Moral standards…presuppose absolute moral standards, which in turn presuppose the existence of an absolute personality. In other words, they presuppose the existence of God. But what God?… Of all the major religious traditions, it is only biblical religion that affirms a God who is both personal and absolute. [Only biblical religion sees] that the idea of absolute personality is closely linked to the ideas of a Creator-creature distinction [as reflected in the imagoDei], divine sovereignty, and the Trinity. Compromise these and you compromise the personality of God. This precise pattern of thought is found only in the Bible and in traditions which are heavily influenced by the Bible. Is it then too much to say that morality presupposes the God of the Bible? I think not. — John Frame
I have been wanting to connect the reason I see gender-neutral pronouns like, they/them, ze/zim, sie/hir, are being used by the post-modern Left. The real — bottom line reason — is it dilutes evidences for God and every human’s “Imago Dei” Norman Geisler notes that “[t]he only ‘common ground’ with unbelievers is that they too are creatures in God’s image and live in God’s world.” Continuing he says,
But there are no common notions or methods; non-Christians approach the world differently from Christians, and they view it differently. We have a common world with unbelievers but no common worldview. The contact point with unbelievers is the imago Dei. But even here the “point of contact” is the “point of conflict,” for “if there is no head-on collision with the systems of the natural man there will be no point of contact with the sense of deity in the natural man.” Conflict is inevitable because of human depravity and sin.
I will emphasize our personal being in our language to bolster the point in this paragraph
Let me explain a bit more. Part of the Imago Dei in us all is that we get our “being” from it [“It” – the Ultimate Being]. In other words, an example I use is “can you refer to yourself in the womb of your mother without using personal pronouns? We have an “I” in our being. But that “I” has not always existed… it itself was brought into being by my, or your, parents. Who likewise had being, but “contingent ‘being,'” as they relied on others for their being.
I know, it is tough. But this “being” I am speaking of is argued well below, and is an excellent apologetic for God and the Christian worldview. Excerpted from my post, “Kalam Cosmological Argument ~ History and Argument“
PUT THUS:
We spoke of the universe as “the collection of beings in space and time.” Consider one such being: yourself. You exist, and you are, in part at least, material. This means that you are a finite, limited and changing being, you know that right now, as you read this book, you are dependent for your existence on beings outside you. Not your parents or grandparents. They may no longer be alive, but you exist now. And right now you depend on many things in order to exist–for example, on the air you breathe. To be dependent in this way is to be contingent. You exist if something else right now exists.
But not everything can be like this. For then everything would need to be given being, but there would be nothing capable of giving it. There would not exist what it takes for anything to exist. So there must be something that does not exist conditionally; something which does not exist only if something else exists; something which exists in itself. What it takes for this thing to exist could only be this thing itself. Unlike changing material reality, there would be no distance, so to speak, between what this thing is and that it is. Obviously the collection of beings changing in space and time cannot be such a thing. Therefore, what it takes for the universe to exist cannot be identical with the universe itself or with a part of the universe.
An excellent short video explaining this all is this one,
Contingency Argument SPEED RUN!
In other words, our “being” has a Cause in His “Being.” Plato saw this dimly in his Theory of Forms:
Plato’s Theory of Forms is a philosophical concept that explains the nature of reality. The basic question goes something like this:
We can see trees, cats, circles and many other things in everyday life, and we can easily recognise each one as the thing it is supposed to be. But, if we look closer, we never really see anything like a “standard cat.” Every cat is different, and so is every tree and every drawn circle. Especially with geometric forms, they are never perfect. Every circle we can see in our world is either broken, distorted, pixelated, or in a myriad of other ways not “a perfect circle.” In fact, a perfect geometrical circle would need to be drawn with a line that does not have any thickness, and so would be invisible!
So how is it, Plato asks, that we are able to identify circles, trees and cats if have actually never seen a “standard” thing of each kind?
There are two worlds, Plato says: the world of physical objects and the world of Forms. The world of physical objects is the world we see around us, while the world of Forms is the world of abstract concepts and ideas. The Forms are perfect, unchanging, and eternal, while the physical objects we see around us are imperfect, changing, and temporary.
