Book Burning

Ryan T. Anderson
photo from Wikipedia

Three years ago Ryan T. Anderson wrote a book. It was on a controversial topic, but sensitively presented and extremely well documented. It received praise from all sides. Well, not all. But all reasonable sides.

That book was recently removed from the Amazon online marketplace. For violating community standards. The author wasn’t informed or warned. The book had previously topped at least two of Amazon’s bestseller lists. It received high praise from experts in the field, and even from those with opposing views. It would be hard to find any more informative and sensitively written work on the subject. Amazon holds an 80% market share for booksellers.

The book is When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment. You can still purchase a copy at this other online site.

image from here

Ryan Anderson is President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He spent time working at the Heritage Foundation and the Wotherspoon Institute before taking this most recent position. As a graduate student, in 2012, he co-wrote “What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense” for the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy along with mentor Robert George and fellow student Sherif Girgis. Besides many journal articles, he has also written Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom, in 2015; and Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination (co-written with Sherif Girgis and John Corvino), in 2017.  When Harry Met Sally was his most recent book, from 2018.

I’ve referred to his works numerous times here on this blog. Here are a few:

·         Bigness, April 16, 2015 

·         Path Forward for Us Dissidents, July 20, 2015 

·         Duty to Resist, September 7, 2015 

·         SOGI Laws Discriminate Against Religious People, February 22, 2019 

He is only this year turning 40. All this is to say, he is an extremely impressive young man, and a serious voice that deserves to be heard.

In a piece about his book being banned, Ryan Anderson mentioned the inaptly titled legislation currently before Congress:

It’s an abuse of our civil rights law when we add all these different protected classes and when we treat reasonable disagreements as if they’re discriminatory. We’ve done it on the gay marriage debate; we’re now doing it on the transgender debate. And the Equality Act would just make this worse.

And in a piece he wrote this week, Anderson says, 

[F]irst, a caveat: If you fear what Big Tech can do if you dissent from gender ideology, just wait to see what Big Government will do if the so-called Equality Act becomes law. Second, a lesson: If you fear Big Government, don’t turn a blind eye to Big Tech. Conservatives need to get over the misguided belief that private businesses can do whatever they want. That isn’t true. And it’s never been the American law on the issue. Nor is it what the natural law supports.

In 2019 books by researcher Joseph Nicolosi were removed from Amazon, as his son explains, “not because science dictates their removal, but because LGBT ideology has shouted down sound science.” Joseph Nicolosi, Sr., was a longtime, well-respected researcher. He wasn’t into the undefined and unregulated “conversion therapy” maligned in media depictions. He was a serious psychologist and researcher/ who developed methods that helped resolve issues for those seeking that resolution. I cited his works many times in my writings on the defense of marriage.

Note that Mein Kampf is still available. It does not violate Amazon’s community standards.

What are the false ideas so dangerous that they should not be allowed to be read—in books, in articles—or heard in recordings, speeches, or lectures? It’s SOGI issues (i.e., sexual orientation and gender issues), but also more:

·       There are two sexes of humans: male and female.

·       Permanently disfiguring a child to pretend they are something other than their biological sex is child abuse.

·       Sexual orientation is not immutable; treating with reintegrative therapy can help resolve issues for those who seek that help.

·       Covid-19 can be successfully treated with such inexpensive and widely available therapies as hydroxycholoroquine with zinc and azithromycin.

·       There is significant evidence of election fraud.

·       Race relations don’t get better when you insist on viewing everything in terms of race instead of character and ability.

You can probably think of a few to add to that list. But those are some things that will get you in trouble on social media and many other places—except maybe the HCQ treatment, which suddenly became acceptable news after being labeled dangerously false for most of a year.

There’s this sort of frenzy, among the dictators of what is allowed to be said, that posits there’s too much misinformation and disinformation being spread—and that is a danger to our democracy and must be stopped.

Tucker Carlson did an excellent monologue on February 23^rd, on the mixture of censorship, misinformation/disinformation, and truth. He noted that the MSM use the word “norms” a lot. Supposedly these so-called “norms” are violated when people say things they don’t like. And violating norms, they claim, destroys democracy. His montage was pretty amusing.

Tucker Carlson, screenshot from his February 23rd show

But then he notes, more seriously, that there are real consequences to people getting the wrong information. An example he uses is the mismatch between public views and the real statistics on police killing unarmed black men. People on the street were wildly overestimating the problem. Who is doing the misinforming? is a legitimate question. He says:

A lot of Americans are completely and utterly misinformed, and that has consequences. Public policy can change dramatically on the basis of things people think they know but don’t actually know. And we have seen that a lot. Entire police departments got defunded.

So it’s worth finding out where the public is getting all this false information, this disinformation, as we’ll call it. So we checked. We spent all day trying to locate the famous QAnon, which in the end we learned is not even a website. If it’s out there, we could not find it. Then we checked Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Twitter feed, because we have heard she traffics in disinformation—CNN told us—but nothing there. Next we called our many friends in the tight-knit intel community. Could Vladimir Putin be putting this stuff out there? The Proud Boys? Alex Jones?

Who is lying to America in ways that are certain to make us hate each other and certain to destroy our core institutions? Well, none of the above, actually. It wasn’t Marjorie Taylor Greene; it was cable news. It was politicians talking on TV. They’re the ones spreading disinformation to America.

By the way, a couple of months ago I also tried to track down Q, or QAnon if you’d rather. Just so I could see actual posts, or drops, rather than what various people said Q had said. I literally couldn’t find a way to sign up to get Q drops. If it’s intended to spread, the spreader sure does make it hard. (I hope I didn’t accidentally get on some government list, just because I was trying to do due diligence.)

