It's Called Grooming

A few weeks ago I shared some information for parents to protect their children. The issue was human sex trafficking. We were made aware of warning signs that a child is being groomed, to be led into the hands of the traffickers. There are steps in recruitment, what we could call grooming:

1.       Befriend—to get the target to see the groomer as someone to trust.

2.       Intoxicate—to cause inability to think clearly combined with causing friction at home.

3.       Alienate—to drive a wedge between target and family and their core values.

4.       Isolate—to separate the target from old friends who held their original core values.

5.       Desensitize—to confuse the target’s moral compass, making the previously unthinkable seem common or even normal.

6.       Capitalize—to take the target into control by the groomer, and subject to sex slavery.

Image from here
link from this story

As a follow-up, here’s a piece warning parents of the apps the predators are using. 

This is a scary scenario, and pretty horrifying for a parent. I think we do need to be vigilant. But I think the danger is larger than recruitment into human trafficking, which, while unbelievably too common, is still comparatively rare.

I don’t mean to diminish the meaning. But I believe the methodology—grooming—is being used in a broader attempt to recruit a generation into an alternate reality, with an alternate morality and behaviors.

These things are so serious, it helps to be able to keep a sense of humor. So let’s start with yesterday’s Andrew Klavan Show intro. He begins each episode with a monologue in the form of a news report parody, like this:

Leftist scientists working around the clock have developed powerful new tools for altering reality. In a speech to the Society for the Promulgation of Irrational Hysteria, left-wing physicist Dr. Geraldo Von Zippity-Noodle told the gathering of empty chairs he can now confirm that writing a statement five times over in all capital letters and posting it on Twitter transforms that statement, no matter how absurd, into the truth.

In an experiment that has been reduplicated in multiple peer-reviewed imaginations, scientists posted the words “TRANS-WOMEN ARE WOMEN” five times in all caps on their Twitter feeds, and discovered from that time forth men who wore dresses not only became real women, but were actually able to conceive and bear children, if no one looked too closely.

In a transcript of the speech, released through UCLA’s office of Collecting Undeserved Paychecks by Repeatedly Using the Word Diversity, Dr. Von Zippety-Noodle said, “The key to changing reality through repetitive Twitter capitalization, or RTC, is to ensure that no one damages the results by demanding proof or using such phrases as ‘nonsense’ or ‘applesauce’ or uttering ‘complete horse manure of the purest ray serene.’[i] If people using such words can be banned from Twitter, or silenced through intimidation, then the proper reality change can take place undisturbed. Or, if not, who is there to say?”

Andrew Klavan,
screenshot from episode 710

That's somewhere around step 5, desensitizing. Disorienting. Claiming an alternate truth so often and so firmly that sensible people begin to question their long-held grasp on reality.

This disorienting comes easier if there’s already been some unmooring from the family and the core beliefs inculcated within (step 3, alienating), and from friends who went along with those core values (step 4, isolating).

This step has been underway for quite a while. Things that seemed unthinkable in 1950 or 1960 were mainstreamed—in media, academia, and then in politics, which is downstream from culture.

Consider a few recent stories.

In this one, a British priest/teacher at a school in Essex was castigated for considering the feelings of any child but the boy/girl with gender dysphoria: “Priest Resigned Post Over Children Being ‘Sacrificed on the Altar of Trans-Ideology’”  

The school in Essex, which has not been named in reports to protect the privacy of the children and families, had a pupil who, at just eight years old, was looking to transition from a boy to a girl, British newspaper the Mail on Sunday reported. Reverend Parker said he supported the child’s transition but wanted to inform parents of other pupils in order to ensure the safety of everyone at the school and to address any concerns about the child using the girls’ toilets.

It was not enough that he supported the transitioning child; he had to also dismiss any concerns surrounding the situation. The school’s governor and church leaders told him to shut up. So he left.

In Brazil—as attempted in the US with the recent Equality Act, which passed in the House—disagreeing with the LGBT agenda is being made a crime: “Brazil's supreme court votes to make homophobia and transphobia crimes.”  

Racism was made a crime in Brazil in 1989 with prison sentences of up to five years. The court's judges ruled that homophobia should be framed within the racism law until the country's congress approves legislation specifically covering LGBT discrimination.

Brazil's Senate is dealing with a bill to criminalize discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender with sentences of up to five years.

Meanwhile, as women and girls express their fears—not necessarily of transgenders, but of predators using the opportunity to victimize—actual cases continue appearing: “Man who says he’s ‘female’ enters women’s bathroom, sexually assaults 10-year-old girl.” The story offers this commentary:

Decades after feminism swept the West, transgender rights have now formally replaced women’s rights as the emerging ideology of gender fluidity wipes out any formal conception of what a “woman” is to begin with.

Women and girls who feel unsafe when biological males enter spaces once reserved for females only are being essentially told that they are transphobic and that they should shut up.