Norman Geisler explains this in differing ways with the following. And note, I have more in-depth reproductions of his arguments in the second half of this post — along with the PDF reproductions for download. But I am here desperately trying to dumb the argument down to make the broader point. Which is, the “pronouns” being foisted on us ARE AN ATTACK on the foundation of truth and reality, which is rooted in God’s “Being”, Image, transferred to us in a finite, now fallen way.
This contingent being is caused either (1) by itself, or (2) by another.
If it were caused by itself, it would have to precede itself in existence, which is impossible.
P2) Therefore, this contingent being (2) is caused by another, i.e., depends on something else for its existence.
P3) That which causes (provides the sufficient reason for) the existence of any contingent being must be either (3) another contingent being, or (4) a non-contingent being (necessary) being.
If 3, then this contingent cause must itself be caused by another, and so onto infinity.
P4) Therefore, that which causes (provides the sufficient reason for) the existence of any contingent being must be either (5) an infinite series of contingent beings, or (4) a necessary being.
P5) An infinite series of contingent beings (5) is incapable of yielding a sufficient reason for the existence of any being.
P6) Therefore, a necessary being (4) exists!
Based on the Principle of Existential Causality
Some limited, changing being[s] exist.
The present existence of every limited, changing being is caused by another.
There cannot be an infinite regress of causes of being.
Therefore, there is a first Cause of the present existence of these beings.
This first Cause must be infinite, necessary, eternal, simple, unchangeable and one.
This first uncaused Cause is identical with the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition
A mix of both
Something exists (e.g., I do);
I am a contingent being;
Nothing cannot cause something;
Only a Necessary Being can cause a contingent being;
Therefore, I am caused to exist by a Necessary Being;
But I am personal, rational, and moral kind of being (since I engage in these kinds of activities);
Therefore this Necessary Being must be a personal, rational, and moral kind of being, since I am similar to him by the Principle of Analogy;
But a Necessary Being cannot be contingent (i.e., not necessary) in its being which would be a contradiction;
Therefore, this Necessary Being is personal, rational, and moral in a necessary way, not in a contingent way;
This Necessary Being is also eternal, uncaused, unchanging, unlimited, and one, since a Necessary Being cannot come to be, be caused by another, undergo change, be limited by any possibility of what it could be (a Necessary Being has no possibility to be other than it is), or to be more than one Being (since there cannot be two infinite beings);
Therefore, one necessary, eternal, uncaused, unlimited (=infinite), rational, personal, and moral being exists;
Such a Being is appropriately called “God” in the theistic sense, because he possesses all the essential characteristics of a theistic God;
Therefore, the theistic God exists.
IN OTHER WORDS, our being, the “I” that we experience the world through IS AN APOLOGETIC, EVIDENCE of God!
Our being has a logical argument from Thee Being.
Our being (ways in which something can exist or occur or to be presented, or stand) is rooted in a theistic argument that is much surer in it’s premises and explanations.
That aside, the Marxist [read here atheistic] attack on Western values and truth is rooted itself in negating the Judeo-Christian aspect of historical truth, or knowing Part of this argument is the enquiry into “what we can know.” Our Declaration of Independence and Constitution either state or assume this:
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”
[….]
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
[….]
“We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States…”
This title of Supreme Judge of the world establishes God not only as the Creator of the world but also as the source of moral law. This statement is in opposition to the idea of Deism, which says that there exists a supreme being or creator who set the universe in motion but does not intervene in human affairs or the natural world. This statement suggests that those writing the declaration believed that the God of the Bible was the ultimate judge of good and evil.
The final mention of God in the Declaration of Independence labels God as the giver of Divine Providence.
“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
This is a statement of trust in the divine’s oversight and actions that would result in declaring independence from Britain. These four mentions of God show that the founding fathers had a clear belief in moral truth which originated from a supreme being. In an article for Intercessors for America, Tyler O’Neil states, “The leaders who formed our country based their arguments for independence on the laws of God, and they trusted Him to guide America through its struggles. They looked to faith as a bulwark of freedom, not as its opposite.”
