Tag Archive for: TransgenderIdeology.

Court Lets State Protect Kids From Transgender ‘Care,’ Making Key Point About Evidence

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Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

A Missouri trial court declined Friday to block a law preventing transgender interventions for minors, citing “conflicting and unclear” medical evidence on the effectiveness of so-called puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.

“The science and medical evidence is conflicting and unclear,” Judge Stephen R. Ohmer ruled. “Accordingly, the evidence raises more questions than answers.”

Three Missouri families who claim their children identify as the gender opposite their biological sex sued the state’s Republican governor, Michael Parson, challenging the constitutionality of a law he signed on June 7.

The families had asked the court to issue a preliminary injunction, blocking the law from going into effect during the course of litigation. However, Ohmer ruled that the families “have not clearly shown a sufficient threat of irreparable injury absent injunctive relief,” so he declined to grant the injunction.

“Today is a day that will go down in Missouri history,” Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who defended the law, told The Daily Signal in a written statement Friday. “We put their ‘evidence’ under a microscope, and it spoke for itself. Missouri’s children won today. I’m beyond proud to have led the fight.”

“Missouri is the first state in the nation to successfully defend at the trial court level a law barring child mutilation,” Bailey also said in a press release. “I’ve said from Day One as attorney general that I will fight to ensure that Missouri is the safest state in the nation for children. This is a huge step in that direction.”

Judges in Alabama and Tennessee granted injunctions blocking similar laws in those states, before higher courts restored the laws. District courts have blocked such laws temporarily in at least seven states, including Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, and Kentucky.

The Missouri law, SB 49, called the Missouri Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act, or SAFE Act, will go into effect Monday. It states: “A health care provider shall not knowingly perform a gender transition surgery on any individual under eighteen years of age,” nor “knowingly prescribe or administer cross-sex hormones or puberty-blocking drugs for the purpose of a gender transition for an individual under eighteen years of age.”

The law defines “biological sex” as “the biological indication of male or female in the context of reproductive potential or capacity, such as sex chromosomes, naturally occurring sex hormones, gonads, and nonambiguous internal and external genitalia present at birth, without regard to an individual’s psychological, chosen, or subjective experience of gender.”

It defines “gender transition” as “the process in which an individual transitions from identifying with and living as a gender that corresponds to his or her biological sex to identifying with and living as a gender different from his or her biological sex, and may involve social, legal, or physical changes.”

The law states that if a physician administers cross-sex hormones or “puberty blockers” to a minor, such an act “shall be considered unprofessional conduct” and the physician “shall have his or her license to practice revoked by the appropriate licensing entity or disciplinary review board.”

It also creates a cause of action, enabling a minor who undergoes such a procedure to sue the physician or health care provider within 15 years.

The ban doesn’t apply to patients suffering from a disorder of sex development. It also bars physicians from performing transgender surgeries on prisoners.

The law sunsets in 2027 as part of a compromise with Democrats in the Missouri Senate.

Transgender interventions, often referred to by the euphemistic term “gender-affirming care,” involve “puberty blockers”—drugs such as Lupron, which the Food and Drug Administration has not approved for gender dysphoria (the persistent condition of painfully identifying with the gender that is the opposite one’s biological sex); or “cross-sex hormones” (testosterone for girls, estrogen for boys) that introduce a hormone imbalance, a condition that endocrinologists otherwise would recognize as a disease. (Endocrinologists treat the endocrine system, which uses hormones to control metabolism, reproduction, growth, and more.)

Psychiatrists, endocrinologists, neurologists, and other doctors testified in support of a Florida health agency’s rule preventing Medicaid from funding various forms of “gender-affirming care,” such as “puberty-blockers,” cross-sex hormones, and transgender surgeries.

“Patients suffering from gender dysphoria or related issues have a right to be protected from experimental, potentially harmful treatments lacking reliable, valid, peer-reviewed, published, long-term scientific evidence of safety and effectiveness,” Dr. Paul Hruz, an endocrinology researcher and clinician at Washington University School of Medicine, wrote in a sworn affidavit.

Hruz noted that “there are no long-term, peer-reviewed published, reliable, and valid research studies” documenting the percentage of patients helped or harmed by transgender medical interventions. He also wrote that attempts to block puberty followed by cross-sex hormones not only affect fertility but also pose risks such as low bone density, “disfiguring acne, high blood pressure, weight gain, abnormal glucose tolerance, breast cancer, liver disease, thrombosis, and cardiovascular disease.”

Hruz and other doctors argue that the medical interventions often described as “gender-affirming care” are experimental and that the organizations that present standards of care supporting them—the World Professional Association for Transgender Health and the Endocrine Society—represent more a political and advocacy effort than an objective analysis supporting these alleged treatments.

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This article was published by Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

Intellectual Dysfunction

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Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

When did things begin to go wrong? The Garden of Eden is one possible answer, of course. But we nevertheless look for more proximate answers to a question such as “When did transgender ideology become an unassailable orthodoxy in large parts of the academy?”

Personal memory is deceptive when trying to answer such a question: in any case, orthodoxies nowadays become dominant in a process, rather than by encyclical or as an event. The answer to the above question might well be “Longer ago than we think”: that is to say, at least 6 years ago.

Retraction Watch is a website devoted to publicizing and sometimes provoking the retraction of scientific papers that have been found deficient in some way. The pressure to publish in the academic world of “publish or perish” is a powerful incentive for carelessness, intellectual dishonesty, plagiarism, and outright fraud. There is also honest error, of course: indeed, it is but rarely that I read a medical paper that is completely beyond criticism.