The odd thing, then, is that those who are so upset about the spread of wrong ideas are the ones spreading falsehoods.

This might be intentional.

Joshua Philipp of The Epoch Times was giving a talk in Texas earlier this month in which he said this: 

If you go back and read the Communist Manifesto, what does it say? “Communism abolishes eternal truths.” And what is eternal truth, right?

It says, “Communism abolishes all religion and all morality.” We think it’s an economic theory. You go back to the 1930s, it was never an economic theory; it was a metaphysical theory, meaning it is a belief. And it’s a belief of a cult of man. And that you can only create that cult of man by destroying God and everything that God created in man. It is a system to re-create society in the image of man and not in the image of God.

And so everything they do is to make you abandon your faith. Everything they do is to undermine your morals, to destroy your traditions, to destroy your family values, to destroy everything that your country and your culture and your character is based upon. And it is only through that, if they can achieve it, that they can achieve their goals.

And so, at Epoch Times, we of course have our slogan: Truth and Tradition—meant to speak the truth and uphold traditions. This is something we’re going to be doing into the distant, distant future. And we will never be silent.

Truth and tradition are very different from “our truth” and “our norms.” I certainly don’t want someone with a Marxist ideology—or really any other ideology—dictating what I’m allowed to say or read.

Hitler Youth burning books, 1938
Alamy stock photo found here

How do you know, at the beginning of a discussion, before both sides lay out their evidence and persuasive points, which side holds objective truth? Or even which side is most persuasive? You need to be able to express things that might not turn out to be true.

If there’s going to be some rule about what you can say, because it may not be true, then you have to ask, who is the arbiter of truth?

Our founders made this clear in the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” and then listed the God-given unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and then declared government’s purpose to defend these rights, “deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

But, in Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope, he misconstrues that clarity this way:

Implicit in [the Constitution’s] structure, in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or “ism,” any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course.

As I mentioned some years ago,  you can’t get from that point A, the Declaration and Constitution, to that point B, rejection of absolute truth; there is no such path. As Dr. Larry Arnn puts the question, “How did Barack Obama come to believe something so foreign to America’s heritage as the idea that in the name of liberty we must reject absolute truths—which necessarily includes rejecting those truths I just quoted from the Declaration?”

Who, then, gets to be the arbiter of truth, if not God? There are a great many people I would absolutely not want to grant that power to.

Here's the irony: the self-appointed arbiters of truth reject absolute truth. But if there is no objective, perceivable truth, then why is “their truth” so right that any other “truth” must be censored—not only as simply untrue but harmful enough to be considered subversive?   

Book burning is never about protecting the unsuspecting public from false ideas; it is about protecting the power elites from dissent.

Normalizing, Part III: Change Is Possible

There’s so much more to cover about the lines that have already been crossed toward normalizing sexual perversion, I’m sure we’ll leave out plenty. But this third post is probably enough for now. (See Part I and Part II.)

For the sake of sanity, let’s start with this clip from Monty Python’s Life of Brian:

So, in 1979 the movie depicted the absurdity of a man suddenly deciding he was a woman, when it was clear to all those around him (who were supposed to be open-minded people of the first century AD) that, of course Stan can’t just “be” a woman; he doesn’t have a womb. He can’t have babies—and that isn’t even the fault of Roman oppression. It’s just a fact of life.

I’d say this basic fact was obvious common sense until about 2 minutes ago, historically speaking. A decade ago, during discussions about same-sex “marriage,” when activists were asked what would be the line that would not be crossed, the line that would be too far, pedophilia and transgenderism were both supposedly beyond the line. No one would ever accept those perversions. It was that recent that the term “transvestite” became politically incorrect and became “transgender,” about the same time T was added to LGB. (The term LGBT was used in the 90s, but not widely. By the way, the terms transgenerderism and transphobic are so new, automatic spell checks still highlight them to alert you that you don't have a word.) Many Ls and Gs still aren’t comfortable with that, since the point of their argument is that it matters to them which sex/gender they’re attracted to. Which sex you are, or which you’re attracted to, is not arbitrary or without meaning.

So now, when we have transgenderism being forced upon our school children, and we’re denigrated as vilely transphobic for stating the obvious, maybe we would be wise to step back and refuse a few already crossed lines before things get worse.

In June, the country’s biggest, and possibly most powerful, teachers’ union, the NEA, met and passed New Business Item 11, requiring that “all state and local affiliates encourage K-12 teachers to view a series of films called Creating Gender Inclusive Schools.” I viewed a two-minute sample. They talk mostly about colors and activity choices, which may be associated with gender, but which are totally cultural and often arbitrary, and have nothing to do with actually being male or female.  And then they slip in the idea that you don’t have to have gender imposed on you; you can just choose your gender.

Just as in the children’s music video I mentioned in Thursday’s post, this is a lie. Liking blue or black or pink or purple does not change whether you are male or female. Liking sports and physical activities when you’re a girl doesn’t mean you’re really a boy in the wrong body; it means you’re a girl who likes sports and physical activities. Liking arts, dance, music, literature, or other pursuits that require a certain aesthetic sensitivity when you’re a boy does not mean you’re really a girl in the wrong body; it means you’re a boy with an aesthetic sense.

These films are not designed, as claimed, to make all children “safe” in schools; they are designed to indoctrinate a radical ideology through lies told over and over, to impressionable children in a setting where they are expected to trust their authority figures.

Michelle Cretella
screen shot from this video

This does not make all children “safe.” This makes no children safe. The 99.97% who are not confused about whether they are male or female are told to reconsider, making them uncertain and confused. And the .03% who are confused about their sex are not given the help that will treat and help them overcome the confusion; they’re encouraged in it. And, against the advice of the American College of Pediatrics, which calls it child abuse, they may be surgically and medically altered in ways that will sterilize them and prevent them from ever living a normal life.