What Role Did Religious Beliefs Play in the Founding of the United States?
Many religious backgrounds made up those living in Colonial America at the time of the Declaration of Independence and the writing of the U.S. Constitution. Puritans, Anglicans, Quakers, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, and Jewish congregations were all represented within the American Colonies.
It is well documented that 51 of the 55 delegates at the Constitutional Convention claimed to hold Christian beliefs. Even Benjamin Franklin, a proclaimed Deist, gave a call to prayer that contained several references to scripture on June 28th, 1787, when the Constitutional Convention was struggling to agree.
“The Constitution doesn’t explicitly mention God but references frequently concepts central to Christianity like morals, reason, and free will,” says David Barton, founder of WallBuilders, a Texas-based group dedicated to promoting America’s Christian heritage. …
In other words, attacking the foundation of knowledge and beings able to know moral truths and reality is at the heart of the pronoun issue. It is both an attack on our freedoms here in America, as well as an attack on our freedoms discovered via Western culture writ large.
There seems to be little consensus where there was once clarity on what constituted male and female, boy and girl, man and woman, he and she. This is evidenced in the growing number of people who identify as transgender (those who experience gender dysphoria, a condition that describes the “psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity”) or those who identify themselves using other nontraditional gender terms. As such, it is becoming somewhat common for people to state or list their preferred pronouns in conversation, on social media, before meetings, or in email signatures. For example, during the 2020 election season, several Democratic presidential candidates put their preferred pronouns on their social media profiles.
In contrast, the Christian worldview asserts that God created people to be either male or female. Genesis 1:27 reads, “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.” God did not intend for sex and gender (identity) to be separate from one another; they are synonymous. To adopt a different worldview on sex and gender would be to reject the truth. Nevertheless, the culture today is attempting (with some success, unfortunately) to convince Christians differently.
To not call someone by their preferred pronouns, like, xe/xir/xirs, ze/zir/zirs and fae/faer/faers, is liked to a “human rights violations.” In fact, those prouns are an attack on what it is to be human.
Our essence.
Our being.
Dennis Prager says it is a war on human order. Which is a war on God:
Genesis 3:5 has the serpent (the Devil) tempting Adam and Eve. Half-truths are the best the Serpent can come up with, but the commentary I love on this verse will follow. I will highlightsome points in it. 3:5 reads: “In fact, God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (CSB).
Here is the commentary:
The climax is a lie big enough to reinterpret life (this breadth is the power of a false system) and dynamic enough to redirect the flow of affection and ambition. To be as God,25 and to achieve it by outwitting him, is an intoxicating programme. God will henceforth be regarded, consciously or not, as rival and enemy. Against this human arrogance ‘the obedience of the one’ and his taking ‘the form of a servant’ show up in their true colours (Rom. 5:19; Phil. 2:7).
So the tempter pits his bare assertion against the word and works of God, presenting divine love as envy, service as servility, and a suicidal plunge as a leap into life, ‘All these things will I give thee …’; the pattern repeats in Christ’s temptations, and in ours.
— On knowing good and evil, see on 2:9 [see below].
25.Or, gods (AV). The word ’ĕlōhîm can be used generically to include the angelic orders; see on 1:26.
2:9
…. The knowledge of good and evil is perhaps best understood in this living context. In isolation it could mean a number of things, many of them with biblical support. The phrase can stand for moral or aesthetic discernment (e.g. 1 Kgs 3:9; Isa. 7:15); yet Adam and Eve are already treated as morally responsible (2:16, 17) and generally percipient (3:6) before they touch the tree. It could be a hebraism for ‘everything’ (i.e. man is not to covet omniscience); yet it can hardly mean this in 3:22. It has often been regarded as sexual awakening, in the light of 3:7; recently R. Gordis suggested that this tree thereby offers a rival immortality to that of the tree of life, in the procreation of a family and a posterity. This too is open to several objections, including the fact that 3:22a is incompatible with it (heaven is sexless in the Old as in the New Testament), and that God instituted marriage after forbidding the use of the tree that is said to symbolize it.