We do not know what percentage of fraudulent or otherwise deficient scientific publications are caught in Retraction Watch’s net; it is not even known for certain whether scientific misconduct is increasing, decreasing, or remaining constant. But recently, a new jewel was added to the website’s crown: the hoax paper.

In 2017, a philosopher, Peter Boghossian, and a mathematician, James Lindsay, submitted a paper under pseudonyms to a journal called Cogent Social Sciences, titled “The conceptual penis as a social construct.” The paper argued, if that is quite the word for it, that the penis is not principally a male biological organ, but rather a concept or mental construct employed in the pursuit of male dominance. I quote a passage to give readers a flavor of the writing:

Penises are problematic, and we don’t just mean medical issues like erectile dysfunction and crimes like sexual assault. As a result of our research into the essential concept of the penis and its exchanges with the social and material world, we conclude that penises are not best understood as the male sexual organ, or as a male reproductive organ, but instead as an enacted social construct that is both damaging and problematic for society and future generations. The conceptual penis presents significant problems for gender identity and reproductive identity within social and family dynamics, is exclusionary to disenfranchised communities based upon gender or reproductive identity, is an enduring source of abuse for women and other gender-marginalized groups and individuals, is the universal performative source of rape, and is the conceptual driver behind much of climate change.

The journal Cogent Social Sciences usually demands money for publication, a common if lamentable practice now in the academic world, though in this case, the authors did not pay to have their paper published and it was peer-reviewed by two academics who recommended publication. No doubt they did so because it is so difficult these days to distinguish spoofs from the real thing in academic writing, especially in the social sciences, but also, increasingly, in literary criticism.

It seems that we have arrived at the point at which we need experts to decide for us whether or not a penis is “best understood as a male sexual organ.”

The publisher of the journal was Taylor and Francis, a multinational academic publisher with headquarters in England, but with offices in Stockholm, Leiden, New York, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Philadelphia, Tokyo, Sydney, Cape Town, New Delhi, and no doubt other places too. It is no fly-by-night operation, having existed for more than two centuries: evidently, it has moved with the times.

One of the company’s editorial directors said, in response to the humiliating exposure of the paper as a satire on the nullity of the field to which it was supposedly a contribution:

On investigation, although the two reviewers had relevant research interests, their expertise did not fully align with this subject matter and we do not believe that they were the right choice to review this paper.

Thus, it seems that we have arrived at the point at which we need experts to decide for us whether or not a penis is “best understood as a male sexual organ.”

As with so much in the modern world, one is not sure whether to laugh or cry. Deep academic solemnity and utter intellectual frivolity are often combined in the same sentences; academics pore over propositions that no intelligent person could entertain for a moment, as if, with enough study, some valuable truth might emerge from them. Such academics are the alchemists of our times. 

In essence, this is state-funded stupidity. Without state funding (or, in the United States, without funding from charitable foundations or endowments that have been deeply corrupted from within), no such drivel could ever have been produced, certainly not in the industrial quantities in which it has been produced: and one cannot blame a commercial company such as Taylor and Francis for profiting from it. If anyone wanted proof of capitalism’s astonishing capacity to turn anything into profit, just read the passage above from the spoof paper that I have quoted and marvel at how Taylor and Francis (and, of course, other publishers) have turned a profit on hundreds of pages of such rebarbative prose: that is to say, prose which hides its meaning from the minds of readers as modestly as any woman in a burqa hides herself from the gaze of strangers.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, some academics in the field of gender studies (the alchemy de nos jours) have claimed that the authors of the spoof inadvertently enunciated truth in their paper because, presumably, the penis really is best thought of as a “social construct”—meaning that in another society, a penis would cease to be a penis, and become something else entirely.

It has long amazed me that those who engage in “gender studies” and the like never seem to grow tired of reading clotted prose that is to meaning what fog is to clear vision. Here I quote a short passage from Judith Butler, one of the leading lights in “gender studies”:

That the power regimes of heterosexism and phallologocentrism seek to augment themselves through constant repetition of their logic, their metaphysic, and their naturalized ontologies, does not imply that repetition itself ought to be stopped—as if it could be. If repetition is bound to persist as the mechanism of the cultural reproduction of identities, then the crucial question emerges: What kind of subversive repetition might call into question the regulatory practice of identity itself?

This, incidentally, is the author at her most lucid and succinct; and the ability to wade through hundreds of pages of this stuff is indicative of a determination and endurance of the kind that Ernest Shackleton and his crew displayed during his Antarctic explorations. And since the people who display it are not stupid, in the sense at least of being deficient in IQ, the crucial question is, to adapt slightly Professor Butler’s question, “How do they stick it?” Some explanation must be sought for their determination and endurance.

The most likely explanation, it seems to me, is that their search is not for truth but for power: for in a world without transcendent meaning of one kind or another, power is the only good, the only thing worth having. Truth has no value and nothing to do with it.

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This article was published by Law & Liberty and is reproduced with permission.

J.K. Rowling’s Moment of Truth

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Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes

J. K. Rowling is not a witch. She acquitted herself well in her recent “trial,” by which I mean the podcast series hosted by The Free Press, detailing the explosive controversy between history’s most famous children’s author and liberal progressive activists. It’s cleverly titled The Witch Trials, and it tells the story of Rowling’s rise to fame and her fall into (progressive) infamy. There is extended interview material from Rowling herself, along with some contributions from her detractors and critics. I should warn readers that this is the sort of podcast I had to turn off whenever my kids climbed into the car. Rowling’s battle with transgender ideologues has been exceedingly ugly, and the series makes no effort to sugar-coat this. Nevertheless, the whole story left me oddly hopeful.

