Religious Intolerance at the Townhall

I was blissfully unaware that the Democrat presidential candidates had a townhall on CNN last Thursday, focused on LGBT issues—which, in case you haven’t figured it out, means focused on religious discrimination. But Ben Shapiro did his job by suffering through it for the sake of Friday's podcast at The Daily Wire.

He’s not usually very emotional. Rational is really a good descriptor of his approach to things. But I think this got him as riled up as he gets. Because, when presidential candidates say they’re coming to take away your rights to your beliefs and to share those beliefs with your children—you don’t sit quietly and acquiesce.

Ben Shapiro, from Friday, October 11, 2019
screenshot from here

It started with Beto O’Rourke, who seems to be making a campaign of speaking aloud the things we all know Democrats intend, but that they keep quiet about so as not to wake up the voters. Here’s the question and his answer:

Moderator: Colleges. Churches. Charities. Should they lose their tax-exempt status if they oppose same-sex marriage?

Beto: Yes. There can be no reward, no benefit, no tax break, for anyone, any institution, any organization in America that denies the full human rights and the full civil rights of every single one of us. And so, as president we’re going to make that a priority. And we’re going to stop those who are infringing upon the human rights of our fellow Americans.

Let’s clarify a few things. He’s talking about a lot of organizations. The university I went to, Brigham Young University; Hillsdale College, Liberty University, Baylor, Notre Dame—maybe a majority of private higher education. He’s also talking about taking away your right to attend the church you believe in—unless the church is willing to change its doctrines to suit President Beto. And any religion-affiliated charities—they should be shut down, because they're so evil.

Note that, for the most part, these institutions do nothing to prevent LGBT people from associating with anyone else they choose and doing whatever they want. They aren’t taking away any rights; they’re just not offering any particular services that conflict with their beliefs. If you want a same-sex wedding, go to a church or reception facility down the road that caters to what you want.

But Beto is saying that the very holding of the idea he disagrees with is tantamount to disqualifying behavior. So, all churches, schools, and charities, regardless of their behavior toward LGBT people, must be punished.

But he’s saying just not rewarded by tax-exempt status; that’s not the same. Right? Let’s connect the dots. I’ll let Ben Shapiro do that.

Once you remove their tax-exempt status, and you say they don’t have tax-exempt status anymore, you treat them like a normal LLC. Well, if you have anti-discrimination laws in states like California, or if you’re the Democratic Party and you’re trying to pass the so-called Equality Act, which is really a way of cracking down on religious institutions and forcing people to abide by social rules that they don’t want to abide by (and in violation of the First Amendment—blatant violation of the First Amendment. The Founding Fathers are spinning so fast in their graves, they’re drilling directly to the core of the earth at this point). The fact is that the goal here would be to, then, kick these religious institutions from 501(c)3 tax-exempt status institutions into normal LLC territory and then declare that those LLCs are in violation of non-discrimination policies and shut them down as violative of law.

We’ve already seen them do this with Arlene’s Flowers in Washington State, where, if you are a florist who is religious and only will cater to weddings that are traditional, you’ll be shut down or fined. The same with photographers. We’ve seen it with Jack Phillips, the baker in Colorado. We’ve seen all of that. Again, we’ve seen the Democrats and the left do this.

They’re going to do that to your church. They’re going to remove tax-exempt status, and then they’re going to shut it down.

Beto O’Rourke wasn’t the only one letting long-held beliefs escape into the spoken word. Corey Booker helped with that. Here’s what he said:

Corey Booker at Thursday's CNN Town Hall
screenshot from here

Corey Booker: And so, for me, I cannot allow, as a leader, that people are going to use religion as a justification for discrimination. I could respect your religious freedoms but also protect people from discrimination. And, as I said in an earlier answer, I grew up in a household where my parents talked to me about how people used to use religion to justify the discrimination against African Americans

How sad for him that he grew up in a household that taught him lies. Religion is the reason slavery ended. Historically, did some slaveholders try to justify their behavior with religion—probably. But not successfully. Because God is no respecter of persons. And, we should add, ALL of those who held those beliefs were Democrats. Republicans—and a majority of religious people among them—gave their lives and treasure to put a stop to it.

It’s practically an aphorism today among those who seek power through tyranny, poverty, and savagery that “religion” is the evil thingin itself. Just like pagan kings in ancient times who set up their own religions—often making themselves the personification of god—as a means to control the beliefs, and thus the behavior, of their people.

Here’s Ben Shapiro’s not exactly calm response:

“I cannot allow”? Who the “F” are you, dude? You cannot allow? Guess what? That’s not your right.

My right is to act in ways that don’t harm anybody else. And if I choose to have an institution where I am going to elevate heterosexuality above homosexuality, that is not harming anyone else. You don’t have to participate in that institution. It’s a free country.

I mean, you have institutions where you don’t tolerate my religious beliefs. I don’t expect that when I walk into a mosque that suddenly they’re going to start practicing Judaism. I don’t expect that when I walk into an atheist meeting, they’re going to start keeping kosher. And I don’t expect that when I walk into the offices of the Human Rights Campaign, that they’re going to start handing out literature from Leviticus.