In the context, however, the emphasis falls on the prohibition rather than the properties of the tree. It is shown to us as forbidden. It is idle to ask what it might mean in itself; this was Eve’s error. As it stood, prohibited, it presented the alternative to discipleship: to be self-made, wresting one’s knowledge, satisfactions and values from the created world in defiance of the Creator (cf. 3:6). Even more instructive is the outcome of the experiment; see on 3:7. In all this the tree plays its part in the opportunity it offers, rather than the qualities it possesses; like a door whose name announces only what lies beyond it.
Derek Kidner, Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary, vol. 1, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1967), 67–68, 73.
Yep. It is all a big lie. And the extreme gender confusion with it’s high rate of suicide is literally “a suicidal plunge as a leap into life.”
And another point. Lets say you work at a Starbucks in West Hollywood, and you have 4-people who each have chosen a preferred pronoun[s]. For example, here are some of the choices:
So one person uses “xe, xem, xyr, xyers.”
Another uses “ne, nem, nir, nerself.”
Yet another uses “ci, cer, cer, cirs.”
And lastly this person uses “ve, vis, ver, verself.”
How is one supposed to keep track of all that hogwash so as not to get fired? It is impossible for even these 4 to keep it straight. In Michigan they are making these felonies:
A new Michigan bill would make it a hate crime to cause someone to “feel terrorized, frightened, or threatened.”
The Michigan Hate Crime Act, designated HB 4474 , passed in the state House on Tuesday and now goes before the Michigan Senate. It will replace the existing Ethnic Intimidation Act and expand the categories of people protected by the law.
The new bill would include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity or expression” as classes protected against intimidation.
[….]
If passed, the hate speech legislation would make violators guilty of a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of $10,000.
AMERICAN THINKER notes this religious attack implicitly at the beginning of their article:
God-fearing people recognize that the effort to demolish the two God-given genders is a shaking of the fist at the Almighty. After all, the first chapter of the Bible says: “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them”(Genesis 1:27). This paradigm empowers females who are created in the imago dei. They are different from males, but equal to them at the level of essence. Nature and biology confirm God’s binary design.
Unfortunately, we live in a post-Christian society. Sane arguments often fall on deaf ears. The secular elites who control education and the media have marginalized those who provide biblical explanations. Given this sad reality, might there be another way to end the compelled speech of pronoun lunacy in which people can decide by which pronouns they will be referred?
[….]
For example, if someone asked another person about me: “What do you think of Newt?” They would need to respond something like: “I hate Newt. He is a tyrant. He never does what you ask of her.” Note that “he” is used when Newt is the subject of the sentence, and “her” is used at the end when Newt is the object of the sentence. If they failed to honor my preferred pronouns and said, “…He never does whatever you ask of him…” this would be a violation. I would report this, and press charges, if possible.
Mary could likewise insist on her pronouns being “She” and “Him.” Those speaking or writing about Mary would have to write something like: “I appreciate Mary. She is a great friend. I have no better friend than him. She is a great listener.” Or she could insist on “He” and “Her” (as does Newt).
Can you imagine if as many people as possible insisted upon this practice? Might it cause the regime of verbal tyranny to collapse? Though we are in the process of butchering English with the improper use of “they,” the mind can factor in this mutation and get used to it. However, since native English speakers calculate pronoun case automatically and subconsciously, it would be nearly impossible to speak and write in a way that could satisfy those who insist on different gendering pronouns that are case-dependent.
Yep. It is impossible to satisfy such people. This thinking “wresting one’s knowledge, satisfactions and values from the created world in defiance of the Creator.”
SOME APOLOGISTS DISCUSS THE ISSUE:
Douglas Groothuis w/Melissa Dougherty
Today, I interviewed Dr. Groothuis about the craziness we see around us and what we can do about it. Dr. Groothuis holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and is a Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary. He is the author of sixteen books and has also published over thirty academic articles in journals as well as dozens of pieces in publications.
