husband, Doug Emhoff, skipping his fawning, family-focused address. Emhoff praised his blended family and acknowledged his divorce, although he did not mention the baby he conceived with his children’s nanny, who apparently either aborted Emhoff’s child or placed the child in adoption. Kamala Harris “connected me more deeply with my faith, even though it’s different from hers,” said Emhoff, who is Jewish.

Former President Bill Clinton and presumptive vice presidential candidate Tim Walz are scheduled to speak Wednesday.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

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

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 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.

Who Is Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s VP Candidate?

Vice President Kamala Harris selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) as her vice presidential running mate on Tuesday. The obscure governor and former congressman has signed bills that would remove children from their parents’ custody if the parents refused to carry out transgender procedures, allowed abortion until birth, and left churches meeting online while so-called “essential businesses” were permitted to open their doors more fully during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The vice presidential nod had narrowed to Walz and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D), whose ardent support of Israel would have complicated Harris’s ability to win Michigan. The 60-year-old Walz — who is in his fifth year as governor of Minnesota and served 12 years in the U.S. House of Representatives — has sometimes drawn comparisons with Bernie Sanders by comparing socialism to “neighborliness.”

“It just highlights how radical Kamala Harris is,” because she “listened to the Hamas wing of her own party in selecting a nominee,” Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance told a press gaggle late Tuesday morning. Tim Walz “has proposed defunding the police just as Kamala Harris has,” said Vance. “Tim Walz allowed rioters to burn down Minneapolis in the summer of 2020, and then the few who got caught, Kamala Harris helped bail them out of jail. So, it is more instructive about what it says about Kamala Harris. She doesn’t care about the border. She doesn’t care about crime. She doesn’t care about energy. And most of all, she doesn’t care about Americans who have been made to suffer under those policies.”

Walz’s career could be split into two halves, said those who have clashed with him over the years: his time as a congressman in a swing district, where he had to modulate his own liberal views, and his tack to the left once he became governor. In Congress, “he focused on veterans issues, and kept his head down to some extent,” explained Moses Bratrud, director of strategy at the Minnesota Family Council, on Tuesday’s “Washington Watch.” But as governor, he has appealed more to the Ilhan Omar wing of the Democratic Party, said Bratrud. “It’s almost like there are two Tim Walzes.”

Walz served six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (2007 to 2019) after defeating a Republican congressman in a rural district. His record sometimes tracked with his constituents’ more centrist views — for instance, his work on veterans affairs — although Walz’s social liberalism earned him a 0% rating from FRC Action in his next-to-last year in Congress.

As governor, he has signed abortion-expanding legislation, placed transgender ideology over parents’ rights, and limited religious liberty.

Abortion

In January 2023, Walz signed the Protection of Reproductive Options (PRO) Act, which allows unlimited abortion-on-demand until birth. He also increased the payments abortionists receive from the government when they carry out taxpayer-funded abortions, removed informed consent laws, curtailed funding for pro-life pregnancy resource centers, and removed a requirement that babies born alive during botched abortions receive life-saving emergency care.

“Kamala Harris and Tim Walz make up the most pro-abortion presidential ticket America has ever seen. There is no daylight between them on this issue,” said SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser in a statement emailed to The Washington Stand.

Walz called his state an “island of decency” for allowing abortion in an area allegedly dominated by pro-life policies. Walz said among “the things we value most around freedom” include “reproductive freedom,” a euphemism for abortion. At times he has said the “golden rule” is: “Mind your own d–n business!” about who people “marry, their own health care decisions, what books they read.”

“Sadly, these aggressive attacks against vulnerable women and children have earned Walz a place as Harris’s running mate on the Democratic ticket,” said Jeanne Mancini, president of March for Life Action, in an email to TWS.

Transgender Policy

Walz has aggressively sided with the transgender industry and promoted extreme gender ideology in the state, including for minors against their parents’ will. Among his most controversial actions, Walz declared Minnesota a so-called sanctuary state for transgenderism. In April 2023, Walz signed a bill (House File 146) that would take minors into state emergency custody if the child has been “unable to obtain gender-affirming health care” — that is, if parents objected to transitioning their minor child. Critics like Bratrud call it “the kidnapping bill,” because it will remove children from any state in the union from their parents’ care if those parents do not enact Walz’s view of transgender ideology.