Why in the world would you not express the same degree of tolerance for people who disagree with you as people you agree with? If you are only tolerant of people who agree with you, this is a good indicator you are not a very tolerant person.

Religious freedoms—and, along with that, parental rights to the upbringing of their children—are at risk whenever there’s a chance of a tyrant gaining power.

Walt Heyer on the Candace Owens Show
October 13, 2019
screenshot from here

On a related issue, this Sunday Candace Owens talked with Walt Heyer. He’s been through a lot. In his 40s, he transitioned, including surgery and hormones, to live as a woman. The problem was, he always knew those outward changes didn’t actually change who he was. There were things he needed to address, from childhood, that had made him reject who he actually was and try to be something else. Eventual therapy led him to deal with those things. And he transitioned back, as much as that is possible, after seven years.

The original change cost him his family and his job. So to admit that was a huge mistake was very hard. If only he’d had the therapy he needed in the first place! It was after just the second visit that his doctor diagnosed him with gender dysphoria and told him the treatment was to transition through hormones and surgery. He barely knew him. He explored nothing about co-morbidity—other problems typically linked with transgender (and other LGB) issues.

Since transitioning back, he has been outspoken, and has created a ministry to help those who have transitioned and find no solution to their problems there.

His issues started very young, when a grandmother used to dress him up, and keep it their secret; and she would tell him how cute he was, and give him affirmation for pretending he was a girl. When his parents found out, they discontinued contact with that grandmother. But an uncle sexually abused him, and his parents didn’t believe him. So he came to believe both that there were things he couldn’t tell adults, and that there was something wrong with who he was.

That experience is not uncommon among people with gender dysphoria. An idea gets planted very early. If talked through, or even left alone, often the mistaken idea gets resolved and the person goes on to lead a normal life. But the transgender activists today seek to intervene, even against parents’ wishes, and castrate and mutilate the prepubescent child, making them forever unable to live a normal life.

Here’s what Heyer says about our children and schools:

When you begin to introduce these ideas that you can change your gender, change your sex, you begin the early sexualization of children, which is abhorrent. It shouldn’t be done, and it shouldn’t be allowed.

We’re interfering with their natural development. These are children that are exploring every opportunity and trusting adults to guide them and to nurture them properly. But introducing all of this sexuality, and all of these things at such an early age, is very disturbing.

Today I work with hundreds of people who’ve been through this. And what I’m seeing is, up to 50% of them have been sexually abused. And so, sexual abuse is kind of a common issue that happens with this ideology.

A healthy psychological society is built on families. And kids are the core of the next generation. And if we’re ripping our kids apart in school with this ideology, we’re ruining even the next generation. And this is why it’s so critical to address this issue.

We should not be teaching children in school that they can change genders. It’s not a vending machine for genders. This is a critical issue that needs to be removed from the school. LGBT material doesn’t need to be in our public schools. Reading, writing, arithmetic is what we need in our schools, not LGBT agenda stuff.

You can’t give in on one uncompromisable issue and expect that the others won’t follow.

We are in a culture war. While we’re set up to allow a great deal of difference of opinion in our society, the intolerant side has to be prevented from gaining power over us—because they do not allow dissent.

Those of us who honor God, life, and family (and we could add the other two: truth and property ownership) are heretics in the religious worldview of Corey Booker and Beto O’Rourke—and all the other Democrat presidential candidates, none of whom would dare to disagree. That means we have an obligation to ourselves, our children, and civilization as we know it to keep these intolerant religious bigots out of power.

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.”

Prevent Defense at the Legislature

The Texas Legislature is in session, as of last week. So I’m busy putting together a list of bills to follow. There’s a lot left to do, although I do have a few items so far under the categories of the legislative priorities we developed at the state convention last June.

Texas State Capitol

Usually we follow, and do citizen lobbying for, bills we want to have pass. Most of the time we don’t spend a lot of time on things we’re against. We’ve had Republican leadership, so that means a Democrat agenda doesn’t make a lot of headway.

This year we have a better speaker—which means we have reason to hope more conservative legislation will get on the calendar for a vote. But the minority party is slightly larger than last session. So there’s reason to be cautious.

As I’ve been going through the bills that have been filed, I thought it might be instructive to go over a few things we don’t want to see happen. Like I said, I don’t think these things have much of a chance. But maybe you should be aware of what some legislators think would be “progress” for Texas.

The state Senate has a bill, SB 150, attempting to codify in Texas law a right to abortion. Meanwhile a joint resolution, SJR 3, was filed attempting to guarantee the right to life of unborn children (to the extent authorized under federal constitutional law). That’s the kind of contrast we have between the two parties. Irreconcilable differences.