And this:

Any discomfort expressed by women themselves is condemned as bigotry. And this system is impervious to questioning: It is not only transphobic to ask whether some spaces should be limited to biological females for the purposes of safety, it is also transphobic to ask any follow-up questions about this. The transgender community, apparently, is a uniformly perfect group, utterly without sin and lacking any nefarious members whatsoever. I suppose if you can believe a woman has a penis, you can believe anything.

If you’re recruiting, why not start young? It’s hard to know whether this next story is about a really, really stupid teacher or a purposeful groomer: “'He Feels Confused': Parents Sue After Teacher Repeatedly Asks 8-Year-Old if He's Trans.” In this case, an 8-year-old had digestive problems, which were accommodated by allowing him to use a different restroom (I think I read in a related story was the teachers’). His teacher, instead of asking why this arrangement had been made, surmised that he had gender dysphoria, and singled him out multiple times to ask him if he thought he was really a girl, and gave him books to read that would lead to that conclusion. The books in his backpack were how the parents found out. The boy was very confused, and required some to deal with the trauma the teacher caused him. The family sued, rightfully.

Note here that the boy wasn’t confused before the teacher repeatedly and somewhat forcefully implanted the idea of gender dysphoria. In other words, the pressure to put this information in early grades, supposedly to get kids used to the existence of people with gender dysphoria so that there will be greater understanding and acceptance, is really recruiting, or grooming: separating the child from the parents’ core values, making shocking abnormalities seem normal, claiming a lie loudly and boldly enough that sane people begin to question reality. It’s a horrible thing to do to vulnerable children.

There was a story a few months ago, from here in Houston, about drag queens reading to small children in Houston city libraries. Here's additional commentary on that story: “DragQueen Who Read to Kids at Houston Library Is Convicted Pedophile.” Eventually, a second sexual predator was found reading to kids. The library said, “Sorry,” but not really sorry. After all, it was for the greater good of indoctrinating kids to be more tolerant and accepting. Chris Sevier, of MassResistance, the parent group that did their own research, leading to the discoveries, when the city refused to, said, 

“It’s not about acceptance, love and tolerance. It’s really about indoctrinating children to the ideals of secular humanism.”

A week ago, Jordan Peterson, on his weekly podcast, interviewed provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. I didn’t know much about Yiannopoulos before. I remember a couple of years ago he was invited to speak at C-PAC. But I don’t give a lot of heed to people who say something anti-leftist and are suddenly given a platform as a conservative. Let time settle any questions.

Milo Yiannopoulos,
screenshot from Jordan Peterson podcast

It was an interesting interview. He’s unpleasantly in-your-face accusatory at times, and overly certain of his own brilliance and talent. OK. Anyway, I knew so little about him that I didn’t know he was gay or that he had suffered a media downfall because of a comment he made about younger gay males being brought in by older gay males; that had happened to him, but he said it was consensual, which he said he believed it often is. What he realizes now, slightly older, is that for him at his age to do the same to a young teen male would be predatory and wrong. It happens; everyone in the gay community knows it and recognizes it. But he only now, with a little more maturity, sees that he had been preyed upon. He was punished for saying what he said, but I think a sensible onlooker would have looked at the scenario and thought, “Oh, he doesn’t yet realize what happened to him.”

Another piece I came upon makes the pedophile/homosexuality connection: "Pedophilia and homosexuality–an undeniable connection." This is an opinion piece, originally written in Croatian, I believe, so there are syntax issues. But I’ve done the math before and gotten similar results. The author (I can’t find an author or date on the piece) posits that many gay men prey upon boys who were the age of their own first encounter.

The LGBT agenda isn’t the whole story. But it’s a good example of grooming. Review this piece on the Yogyakarta Principles: “Ten Years of International Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Laws: Lessons Learned,” by Daniel Moody.

You can add abortion to the list of disorienting realities being called good. We need to end with something a little light-hearted, to give us strength. Thanks again to The Babylon Bee, for their “news” story: “DisneyCEO: 'To Avoid Filming Among Depraved, Immoral People, We Are Moving All OurGeorgia Operations Back To Hollywood.'” Because Georgia passed anti-abortion laws:

"To avoid filming among depraved, immoral people, we are moving all our Georgia operations back to Hollywood," [Disney CEO Bob Iger] said in a press conference, wagging his finger sternly. "The people of Georgia can't pass immoral, unjust laws like this and expect us righteous elites in Hollywood to stand by and let it happen. Morality is very important to us in the film industry. That's why we film a lot of our stuff here in Hollywood, where we can rest easy knowing that the money from our production is going to support moral, upright people."

"It's the right thing to do," he added.

Iger also pointed out that California's lax abortion laws come in handy in Hollywood quite often.

Questions I have at this point are, who is doing the grooming, and what is their goal?

In a religious context, the simplest answer is that Satan is grooming as many people as possible—and concentrating on the young—to accept as “real” and “good” things that are false and evil, so that he can ruin as many lives as he can. Science and natural law are on the side of real and good. That’s why the “groomers” make sure the real and good are shouted down—in all caps. With claims of being “for tolerance and against bigotry,” while being intolerant and bigoted—adding force of law whenever possible.