Instead, Walz has barred parents from getting any alternative, banning so-called “conversion therapy.” He signed a bill that “threatens mental health practitioners who offer voluntary, compassionate care to young people who just want to live according to their faith in the area of gender and sexuality,” explained Bratrud.

Walz’s guidelines have seen schools put feminine hygiene products in boys’ restrooms. “That’s just crazy. That makes no sense whatsoever,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) told Newsmax on Tuesday morning.

“When it comes to transgenderism — the anti-science movement that promotes the right of males and females (including minors) to switch their sex — the Biden-Harris team is the most radical administration in American history,” said Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, in an email sent to TWS.

“Freedom is on the march in Minnesota. Decency is on the march in Minnesota. Compassion is on the march in Minnesota,” said Walz after signing the “kidnapping bill,” compassionate therapy ban, and abortion expansion bills on the same day.

Walz has portrayed his socially liberal policies as a matter of personal “freedom,” the key word Kamala Harris has used to brand her presidential campaign. “Here in Minnesota, we believe in protecting personal freedoms. It’s why we established reproductive freedom and gender-affirming care as fundamental rights in Minnesota. And it’s why we banned the practice of ‘conversion therapy’ and ended book bans based on ideology,” Walz posted on X on July 26.

Yet religious denominations say they experienced little freedom during the 2020 COVID lockdowns, when Walz’s policies kept houses of worship closed while bars and casinos opened more fully. Walz issued an executive order that allowed so-called essential businesses to expand their capacity — but in-person church services remained limited to 10 people. The Becket Fund sued, and Roman Catholic and conservative Lutheran church leaders announced they would ignore his executive order and reopen on Pentecost Sunday. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D), a Muslim, tenaciously defended Walz’s lockdown policies, contending that since houses of worship “are not buildings,” then “churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples have never been closed because Minnesotans have been doing the work of worship outside the buildings: serving the poor, sick, and needy, delivering meals, ministering online to the spiritual needs of their people.”

“[I]t is so disheartening that the Governor has subordinated our spiritual well-being to the economic well-being of the State,” said Rev. Dr. Lucas Woodford, president of the Minnesota South District of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

Socialism, Lawlessness, Immigration, and China

Walz has earned comparisons with Bernie Sanders for his embrace of the term socialism. “Don’t ever shy away from our progressive values. One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness. Just do the d–n work!” said Walz.

Walz was governor in May 2020, when George Floyd’s death in police custody touched off the Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots. Rioters burned down the Minneapolis Police Department’s 3rd precinct en route to inflicting an estimated half-a-billion dollars of damage statewide. Walz faced steep criticism for waiting three days to call in the National Guard, due to strained relations with then-President Donald Trump.

Walz has favored amnesty for illegal immigration, as well as legal immigration expansion, earning an F- from NumbersUSA. Walz once vowed that, if the U.S. built a wall to stop the flow of illegal immigrants over the southern border, he would “invest in a … ladder factory” to help illegals climb the wall. Walz has also voiced his support for so-called “sanctuary cities,” which do not comply with federal law enforcement’s efforts to deport criminal aliens and others who entered the country unlawfully.

Walz summed up his views of the last four years in a social media post, stating, “Joe Biden is and has always been an American hero. History will look fondly on his legacy.”

Walz was born on April 6, 1964, in West Point, Nebraska, to James F. Walz and Darlene Rose Reiman Walz. He served 24 years in the Army National Guard and worked as a teacher, including a year on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

The Democratic vice presidential candidate has longstanding ties to America’s most potent foreign adversary, China. Walz spent a year teaching in the People’s Republic of China, instructing students at Guangdong province’s Foshan No. 1 High School in English and American history in 1989 — the year of the Tienanmen Square massacre. If it left unpleasant memories, they were soon forgotten, as Walz and his wife, Gwen (nee Whipple), took their honeymoon in China in 1994. They set up a company that carried out exchange visits to China, Educational Travel Adventures. Walz said he had visited China 30 times by 2016.

Walz belongs to the liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), which has paid for its employees’ abortions through its health care plan, ordained non-celibate homosexual clergy, and promoted transgenderism and “queerness” as “beauty.” He and his wife, Gwen, have two children, Hope and Gus, both conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF), a fact Walz has used as a political weapon in his campaign speeches. Walz got his first political job in 2004 as a organizer for the John Kerry presidential campaign.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

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

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 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.