There’s a bill in the House, HB 513, attempting to set up a pilot program for distributing “long-acting reversible contraceptives” in public schools. I consulted Wikipedia to know what such contraceptives entailed: “Long-acting reversible contraceptives are methods of birth control that provide effective contraception for an extended period without requiring user action. They include injections, intrauterine devices and subdermal contraceptive implants.” So, either hormones by injection or subdermal implant, or a device requiring minor surgery—provided by a school. Why should a school be involved in this medical business in the first place? The bill says,

the pilot program may not distribute or provide for the distribution of a long-acting reversible contraceptive to a student who is under 18 years of age unless the school district obtains consent from the parent of or person standing in parental relation to the student.

Which is better than no parental approval for minors. Who is a “person standing in parental relation to the student”? It’s a legal term that would disqualify a parent whose custody rights have been discontinued. But it does not necessarily mean that both parents in divorce or separation must be informed.

In the category of Religious Freedom come several things related to privacy versus the LGBT agenda, which uses coercion. In the name of preventing housing discrimination, HB 188, forces landlords or facilities operators to allow transgenders or opposite sex individuals, disregarding the privacy rights of other individuals. It makes sexual orientation and gender identity or expression protected in the same way as race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin.

HB 244, and also HB 254 (they look the same to me), creates a criminal offense for discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity or expression in hiring practices by public, private, or religious entities. Again, this law adds “sexual orientation and gender identity or expression” to the list of protections from discrimination, which are race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin. The additional harm of this legislation is that it allows prosecution for perceived discrimination or perceived possibility of future discrimination—actions that haven’t happened. A defendant is forced to defend themselves based on some person’s guess that they might be about to do something perceived as discrimination. Think Minority Report—prosecution before the crime.

Another one, HB 517, labels it “unprofessional conduct” for health providers to notice, recognize, or treat according to biological sex definitions that, regardless of actual science, run counter to the current LGBT agenda.

Here’s the definition of “gender identity or expression”:

A person’s having or being perceived as having a gender-related identity, appearance, expression, or behavior, whether or not that identity, appearance, expression, or behavior is different from that commonly associated with the person’s assigned sex at birth.

So, healthcare professionals, who presumably studied a lot of biological science to qualify for their professions, must disregard actual biology and notice—and then go along with—a person’s self-perception. There’s a huge science-denial problem there.

Also, people aren’t assigned sex a birth. Every cell in the baby’s body shows the individual’s sex with the presence or absence of a Y chromosome, from conception onward. There are some rare exceptions, with individuals who have a chromosomal anomaly, something extra, such as vestigial organs of the opposite sex; almost all these cases are clearly one sex or the other, so doctors, looking at the obvious evidence, “assign” the sex based on the physical evidence. Doctors making random decisions, or assigning incorrectly in these rare cases, isn’t a thing. And such cases certainly give no support to the transgender movement’s claims against reality.

Who are the healthcare providers to be prosecuted and disciplined for recognizing reality as opposed to a person’s anti-reality perceptions?

·         A licensed behavior analyst

·         A licensed chemical dependency counselor

·         A licensed professional counselor

·         A licensed marriage and family therapist

·         A licensed nurse

·         A licensed physician

·         A licensed psychologist

·         A licensed sex offender treatment provider

·         A licensed social worker

·         A special officer for offenders with mental impairments

·         Another person licensed by the state to provide professional therapy or counseling services

Specifically, the proponents of this law are lashing out against any treatment—whether desired by the patient or not—that could dissuade the patient from the sexual “transition” or sexual orientation that defies their biology.

This bill pertains specifically to the treatment of children, who, according to data, are highly likely to overcome gender dysphoria by adulthood if left untreated. But anyone who might know the research, be aware of the high likelihood of changes in the belief of people with gender dysphoria, the higher incidence of depression and suicide risk following transition, the high probability of regret and desire to de-transition (as in this story)—must not share that data, mention it, whisper under breath, hint at in professional or private settings. And not just mental health counselors, but also nurses and social workers. The law’s coercive intrusion appears totalitarian.

When we say our freedoms are at risk whenever the legislature is in session, this is evidence. So far we still have a majority in the state. But we’ve only had that since about the turn of the century. Prior to that Texas was a Democrat stronghold going back to its founding. We don’t know if the “redness” we have now is just temporary.

Here in Harris County, we’ve been half-and-half for quite a while, but mostly able to get more conservative voters out than the opposition. But the last two county-wide elections, we’ve lost. And now we have an inexperienced 27-year-old in her first job out of college as the county’s top executive, and a new county clerk who wants to spend a couple billion dollars to throw out the tried and true free and fair election practices, prevent precinct chairs—and thereby anyone from a party the clerk doesn’t want to hire—from running polling places, and return to the rampant fraud of the paper ballots that used to work so well for lovers of voter fraud.

at the Texas State Capitol

We have a lot of recovery to do in the county. And a lot of vigilance to do in the state.

Other bills to prevent include registering prisoners to vote, voter registration at the polling place, eliminating photo ID for voting. Plus there are minimum wage laws (outlawing entry-level pay), elimination of capital punishment, and preventing assistance to immigration officers. In other words, there’s a lot of mischief that could be done, if we don’t pay attention.

Prevention is better than repair. And there’s already plenty to repair, if we want freedom, prosperity, and civilization.