That’s not because I am especially sanguine about the transformative power of free speech. The creators of Witch Trials would like us to imbibe that message, in keeping with The Free Press’ wider philosophy. They present this as a cautionary tale about cancel culture, but while I broadly support their principles, Rowling’s travails are in that sense all too familiar, and I wouldn’t have listened to a seven-episode podcast just to remind myself how nutty and intolerant the progressive left has become. What I did enjoy was the eye-opening illustration of how nature perennially reasserts herself, even when people are trying to sprint away from her.

Rowling’s fans feel like she tricked them with a bait-and-switch. A lifelong liberal, she led her readers into what felt to them like a “safe space,” one whose characters grew with them throughout their childhoods. Then, as adults, she shocked them by articulating perennial truths that they preferred not to believe. The hysterical rage was especially fascinating given that the points Rowling was making had always been central to the Harry Potter series. Rowling is a gender complementarian; this has been clear from the earliest Potter books. Further, she very obviously believes that things have natures. Though it is impressive how she personally has been willing to defend her views publicly, instead of cowering before the cancel mobs, there is some level on which this reckoning was bound to happen given the unstable mutations of twenty-first-century gender ideology.

People crave epic stories, meaningful life pursuits, and courageous figures who appear to stand for something. Those goods are only attainable when words mean things, and when we accept certain aspects of the world as fixed, not compliant with our revisionary whims. Progressive activists have for some time been cheerfully torching large portions of American history and Western Civilization more broadly, which is upsetting to some of us, but perhaps just good fun for people who were never taught to value those things in the first place. Eventually, though, iconoclasts find themselves standing, wood bundles and torches in hand, at the foot of something they genuinely love. For this group, Harry Potter turned out to be that thing.

What follows will contain spoilers, if that term still applies to Harry Potter. Perhaps the “Boy Who Lived” has now joined Hamlet, King David, and Gilgamesh as a character whose story the educated reader is simply expected to know. Indeed, I predict that future generations will know him. But I think they will refer to him, to the last, as a “boy.”

The Bait

Millennials worshiped Rowling in childhood. This comes through quite clearly in Witch Trials, as childhood fans gush about the way her books represented a “security blanket” through their childhood and adolescent growing pains. In a way, this is odd, because as children’s books go, Rowling’s are quite dark. Death is a major theme. Political oppression is rampant. Even “good” adults seem to be offering a tutorial in “failure to protect,” as Harry arrives each fall at Hogwarts brimming with eagerness to learn, only to be socially ostracized, plagued with death threats, or both. This is what gives today’s kids warm fuzzies?

My explanation is threefold. First, for all the grimness, Rowling gave her readers a universe that they found morally comfortable. Inclusion was always a major theme. The bad guys, a group of “pureblood” wizards, want to rule the world and ensure that their magical club is restricted to people of noble (magical) birth. They’re one part evil aristocrats protecting their privilege, and one part wand-wielding Nazis crusading under a “dark mark.” Meanwhile, the good guys are crusading for meritocracy, equality, and love, with side plots exploring the ethics of discrimination, especially against house elves (which some wizards regard as natural slaves). Modern readers find themselves right at home in this moral landscape. It is especially clever how the most scorned and discriminated-against group is “Muggles,” or non-magical persons, which is to say, every actual human being on this planet. Look at that! In J. K. Rowling’s universe, we can all be victims.

Dobby is a free elf, and better for it. But he is still happiest and most fulfilled when devoting his energies to the service to others, and Hermione becomes a better house-elf advocate when she accepts this reality.

Rowling’s readers did not only want to be victims, however. They wanted to be heroes as well. This is another major theme of Harry Potter, and the wizarding universe undoubtedly appealed to readers in part because its Millennial audience also hungered to be “seen” and recognized in their personal uniqueness. There is a reason Harry Potter spawned a slew of internet quizzes. Children are initiated into the wondrous world of Hogwarts after discovering that they have an innate capacity for doing magic, and readers then get to follow these elite characters to their posh boarding school, where their unique abilities are further explored and refined. In the very hour of their arrival, their minds are probed by the magical “sorting hat” that assesses their character and places them within the proper House. As they continue at Hogwarts, they may encounter Dumbledore’s Mirror of Erised, which shows each person the deepest desire of his or her heart. Spooky Bogarts bring them face to face with (an illusion of) their greatest fears. The magical Room of Requirement supplies a seeker with whatever he or she happens to need at a given moment, and students eventually learn to cast a magical “patronus charm,” which brings forth a kind of animal-protector in a form that uniquely reflects the caster’s soul.

Why wouldn’t Millennials feel nurtured in this imaginary universe, where exquisitely-individualized magicians battle bigots and bullies? Social conservatives obligingly supplied the final piece of this puzzle by panicking and trying to ban Harry Potter. Alarmed by the references to magic and “witchcraft,” combined with the cultlike character of Harry Potter fanhood, some traditionalists issued their own fatwa against Rowling and tried to get her books removed from school libraries. This was probably silly, but it would be hard to find a more surefire method of convincing the left that Rowling was enlightened, uplifting, and thoroughly “safe.”

The Trap

Harry Potter exploded in the late ’90s and early 2000s. Time passed, and Millennials got older and exulted in their “love wins” moment. Rowling supported this, announcing in 2009 that she saw Albus Dumbledore as gay. But as time passed, and same-sex couples settled into banal normalcy, young adults went searching for new horizons of sexual-identity-based inclusion. Soon growing numbers were identifying as “trans” and demanding hormone blockers and “sex reassignment surgery.” And then, it happened. Their favorite author jumped ship.

