Like so many events this spring, my little sisters’ dance recital was canceled, causing much disappointment after months of hard work. My youngest sister has found solace in leaping and twirling around the house in her recital costume, with the undeterred enthusiasm of a four-year-old who fully intends to be a princess-ballerina when she grows up. From my own days as a dancer and from my younger sisters’ current experience, I know dance’s potential to be a source of enjoyment that also builds confidence, coordination, and discipline. Because of this, Netflix’s recently released trailer and promotional imagefor a film called Cuties disappointed me, to say the least. The film artworkwhich sparked an outcry on social media, causing Netflix to issue an apology and replace the image (without changing the content of the film itself)featured 11-year-old girls in revealing costumes and provocative poses accompanying the film description, “Amy, 11, becomes fascinated with a twerking dance crew. Hoping to join them, she starts to explore her femininity, defying her family’s traditions.”
Cuties is not the first time that Netflix has featured a film that portrays children in a sexualized manner. As World magazine pointed out, “It might be easier to give Netflix the benefit of the doubt on its artistic intent, though, if the company didn’t have such a poor track record featuring hypersexual material involving young characters.” Cuties is a symptom of a much deeper problem. It is a symptom of culture that does not understand human value and dignity and that views the human body as a commodity. This same mindset fuels the widespread use and acceptance of pornography and the hypersexualized images that are so often on display in the entertainment industry and on social media.
Last night pro-life spokeswomanand former abortion worker Abby Johnson addressed the Republican National Convention, sharing part of her story of her journey from directing a Planned Parenthood facility to advocating for the unborn, explaining how, for her, the fight against abortion is not abstract but deeply personal. “See, for me, abortion is real,” she told the convention. “I know what it sounds like. I know what abortion smells like. Did you know that abortion even had a smell? I’ve been the perpetrator to these babies. To these women.
“I truly believed I was helping women,” she said of her time at Planned Parenthood. Shortly after she was recognized as Planned Parenthood Employee of the Year,Abby Johnson was assigned an abortion quota and was instructed to make sure that her facility sold twice as many abortions as they had the previous year. When she questioned this, pointing to the abortion giant’s public goal of making abortion less common, she told, “This is how we make our money.” She left the abortion industry a few months later after witnessing an ultrasound abortion. Her ministry, And Then There Were None (ATTWN) has helped nearly 600 abortion workers leave the abortion industry.
Marriage rates in the United States recently reached an all-time low.On top of that, it is currently estimated that only half of America’s children are raised by married parents. An increasing number of people are beginning to ask, “Are we seeing the death of the nuclear family?” What is particularly striking is that many of the people askingthis question do not see the death of the family as a bad thing. As lockdowns were put in place this springdue to COVID-19, severalvoices suggestedthat this ought to be the end of traditional family structures. Even well before COVID-19,the nuclear family was being challenged as sexist, oppressive, and even racist.
These critiques generally assume that the nuclear family is an invented concept. However, at the core of the nuclear family is marriage, which does not have a human inventor. Rather, it was created and ordained by God in the beginning. Because marriage is part of God’s good design, the benefits of stable, two-parent families are not a surprise, nor is it surprising that there are serious, tragic effects when God’s design is ignored. These effects do not come about because the nuclear family is an oppressive construct, but because the nuclear family is good.
Two more Minnesota cities have adopted counseling bans that intrude on counselor-client relationships by allowing the city council to dictate what kind of help young people struggling with gender dysphoria or unwanted same-sex attraction may seek out. Winona and West Saint Paul’s bans, both of which passed on Monday night, bring the total number of Minnesota cities that have adoptedthese counseling bans up to six.
These bans make it punishable for a licensed counselor or therapist to discuss a full range of optionswith their clients. Counseling bans are especially concerning when it comes to teens struggling with gender dysphoria. Even though the vast majority of young people struggling with gender dysphoria and do not “transition” become comfortable with their biological sex as they get older, these bans would usher young people into social transition and medical “treatments” that carry life-long effects and do not improve mental health outcomes. City officials do not have the right to decide that a young person struggling with gender dysphoria cannot receive help in the form of watchful waiting and counselinginstead of being rushed into a “transition” that will affect them for the rest of their lives, nor do they have the right to limit the free speech of counselors in this way.
On Friday, a federal district court halted the enforcement of a Louisville, Kentucky ordinance that would have penalized Chelsey Nelson, a Christian wedding photographer and blogger, for running her business in accordance with her beliefs. Last year, the city of Louisville adopted an ordinance that prevented Nelson from refusing to participate in a same-sex wedding. The ordinance would have also prevented her from explaining her beliefs about marriageon her website or her social media accounts. In other words, the Louisville ordinance would have kept Nelson from publicly statingor acting on her beliefs.