The Man and the Motive: Behind Musk’s War on the ‘Woke Mind Virus’

When California enacted a school secrecy pact last week, businessman Elon Musk responded with surprising intensity. The law, which would require school personnel to lie to parents about their child’s gender identity, as The Washington Stand reported, was “the final straw” for Musk, who announced plans to relocate his businesses’ headquarters to Texas (Tesla’s headquarters relocated to Texas in 2021, but now SpaceX and X are set to follow).

Those were the facts as reported last week, but they lacked a satisfactory explanation — they didn’t seem to fit Musk’s character. The sudden declaration would be expected from a conservative culture warrior — a Pat Buchanan acolyte perhaps, or an explicitly strident investment firm like Strive Asset Management. By contrast, Musk made his fortune pioneering electric vehicles, before turning to private spaceship construction, and eventually acquiring a social media giant — not the standard portfolio for a conservative culture warrior. Beyond all that, one does not become the world’s richest man by making dramatic, seemingly impulsive business decisions without an apparent profit motive.

The facts were there, but the question remained: How does a liberal businessman from Silicon Valley transform into a culture warrior against transgender ideology?

Musk supplied the answer in an interview with Jordan Peterson published yesterday.

When asked why he is willing to make an issue of gender ideology, Musk replied, “It happened to one of my older boys.” During the COVID confusion, he explained, “I was essentially tricked into signing documents for one of my older boys, Xavier,” to obtain puberty blockers. “This is before I had any understanding of what was going on,” he added, “and I was told Xavier might commit suicide if he doesn’t.” Musk added, “It wasn’t explained to me that puberty blockers are essentially sterilization drugs.”

Musk’s oldest surviving child — one of his twins conceived through IVF — officially changed his name to a feminine one the day after turning 18. He also took his mother’s last name to avoid being associated with Musk.

“So, I lost my son, essentially,” mused Musk. “They call it ‘deadnaming’ for a reason. The reason they call it that is that your son is dead. So my son Xavier is dead, killed by the woke mind virus. … So I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that.”

Musk clearly loves his children, 11 of whom survived infancy. And it seems losing one of his children to a destructive ideology turned an otherwise neutral businessman into a combatant.

This is the story of countless parents who lack the fame, fortune, or platform of Elon Musk. “There’s lots of people in that situation now,” Peterson responded. “It’s not pretty. And lots of demolished kids.”

Ending the provision of harmful gender transition procedures to minors is a popular, commonsense position with growing momentum. The number grows daily of parents and detransitioners who experience Musk’s revulsion against these horrors and are mobilized against them. Protecting children in this way is a good, moral, and just hill to die on, although the growing support indicates stalwart defenders of this hill may not die there after all. While the 2024 Republican platform unfortunately omits this issue, it is consistent with other policy priorities and worth the fight.

While a loving father and an ally to conservative Christians on the issue of gender transition procedures to minors, readers should be under no illusion that Musk’s political journey has been accompanied by a religious conversion, nor that he is socially conservative across the board. In the same interview, Musk called himself a “cultural Christian” like Richard Dawkins. He said that “the teachings of Jesus are good and wise” and called forgiveness “essential,” but he also put caveats around the teaching of Scripture and said he is “not a particularly religious person.”

But Jesus did not allow people to think of him merely as a good and wise teacher. Jesus claimed to be God. If Jesus’s claim was true, then he must be worshiped as Lord. If it was false, then Jesus ought to be considered a liar and a charlatan, no proper source of ethical wisdom.

Essentially, Musk admires Christian teaching, but he has not received it for himself. In his personal life, Musk is unconstrained by a biblical worldview of human sexuality; he has divorced two women three times and has children by at least four different women. He remains on the outside looking in, unable to access the great benefits of Christianity, including eternal life, which are only available through faith in Jesus Christ and submission to him as Lord.

In the unlikely event that Mr. Musk ever reads this, I would urge him to continue thinking about the theme of forgiveness. In particular, I would urge him to consider his own need for forgiveness, not from any other human being, but from a holy creator God. I would urge him to reflect on his inability to earn that forgiveness, but also on the freedom with which it is offered in Christ.