Nancy Pearcey w/Babylon Bee’s Ethan Nicolle
Editor-in-chief Kyle Mann and creative director Ethan Nicolle welcome Professor Nancy Pearcey. She is professor of apologetics and scholar in residence at Houston Baptist University and author of several books, most recently Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality. Prof. Pearcey’s books also include Total Truth, Finding Truth, The Soul of Science, Saving Leonardo and How Now Shall We Live? (co-authored with Chuck Colson). They talk about sexuality, gender, abortion, and Christianity’s high view of the human body.
Topics Discussed
Abortion… scientific human life vs modern Personhood Theory
Biological Sex vs Gender
The Christian’s high view of the material world and the human body due to belief in the incarnation of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, and the new heaven and earth.
Trusting in a design vs individual revolt against nature and biological realities
Language as a front in the culture war
All of our actions endorse a worldview
What about people who identify as “gay Christians” or some other adjective placed before the word Christian?
Nudity in medieval Christian art
Unnamed People w/Melissa Dougherty
There’s a postmodern ideology that is plowing through our world that aims to dismantle all societal and moral norms. This ideology is responsible for how we have gotten to the point in society where language is rebranded and “sex” and “gender” are separate. Now, there are supposedly unlimited genders. If this isn’t disturbing enough, the logical conclusion of this ideology (which really functions like a religion) is that age should be flexible, too. Kids should have the freedom to choose what age they identify as… as sexual beings. This ideology says this is good, liberating, and empowering.
This is completely shocking. And absolute garbage that should be talked about and brought to light.
For the first time in history, the medical industry has allowed people to self-diagnose themselves when it comes to gender dysphoria. And doctors must “affirm” this diagnosis. That goes for people of all ages, including children.
All that is bad enough. However, the worst part about that is not only is this model being used on children, but many doctors have allowed minors to make life-altering decisions under the guise of “affirming” that self-diagnosis.
Coincidentally, it just turns out that all that is “big business.”
Joe Rogan told Aaron Rodgers what we are all thinking. It’s that “gender-affirming care” may result in a load of lawsuits coming from children whose self-diagnosis was “affirmed” and the “doctors” encouraged them to make these life-altering decisions……
? Joe Rogan & Aaron Rodgers on the Big Business Behind ‘Gender Affirming Care’
“It’s a business. My friend who’s a doctor told me that his friend, who is a plastic surgeon who moved into gender transition care,…gets $70,000 every time he does this. And he goes, ‘This guy is… pic.twitter.com/lhrHggzZVh
Here is a part of the NYT’s article, I will emphasize the part that stood out to me followed by a video that affirms why people should speak up, in love::
Grace Powell was 12 or 13 when she discovered she could be a boy.
Growing up in a relatively conservative community in Grand Rapids, Mich., Powell, like many teenagers, didn’t feel comfortable in her own skin. She was unpopular and frequently bullied. Puberty made everything worse. She suffered from depression and was in and out of therapy.
“I felt so detached from my body, and the way it was developing felt hostile to me,” Powell told me. It was classic gender dysphoria, a feeling of discomfort with your sex.
Reading about transgender people online, Powell believed that the reason she didn’t feel comfortable in her body was that she was in the wrong body. Transitioning seemed like the obvious solution. The narrative she had heard and absorbed was that if you don’t transition, you’ll kill yourself.
At 17, desperate to begin hormone therapy, Powell broke the news to her parents. They sent her to a gender specialist to make sure she was serious. In the fall of her senior year of high school, she started cross-sex hormones. She had a double mastectomy the summer before college, then went off as a transgender man named Grayson to Sarah Lawrence College, where she was paired with a male roommate on a men’s floor. At 5-foot-3, she felt she came across as a very effeminate gay man.
At no point during her medical or surgical transition, Powell says, did anyone ask her about the reasons behind her gender dysphoria or her depression. At no point was she asked about her sexual orientation. And at no point was she asked about any previous trauma, and so neither the therapists nor the doctors ever learned that she’d been sexually abused as a child.