Rowling’s objections to the trans movement have mostly been posed in practical terms. She considers it unsafe and unjust to allow physiologically male persons in women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, and prisons. She sees it as worrisome, not a sign of progress and liberation when scores of young people are so repulsed by their natural bodies that they consider it unbearable to live in them. But she also objects strongly to terms like “menstruating person” and “chest feeder,” which she clearly sees as degrading to women and mothers. It’s clear from both her books and her public advocacy that Rowling believes in sexual difference, as a real thing that is meaningfully connected to biology. Also, she is clearly interested in natures as such.

First, consider sexual difference. In affairs of the heart, the wizarding world was remarkably conservative. Hogwarts is full of romantic intrigue, all of it heterosexual. Sexual minorities often view Remus Lupin, Rowling’s “high and lonely” outcast, as a kindred spirit, but in the books, he ultimately marries a woman and has a baby with her. Whatever Dumbledore and Grindelwald may have done in their imprudent youth, we see exactly zero settled, same-sex couples in the wizarding world.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that Rowling secretly disapproves of same-sex relationships. She says she doesn’t, and she has proven her willingness to stand by unpopular views. I think she feels real sympathy with gays and lesbians, and also with people who experience gender dysphoria. But her interest as an author always followed the interplay of man and woman, considering what brings them together or drives them apart. Meanwhile, for all their detailed personal development, her characters never explore their gender identities; even when they use Polyjuice’s potion to take on the guise of other people, Harry and Ron always seem to be boys or men, while Hermione is always the girl. There is a scene in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (amusing now to revisit) in which we learn that at Hogwarts, female students may enter the boys’ dormitories, while the reverse is prevented by magical charms. It’s quite remarkable that Rowling’s fans managed to obsess over her books for so many years without noticing how traditional her instincts really are in this regard.

Questions about natures are explored in interesting ways in sub-plots involving non-human species. There are several of these: giants, goblins, house elves, and centaurs, along with some sentient-seeming magical beasts such as hippogriffs, unicorns, and thestrals. Obviously, as mythical species, these are available to Rowling to explore and develop imaginatively. Her creative choices here reveal a deep curiosity about natures as such, and about their role in defining us as persons.

Eventually Rowling herself became a kind of truth martyr, publicly pilloried and bombarded with threats of sexual violence, for refusing to say things she understood to be false. Do we all need scar tissue to teach us the real value of the truth?

On the one hand, she is clearly deeply committed to the premise that persons have intrinsic worth that transcends the particularities of their kind. Even sympathetic characters like Sirius Black can be punished for their failure to treat non-human persons with compassion and respect. On the other hand, characters can also make mistakes by failing to recognize the distinctness of each non-human species, as when Hagrid puts himself and others at risk by refusing to recognize the dangers of keeping vicious monsters as pets. We understand of course that as a “redeemed monster” himself (a half-giant with a heart of gold), he has an irrepressible need to see the benevolent potential in other apparently-monstrous creatures. Unfortunately, much of the time it’s just not there. Hermione, likewise, makes a fool of herself with her juvenile attempts to “liberate” house elves from servitude, while Ron (the stodgy wizard-born traditionalist) steadfastly maintains that the elves really do not want the kind of freedom she envisions for them. We might have expected the liberation-minded feminist to win the day, but it turns out that Ron is correct on this point. The character of Dobby proves, in a very moving way, that house elves are capable of their own kind of freedom, and certainly of love. Dobby is a free elf, and better for it. But he is still happiest and most fulfilled when devoting his energies to the service to others, and Hermione becomes a better house-elf advocate when she accepts this reality.

In Rowling’s mythical “natures,” we can see the curious musings of a person trying to figure out how far nature goes in defining a person’s life and horizons. How do “given” characteristics that we share with others of our kind interface with more universal characteristics of personhood (rationality, intrinsic dignity, a capacity for love)? How are they juxtaposed against unique personal characteristics, and individual hopes and dreams? The Harry Potter stories don’t always provide worked-out answers to these questions, but they are exploring them, and the answers they do give are broadly consistent with the Christian natural rights tradition. Persons are unique, and that uniqueness should be recognized and valued. At the same time, all have dignity, want to love and be loved, and desire freedom.

The Lesson

It really is not possible to tell a good story without drawing on themes like this. Good stories draw from tradition and transcend the particulars of a given historical moment. They appeal to a universal human nature, which is what enables people from across history to be fascinated and moved by the dilemma of Antigone, the courtship of Ruth and Boaz, and the loyalty of Huckleberry Finn. Rowling does tell good stories, which is why I read them as a young adult, and then reread them with my own children. Inclusion and privilege are not the only themes. Rowling also explores friendship and selflessness, obligation and sacrifice, loyalty and forgiveness, and the importance of personal integrity. Her reflections on death are sometimes deeply moving, and it is especially impressive how bad magic is distinguished so clearly from the good. The good kind is lawlike, while bad magic subverts nature and warps the human soul, as power-lust will inevitably do when it is unshackled from justice, love, and the natural law.

My least favorite feature of Harry Potter was always the way that her characters lied so frequently, often for trivial reasons and seemingly without remorse. I saw a deep irony in the situation when Harry was subjected by the repressive Dolores Umbridge to a torture-chamber version of a familiar schoolroom punishment, forced to write repeatedly in his own blood that “I must not tell lies,” until the message was literally etched in scar tissue on his hand. At the time, he was being punished for telling the truth. But in fact, he did tell lies on a regular basis. Was it possible, I wondered, that Umbridge unwittingly helped him towards genuine moral improvement? That question took on another dimension when Rowling herself became a kind of truth-martyr, publicly pilloried and bombarded with threats of sexual violence, for refusing to say things she understood to be false. Free societies are certainly better, but scar tissue can be effective in teaching us the value of truth.