Keep your children close. Don’t trust them to schools, entertainments, academia, or anyone who has already fallen prey to the false and evil; those people are patiently doing their work as groomers.

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[i] I looked this up so you don’t have to. It’s from stanza 14 of Thomas Gray’s poem “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.”

We Must Never Forget

It’s a Memorial Day, which is always worth noting here, where we seek freedom, prosperity, and civilization. Freedom isn’t free.

I’m mostly sharing what other people have posted to celebrate this day.

First, a reminder of what this day is:

·         Armed Forces Day, for those currently serving, is celebrated the third Saturday in May

·         Veterans’ Day, for living former servicemen/women, is celebrated November 11.

·         Memorial Day, for those who died while serving, is celebrated the last Monday in May.

       

Image from Military Families United, found on Facebook.

Here are some images that remind us of the reverent spirit of the day.

Quote from Ronald Reagan,
image found on Facebook, from Founding Principles

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, in the rain,
imaged shared on Facebook in 2015 by Randy Baughn

Here are some reminders of what our freedoms cost.

Image shared on Facebook by Newsradio 740 KTRH

 

Image found on Facebook, shared by Until Every Troop Comes Home

This next section is the Memorial Day post from my US Representative, Dan Crenshaw, former Navy Seal who lost his right eye in Afghanistan, specifically honoring those he lost from his Seal Team. The words and photos are his:

Enjoy your Memorial Day and let us remember why we celebrate. We celebrate the lives of the heroes we have lost. Never Forget.

Please read the entire post.

Brendan Looney. Did our first deployment together at SEAL Team 3. One of the best and most respected leaders on the Team. Husband, son, and brother. “Be Strong. Be accountable. Never complain.”

Pat Feeks. One of the best JTACs out there. Best story teller I ever met (those who knew him will understand!). Loyal friend, husband, brother, and son. He always showed up when you asked him to.

Dave Warsen. All American. Spent a lot of time together on our deployment to Afghanistan. When not on missions, we’d hit the volleyball court (half sand, half rocks). Strongest guy in the platoon, and also the happiest. Truly loved and missed.

Kevin Ebbert. My roommate in BUD/S. One of the smartest, most capable, kindest SEALs I ever knew. Skilled medic, loving husband. Missed dearly.

Brad Cavner. Cool, collected, and a great operator. Brad taught me to shoot left-handed after I lost my right eye, and spent countless hours getting my CQC skills back up to speed. “It’s about the Brotherhood.”

Tom Fouke. My old roommate. Dear friend. The gentlest big guy I ever knew. He raised an Argentine Horned frog named Lester when we lived together. Loved life, loved Metallica. World would be a better place with him in it.

Brett Marihugh. The most motivating and entertaining guy in our BUD/S class. Told stories for hours about his time as a cop before he joined. He pretended to be a doctor so he could visit my hospital room in Afghanistan and check up on me after I got hit by an IED.

Charles Keating IV. “Chuck Heavy”. His laugh was contagious. Life of the party. He was killed placing himself in danger so that his Team wouldn’t have to. Navy Cross recipient. Epic hero, husband, son, brother.

Another story of loss is Jennie Taylor's, mother of seven whose husband was killed in Afghanistan on his fourth deployment in fifteen years. She is now faced with carrying on their life dreams in his absence, with God’s help.

Jennie Taylor with her husband and kids
image from here

Finally, below is a brief speech from President Ronald Reagan on a past Memorial Day. There’s this memorable quote in the middle:

Our first obligation to them and ourselves is plain enough: The United States, and the freedom for which it stands, the freedom for which they died, must endure and prosper. Their lives remind us that freedom is not bought cheaply. It has a cost. It imposes a burden. And just as they whom we’re grateful were willing to sacrifice, so too must we, in a less final, less heroic way, be willing to give of ourselves.

And it ends with this good summary for today:

As we honor their memory today, let us pledge that their lives, their sacrifices, their valor shall be justified and remembered for as long as God gives life to this nation.

Stop Throwing Out the Baby

There are some ideas that have been around a very long time, experimented on, varied—and then it turns out the original was the best idea all along.

We’re about to talk about some truths that are very nearly lost in today’s society, because of unwise throwing out of ideas, simply because they’re old. And this has led to some literal throwing out of babies with the proverbial bathwater.

An article was brought to my attention that I thought might be worth reacting to. The piece is for an online forum called Human Parts, which I hadn’t heard of before. Gabrielle Blair writes “Men Cause 100% of Unwanted Pregnancies.” 

image from here

Technically, she’s right. If you go ahead and read her piece, be forewarned that it’s explicit—not in a prurient way, but still not something you want to have up on your computer screen with a nine-year-old looking over your shoulder.

Blair points out that men can cause pregnancy with every orgasm, while a woman can only get pregnant, all things being healthy, during about 48 hours a month. Nature is not equal.