“I wish there had been more open conversations,” Powell, now 23 and detransitioned, told me. “But I was told there is one cure and one thing to do if this is your problem, and this will help you.”….
About a 55-seconds into the video this is said:
Everybody I told I was getting a sex change and blah blah blah. They all said ohh if that’s what – If that’s what you think is right, then go ahead and do it. You know, if you if – you if you feel good and feel good about it, you know if that’s what you want. Go go do it and.
How can that happen… when you’re supposed to be accountable for your brothers and sisters and help them out? According to what I read?
And they didn’t do it. They did not do it. And to this day, they thought I was going to be a disgrace to them. That’s why they didn’t do anything. They just told me that there’s the door said OK, you know.
Today on the Matt Walsh Show, a whistleblower from inside the child gender transition industry has finally come forward and what she reveals is horrifying. I’ll walk you through the whole story today. Also, a congressional Democrat learns that the old “yelling fire in a crowded theater” trope is not actually a valid argument against free speech. I have one more clip that you haven’t seen yet from that now infamous committee hearing in Tennessee. Plus, reports suggest that Project Veritas is trying to push James O’Keefe out, even though James O’Keefe is Project Veritas. In our Daily Cancellation, Vice holds a panel discussion on race. One guy with common sense made it onto the panel, and proceeded to offend and terrify the rest of them.
Mr. Rogers tried to warn everyone in the late 1960’s, and again in the 1980’s about an agenda on tv that isn’t suitable for minors. He went as far as making a song to remind young boys and girls what their biological gender is ln fear of one day the media would give them the idea to change genders later in life. Everyone laughed then but this is very much a reality now.
Mr. Rogers Tried Tried To Warn Everybody In The Late Sixties And In The Eighties
Here is the full testimony in the Senate:
On May 1, 1969, Fred Rogers, host of the (then) recently nationally syndicated children’s television series, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (named Misterogers’ Neighborhood at the time), testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce Subcommittee on Communications to defend $20 million in federal funding proposed for the newly formed non-profit Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which was at risk of being reduced to $10 million. Subcommittee chairman, Senator John Pastore (D-RI), unfamiliar with Fred Rogers, is initially abrasive toward him. Over the course of Rogers’ 6 minutes of testimony, Pastore’s demeanor gradually transitions to one of awe and admiration as Rogers speaks.
A recent arrival from Kansas learns what it is like to run a business in the People’s Republic of California…. You can see why the pathologically despotic Michael Bloomberg sees hyper-regulated California as a model to emulate. You can also see why moving vans tend to be full when they leave California and empty when they return. But the Third World still keeps the state’s population growing, if slowly.
Another skit where a 3-years old “chooses” his gender:
WASHINGTON — Medical doctors and a mom of a trans-identifying child are urging the government to shut down medical operations that are harming children.
Their efforts to resist the medicalization of gender has led them to discover that government-funded research now allows wrong sex hormones such as testosterone to be given to girls as young as 8.
At a Thursday panel at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, Dr. Michael Laidlaw addressed the medical harms of hormonal treatments and surgical interventions being performed on young people who believe they are the opposite sex. Doctors administering these treatments are advocating these harmful practices on increasingly younger children, he explained.
Today, medical scenarios such as girls as young as 13 and 14 undergoing double mastectomies and 17-year-old boys with penises of 9-year-olds, developmentally speaking, because of chemical puberty blockers, are now showing up, Laidlaw, a Rocklin, California-based endocrinologist, explained in his remarks.
[….]
To date, hormone blockers such as Lupron, which is used to treat both prostate cancer patients and children with precocious puberty, has never been through an FDA-approval process for the purpose of blocking normal puberty, and is prescribed off-label. Laidlaw refers to puberty blockers as a form of “chemical conversion therapy” and noted that the largest professional association for endocrinologists, The Endocrine Society, now recommends delaying puberty in gender dysphoric youth at Tanner stage 2, which is soon after the pubertal signals in the brain begin to occur.