In a piece earlier this year, Ryan T. Anderson reminded us of the negative outcomes of this lie:

The most thorough follow-up of sex-reassigned people—extending over thirty years and conducted in Sweden, where the culture is strongly supportive of the transgendered—documents their lifelong mental unrest. Ten to fifteen years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to twenty times that of comparable peers.

You don't lower the risk of suicide by sex-reassignment "therapy"; you increase the risk of suicide.

The concern about preventing suicide is also used as an argument for accepting homosexuality as normal. But we know now, because of several European countries that have long accepted and normalized homosexual behavior, societal acceptance doesn’t improve the long list[i] of mental and physical issues related to having LGBT issues.

If the underlying, and possibly causal, mental issues were addressed and treated, not only would the suicidal tendencies be addressed, but freedom to choose a normal lifestyle might also become more likely.

In Monday’s post, I pointed out that, while there are important differences in degree of evil between pedophilia and homosexuality, I remember—unlike Roaming Millennial and most of her generation—when it was commonly understood that homosexuality was a deviant perversion. Did the behavior change? No. The message that was inculcated through media and academia changed, with the purpose of changing people’s beliefs. That inculcation has been so successful that people of the millennial generation and younger aren’t even aware that they’ve been the target of activist indoctrination. They think their current understanding is simply the decent and compassionate response to scientific “fact.”

Let me be clear that I am in favor of both decency and compassion. I might, however, have a different idea of what that consists of.

I believe some things needed to change. People who mean no harm and do no harm to others should be respected, even if their choices are not what we might call moral. (A person who knowingly spreads HIV or any other sexually transmitted disease is guilty of doing harm, as is a person who gives in to a sexual attraction to children.) A person with same-sex attraction should not be hated for being different. They should be treated with kindness and respect—not because of their sexual orientation, but because of their being human. But tolerance does not require approval.

I approve of my church’s position toward same-sex attraction—which isn’t new or changed; this has always been the case, but has been made clearer and more accessible. A person with same-sex attraction is required to live according to the same moral commandments as everyone else, because God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34, Doctrine & Covenants 1:35, 2 Nephi 26:33).

Behavior matters. Thoughts lead to behavior, but in a civilized world we don’t prosecute or persecute thoughts we disagree with; we communicate—both ways. And persuade when we can.

One reason I approve of my church’s approach regarding behavior, not orientation, is because orientation can change. I’m sympathetic with those who don’t want same-sex attraction. They want to be rid of it. And they struggle, sometimes for years, sometimes not very successfully. They don’t get much help in today’s world, which includes even therapists who think the solution is to accept their condition and try to change the world to accommodate them, rather than help them find ways to change or avoid the unwholesome lifestyle and associated mental and physical illnesses.

I’m disturbed by parents who respond in extreme ways to a child’s announcement of same-sex attraction. Being angry at the child, punishing or ostracizing that young person—that is not the right approach. Even if the young person goes through a long period of appallingly unwholesome lifestyle choices, forcing them to change when the world is telling them they can’t is only going to make them feel unloved. They may already feel unloved.

One young person I know, feeling sympathy for gays—convinced that those she knows are all legally married to their monogamous exclusive partner (see heteromorphism in the last post)—believes the church ought to accept them, because she can’t accept the idea that they should go through life without ever experiencing love.

I understand the care and concern. And I don’t deny that some gay couples love each other. But there’s a huge difference between love and sex. Sex doesn’t express love outside marriage; the commitment must come first. This is just as true for heterosexuals. Have you ever known a gay person who waited until after marriage before having sex? Even since the change in the definition of marriage was forced upon us nationally by the Supreme Court?

If you’re going to encourage acceptance of same-sex “marriage” in order to allow a certain group of people to experience love, you’re saying they have no chance of change, and no chance of self-control. And you’re also putting them above others who never marry—or experience that type of love—for various reasons—a disability that interferes with a love life, a lack of opportunity, or some other life tragedy. Why change the world for homosexuals but not all other individuals?

If you’re being practical (and parents, family, and friends should be), a committed same-sex “marriage” relationship is a better situation than a non-exclusive relationship, or the more typical promiscuous gay lifestyle. But it still doesn’t give them as likely a chance of a healthy, happy life as leaving the lifestyle and possibly changing orientation to the point that a real marriage becomes a possibility—with God’s blessing.

I’m also disturbed by parents who reject church teachings in order to support a child’s homosexuality. That means you’ve bought into the lie that your child was born that way and has no ability to change—or even to refrain from engaging in illicit sexual acts with multiple sex partners. Why would that be moral for your homosexual child but not for your heterosexual child? Why are you suddenly so sure you are right and God—the definer of good—is wrong?

For help as a parent, or as someone with unwanted same-sex attraction, you might try Positive Approaches To Human Sexuality (https://www.pathinfo.org).

I believe we’re all better off with actual truth, rather than gut reactions—many of which are planted in us by a long-term indoctrination program that we haven’t been aware of or had control over.

Yes, be kind to everyone. But civility does not require agreeing with everyone or approving of everyone’s behavior.

Keep pedophiles far away from our children. But also keep indoctrinators of the entire LGBTIQ+ alphabet of treatable mental illnesses away from our children. Because their normalization indoctrination has already done harm to many and brought us dangerously close to allowing pedophiles access to our children.