She also accurately points out that contraceptives for women have lots of negative side effects. Meanwhile, the most common contraceptives for men, condoms, are cheap, plentiful, and free of side effects. But men don’t like them. Because they cause slightly less pleasure. Here’s how she puts it:

Imagine a pleasure scale, with pain beginning at zero and going down into the negatives. A good back-scratch falls at 5, and an orgasm without a condom is a 10. Where would sex with a condom fall? A 7 or 8? So, it’s not that sex with a condom is not pleasurable, it’s just not as pleasurable. An 8 instead of a 10.

Let me emphasize that again: Men regularly choose to put women at massive risk in order to experience a few minutes of slightly increased pleasure.

She comes up with a rather radical solution: all men should get a vasectomy, which they can have reversed once they’re married and want to have children.

Yes, that’s radical. No, it’s not likely to catch on. Her point is that men ought to take on the responsibility, rather than women.

But here’s where we differ. She’s talking about which way men should go about mitigating the natural consequences of having irresponsible sex. That does nothing but perpetuate the actual root problem: men having irresponsible sex—and women allowing men to have irresponsible sex.

Here’s something that might seem mind-blowing for young people today: this issue has been part of the human race for all the millennia we’ve had the human race. That means people have had plenty of time to work out solutions. And there is one solution that actually works: absolute monogamy. (We've talked about the research of  Vico and Unwin before, here.)

That means no sex outside of marriage, and absolute fidelity within marriage. Not just for women, but also for men. In another word, that means chastity for both women and men.

Candace Owens (left) and Lila Rose on the Candace Owens Show
May 19, 2019 screenshot from here

This past weekend, Lila Rose, pro-life advocate, was on the Candace Owens podcast, and they had a conversation about this old idea of chastity. Lila Rose got married within the past year; she was a virgin up until marriage. She is 30. Owens is also 30. Her journey to conservatism comes from another direction.  She lost her virginity in high school. She lives differently now and regrets that:

Candace Owens: Because the person meant absolutely nothing to me, and I was doing it because I wanted to fit in. I was doing it because this was the normal thing to do, and you were considered weird if you didn’t do these sorts of things.  

And it’s not even just peer pressure from other students; it’s peer pressure from society. It’s everything that you’re seeing on TV. It’s everything that you’re being taught by your teachers.

Now I’m engaged. I wish I had waited. And that’s a really sad thing, and a weird thing, to say now, obviously, because I live a different lifestyle. But that guilt started creeping up on me before I got engaged.

Before I met my fiancé, I was in a relationship, and I had this conversation where I was, “I think I kind of want to recommit myself back to God.” And my boyfriend at the time said, “No.” Like, if you don’t have—  And this is when I knew something was really wrong. Right?

Lila Rose: Meaning, “I’ll love you if you have sex with me.”

CO: That’s what I heard.

LR: That’s not love.

CO: I think his excuse, what he said to me was, “Sex is how people connect.” Right?

LR: It is, but with someone that you’re going to love lifelong, and you’ve given everything to. It’s more than that.

It ought to be more than that. Think about the difference between giving sex to a man who isn’t committed to you, in the hopes that he might come to love and commit to you—and to earn this chance, you risk pregnancy (not to mention STIs) without his support, just for a hope. Meanwhile, to him it means nothing but temporary pleasure.

Compare that to sex with a man who has already committed to stay with you forever—and has declared that to the whole world with a signed covenant. Then sex becomes the enjoyable expression of that love and commitment, founding an actual family. The social science data shows that sex is better for married couples, and enjoyed more often, than it is for singles. And among married couples who are religious and attend church regularly, they have the most enjoyable sex of any demographic.

As Lila Rose points out, outcomes are better for both women and men when they wait for marriage:

Outcomes meaning, your relationship happiness, your economic happiness, physical health—because of STIs, the potential for pregnancy when you’re not prepared for it. So I think that—  First of all that’s just the social data on that. But from a spiritual perspective, if we think sex is just an act you do, right, and all that matters in consent—  It’s all about consent today, right? All you need to do is consent, and then you’re good, right? That’s the #MeToo movement: as long as there’s consent, that’s good. We need consent. But consent is not enough. Sex should be about love. It should be about commitment. It should be about responsibility. And it is built to be about children.

This next part I thought was most telling:

And it’s only because we sterilize it. I mean, we use women—  Think about it. All these women our age and younger are taking birth control pills. They’re being told, “You need to sterilize yourself. You need to shut down your hormones in order to be sexually available to men.” I mean, that’s what that message is.

There’s something really wrong with a society that values sterility rather than fertility.

The sexual revolution of the 1960s was not progress; it was the repeat of a rebellion that has occurred in every failing society in world history.

A young man who’s a friend on Facebook (used to be a missionary here in Houston—and he’s an eligible bachelor saving sex for marriage, and good looking, strong, and outdoorsy, so there are such men available, just saying) said this wise thing a couple of days ago:

You can judge a culture on how they treat their offspring.

