LBGTQ

Each week, I recommend readings on the culture war from around the Internet for Christians living amid an increasingly hostile society.

My mission is to provide help and encouragement to live out our faith amidst the moral decline of our culture. Challenges to religious freedom, free speech, biblical morality, innocent and defenseless human life continue unabated.

Do not be afraid. Standing firmly on the Word of God, we can resist evil and shine as lights, offering hope to a darkened world.

Twitter Demands Users Delete the Truth

Doing their part in the culture war, the woke censors at Twitter have their own definition of truth. God help us to never begin thinking like the Twittists.

Since Sunday, Twitter has held hostage the account of The Babylon Bee, a conservative, Christian satire website that made a joke about a transgender Biden administration official.

On March 13, USA Today included U.S. Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel Levine, a biological man who identifies as a woman, in its list of “women of the year.” Two days later, the Bee posted a satirical article naming Levine its man of the year.

In practice, the social media giant appears to target users who post on issues such as transgenderism while seemingly ignoring accounts with ties to gross human rights abuses.

Twitter has allowed Taliban-associated accounts, such as those of the Islamist group’s Ministry of Interior Affairs and its spokesman, Qari Saeed Khosty. Since regaining power in Afghanistan, the Taliban has put back into place policies limiting women’s mobility, rights, and access to education. As of Wednesday, girls are barred from attending secondary school. The Bee pointed out the irony in a Tuesday article titled, “Taliban Spokesman Finally Banned from Twitter After Sharing Babylon Bee Headline.”

Photographer ‘Disappointed’ by Today Show’s Alteration of Lia Thomas Photo

The woke media is at it again. While denying there is a culture war, they actively engage in the battle. This time, they altered a photo of NCAA transgender (male pretending to be a woman) swimmer Lia Thomas to make (him, her, it) look more feminine. Why let the facts that the swimmer certainly looks like a man interrupt the LBGTQ narrative?

Photographer Erica Denhoff was stunned and upset by the Today Show’s modification of her photo of Lia Thomas, the transgender athlete who has out-placed female swimmers throughout the season and most notably at the NCAA’s women’s championship last weekend.

She said she was “disappointed” by the show’s editing. “I pride myself on providing authentic images as a photojournalist,” she told the Washington Examiner.

Denhoff noticed the softening of Thomas’s face, which eliminated rougher imperfections that might appear more masculine, and figured that the move was “intentional” on NBC’s part, she told the publication. “It’s really important as photojournalists that we transmit authentic photos that have not been altered,” she said.

Biden’s Supreme Court Nominee Refuses to Define the Word “Woman”

This belongs in the “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up” file. Judge Jackson is an educated person and certainly not stupid. It doesn’t take a PhD in biology to know what a woman is. Unless you have imbibed the LBGTQ Kool-Aid.

However, likely lost among the hours of questioning in yesterday’s confirmation hearing was a fascinating exchange late last night between Judge Jackson and Sen. Blackburn. During her questioning, Blackburn asked the nominee to define the word “woman.”

“Can you provide a definition of the word ‘woman’?” Blackburn asked. After a brief pause, Jackson answered, “No, I can’t.” Incredulous, Blackburn replied, “You can’t?” “Not in this context; I’m not a biologist,” the judge responded.

“Truth Is Not Hate Speech”

Some more thoughts on Big Tech’s role in the culture war: censorship and its perverted idea of truth.

From the left’s perspective, “misgendering” through satire is hateful because it fails to provide the trauma-preventing societal recognition of an individual’s self-constructed identity required for them to feel authentic. In other words, individuals might be confronted with ideas they do not want to hear but may need to hear, which is one of the main reasons freedom of speech is so sacrosanct. That might explain a standard warning attached to a particular tweet but not the more aggressive action of suspending a user from the platform. In this case, the threat is more dangerous because the truth is so clear.

Lies are the mortar in tyranny’s wall.

Supreme Court Conservatives Say Religious Groups Should Be Free to Hire Only Like-Minded Believers

Should the government force churches, parochial schools, and religious ministries to hire people who disagree with and flaunt their beliefs? Some Supreme Court justices have enough common sense to think not.

Two of the Supreme Court’s conservatives said Monday that religious organizations should be fully exempt from nondiscrimination laws and free to hire only people who share their beliefs.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito made their views known as the court declined to take up a dispute over a Seattle religious nonprofit group’s refusal to hire an applicant who was in a same-sex relationship. They agreed the case was at a preliminary stage and not yet ripe for their review, but they said the court should confront the issue in a future case.

Writing for both of them, Alito strongly suggested how they would rule in such a dispute: “To force religious organizations to hire messengers and other personnel who do not share their religious views would undermine not only the autonomy of many religious organizations but also their continued viability.”

Critical Race Theory, Public Schools, and Parental Rights – Frontlines in the Culture War

It would seem to be common sense that parents should have something to say about their children’s education. But more and more public-school districts oppose this idea. This is a sad commentary on the state of education in our nation.