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[i] Homosexual conduct has consequences for mental health. There is a well-documented correlation between homosexuality and suicide and mental illness. See, e.g., Theo B. M. Sandfort, De Graaqf, Bilj, and Schable, “Same-Sex Sexual Behavior and Psychiatric Disorders:  Findings from the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study,” 85 (Archives of General Psychiatry 85 (January 2001) (“The findings support the assumption that people with same-sex behavior are at greater risk for psychiatric disorders”); Richard Herrell, et al., “Sexual Orientation and Suicidality,” Archives of General Psychiatry 867 (October 1999) (“Same-gender sexual orientation is significantly associated with each of the suicidality measures” and “is unlikely to be due solely to substance abuse or other psychiatric co-morbidity”); David M. Fergusson, et al., “Is Sexual Orientation Related to Mental Health Problems and Suicidality in Young People?” Archives of General Psychiatry 876 (October 1999) (“Findings support recent evidence suggesting that gay, lesbian, and bisexual young people are at increased risk of mental health problems, with these associates being particularly evident for measures of suicidal behavior and multiple disorder.”)  While some may argue that these findings are “caused by society oppression” (J Michael Bailey, “Homosexuality and Mental Illness,” Archives of General Psychiatry 883 and 884 October 1999), this is not the only possible explanation. The survey of findings from the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study found a significant greater risk for psychiatric disorders among homosexuals, even though “the Dutch social climate toward homosexuality has long been and remains considerably more tolerant” than most of the world. Sandfort, et al, above, at 89. Other possible explanations include hypotheses that “homosexuality represents a deviation from normal development and is associated with other such deviations that may lead to mental illness,” and that “increased psychopathology among homosexual people is a consequence of lifestyle differences associated with sexual orientation.”  J. Michael Bailey, above, at 884. Also, Sandfort et al., above, at 85-91.  (Youth are four times more likely to suffer major depression, also three times as likely to suffer generalized anxiety disorder, nearly four times as likely to experience conduct disorder, four times as likely to commit suicide, five times as likely to have nicotine dependence, six times as likely to suffer multiple disorders, and over six times as likely to have attempted suicide. Additionally, this research originates in the Netherlands where homosexuality is much more mainstream and accepted.)  Substance abuse is an additional health concern of those in the homosexual lifestyle:  Timothy J. Dailey, “The Negative Health Effects of Homosexuality” and associated notes, Family Research Council “The Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychologists reports that lesbian women consume alcohol more frequently, and I larger amounts, than heterosexual women. Lesbians were at significantly greater risk than heterosexual women for both binge drinking (19.4 percent compared to 11.7 percent), and for heavy drinking (7 percent compared to 2.7 percent)….Among men, by far the most important risk group consisted of homosexual and bisexual men, who were more than nine times as likely as heterosexual men to have a history of problem drinking.”

Reality Is Kinder

Have you ever known anyone with anorexia? I’ve known a couple. Their brain is telling them that they are fat, that they must do something to lose weight, when in reality they are dangerously thin. They starve themselves, affecting their health, possibly causing permanent damage, and risking their life if left untreated. It is treatable, but not easily.

Would you go to such a person and support them in their delusion about themselves? Would you say, “You’re right; those people who are telling you that you don’t know what you’re talking about are so unsupportive. You stay away from that food all you want”?

No. If you care about them, you do whatever it takes to bring them back to reality—because their life is at stake. You get them mental health care. You might get them to a hospital or live-in program that will intervene long enough to get their brains to develop new neural pathways.

So, can we agree that, when a person has a mental disorder that causes them to be unable to perceive or accept reality—if that delusion is life-threatening, it would be better to offer treatment than to attempt to change the world to buy in to their false view?

If we compare this anorexia example to gender dysphoria, leading to transgenderism, we need to know two things:

·         Is the person with gender dysphoria unable to accept reality?

·         Is going along with the delusion (if that is what it is) life threatening?

If the answer is yes to both, then the treatment for gender dysphoria ought to be similar in process to treating anorexia or other mental delusions. I’m not saying the treatment is the same, or even that I know how to treat mental delusions. I am saying that treating for the delusion is a more humane approach than supporting the delusion.

image from here

I’m not the first to make this comparison. The CanaVox video blog uses this as a way to discuss transgenderism in an age appropriate way when it comes up with children. And, because of media, and activists within academia, these issues are coming up for children at younger ages than we wish. I'm unable to provide the video here, but this link will take you to the 5-minute video on Vimeo.

Let’s start with definitions. Back when my dictionary was written (which I use in order to recall what certain words meant before recent definition changes), gender referred mainly to the classification of nouns and pronouns in languages that use those distinctions. In Spanish, for example, you can’t communicate without knowing the gender of the nouns and modifiers you’re using. In English, gender is mainly confined to pronouns that are referring to the sex of a person or animal: he, she. But, colloquially, gender can also be a synonym for sex; i.e., male or female.

The invention of gender as something separate from sex, something outside of biology, is newly invented.

So, back to the two questions. There’s the scientific, biological answer. And then there’s the non-scientific, or philosophical (personal belief) answer.

The non-scientific newly invented definition insists that gender is fluid, and a matter of choice, and refers mainly to expression to the world. That’s pretty vague. But it essentially means putting on the trappings—clothing, hair, makeup, mannerisms—of the gender of choice. And this has been extended to include more elaborate expressions, by hormonal and/or surgical interventions that make the transgendered person appear more like the opposite of their biological sex.

The scientific answer is that the gender, or the sex, of a biological creature is determined by what part is played in the reproductive process of the organism.

Ryan T. Anderson, author of When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, explains it this way:

available here

Sex is a bodily reality that can be recognized well before birth with ultrasound imaging. The sex of an organism is defined and identified by the way in which it (he or she) is organized for sexual reproduction.