The reason that Jazz Jennings, transgender star of the TLC series “I am Jazz,” has reportedly never had any sexual sensations or orgasms is because his natural puberty was halted at this stage and was not allowed to occur, the California doctor explained. These puberty-blocking drugs also disrupt normal brain and bone development, putting kids at future risk of osteoporosis, he said.
In England, Oxford professor Michael Biggs discovered through a freedom of information request that at the Tavistock gender clinic, children reported greater self-harm with these particular medications, and girls exhibited greater emotional problems and dissatisfaction with their bodies, Laidlaw noted.
“Now you’d think if you had these side effects of these medications, wouldn’t you want to stop?” Laidlaw asked.
During his presentation, he played video clips of two doctors active in the medical transitioning of children, Ilana Sherer and Johanna Olson-Kennedy.
Sherer explained that puberty blockers are given to children at age 8 or 9, when they are in third and fourth grades. Olson-Kennedy is doing a 5-year study, for which she has received a $5.7 million National Institutes of Health research grant, and in one of her publications, it shows that mastectomies have been done on girls as young as 13. In the clip Laidlaw showed, Olson-Kennedy is seen on tape insisting adolescents have the capacity to make life-altering decisions, including to have their breasts removed….
Are the differences between men and women biological or socially constructed? What do women want from a relationship? What do men want? Are they the same? Or are they much different? Sean McDowell, Associate Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Biola University sorts it all out in this eye-opening video.
Dennis Prager discusses a topic that is really a new piece of Leftist propaganda (within the past 5-years), that is, rapid onset gender dysphoria. Over the years of studying cults, brainwashing, separating children from family, etc., I see much of this in the inundation of these ideas in concentrated forms and peer pressure at the university.
The articles referenced by reading from the College Fix are these:
This is a travesty! The Left and Leftist parents and doctors start to block hormones in pre-teen children, when about 90% of young people who have “gender dysphoria” settle on being either gay or straight, and not trans. It is child abuse, number one. And number two, it is no different than the “psychosurgery” that was popular in the 40’s-60’s – that of lobotomies. It is sick. It was wrong then just as it is wrong now. Doctors and psychologists were wrong then JUST as they are wrong now. Which brings me to number three… it is not scientific.
A reader contacted me under a pseudonym a few months ago. She turned out to be a prominent Southern lawyer with a problem she hoped I’d write about. Her college-age daughter had always been a “girly girl” and intellectually precocious, but had struggled with anxiety and depression. She liked boys and had boyfriends in high school, but also faced social challenges and often found herself on the outs with cliques.
The young woman went off to college—which began, as it often does these days, with an invitation to state her name, sexual orientation and “pronouns.” When her anxiety flared during her first semester, she and several of her friends decided their angst had a fashionable cause: “gender dysphoria.” Within a year, the lawyer’s daughter had begun a course of testosterone. Her real drug—the one that hooked her—was the promise of a new identity. A shaved head, boys’ clothes and a new name formed the baptismal waters of a female-to-male rebirth.
This is the phenomenon Brown University public-health researcher Lisa Littman has identified as “rapid onset gender dysphoria.” ROGD differs from traditional gender dysphoria, a psychological affliction that begins in early childhood and is characterized by a severe and persistent feeling that one was born the wrong sex. ROGD is a social contagion that comes on suddenly in adolescence, afflicting teens who’d never exhibited any confusion about their sex.
Like other social contagions, such as cutting and bulimia, ROGD overwhelmingly afflicts girls. But unlike other conditions, this one—though not necessarily its sufferers—gets full support from the medical community. The standard for dealing with teens who assert they are transgender is “affirmative care”—immediately granting the patient’s stated identity. There are, to be sure, a few dissenters. “This idea that what we’re supposed to do as therapists is to ‘affirm’? That’s not my job,” said psychotherapist Lisa Marchiano. “If I work with someone who’s really suicidal because his wife left him, I don’t call his wife up and say, ‘Hey, you’ve got to come back.’ . . . We don’t treat suicide by giving people exactly what they want.”