In other words: High rates of abortion is evidence we are not committed. Not committed to those we express we love. Making the most intimate activity a lie. Taking advantage of others. Willing to take a life to justify a lie.

This is our culture.

Abortion has never been about empowering women; it has been about causing women to do unspeakable evil in order for men to have irresponsible sex without consequences.

Of course we need to be against abortion—which is used for a reason other than inconvenience in only about 4% of cases. At least 86% of women having abortions are unmarried—and of those, it’s hard to know what percentage are nevertheless because the man doesn’t want to support offspring. Married women are seldom selfish enough to kill their offspring when a man is willing to work out a solution to give that child a family.

The vast majority of abortions happen because a woman has allowed a man to have sex with her when he is not willing to stay with her and raise a child, when he is not committed to her or her offspring.

The sexual rebellion is touted as freeing men and women from the restrictions on sex of former, old-fashioned times. But look at what has actually happened. A woman used to have the support of society when she expected a man to respect her and wait for sex until after he had committed to love her and stay with her. Now women are expected to pretend, along with men, that sex is meaningless pleasure that they of course want to indulge in. Consider the idea that a woman is expected to “put out” if a man has paid for a nice dinner. She’s expected to give her body to him, risking all that nature brings with it, because he fed her one meal? That’s all she’s worth? And it’s a monetarily determined exchange? That’s what we’re supposed to believe is sexual liberation for women?

Compare this to a man respecting a woman’s reputation so much that he would never compromise her; he loves her and asks for her to marry him before he offers or expects sex in their relationship. And then they work together to have a happy family life together from then on. Not only is the woman happier—and freer from negative life outcomes; the man is also happier and lives a more meaningful life (with better sex as a bonus).

We don’t need men to come up with more and better ways to get away with irresponsible sex with women. We need men to respect and love women so much that sex is returned to its proper place within the sanctity of marriage.

This—men who never have irresponsible sex—is the answer to ending sex trafficking—and the pornography industry related to it. It would be the end to rape. It would be the end to abortion except to save the life of the mother when saving both isn't possible. It would be the end to unwanted pregnancies. It would nearly be the end to children raised without fathers in the home. It would bring about the end to more than 90% of poverty in our society.

Chastity is one of those simple but not easy solutions. But it is possible. Been there, done that, lived that life. And it is what we should be teaching.

Teaching birth control in schools, while failing to teach the meaning of sex, says, “Of course you’ll have sex; of course there are consequences, but our society wants to ignore them. So try these sterilization methods while you’re too young to know better.” And we shouldn't ignore that this approach doesn’t get good outcomes. More than half of women getting abortions were using some form of contraceptives during the month prior to pregnancy.

If you’re cynical enough—and about Planned Parenthood, which provides a large portion of sex education curriculum, this is a natural assumption—you’d think they were touting contraception knowing full well pregnancies would result, so they’d get more money from abortions.

Is more sex education in schools the answer? No! Heck no! We need real sex education, controlled by the parent, and preferably taught by the parent. There may be good programs parents can use. I'm told Utah recently adopted a good program, but I haven't seen it yet. If it's good, wouldn't it be best as a resource to parents? Churches can help. But promoting sex without morality is a bad experiment we need to end.

Nor do we need sexual repression. We don’t need to pretend it’s bad or disgusting. But we do need to celebrate it as the extremely important thing it is, and therefore keep it within marriage.

Let's stop, as a society, valuing sterility as a means of getting more irresponsible sex. And return to valuing fertility—which is a sign of health and vitality not only for women, but for all of civilization.

Chastity—for both men and women—leads to thriving civilization wherever it’s tried.

The Anything but Equality Act

In government, when a name is applied to an act, or a bill, chances are that name is intended to obfuscate. The Equality Act, numbered HR 5, to be voted on next week, is not about equality.

HR 5 adds SOGI (sexual orientation and gender identity) to the list of protected classes in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In granting that special protection to these behavioral preferences (or, arguably, mental conditions or illnesses), the bill has the more direct result of removing rights that are specifically identified in the First Amendment: freedom of religion and conscience, and freedom of speech.

Just in case it could be construed otherwise, the bill adds this:

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (42 U.S. C. 2000bb et seq.) shall not provide a claim concerning, or a defense to a claim under, a covered title, or provide a basis for challenging the application or enforcement of a covered title.

In other words, when the Federal Government attempts to coerce persons to act against their beliefs, the First Amendment and RFRA, the usual defenses, are not allowed to be used.

What are the supposed inequalities the act is purported to address? Discrimination toward homosexuals and transgendered individuals in relation to housing, employment, and public accommodation. There may be some actual discrimination that could be addressed. We can probably agree that people, simply because they’re human, deserve the right to purchase or rent housing. But we also ought to agree that there are limits to this right.

Among those limits ought to be the right to separate housing for males and females in school dormitories for those who choose this separation. A woman renting out a room in her home ought to be able to choose not to rent to a man. And there ought to be a right for a women’s shelter, for example, to exclude males from accommodation at that shelter.