This is just one manifestation of the fact that natural organization is “the defining feature of an organism,” as neuroscientist Maureen Condic and her philosopher brother Samuel Condic explain. In organisms, “the various parts… are organized to cooperatively interact for the welfare of the entity as a whole. Organisms can exist at various levels, from microscopic single cells to sperm whales weighing many tons, yet they are all characterized by the integrated function of parts for the sake of the whole.”

Male and female organisms have different parts that are functionally integrated for the sake of their whole, and for the sake of a larger whole—their sexual union and reproduction. So an organism’s sex—as male or female—is identified by its organization for sexually reproductive acts. Sex as a status—male or female—is a recognition of the organization of a body that can engage in sex as an act.

That organization isn’t just the best way to figure out which sex you are; it’s the only way to make sense of the concepts of male and female at all.

There is no alternative scientific definition of sex. Maleness and femaleness are biological realities in particular organisms.

As Anderson says, this shouldn’t be controversial. In social “science,” however, the non-biological approach has gained traction. That should not be construed in any way to actual science overriding what we know of biology. Anderson quotes Dr. Lawrence Mayer:

I have searched dozens of references in biology, medicine and genetics—even Wiki!—and can find no alternative scientific definition. In fact the only references to a more fluid definition of biological sex are in the social policy literature.

Dr. Mayer says further:

Scientifically speaking, transgender men are not biological men and transgender women are not biological women. The claims to the contrary are not supported by a scintilla of scientific evidence.

So, the answer to the first question, about reality, is that gender dysphoria is a condition in which the person is unable or unwilling to accept reality. It is not possible to change from male to female, or from female to male. It is only possible to do elaborate play-acting.

There are plenty of delusions in which otherwise sane people might be unable to accept reality, and yet the delusional can go along with their lives functioning well enough anyway. So the second question is also important. Is it harmful?

“Transitioning” does not bring psychsocial outcomes of wholeness. This proves true even in countries that are considered “trans-friendly.” That is, they accept what many societies would consider weird, and take it in stride without social isolation or stigma.

Long-term follow-up studies are rare and inconclusive. But Anderson suggests the best one comes from Sweden. There, it was found,

Ten to fifteen years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to twenty times that of comparable peers.

An argument for having transitioning treatment (hormonal and surgical) has been that it would solve the dysphoria, assuming the dysphoria was caused simply by a mismatch between brain and body. So it was assumed the depression and suicide among those with gender dysphoria would be drastically reduced. Instead, the underlying problem causing the dysphoria is untreated, leading to even greater hopelessness, and 20-fold more suicides.

It is difficult to know if that number is accurate. It may be higher. One of the difficulties with long-term studies is that the few attempted studies have lost track of more than half of participants. One likely reason for being unable to re-locate a participant is suicide.

If that weren’t tragic enough, according to Anderson, “death due to neoplasm and cardiovascular disease was increased 2 to 2.5 times as well.”

So the answer to the second question is, yes, going along with this delusion can be life threatening.

Therefore, treatment to bring the person into touch with reality is much kinder and more healthful than joining activists to change the world and insisting it is wrong to even question the “right” and “rightness” of playing along.

I am now acquainted with a transgender person, which I wasn’t aware of a week ago. I have seen several, of course. But not among people I know. This is not someone I know well. But I have known his wife since she was born, and was there for their wedding.

He has decided to become a woman, and is already undergoing hormonal therapy. He has not, prior to this, been cross-dressing. It used to be a requirement, or at least a recommendation, before transitioning “treatment,” to live as the opposite sex for a full year. Now it appears that, at the first sign of gender dysphoria, a therapist encourages transitioning—permanent changes, as yet untried, just to see whether it helps. Because a delusional person who is denying biological fact should be treated as sensible and capable of making such important decisions?

So, I am sad for the people I know who care about this young couple. So far the couple is childless, and cannot going forward ever engage in sex that results in offspring. They froze some sperm, just in case—because they’re not actually unaware of biological reality. But they stopped going to church and completely altered their lifestyle at the moment of beginning the hormonal treatments. So their support system is compromised as well. The wife is staying with him for now. But she is not a lesbian; she is not attracted to women. But staying with him forces that pretense upon her.

Also, I’m just saying, as a woman, we’re aware of body image, more so than your typical male. What are the odds that a 6”2” “woman,” who is a slightly doughy and hairy male to begin with, will be without body image issues simply by “changing” into a female?

My disapproval will matter not at all to these people; we are not close enough for me to have that influence. But I am sad that people who should have been able to offer actual help—particularly the psychiatric/medical community—offered instead something that is likely to lead to suicide, misery, and the loss of parenting opportunities and anything we might have meant when we wished this couple happiness in their marriage. I see nothing but tragedy in their situation—chosen, avoidable tragedy.

Defending Religious Freedom

We have this beautiful Constitution, designed to help us “form a more perfect union,” with limited specific roles. Included are the Bill of Rights, and the first right mentioned is freedom of religion.

To be specific, the first amendment refers to government at the national level, and does two things:

·         Prevents the federal government from establishing a religion.

·         Prevents the federal government from prohibiting the free exercise of religion.

In subsequent years, states (some of which started with state religions) have followed suit, and now there is an assumption that a state cannot infringe on this natural, God-given right. While technically the US Constitution doesn't settle state law, the Bill of Rights is there to remind us that these are God-given rights, not government-granted rights.

And yet, governments—both state and federal, plus sometimes local—have interfered with the free exercise of religion.

We’ve recounted these before. Among the disagreements between many religious people and governments are issues of sex, gender, marriage definition, life, and abortion.

We know what is necessary for civilization to flourish: a righteous people who honor God, life, family, truth, and property. The disagreements put government against the side of civilization. That means that the moral compass of these governments—which actually means the moral compass of those holding positions of power in governments, because governments don’t have feelings or morals in and of themselves—their moral compass is wrong.