The Millennials are an impious and historically ignorant generation. Still, they were children once. They liked stories back then, as children do. Watching the ghost stories of their own childhoods come back to haunt them, we may reflect that every generation, however hostile to tradition, retains something that it likes from the past. Finding that something can be the key to salvation for many wandering souls.

Rowling is the creator of a magical universe. We thought that Deathly Hallows completed her legacy, but it turned out she had a few more tricks up her sleeve. Many of her former fans have decided that she’s a witch, but she’s been more faithful to them than they know. As the witches of old, she has passed through her moment of infamy, but she may be judged more kindly by generations to come.

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This article was published by Law&Liberty and is reproduced with permission.

‘We’re Here, We’re Queer, We’re Coming for Your Children’: 6 Scenes From NYC Pride Events

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Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

Editors’ Note: There are uncomfortable scenes that we must share with you. If not, you might not know the extent to which sexual extremists are taking their argument. Otherwise, you might think we are mean and against gay people. Earlier, we had written about this subject (see Get Your Bedroom Out of My Government) and made the point that a proper concept of liberty suggests that you are free to do what you want to do as long as you do not harm others or use force or coercion. Society has reached its level of tolerance with “pride.” What consenting people do in private should be respected, but this invasion of our schools, and ghastly public displays deserves strong condemnation and resistance. Further, some 21 Federal Agencies and numerous local authorities have sanctioned “pride events” and the flying of pride flags on government buildings. We need to get the “bedroom” of the LGBTQ crowd out of our government and especially out of our schools. Their movement now is using coercion by hijacking the government and is doing harm to our children and to society at large. Enough.

 

New York City held its 53rd Pride parade Sunday.

Here are some of the scenes from that parade and related events shared on social media.

1. ‘We’re Here, We’re Queer, We’re Coming for Your Children.’

In a clip that has gone viral on Twitter, marchers at the New York City Drag March, which was held Friday, chanted, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children.”

One holds a sign that says, “Drag isn’t for CISsies.”

2. Twerking

Men wearing almost nothing but Speedos twerked and danced on a parade float sponsored by the Chinese Rainbow Network, an organization that claims to be the “largest Mandarin speaking LGBTQ+ network in North America.”

The float also featured a woman wearing a red dress and boot stilettos pole dancing.

At the end of the float, one woman fully dressed stood in the corner and filmed the others sexually dancing on her phone.

3. ‘Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Don’t Assume Your Kids Are Straight!’

Some marchers shouted, “One, two, three, four, open up the closet door! Five, six, seven, eight, don’t assume your kids are straight!”

Kids wearing pink shirts and rainbow gear marched along with the adults.

One little girl on a man’s shoulders wore a transgender pink, white, and blue flag as a cape.

4. ‘Stop Touching Me!’

K. Yang, an activist advocating for female rights, was verbally harassed and assaulted while protesting in the middle of a Pride gathering.

The video shows ralliers closely shouting in Yang’s face, swatting her signs down and stomping on them, and grabbing and pushing Yang. Yang repeatedly shouted, “Stop touching me.”

5. ‘Clothing Optional’ Water Party

A massive reportedly “clothing optional” water party took place in Washington Square Park. Attendees are seen wading in one of the park’s fountains.

6. ‘We’ll Love Our Son Even If He’s Straight.’

A couple paraded their child down the street, holding a sign saying, “We’ll love our son even if he’s straight.”

They were followed by a group of men clad in leather underwear.

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This article was published by DailySignal and is reproduced with permission.

When LGBT Activists Flood Target With Bomb Threats, Media Pretend Conservatives Did It

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Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

‘Pride’ activists will do whatever it takes to maintain their clutch on the narrative — including spinning their own bomb threats against themselves.

 

The shameless corporate media are so desperate for a narrative about LGBT victimhood, they’re pretending threats of violence from angry pro-“pride” perpetrators are instead threats against them. The latest examples are pure propaganda from The Hill and The Washington Post on Monday, which led with scaremongering — “bomb threats over Pride items” — while completely burying the lede: The bomb threats against culturally embroiled retail giant Target came from pro-LGBT activists.

“Target stores in at least five states receive bomb threats over Pride items,” read The Hill’s headline — the only part most people see.

The few readers who actually bothered to click the link were met with this deceptive framing in the first paragraph: “Target stores in at least five U.S. states had to be evacuated over the weekend after receiving bomb threats, the latest example of backlash the U.S.-based retail chain has received for its Pride month merchandise.”

Not until paragraph six, however, did the author reveal that these bomb threats that were emailed to news outlets in multiple states “accused the retail chain of betraying the LGBTQ+ community.”

The Washington Post ran an almost identical headline, burying the real news a full eight paragraphs down and leading instead with: “Target stores in at least five states were evacuated this weekend after receiving bomb threats. Though no explosives were discovered, the incidents tie into the backlash over the retail chain’s Pride Month merchandise.”

This media horsepucky is the latest attempt to push a fake narrative about conservative extremists assaulting the pro-trans department store. That’s why the outlets used words like “latest example,” “backlash,” and “for its Pride month merchandise.” As far as we know, the bomb threats had nothing to do with rainbow merchandise, nor were they related to any other “examples” of “backlash,” such as peaceful conservative boycotts. Instead, they appear to be a direct result of LGBT lunatics not getting their way. The framing is intentional.