Privacy and safety concerns ought to allow women the right to assume those they share intimate spaces with—such as a dorm room, a public bathroom, or a locker room—are for women only, not for men. Likewise, even though fear of being overpowered and raped is not at issue, men ought to feel free to use a urinal without someone of the opposite sex observing them.

The so-called Equality Act refuses to acknowledge any of these reasonable and justifiable feelings. The feelings and preferences of LGBT individuals are given supremacy.

We’ve talked about the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, where a baker refused to participate in a same-sex wedding. The Supreme Court ruled that he didn’t have to make the cake—but didn’t go so far as to say he actually had the right to refuse. The Court just said that he had been persecuted by his state’s animus toward his religion, leaving open the possibility that he or others could be coerced to participate against their religious convictions—if the state went about it without obvious religious animus.

Masterpiece Cakeshop, screenshot from this video

So for cases in that category, business owners who have not refused to serve anyone but have refused to participate in particular activities that go against their deeply held religious beliefs could be coerced to act against conscience. Not so that LGBT people can get equal treatment—which they already had from those very defendants—but so that LGBT individuals can enforce their agenda and coerce the business owners.

The SOGI agenda is already harming women. This is most obvious in sports. Women’s sports are separate from men’s sports specifically because women are physiologically different from men. Men typically have greater upper body strength and more muscle mass. Even mediocre male athletes are likely to outperform excellent female athletes in contests of strength and speed. But recently, biological males who want to compete in women sports are allowed to, and females are mostly cowed into silence for fear of social reprisal, which includes being called transphobic and bigoted and being publicly scorned and shamed, and also may include legal lawsuits for going against the SOGI agenda. These female athletes lose out on scholarships and other benefits of excelling in women’s sports, cancelling out any benefit intended by Title IX.

Among the most troubling products of the pro-SOGI agenda are the loss of reason surrounding transgendered or various “other” genders controlling language of everyone around them, as well as common sense among mental and physical healthcare doctors, and parents.

Pronoun invention goes against how languages function and develop. A pronoun is not something a person has a right to; it is a way people who may not know anything about them beyond how they appear can refer to them in absence of a name, or out of convenience in conversation. Why should a person who claims a different gender have a right to persecute someone for using a different pronoun than that person prefers? That preference may not have been conveyed. And, even if it has, pronoun usage is a shorthand for referencing the person to a third party; it’s not a direct reference wherein a name or “you” would be used. The person taking offense isn’t even involved in the conversation in which he or she is referenced. To additionally insist on requiring words that aren’t even a natural part of the language involves so much hubris that a person might choose never to interact with whoever makes such a requirement.

What other use of normal conversation subjects a person to prosecution, persecution, loss of employment, and social ostracism? That much control over our language is something we have never granted our government and only an extreme tyranny would attempt.

About caregivers, the way the SOGI agenda works, only agreement—affirmation—is allowed. Therapists can’t say, “Let’s take a look at the underlying issues before we go ahead with anything drastic or permanent”: they can lose their license for lack of affirmative “therapy.” Even saying, “That’s not something I’m ready or qualified to support; let me recommend you to a different counselor” can be construed as breaking the law, leading to loss of license.

So, the law purported to prevent discrimination among a full range of employment opportunities actually removes employment opportunities from people who have worked hard to earn their licenses and have done nothing but try to offer their expert opinion about what constitutes appropriate care.

This bill isn’t to guarantee that LGBT people can get access to regular healthcare, such as for a disease or a broken leg. Of course they get that, and no new law is required to guarantee it. What this does is coerce physicians to do harm. Suppose a biological female comes in, claims to be a male, and insists on a hysterectomy; a doctor who sees surgically removing healthy organs as abhorrent and refuses to do it can lose the ability to do good for all the other patients she would come in contact with during her long career.

With the SOGI agenda infiltrating both healthcare and schools, fit parents are suddenly subject to losing their parental rights—simply for not jumping in to fully affirm a child’s confused concept about what that child imagines his or her sex to be—regardless of biology and everything the parents have known about that child from birth. Recognizing that gender confusion often disappears by adulthood, that transitioning typically continues or increases suicidality, that transitioning causes sterility and additional serious detrimental health consequences—all these facts are to be disregarded by parents.

Need to do some more reading on the Equality Act before you call your congressional representative? Here are some pieces specifically about HR 5:

·         “The Equality Act: Harming Children and Hijacking the Rights of Parents” from United Families International 

·         “H.R. 5 Is No Act of Equality” from The Heritage Foundation 

·        “ The ‘Equality Act’ Would Mark the End ofReligious Conscience” by Bruce Hausknecht for The Daily Citizen 

·         “Equality Act Is About Civil Tyranny, Not Civil Rights” by Star Parker for The Daily Signal 

·         “A Pediatrician Explains How ‘Dangerous’Equality Act Would Force Doctors to ‘Do Harm’” by Katrina Trinko for The Daily Signal 

·         “Church Expresses Support for ‘Fairness for All’Approach” from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Newsroom 