But they don’t know it. They very smugly go forward, assuming their rightness, and their righteousness, as they trample the rights of those who believe differently.

It will never be true that gender is just a social construct subject to the choices an individual feels inclined to make. When we get past the current confusion, we will look back at this as sheer foolishness.

It will never be true that a relationship between two people of the same sex is equivalently valuable (in the general sense, to society—not each individual relationship) to permanently committed man and wife who procreate and raise their own children to adulthood. When we look back, we will see which is more likely to both produce children and provide children the best outcomes.

Eventually it will become clear that unborn human life is still human life and not some clump of cells, like a tumor, interfering with a woman’s life plans. And elderly life, or life with disability, is still valuable and worth protecting. Killing some humans one deems as less valuable or less fully human is an evil we call murder.

Forcing people to go against their conscience, just because government disagrees with their conscience, is tyranny.

And tyranny is always bad. So it is important to everyone in a free society that we stop government—and anyone with power over others—from infringing on religious freedom rights.

Figuring out how to stand up and protect these rights is a challenge we have to face. On January 21, Elder Dallin H. Oaks, Apostle in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and former Utah State Supreme Court Justice (and President of Brigham Young University while I was there), spoke at a religious freedom conference in Arizona. This was mainly to Latter-day Saints, but the principles work for everyone who wants to stand for religious freedom. He said,

Elder Dallin H. Oaks
photo from Deseret News

Whatever our differences, most of us want to live together in happiness and harmony, with goodwill toward all…. We want effective ways to resolve differences without anger or contention and with mutual understanding and accommodation. We all lose in an atmosphere of hostility or contention. We should encourage all to refrain from the common practice of labeling adversaries with such epithets as “godless” or “bigot.” We all lose when debates on ideas and policies turn into personal attacks, boycotts, firings and other intimidation of adversaries.

He used a metaphor of a two-sided coin:

Love of others and tolerance for their opinions and behavior is only one side of a two-sided coin. The other side is always what is true or right. One of these sides cannot govern without consciousness of the other. Those who question why the Church does something they consider contrary to love overlook the companion requirement of truth.

So the question follows, how do we do it? How do we stand for truth while being accused of hating, even when we’re not hating?

The LDS Church has a new website to help: religiousfreedom.lds.org. Again, this is designed for Latter-day Saints, but is useful to anyone trying to stand for truth. Among the helpful features are several lists. One is "10 Ways to Protect Religious Freedom":

1.       Study up on the issues.

2.       Speak up with courage and civility.

3.       Get involved in the political process.

4.       Get to know people of other faiths.

5.       Volunteer for a charity—help solve problems in the community.

6.       Get involved in education.

7.       Be part of a club, business group, or professional association.

8.       Extend the reach of your faith—cooperate with other faiths.

9.       Make it a family matter and a matter of prayer.

10.   Enlarge your voice through social media.

I’m feeling fairly good that, in my small circle, I’m doing these things. It’s how I live my life now.

Some of those suggestions might benefit from this additional list, "7 Keys to Successful Conversations":

1.       First seek to understand, not judge.

2.       Remember that the people you’re talking with are children of God—give them respect and love.

3.       Express your beliefs calmly and sincerely, from your personal perspective.

4.       Stay true to your beliefs.

5.       Rely on the Holy Ghost—trust that God will inspire you with what to say.

6.       Be kind, listen, and love—this, even when others are not kind toward you.

7.       Know when to end the conversation—when others are unwilling to offer respect, and listening, it is unproductive to continue.

There are additional articles, links to documents, videos, and various resources. For example, if you’re dealing with religion and schools, there’s “7 Religious Things You Can Still Do,” along with a video example, and links to additional guides in PDF form: “What US Parents Should Know” and “What US Teachers Should Know.”

This website is the best resource I’ve found on defending religious freedom since Ryan T. Anderson’s book Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom came out in 2015, shortly after the errant Supreme Court ruling redefining marriage.  In that book he suggests being clear that the ruling has nothing to do with the Constitution. And he believes in bringing in new, recent research, so that science is on our side. He also believes in being kind, and listening—even when only intolerance is returned.

We shouldn’t give in to the defensive position of proving we’re not bigoted while we are being assaulted by religious intolerance. We just need to be the reasonable ones in the conversation, and trust that truth will persuade among reasonable people.

Religious Freedom Day

Here in Houston we have an ongoing discussion about the Astrodome, one of the modern wonders of the world (the 8^th, specifically). But, as modern buildings go, it’s old. It was built in 1965 and hasn’t been used for baseball or rodeo since 2002. If it weren’t considered historically significant, the building would simply be razed and replaced with something more currently useful.

But because it is historically significant, the debate goes on. Should it be restored? Used for some other purpose? Maybe a museum? Who should pay for whatever is done with it?

A couple of times the people have been faced with an ultimatum: pay big bucks for some specific purpose (which they may not prefer) or it will be destroyed. Even when the big bucks aren’t approved, however, the destruction doesn’t happen, and the debate continues. Eventually the people will need to answer the question, does it still have value?

celebrating religious freedom
image from LDS.org/Newsroom

I’m using this as a metaphor for the way our larger society has been tossing around the idea that religious liberty is maybe historically precious, but can we afford to bother about such things in a modern world?

This ought not to be in question. Unlike a physical building, which may or may not have utilitarian or nostalgic value to various people, religious freedom’s actual value is beyond price.

Who should control what you believe: you, or some distant ruling authority?

If you think you should be in control of your own thoughts and beliefs, then you value religious freedom.

 It’s not some quaint tradition, for those people who care about such things; it is the essence of being who you are, instead of having everything about you, even your thoughts, enslaved.