In other words, I would urge Musk to believe in Christ, and I hope and pray that the only true God works to that effect in his heart. Socially conservative Christians are grateful for Musk’s aid in prosecuting a culture war against gender ideology, but we want something more for him — for his own good. We seek his eternal happiness and salvation, and we “have believed, and have come to know” (John 6:69) that such happiness and salvation can only be found through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. This is true for Musk, for every victim of gender ideology, and for every Christian too.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Tenn. Appeals Court Upholds Law Protecting Minors from ‘Obscene’ Material

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 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.

Are Publishing Giants Pulling Back from Pushing LGBT Material?

In June, Scholastic, the world’s largest children’s book publishing company, put their push for LGBT ideology front and center when they released their 2024 guide to their “Read with Pride” initiative. As reported by The Washington Stand, the guide was to be a “resource” for “supporting LGBTQIA+ youth” by promoting books with radical ideological themes, including transgenderism and taking relationships “to the next level” with sexual intercourse. It also had a glossary of definitions for LGBT terminology such as “agender,” “allocishet,” and “genderfluid.” And yet, despite their unapologetic stance on this agenda, recent developments have caused some to wonder if the company has begun to pull back.

In addition to Scholastic, Pearson, the world’s largest academic publisher, has also prominently promoted LGBT material. But as The Washington Times reported last week, both publishing giants seem to “have distanced themselves from a push to replace biological sex with gender identity in K-12 classroom discussions.” This came after The Heritage Foundation’s Senior Research Fellow in Education Policy Jonathan Butcher exposed Scholastic’s promotion of LGBT ideology to “small children.” As The Washington Times added, Scholastic’s controversial guide “vanished” from their “website at the end of June without explanation, leaving only the ‘Read with Pride’ page” — the section containing the book recommendations.

Scholastic spokeswoman Anne Sparkman insisted the “Read with Pride Guide was a resource for adults available for Pride Month and is not a textbook for students.” However, those who saw the guide while it was still available online have pointed out that it specifically emphasized it had information and recommended materials geared toward “educators, caregivers, and advocates” and children as young as pre-school.

Similarly, Pearson’s editorial guidelines on “genderism” and “antiracism” were also exposed by Butcher last year, which they removed shortly after. According to Butcher, “The pushback on these ideas is strong and the publishers don’t know how to defend them when reporters, policy analysts or parents question what they are doing.” Considering this, he finds it unsurprising that they’re slowly removing some of their most controversial content. And as Sheri Few, founder and president of U.S. Parents Involved in Education, emphasized, “Not everyone is going along with this illusion that there are more than two sexes, both of which are biologically determined.”

In comment to TWS, Joseph Backholm, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement, added to Butcher and Few’s sentiments: “We’ve seen a lot of evidence the public is pushing back against the Sexual Revolution.” As he explained, “The public was convinced to go along with it on the basis of ‘tolerance,’” but as time goes on, it’s become increasingly clear this is “a movement that aggressively recruits children.”

According to Backholm, “The public didn’t want it then and doesn’t want it now,” which could likely “be part of the reason we are seeing modest retreats in cases like” Scholastic and Pearson. Ultimately, “They’ve reached further than the public is willing to tolerate.” But even amid what seems to be a drawback from these leftist publishers, Backholm noted that “it might be one step back before they take two steps forward.”

“Of course,” he continued, “it’s good they’re being less aggressive, but … the Sexual Revolution has made most of its progress by behaving in ways that are shocking, retreating slightly, and then doing the same or worse in the near future when the public is no longer shocked.” Given this pattern, Backholm explained that “if we’re really going to solve the problem of grooming kids, we’re going to have to start actively pursuing what is good rather than focusing on how much evil we’re willing to tolerate.”

Backholm noted “human history teaches us” that enough exposure to something — even something harmful — can cause that practice to become normalized. For instance, “If we see children’s books grooming kids enough, it ceases to be shocking so we cease to resist.” However, he added, “if our standard is creating an environment that is good for children,” then “we won’t get used to things that harm them” — even if a large portion of society has allowed it to become commonplace.

“We must resist evil,” Backholm concluded, “but more than that, we must pursue what is good. If we are actively pursuing what is good, we’ll never get used to what is evil.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 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.