This lede-burying exercise from The Hill is just the next page from the same “pride month” playbook the left has been running since May. Before the calendar even flipped to June, Target unveiled its aggressive rainbow merchandise, complete with pro-trans items for children and “tuck-friendly” swimwear. In no time, the company had moved many of its rainbow displays to the back of the store, citing nonspecific “threats.” When Target failed to produce any evidence for these allegations, its plummeting stock suggested the real “threat” was to its bottom line.

That didn’t stop media propagandists from parroting Target’s unsubstantiated claims. PBS, for instance, declared without evidence that Target had endured “intense backlash from some customers including violent confrontations with its workers.” NPR editorialized that the outrage resulted in “threats against employees” — a claim Target didn’t even make in its vague statement.

“Bomb threats” are a new low. But pro-transgender activists, especially those occupying America’s newsrooms, habitually spin their own victimization as victimhood.

For example, when radical LGBT ideologues manipulate impressionable children, activist “journalists” frame concerned parents as “transphobic” and dangerous. When lawmakers take compassionate steps to protect these minors from the clutches of predatory adults or seek to eradicate porn from taxpayer-funded schools, corporate media frame their noble efforts as attacks on “trans rights” and “book bans.” When conservatives plead for dysphoric girls to get mental health help instead of mastectomies, the propaganda press employs emotional blackmail by claiming these girls will commit suicide if they’re prevented from amputating their healthy body parts. When a deranged transgender shooter murders six Christians in cold blood, media activists frame the shooter as the victim.

Public opinion about transgender radicalism is rapidly changing. Based on a Gallup poll out just this week, a majority of Americans (55 percent) believe it’s “morally wrong to change one’s gender.” That’s up four points from 2021, despite poll results also showing more Americans now know a transgender-identifying person. Furthermore, nearly 70 percent of respondents said athletes should only be allowed to play on teams that match their sex, up a full seven points from 2021.

As the cultural tide turns, “pride” activists, with the help of their media allies, have shown they’ll do whatever it takes to maintain their clutch on the narrative — including spinning their own bomb threats against themselves.

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This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

A ReReturn to Fidelity: Princeton Professor’s Brilliant Move to Flip ‘Pride Month’ on Its Head

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On June 1, businesses, government, and even churches will erect rainbow flags and publish proclamations about the importance of “Pride Month,” a celebration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender identities. (Of course, the little plus sign means the list goes on and on, including queer, questioning, intersex, two-spirit, and more. One version even includes “friends and family.”)

This rush to celebrate LGBTQ+ lifestyles is both exclusionary and offensive to conservative Jews and Christians who follow the Bible’s teaching that God created humans male and female, that marriage is between one man and one woman, and that pride is a cardinal sin, not a virtue.

Rather than merely complaining, Princeton professor Robert P. George decided to do something about it. He launched an effort to flip “Pride Month” on its head—dedicating the month not to a specific interest group, but to a moral virtue, fidelity. (George is a member of The Heritage Foundation’s board of directors and The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news outlet.)

“Fidelity” derives from the Latin word “fides,” meaning “faith” or “trust.” The word implies “strict and continuing faithfulness to an obligation, trust, or duty,” according to Merriam–Webster.

George freely acknowledged that “absolutely no one” gave him any authority to declare June “Fidelity Month.” Nonetheless, he has done so, and I believe we as conservatives should join him in this effort.

George proposed dedicating June to “the importance of fidelity to God, spouses and families, our country, and our communities.”

I have often joked that June should be considered “humility” month because in the Western Christian worldview, pride constitutes the great sin of rejection of God in favor of yourself, while humility represents a great virtue. Humility entails surrendering yourself to God and reenacting in a small way the humbling of Jesus, who gave up the presence of the Father to take on human form and become a servant among us, even becoming obedient to the point of death.

The great Christian hope rests in the fact that God exalted Jesus after this great humility, and he will also exalt those who humble themselves in the way Jesus did (Philippians 2:3-8).

Yet humility carries a negative connotation. “Pride” has succeeded because the LGBTQ+ movement associates it with the message that human beings have inherent worth, and no matter your sexual orientation or gender identity, you can take ownership of yourself.

The proper response isn’t just to negate what the LGBTQ+ movement promises, but to take the positive view of humanity and ground it in something more noble.

Ownership of yourself means little without the ties that bind us to one another. Loneliness creeps into our hearts, whispering that social media or entertainment will satisfy us, but pleasures often ring hollow unless they are shared. The deepest friendships and relationships require a give-and-take, a context where each person loves and serves the other. These bonds are familiar to us because we experience them all the time—even if we don’t want to admit that the best word for them is “duty.”

“Fidelity” acknowledges your inherent dignity, but it forces you to consider the dignity of your neighbor as well. We must be faithful not just to ourselves, but to our families, our communities, our nation, and the God who created us.

The LGBTQ+ movement encourages people to take pride in their identities, but Fidelity Month encourages us to fulfill our obligations to one another. It recognizes the inherent dignity of all people and encourages us to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

Pride views the world through the lens of self, and each person is indeed a magnificent image of the ineffable God. No person becomes himself without the help of others, however.

I can only take pride in my accomplishments because my mother and father raised me. My success relies upon the many who invested in my education and the country that established a culture of opportunity. My very breath relies upon the God who established an ordered universe and fashioned me in his image.

The “Pride” of the LGBTQ+ movement often entails a rejection of each of these obligations. The movement denies parents’ rights to educate their children on matters of sexuality, attempting to use gender and sexuality as a wedge to separate children from their parents. The movement denies the goodness of America, preaching that the United States is an oppressive place for people whose very notion of individual worth comes from a Declaration of Independence.