This Saturday, January 16^th, marked National Religious Freedom Day, which has been happening annually since 1993. It consists of a presidential proclamation on the subject. And possibly something schools and churches might bring up. (study guide for schools here).

I believe I’m pretty involved in the support of religious freedom—our first God-given right in the First Amendment of the Constitution. But I wasn’t aware of this designated day—which in some years has coincided with Martin Luther King Day, being celebrated today. But Saturday I came across a video on Facebook, shared by my religion about Religious Freedom Day. I'm unable to embed, but it's available here.

The video has a link to this page on Religious Freedom. This page has several additional videos and resources, and ends with a list of What We Can Do:

·         Learn about religious freedom—what it is, how it works and the issues that threaten it.

·         Practice religious freedom—respect the religious beliefs of others and the beliefs and opinions of those with no religion. Be civil in your conversations and interactions, both face to face and on the Internet.

·         Join with others to promote religious freedom—get involved in your community wherever you feel comfortable. Use the Internet and social media to help others learn about religious freedom.

In Ryan T. Anderson’s book Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom, he talks about the recent threat to our religious freedom. I’ll just share some of his words from chapter nine:

In recent political memory, religious liberty was a value that brought together conservatives, libertarians, and progressives. As recently as 1993, the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act was passed by a nearly unanimous Congress and signed by a Democratic president. Today, the same value is a political liability. Bakers, photographers, and florists are being ruined, adoption agencies shuttered, schools threatened with loss of accreditation and nonprofit status. So what happened? Why is religious liberty now losing so much ground?

Three historical developments explain our current predicament: a change in the scope of our government, a change in our sexual values, and a change in our political leaders’ vision of religious liberty. An adequate response will need to address each of these changes.

First, government has changed. The progressive movement gave us the administrative state. Limited government and the rule of law were replaced by the nearly unlimited reach of technocrats in governmental agencies. As government assumes responsibility for more areas of life, the likelihood of its infringing on religious liberty increases. Why should government be telling bakers and florists which weddings to serve in the first place? Why should it tell charities and religious schools how to operate and which values to teach? Only a swollen sense of unaccountable government authority can explain these changes.

Second, sexual values have changed. At the time of the American Revolution, religion and liberty were so closely linked that Thomas Jefferson could affirm, “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.” Meanwhile, his French contemporary Denis Diderot, expressing sentiments that would culminate in a very different revolution, declared that man “will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” In our own time, however, the sexual revolution has shattered the American synthesis of faith and freedom, setting religion at odds with “liberty”—or more accurately, license. Now bakers, florists, adoption agencies, and schools that uphold what Americans have always believed about marriage find themselves at odds with the law.

Third, religious liberty has changed. Our Constitution protects the natural right to the free exercise of religion. But some liberals are trying to drastically narrow that right by redefining it as the mere “freedom of worship.” If they succeed, the robust religious freedom that made American civil society the envy of the world will be reduced to Sunday-morning piety confined within the four walls of a chapel. They have even gone so far as to rewrite the U.S. immigration exam to say that the First Amendment protects “freedom of worship” rather than the “free exercise of religion.” True religious liberty entails the freedom to live consistently with one’s beliefs seven days a week—in the chapel, in the marketplace, and in the public square.

These three changes represent a rejection of the American Founding. Progressive politics and a radical view of human sexuality are combining to coerce compliance at the expense of a bedrock human right. And of course much of this has been enabled by judicial activism, as in Obergefell.

Anderson talks about what we can do. First, fight for courts to interpret and apply laws fairly. And, outside the courtroom, do all we can to limit government. And then, correct the faulty anthropology; restore a sound understanding of human nature and the laws of nature—combining the efforts of churches and synagogues, schools and universities, and other organizations. He says, “We need groups like this to push back on the sexual revolution and remind people of the law written on their hearts—a law that points the way to true, ordered liberty, not license, when it comes to human sexuality and the family.”

In an earlier chapter, Anderson refers to Pope Benedict XVI, who said, in Anderson’s paraphrase: “While intellectual arguments are important, people are moved more by beauty and holiness. The first thing we need to do is live the truth about marriage ourselves.”

His book is mainly about marriage, but also how changing what marriage is affects religious liberty. So, we could take that last statement and apply it to our religious freedom: The first thing we need to do is live the truth about our religious beliefs ourselves.

We who are used to doing that quietly, as a natural part of our peaceful lives, may find ourselves needing to do it more boldly, more firmly. Because we must not allow someone—anyone—to enslave our beliefs, which would enslave our very selves.

Religious freedom isn’t something nice to have, if we can afford it, and if “regular” people decide to tolerate that in believers. Religious freedom is the essential freedom of our minds and hearts.

About the Children

Section seven of Ryan T. Anderson’s book Truth Overruled: The Future of Marriage and Religious Freedom discusses families. In particular, the outcome for children raised by two parents of the same sex, which was imposed on the American people in June, on the whim of a wavering Justice Kennedy.

The book lays out research on children of gays (COGs), reports from children so raised, and various other opinions—which Justice Kennedy had in hand and dismissed as unimportant. Anderson’s presentation is always logical. I’ll leave it to you to read his version. But for today I’d like to offer a few passages I took note of.

One story comes from an essay by Robert Oscar Lopez, “a bisexual Latino intellectual,” who was raised by his mother and her female partner. His essay, first published in the online journal Public Discourse, is titled “Growing Up with Two Moms: The Untold Children’s View.” Lopez recounts the hole in his young life because of the absence of a father. His friends, he said, learned how to approach life from a man and a woman.