·         “GOP Settles the Score on Girls Sports” from The Family Research Council 

·         “8th Place: A High School Girl’s Life After Transgender Students Join Her Sport” by Kelsey Bolar for The Daily Signal 

·         “Sexual Ideology Indoctrination: The Equality Act’s Impact on School Curriculum and Parental Rights” from The Heritage Foundation 

A piece I’ve recommended before, that gives some background on the history of SOGI ideas suddenly becoming mainstream, is this one:

·         “Ten Years of International Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Laws: Lessons Learned” by Daniel Moody for The Witherspoon Institute 

In addition to Ryan T. Anderson’s book When Harry Met Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, he wrote this shorter piece last year: 

·         “Sex Change: Physically Impossible, Psychosocially Unhelpful, and Philosophically Misguided” by Ryan T. Anderson for The Witherspoon Institute

As the pigs say in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Special rights for some mean unequal rights for all. That’s what HR 5 does while distorting beyond recognition the very word equality.

Savagery Too Close to Home

The world is worse than we thought.

This past Saturday, a speaker at our Cypress Texas Tea Party meeting talked to us about child sex trafficking. This is an issue that has horrified me before. I’ve followed Tim Ballard’s Operation Underground Railroad efforts to free children in various countries. But, while heart rending, that work was mostly foreign, far away. Any connection to the US seemed to be through illegal immigration—closer, but still kind of far away.

A few years ago, I wrote of a sting operation in Waco, Texas, which seemed very close to home. But Kelly Litvak told us it is even closer. Very close.

Kelly Litvak
founder of ChildProofAmerica.org
image from March newsletter

Litvak is the founder and executive director of ChildProofAmerica.org, an effort to inform parents and others to learn how to recognize signs of danger and work to prevent what they went through.

The Litvaks suffered through this horror with their own daughter. She was a good student, an excellent athlete, involved in their church, in the Cinco Ranch area of Katy, Texas. And Kelly Litvak ran a prison ministry for juvenile offenders, so they had talked about a great many things. Yet their daughter got trapped in this evil.

Cinco Ranch is a very nice suburb, west of Houston, with a highly rated school district. Not what you'd expect of a seedy underbelly.

Here are some shocking statistics she told us:

·         One in 20 US men have purchased sex online. (That is, they set up the encounter using the internet).

·         In Houston, that number is 1 in 5 men.

I can’t even!

I have lived a fairly sheltered life. To my knowledge I have never interacted with a man who would ever go to a prostitute. It is so uncivilized that my life doesn’t intersect. I talked with Kelly Litvak’s husband about this afterward. He agreed it’s shocking. He said, you won’t find them in this room (the conference room of the restaurant where we were meeting with civic-minded patriots), “But out there in the restaurant, I guarantee there’s someone.”

Kelly told us there’s a group called the Elijah Project that helps inform on this issue. They took her on a tour to identify the brothels in the area. For local people who know this area, there are 14 brothels on Mason and Fry Roads alone. You have probably passed by them. They’re in strip malls. Places like massage centers or maybe reflexology therapy centers, with dark tinted windows, open long hours, like 7:00 AM to 10:00 PM.

There are more brothels in Houston than Starbucks.

I was at a chiropractor in Cypress once, several years ago—again, in a nice neighborhood, within half a block of the high school—when a nearby massage parlor was raided, and we assumed it must have been a brothel. But even then, I didn’t think about underage, trafficked children. And yet that was probably true there.

It’s not only a local problem, of course. There’s this story from Cleveland, OH, where three pastors were indicted.  According to an eye-opening piece from The Rutherford Institute, the Baltimore—Washington DC area is a hub for sex trade. 

An estimated 14,500 to 17,500 victims are trafficked into the US each year, mainly through illegal immigration. But some 300,000 US teens are also trafficked each year. That’s nearly a third of a million. The target age is 12-14 years; the average age is 13—which means there are younger girls trafficked as well. Half of all victims are minors; 80% are female. The internet is the most likely interaction point for pimps.

It’s a huge business. It’s the second largest criminal industry. According to Litvak, a pimp can make $150,000 to $300,000 a year per victim. As horrifying as it is, if you do the math, at a price of $25 per rape—and rape is what we’re talking about—that’s possibly 12,000 a year. About 33 a day. Some days more than that.

We’re all in agreement that the Elizabeth Smart case was horrific. A young, innocent girl, taken from her home, held hostage for most of a year, raped repeatedly every day. She has remarkable resilience, using her story to help others. She repeats something her mother told her, that the best thing she could do to disempower the perpetrators is to move on and live a happy life. The Litvaks have that kind of attitude as well. And their daughter, now rescued, and in her 20s, is doing well and considering being an advocate as her life’s work.

What I’d like to point out is that, as rare as Smart’s case was, it isn’t very different from the daily experience of children, or young adults, trapped in the sex trade as slaves. This is just too much evil.

There are several problems to solve: Rescue and rehabilitation. Prosecution of traffickers/pimps and buyers. Prevention and protection of children. Getting rid of demand.