Of course, the pinnacle of “Pride” is the claim that God holds no authority over us—that we can choose our own lifestyles and even rewrite biology to tell the One who made us male and female that he placed “transgender” people in the wrong body.

“Pride” is all about infidelity, breaking vows and duties to spouses, to children, and to God. Sexual liberation rests on the idea that marriage only lasts as long as feelings of love do, and family courts will decide who takes care of the children.

Fidelity Month does not come with a political program. It merely represents a response to the endless barrage of rainbow flags as June approaches.

It offers representation for those who are tired of seeing a constant reminder that America’s institutions are in lockstep with the sexual revolution, for those who are tired of having their faith demonized as “anti-LGBTQ+,” for those who truly do want to live and let live, but who see any dissent from rainbow orthodoxy quashed in the public square.

Finally, it offers a subtle reminder that Christians are not to strut about as though we are holier than the “Pride” brigades. We are redeemed sinners, called to faithfulness—not a mean-spirited “Pride” of our own. As St. Peter urged us, we should make a defense, giving the reason for the hope within us, “with gentleness and respect, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good name in Christ may be put to shame” (1 Peter 3:15-16).

Let us strive to live out the fruit of the Holy Spirit this Fidelity Month, and thank God that Robert P. George has crafted a fitting answer to the world’s unfaithfulness.

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This article was published by DailySignal and is reproduced with permission.

The Best of Twitter: What is a Woman

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Editors’ Note: This brilliant video and documentary by Matt Walsh has achieved viral status with tens of millions of viewings across America and the world. For American readers experiencing the barrage of news about ‘transgenderism’ and gender dysphoria and the industrial expansion of gender reassignment in children and young adults, this lengthy video, What is a Women, will explain much about this movement and the individuals involved in advancing it. Dr. Patterson’s featured article today, Transitioning Children is a Dangerous Fad, is a must read as is the viewing of this masterful documentary by Mr. Walsh for all concerned about our children and young adults immersed in a culture of increasing pathology and harm.

 

 

 

 

 

Incredibly Unjust’: Elon Musk Supports Girl Who Spoke Out Against Trans-Identifying Student

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Billionaire Elon Musk weighed in Saturday on the story of a Vermont family who spoke out against a biological male using their daughter’s locker room.

Musk, who owns Twitter, called the Orange Southwest School District Board’s decision to punish Travis Allen and Blake Allen “incredibly unjust” as he responded to a tweet from Riley Gaines, an outspoken advocate for fairness in women’s sports who swam against a biologically male athlete at the NCAA Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships.

“So happy for volleyball player and friend, Blake Allen,” Gaines said, posting a screenshot of The Daily Signal’s report on the Allens. “For feeling uneasy undressing next to a boy in her locker room, she was suspended from school and her dad lost his job. They told her she would only be let back in if she publicly apologized for her feelings of discomfort.”

Travis Allen had been a middle school soccer coach in Orange Southwest School District Board district until he spoke up about his daughter having to share a locker room with a biological male.

“It’s 2023 and legal action is necessary to uphold the ability for girls to give consent when it comes to disrobing in front of/being exposed to the opposite sex,” Gaines added.

Gaines, a 12-time All-American, and three-time Southeastern Conference champion, first shared her story with The Daily Wire after she tied with Thomas in the 200 freestyle in March 2022 at the NCAA Division I Women’s Championships. Despite harassment, threats, and violence, she has continued to speak out and has become a prominent national advocate.

The Daily Signal reported Thursday that the Allen family had reached a settlement with the school district requiring the Vermont School Boards Insurance Trust to pay $125,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees and costs to the Allen family.

Under the settlement, the district will reinstate Travis Allen as middle school soccer coach and will scrub any records of discipline against Travis Allen and his daughter Blake from school records.

Further, the settlement requires the Orange Southwest School District Board and school officials named in the Allens’ lawsuit to remove any content posted online by the school related to the locker room business as well as from the bulletin board or boards at Randolph Union Middle/High School displaying “love and support” messages to the trans-identifying student.

The Alliance Defending Freedom hailed the settlement as a huge win for the Allen family.

“The settlement of Blake and Travis Allen’s case is a resounding victory for freedom of speech,” Phil Sechler, senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, told The Daily Signal on Thursday.

“Calling a male a male shouldn’t have cost Travis his job and gotten Blake kicked out of school,” he added. “We are very glad that the school agreed to do the right thing by giving Travis his coaching job back and dropping the discipline against Blake. Everyone has the right to speak freely, and we are grateful that this settlement further protects that right.”

In their lawsuit filed in October, the Allens said that they “were punished for expressing their view on a matter of profound public concern: whether a teenage male who ‘identifies’ as female should be permitted to change in a girls’ locker room, regardless of the discomfort experienced by the girls in that room.”

“In objecting to a male being in the room while the girls are changing, Travis and Blake each made comments underscoring that the trans-identifying student is in fact a male, including by using male pronouns,” said the lawsuit, details of which were first obtained by The Daily Signal. “Indeed, their view of the student’s maleness was foundational to their opinions on the appropriate use of the locker room.”

“Yet, their remarks were too much for Defendants’ transgender orthodoxy—Travis was deemed to have ‘misgendered’ the student, while Blake was found guilty of ‘harassment’ and ‘bullying’—so Defendants disciplined both of them.”