They learned, typically, how to be bold and unflinching from male figures and how to write thank-you cards and be sensitive form female figures. These are stereotypes, of course, but stereotypes come in handy when you inevitably leave the safety of your lesbian mom’s trailer and have to work and survive in a world where everybody thinks in stereotypical terms, even gays.

Not only did he lack a male role model, his mother and her partner were not traditional mothers either. He makes the valid point that, while gays and lesbians have been pushing for so-called “marriage equality,” they have cavalierly favored depriving children of either a mother or a father, even though, he says, “Many gays don’t realize what a blessing it was to be reared in a traditional home.”

Lopez has been silenced and maligned for expressing his experience and opinions, which do not align with the movement’s agenda.

As Anderson comments, “Gay activists use intimidation to shut down debate about their agenda, and no one has faced more attacks on their characters than the children of gays and lesbians who oppose gay marriage.”

Katy Faust is another such voice, a grown woman who was raised by two women. She wrote, in an amicus brief in the Obergefell case,

There is no difference between the value and worth of heterosexual and homosexual persons…because we are all humans created in the image of God….[But] when it comes to procreation and child-rearing, same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples are wholly unequal and should be treated differently for the sake of the children.

She reminds us, “Each child is conceived by a mother and a father to whom that child has a natural right.”

I noticed this line, because it aligns with a sentence from “The Family: A Proclamation to the World”: “Children are entitled to birth within the bonds of matrimony, and to be reared by a father and a mother who honor marital vows with complete fidelity.”

Faust goes on:

When a child is placed in a same-sex-headed household, she will miss out on at least one critical parental relationship and a vital dual-gender influence. The nature of the adults’ union guarantees this. Whether by adoption, divorce, or third-party reproduction, the adults in this scenario satisfy their heart’s desires, while the child bears the most significant cost: missing out on one or more of her biological parents.

When she became a mother, she came to realize this fact: “Kids want their mother and father to love them and to love each other.” And she adds,

Now that I am a parent, I see clearly the beautiful differences my husband and I bring to our family. I see the wholeness and health that my children receive because they have both of their parents living with and loving them. I see how important the role of their father is and how irreplaceable I am as their mother. We play complementary roles in their lives, and neither of us is disposable. In fact, we are both critical. It’s almost as if Mother Nature got this whole reproduction thing exactly right.

Indeed.

It isn’t that same-sex parents are bad at parenting. Both may be good and devoted parents. But there is still something missing. As the research shows, children raised by divorced parents, or single parents (never married, the father not in the picture), or by in vitro reproduction through a donor, or are abandoned by parents—these children all ache for the missing parent. Their lives are not whole. So, if that is true, Faust asks, “How can it be possible that they are miraculously turning out ‘even better!’ when raised in same-sex headed households?” In reality they aren’t.

She concludes, “The onus must be on adults to conform to the needs of children, not the other way around.”

Heather Barwick, another child of two moms, adds her story. “I’m writing to you [the gay community] because I’m letting myself out of the closet: I don’t support gay marriage….It’s not because you’re gay…..It’s because of the nature of the same-sex relationship itself,” which always deprives a child of either a mom or a dad."

There’s something wrong with adults who think it’s all right to reorder society to meet their desires when those desires necessarily deprive a child of what the child is entitled to, and will feel the absence of. Barwick said,

A lot of us, a lot of your kids, are hurting. My father’s absence created a huge hole in me, and I ached every day for a dad. I love my mom’s partner, but another mom could never have replaced the father I lost…. It is a strange and confusing thing to walk around with this deep-down unquenchable ache for a father, for a man, in a community that says that men are unnecessary….

[A legal system that redefines marriage] promotes and normalizes a family structure that necessarily denies us something precious and foundational. It denies us something we need and long for, while at the same time tells us that we don’t need what we naturally crave. That we will be okay. But we’re not. We’re hurting.

Children of divorce are free to say that they miss having their parents together, or they miss the parent they don’t get to live with. That makes sense to us. But these children, purposely raised without a father, or without a mother, don’t even get to voice their pain; it’s not politically correct to bring that up. Barwick says, “If we say we are hurting because we were raised by same-sex parents, we are either ignored or labeled a hater.” Children who love their gay parents are labeled homophobic for missing something children are naturally made to expect—both of their biological parents.

Another story comes from Doug Mainwaring, a homosexual male who married a woman, left the marriage to pursue a homosexual lifestyle, and then came back for the sake of the children. He says, “(1) Creating a family with another man is not completely equal to creating a family with a woman, and (2) denying children parents of both genders at home is an objective evil. Kids need and yearn for both.”  He said, “I do not get to throw away the mother of my child as if she is a used incubator.”

And Mainwaring added, “When you are a parent, ethical questions revolve around your children and you put away your self-interest…forever.”

Anderson concludes, “For all of Justice Kennedy’s concern about conferring the ‘dignity’ of marriage on same-sex couples, there’s little concern about conferring suffering on the children raised in such relationships. A relentless focus on adult desire has left us astonishingly calloused.”

That callousness—which fits into what we refer to here at The Spherical Model as southern hemisphere savagery—is the legacy of this redefinition of marriage.

Those of us who know what real marriage is have an obligation to remember, to speak up regardless of negative backlash, and to find ways to express the truth and keep it from being buried. The next section of the book talks about how to build a movement of marriage, to help our society recover.

The downward movement started decades earlier, with “the sexual ideology that undermined the rational foundations for the marital norms of permanence, exclusivity, and monogamy.” What took decades to deconstruct will take decades to rebuild.  Anderson paraphrases Pope Benedict XVI, who “reminds us that while intellectual arguments are important, people are moved more by beauty and holiness….So the first thing we need to do is live the truth about marriage ourselves.”

That’s a starting place. We’ll leave it at that for today, and talk about organization and activism another time.