Do the rights of parents to direct the education and upbringing of their children end at the schoolhouse door? That’s effectively what the Ninth Circuit decided in Fields v. Palmdale School District, a 2005 case in which parents argued that the school district violated their rights by giving elementary school students a questionnaire that included sensitive sexual topics, without parents’ knowledge or consent. The Ninth Circuit ruled against the parents, stating that parents’ right to control their children’s education—a right long recognized in common law and explicitly affirmed by the Supreme Court in Meyer v. Nebraska and Pierce v. Society of Sisters—“does not extend beyond the threshold of the school door.”

The Real Civil Rights Issue of Our Time

What is the most important civil rights issue today? Is it gay rights? Could it be transgender rights? Or might it be the rights of pedophiles?

According to former attorney general William Barr, it is religious liberty.

In his new memoir, former attorney general William P. Barr defends religious liberty as the most pressing civil rights issue of our time. One Damn Thing After Another: Memoirs of an Attorney General deserves both attention and commendation, especially now, when government overreach is once again threatening the rights of religious liberty and free exercise.

To take just one example, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is working on developing two rules that would likely force religious nonprofits to cover “gender transition” surgeries and treatments, including for minors. The rules classify transgender treatment as a new “essential health benefit”; they would mandate that employers cover puberty blockers for children, cross-sex hormones, genital and non-genital surgical procedures, and perhaps more. A draft of one rule claims that HHS will comply with laws respecting conscience and religious freedom, but it is not clear whether or how those exemptions will be recognized

The Democrats Need COVID to Stay in Power

This article unmasks the Democrats need to perpetuate victimhood to maintain their political power and keep ahead in the culture war.

The Democrat Party trades in multi-category victimhood and creating taxpayer-funded Government programs in order to “cure” the problems they’ve identified and hyped for each group of victims. Often, these so-called “problems” don’t actually exist — they’ve just been fabricated by the Democrats and trumpeted by the eagerly complicit liberal media — but absent these so-called problems and cures, the Democrat Party would have no rationale for existing.

Every special-interest and so-called minority group has its Democratically sponsored taxpayer programs – Blacks, Hispanics, including illegal immigrants, Women, LGBTQ, Teachers and other unions, and Environmentalists/Warmists.

Transgenderism Has a Science Problem

Scientism is an important component of the worldview of many of the “woke,” cultural elite, and progressives.

According to Wikipedia, Scientism is the view that science and the scientific method are the best or only objective means by which people should determine normative and epistemological values.

So, why do proponents of transgenderism ignore science?

Laws protecting children from harmful gender transition procedures are supported by basic scientific facts. Yet such laws are routinely opposed by cultural, corporate, and political figures, who claim they are the ones in alignment with science. The White House recently called efforts in Texas to protect children from gender transition an “attack on loving parents who seek medical care” that is “dangerous to the health” of these children. Is this really true?

Sadly, when it comes to this issue, ideology is driving science more than science is driving itself. Statements like that of the White House avoid the facts about gender transition for children and instead employ a communications campaign fraught with hyperbole, misinformation, and inadequate research that is more emblematic of a bait-and-switch tactic rather than the gold standard of scientific inquiry. What are we to think of all this?

School Choice: Protecting Parental Rights, Resolving Curriculum Wars, and Reducing Inequality 

More here on parental rights regarding education. If you are a parent or grandparent, worth taking the time to read.

Regardless of where you stand on the prudence of anti-CRT legislation—and even regardless of your views on the merits of CRT itself—the controversy over CRT highlights the need for genuine school choice by unmasking any pretensions to public school “neutrality.” Public school curricula have never been ideologically neutral. But with the advent of CRT, any attempt to maintain even a semblance of neutrality on controversial topics like race, sex, or gender has been abandoned.

Will a Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson Be a Legacy of Critical Race Theory?

Do we need a SCOTUS justice who has imbibed the false narratives of critical race theory and the 1619 Project? I don’t think so, but if the Senate confirms Ketanji Brown Jackson, which is what we’ll have. We will also get an abortion activist, a woke justice who will fight for every progressive meme in the culture war. Not good for America.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who was explicitly nominated to the nation’s highest court at least in part because of her sex and skin color, is a proud proponent of the systemic racism that propelled her to nomination in the form of critical race theory. In fact, its concepts admittedly influence her decision-making.

 

Additional Culture War Related Reading

DeSantis to Honor NCAA Women’s Swimming Runner-Up as Winner Over Lia Thomas

 

Obama’s Third Term and the Destruction of the American Polity

 

SCOTUS Should Uphold the Right of Religious People to Refuse to Serve the LGBT Agenda

 

What Does Jeremiah 29:11 Really Mean?

 

Progressives Seem Willing to Erase Women. Are We Going to Let Them?

 

That’s Just Your Interpretation

 

Is Critical Race Theory a Helpful Tool?

 

Despairing Over the Culture? There’s Still a Reason to Get Out of Bed Tomorrow

 

The Trans Lobby Doesn’t Want to Erase Just Women’s Sports

 

The Extraordinary Vapidity of Kamala Harris

 

May you have a blessed, productive, and peaceful week.