The Daily Signal first reported that Travis Allen had been suspended without pay from his job as the Randolph Union Middle School girls soccer coach for calling the trans-identifying student a male. His suspension followed a Daily Signal video and report highlighting Blake’s discomfort at a biological male using her locker room while she was changing. Jessica Allen, Blake’s mother, also spoke out in the video.

Several of Blake’s fellow female students who spoke with The Daily Signal said they asked the student to leave, but said the student did not immediately do so. The girls said that the student stood in the corner and looked at them while they were changing, causing them to feel uncomfortable.

Orange Southwest School District Board did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Daily Signal.

Musk also waded into a transgender debate earlier this week, when he took steps to allow The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh’s documentary, “What is a Woman?” to be distributed on Twitter. Jeremy Boreing, co-CEO of The Daily Wire, tweeted Thursday, “Twitter canceled a deal with @realdailywire to premiere What is a Woman? for free on the platform because of two instances of ‘misgendering,’” referring to the practice of calling a person by his or her sex instead of the newly adopted gender identity.

Subsequently, Musk tweeted, “This was a mistake by many people at Twitter. It is definitely allowed.” Musk also later tweeted a recommendation for the movie, saying, “Every parent should watch this.”

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This article was published by DailySignal and is reproduced with permission.

Are School Libraries Banning Thousands of Books? Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Trust the Left’s Narrative

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“What we’re seeing here is a resurgence of widespread censorship in America,” Nadine Farid Johnson recently told The Wall Street Journal. Johnson is the Washington director of PEN America and co-author of its report claiming to identify 2,532 books banned in public schools during the 2021-2022 school year.

PEN America advocates on behalf of poets, essayists, and novelists, and it shows: Its report is almost as fictional as the work of the writers it represents.

It is simply false that 2,532 books were removed from schools during the 2021-2022 school year. We know this is false because we examined online card catalogues and found that 74% of the books PEN America identified as banned from school libraries are actually listed as available in the catalogues of those school districts. In many cases we could see that copies of those books are currently checked out and in use by students.

Among the books that PEN America alleges were banned are classic works, such as “Anne Frank’s Diary,” “Brave New World,” “Lord of the Flies,” “Of Mice and Men,” “The Color Purple,” and “To Kill a Mockingbird.” In every school district in which PEN America alleges those books were banned, we found copies listed as available in the online card catalogue.

For example, PEN America claims that “To Kill a Mockingbird” was “Banned in Libraries and Classrooms” in the Edmond public school district in Oklahoma. Edmond’s card catalogue indicates that the library has 10 copies of the book, two of which were checked out at the time we looked.

PEN America suggests that racism is a major factor driving censorship. The organization reports that “659 banned book titles (40 percent) contain protagonists or prominent secondary characters of color” and “338 banned book titles (21 percent) directly address issues of race and racism.”

The book “The Hate U Give,” which was inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and primarily features black characters, is listed as one of the most frequently banned books, reportedly removed from more than a dozen public school libraries during 2021-2022.

But when we examine the online card catalogues in those school districts, we find copies of “The Hate U Give” available in every one of them.

For example, PEN America says that “The Hate U Give” was banned in Goddard Public Schools in Kansas, yet that district’s card catalogue lists nine copies of the book; three were checked out at the time we examined it. Similarly, the book was supposedly banned from the Indian River School District in Florida, but the card catalogue in that district shows 20 copies available, with several checked out.

We were unable to find 26% of the books that PEN America claimed were banned in school district card catalogues, but that doesn’t necessarily mean those books were banned. Given how sloppy and error-prone the PEN America report is, it’s unclear whether the books we were unable to find in school district card catalogues had ever been listed and then removed.

In addition, many of the books we were unable to find in card catalogues were works that would strike most reasonable people as unlikely to be age-appropriate for school libraries. Works like “Gender Queer,” “Flamer,” “Lawn Boy,” “Fun Home,” and “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health” either contain images of people engaged in sex acts or graphic descriptions of those acts.

People who don’t want these books available to children in school libraries aren’t book banners. And people unwilling to defer to the unilateral authority of teachers and librarians to decide what children should have access to without democratic oversight or parental input are not fascists.

Determining what books are age-appropriate and educationally valuable enough to be purchased and kept in school libraries is inherently contentious even among well-intentioned people. But having a productive process for adjudicating these disputes is rendered impossible by false and hysterical claims from organizations like PEN America that there is “widespread censorship in America.” The vast majority of books allegedly banned from school libraries haven’t been banned at all.

A more realistic description of the situation is that classic works of literature continue to be available in the libraries of virtually every school district while we have some disagreements over a limited number of graphic works. Manufacturing a book-banning crisis where none exists only serves to undermine public discourse and fails to protect democratic freedom.

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This article was published at The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

WHO Says LGBTQ/Sex Ed Starts…At Birth?!?!

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The World Health Organization (WHO), which is beholden to and enamored of the genocidal Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and whose horrendous advice triggered the destructive COVID-19 measures such as masking and lockdowns, has more awful advice for you. According to the WHO, “sexuality education starts from birth.”

It’s never too early to teach your infant about sex and how they should chop off body parts! And this is the organization to which governments (including the Biden administration) want to give complete control over pandemic responses in future?

Notice the mention in the screenshot below of “early childhood masturbation” and “gender identity.”

“[The UK Telegraph, May 13] Outrage over WHO advice on sexuality for infants

Guide argues that ‘sexuality education starts from birth’

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is under pressure to withdraw guidance for schools recommending that toddlers ‘ask questions about sexuality’ and ‘explore gender identities.’”

God help us.

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This article was published at Pro Deo et Libertate and is reproduced with permission.