Today’s post is mostly to raise awareness. I’d like to share the information for parents and grandparents that Litvak gave us.

She talked about the grooming process to watch out for, in six steps.

·         Step 1: Befriend. This can begin when a young person is seen as vulnerable, such as after a traumatic event, such as the death or divorce of a parent, a friend’s suicide, or something as relatively small as a boyfriend breakup. Traffickers look for clues online to spot vulnerability and then seek out the teen to build a relationship.

·         Step 2: Intoxicate. The new “friend” invites using drugs and/or alcohol to numb the pain. This has the additional “benefit” of causing friction in the family.

·         Step 3: Alienate. The teen is led to believe her family is against her. This may be the first notice the parents have of something off, but they may not recognize it as different from simply teen separation from parents that is a natural part of growing up. But this is already a severe danger point for the child, hard to step back from without intervention.

·         Step 4: Isolate. Not only is the child disconnected from family, but now the “new friend” cuts them off from longtime friends, anyone who shares their previous core values.

·         Step 5: Desensitize. The child is exposed to a great many formerly shocking scenes and images, and is told these are all normal. Soon nothing that used to shock seems shocking.

·         Step 6: Capitalize. At this point, the child is separated from family and friend, disconnected from their moral compass, and ripe for taking.

graphic from Kelly Litvak's presentation May 11, 2019

The perpetrators can be patient. This process could take as long as two years. They could time it to get the teen to walk out the door of their home and into the arms of the cartel at age 18, when it’s harder to prove the crime, because force, fraud, or coercion must now be shown—which are not necessary for minor victims.

What is a parent or grandparent supposed to do? One thing is to be very vigilant about the online world the child is allowed to connect with. Limit their phone use. Look at their phones; check the apps they use. Among the dangerous apps to look for are Kik, Whisper, Periscope, and Partyline—all used by pimps to build relationships.  Periscope and Partyline include GPS tracking. There are also YouNow live video and Snapchat, which has a hidden backdoor app for hiding photos. Tinder is used for sexual encounters. Keepsafe is used to hide photos in an app disguised as a calculator.

Apps and symbols to beware of.
graphic from Kelly Litvak's presentation May 11, 2019

If you see these apps on your child’s phone, you’ve got a problem already. If you take a phone away, be aware that some pimps provide alternate phones you won’t know about. If there’s child porn or evidence of trafficking on your child’s phone, you can give the police permission to search the phone. Note that there is risk that your child will be caught up in prosecution; one of the things teens are encouraged to do in the desensitizing process is send nude selfies, which qualify as child porn. However, with a minor it’s not necessarily going to be seen as their fault, especially if they cooperate and help identify the person luring them. Regardless, whatever punishment they go through is still better than being caught up in sex trafficking, with a life expectancy of about seven years.

What can you do besides watch your child’s behavior and worry? There are some apps to help parents. All of them approach things differently, some clandestinely, some with the knowledge of the child. These include Highster Mobile, Net Nanny, Qustodio, and mSpy.

Keep dialed in to what your kids are doing. Check up on them. Talk with them—about this danger specifically. Make sure they’re equipped to protect themselves before you put a phone in their hands. Monitor social media. Set your house alarm to know if anyone leaves during the night, and use security cameras. Be on high alert if your child has experienced a traumatic event; get them professional trauma counselling, if needed.

If the worst happens, as it did for the Litvaks, their program, ChildproofAmerica.org, can immediately send a family guide to walk you through the process of getting legitimate help, and avoiding the scammers. On top of all their pain, the Litvaks were also victims of fraud. Someone called these desperate parents, said they were former Seals specializing in finding children. All they had to do was put up $6,000 and they’d get their daughter back. Of course, what really happened was these scammers disappeared with the money. (ChildproofAmerica is a nonprofit that does not accept any donations from families in crisis.)

It’s a wicked world we’re in.

I don’t really have time today to fully cover another big concern—demand. Why is there a market for sex with children? How can we be so savage a society that people who function among us think that is acceptable behavior?

Desensitization is part of it. Porn desensitizes, and it creates an addictive desire for something more intense. Every pornographic photo involves a ruined life. It’s not a victimless crime. But it’s so pervasive, I think we also need to look at porn addicts and help them find a way out of the savagery and back into civilization. Before they become so savage that they would seek out a prostitute, or worse, a child prostitute.

Desensitization, unfortunately, is also a goal of sex education. As Rebecca Friedrichs describes in her book Standing Up to Goliath, the curriculum has nothing to do with teaching a young person safe sexual practices. It instead teaches risky behavior, including perverted behavior, and normalizes it. Healthy sexual relations between married mother and father are never examples. And in some places the very concept of abstinence is prohibited. Look at step 5 again. Such curricula follow an agenda that serves anyone but children or parents. We would be much better off today if all sex education had been left to parents with the support of their churches.

I am sickened to see this savage world functioning alongside our civil society, hidden practically in plain sight. Evil is real. And we’re at war.