But giving in to patients’ demands is exactly what most medical professionals do when faced with ROGD. Like fashionable and tragic misdiagnoses of the past, this one comes with irreversible physical trauma. “Top surgery,” a euphemism for double mastectomies. Infertility. Permanent rounding of facial features or squaring of the jawline. Bodily and facial hair that never goes away.
Planned Parenthood furnishes testosterone to young women on an “informed consent” basis, without requiring any psychological evaluation. Student health plans at 86 colleges—including those of nearly every Ivy League school—cover not only cross-sex hormones but surgery as well.
ROGD-afflicted adolescents typically suffer anxiety and depression at a difficult stage of life, when confusion is at least as pervasive as fun, and there is everywhere the sense that they ought to be having the times of their lives. I spoke with 18 parents, 14 of them mothers—all articulate, intellectual, educated and feminist. They burst with pride in daughters who, until the ROGD spell hit, were highly accomplished, usually bound for top universities. Except for two mothers whose daughters have desisted, all insisted on anonymity. They are terrified their daughters will discover the depth of their dissent and cut them off. They are determined to use whatever influence they have left to halt their daughters’ next voluntary disfigurement.
Nearly every force in society is aligned against these parents: Churches scramble to rewrite their liturgies for greater “inclusiveness.” Therapists and psychiatrists undermine parental authority with immediate affirmation of teens’ self-diagnoses. Campus counselors happily refer students to clinics that dispense hormones on the first visit. Laws against “conversion therapy,” which purports to cure homosexuality, are on the books in 14 states and the District of Columbia. These statutes also prohibit “efforts to change a patient’s . . . gender identity,” in the words of the New Jersey law—effectively threatening counselors who might otherwise dissuade teens from proceeding with hormone treatment or surgery.
Reddit, Tumblr, Instagram and YouTube host an endless supply of mentors, who cheerfully document their own physical transitions, omitting mention of dangerous side effects and offering tips on how to pass as a man and how to break away from unsupportive parents. For anxious teens who tend toward obsession, these videos can be mesmerizing. Though the stars are typically pictured alone in a bedroom, they project exuberance and social élan. As one female-to-male YouTube guru who goes by “Alex Bertie” puts it: “Taking testosterone is the best decision I’ve ever made. I’m so happy within myself. It did not solve all of my problems, but it’s given me the strength to make the most out of life and to battle my other demons like my social issues.”
Brie Jontry, a spokeswoman for Fourth Wave Now, an international support network for these families, is one of the two mothers who spoke on the record. She tells me ROGD teens often come from politically progressive families. Many of the mothers I spoke with say they enthusiastically supported same-sex marriage long before it was legal anywhere. Some of them describe welcoming the news when their daughters came out as lesbians. But when their daughters suddenly decided that they were actually men and started clamoring for hormones and surgery, the mothers begged them to reconsider, or at least slow down.
“If your kid went off and joined the Moonies, people would feel sorry for you, and they would understand that this is a bad thing and that your kid shouldn’t be in the Moonies,” one mother, a former leader of the pro-gay organization Pflag, said. “With this, I can’t even tell anybody. I talk to my husband, that’s it.” The couple have faithfully covered their daughter’s tuition, health-care and cellphone bills—even though she refuses to speak to them.
Under the influence of testosterone and the spell of transgression, ROGD daughters grow churlish and aggressive. Under the banner of civil rights, they assume the moral high ground. Their mothers take cover behind pseudonyms. As ROGD daughters rage against the biology they hope to defy, their mothers bear its burden, evincing its maternal instinct—the stubborn refusal to abandon their young.
Debra Soh (sex researcher) joins Dave to discuss her work as a sex researcher, the backlash to her article “Why Transgender Kids Should Wait to Transition,” Harvard’s admissions discriminating against asians, the #MeToo movement, and more.
Obviously, as an evangelical Christian I would want a different path for Blaire to be realized. However, THAT BEING SAID, his approach to reality will distinctively help with the psychological angst many transgenders feel about their gender (i.e., gender dysphoria).
Are male and female one and the same? Or are there real male-female differences rooted in biology? Ashley McGuire, author of “Sex Scandal: The Drive to Abolish Male and Female,” explains.