Strengthening families. Advancing truth.
Perhaps you’ve seen the coat-hanger pins worn by abortion activists, communicating that if abortion were to become illegal, there would be a dramatic increase in unsafe, back-alley abortions. But is this really the case? What will happen when abortion becomes illegal?
This morning, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Carl and Angel Larsen, St. Cloud videographers whose right to tell stories that reflect their deeply-held religious beliefs was thrown into question after a district court decision last year, can now proceed in their battle.
This is great news for religious freedom! The Larsens, who were featured guests at our COURAGE TO STAND event earlier this year, are not just ordinary videographers. They want to tell a story with each video they create - and they want to honor God in the process. But under Minnesota’s draconian “anti-discrimination laws” they could face jail time if they choose not to film same-sex weddings!
“Gender Dysphoria” is a legitimate diagnosis of mental disorder. It can still be found in the pages of the DSM-5, the manual of mental disorders produced by the American Psychiatric Association. However, unlike with other ailments, the accepted treatment for gender dysphoria is attempting to make one person’s illness into a universal delusion. That is a problem.
If a white person is under the impression that she is African-American, she will be laughed at - no one takes her seriously. This actually happened in the case of Rachel Dolezal. She may have a legitimate mental disorder - in fact, nothing is more likely - but no one thinks that humoring her delusion is a good thing, either for her or for society. Rather, it’s clear to almost everyone that getting her to accept her white ethnicity is the healthiest thing for her, and to encourage her in her delusion would be to make racial categories meaningless.
So why is it so different with sex and gender? Why is someone’s sex, which is even more central to their God-given identity than race, up for grabs?
Twenty-five year old Preeti Singh has had cerebral palsy for entire life, causing her to be wheel-chair bound. In an article, Singh outlined society’s flaw in seeing those with disabilities not as equally valuable to those around them, but rather as people defined by their disabilities, objects to be either pitied or praised.
Singh wrote, “When I was nine, I went to my hometown for my grandmother’s funeral. There, a couple of women caught me alone and told me that I was a burden on my parents. They said that I should have died, and that it was stupid of my parents to spend so much money on my health and education. In the months that followed this incident, I became severely depressed.”