In response to this law, Nelson filed a lawsuit, pointing out that she was being required to choose to “violate the law, forsake her faith, or close her business.” The judge’s decision on Friday allows Nelson to continue to operate her business in accordance with her beliefs as her case continues to move forward. In a statement, Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Jonathan Scruggs said,
The court was right to halt enforcement of Louisville’s law against Chelsey while her case moves forward. She serves everyone. She simply cannot endorse or participate in ceremonies she objects to, and the city has no right to eliminate the editorial control she has over her own photographs and blogs.
Christians are often accused of engaging in politics because we love power and we want to control people. While these accusations are often spurious, it is important that we ask ourselves why engage in politics and what we communicate to the world around us. Our cultural engagement reflects what we believe about God. Because God is sovereign over all, we are free from the politics of fear, so as we engage, we should ask ourselves if our words and our actions reflect this. Do we engage in such a way that people know us by our love?Does the world around us know that we love and celebrate God’s design? Do we approach victories as well as defeats with the confidence that, whatever happens, God is in control, or do we allow ourselves to be consumed by fear and bitterness?
If we place our ultimate hope in anything that is not God, we ask that thing to be something that it is not, distorting its purpose and keeping it from what it was designed to be. As a result, something that was created to be good becomes something harmful.Political engagement is a good thing, but all good things must be kept in their place in order to remain good. If we find that our politics are marked by resentment, fear, and love of power, we should carefully examine our hearts and ask ourselves if we have allowed ourselves to bow to an idol by placing our hope in the political process, instead of God.
Yesterday presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden announced that he had chosen Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate, making for the “most pro-abortion ticket in history.” Senator Harris takes her support for abortion to appalling extremes. Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser pointed out that Harris supports taxpayer-funded abortions on demand up until birth, and has even opposed legislation that would prevent abortion survivors from being denied lifesaving care. She also allowed her support for abortion giant Planned Parenthood interfere with her work as California Attorney General prior to her election to the U.S. Senate in 2016. While she was serving as California Attorney General, Harris ordered a raid on a citizen journalist David Daleiden’s home after he expose Planned Parenthood’s role in the trafficking of body parts from aborted babies. The handling of Daleiden’s case has raised significant concerns regarding freedom of speech and the future of undercover journalism. In May, the Center for Medical Progress filed a lawsuit against Harris and others for “brazen, unprecedented, and ongoing conspiracy,” pointing out that Harris secretly met with Planned Parenthood executives to discuss the investigation shortly before the raid.
As the LGBT movement gains widespread popularity,dissenting voices, including those who have left the LGBT lifestyle, are increasingly being silenced. Facebook has recently joined this trend,enforcing a new “hate speech” policy to remove posts fromorganizations that offer counseling to people dealing with gender dysphoria or unwanted same-sex attraction from Facebook and Instagram. After a targeted campaign from pro-LGBT groups, Facebook decided to remove posts from two non-profits, Core Issues Trust (CIT) and Restored Hope Network, and announced that it would be introducing a new policy classifying content that promotes “conversion therapy” as hate speech under their community guidelines, explaining that they would be doing so because they “don't allow attacks against people based on sexual orientation or gender identity.”
The counseling that Facebook is targeting under this new policy is not an “attack” on anyone, but voluntary talk therapy for people facing gender dysphoria or unwanted same-sex attraction. Ryan T. Anderson pointed out that under Facebook’s new approach, “Content about therapy to help a teen with a body-image struggle due to anorexia would be allowed, but content on the same therapeutic techniques to help a teen with a body-image struggle due to gender dysphoria would be removed.” Family Research Council noted that if Facebook was really interested in free expression, as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently told Congress, they would immediately reverse the decision to engage in this viewpoint discrimination.
Pro-lifers in New York are speaking out against an assembly bill intended to target pro-life pregnancy resource centers. Assembly bill A08212 would direct the commissioner of health to “conduct a study and issue a report examining the unmet health and resource needs facing pregnant women in New York and the impact of limited service pregnancy centers on the ability of women to obtain accurate, non-coercive health care information and timely access to a comprehensive range and reproductive and sexual health care services.” The bill authors reveal a bias against pro-life pregnancy centers by labeling them as “limited service.” Even before the bill has been signed into law, it has already identified what the results of the study ought to be—that pro-life pregnancy centers, because they offer “limited services” by not performing abortions, are leading to unmet needs and offering inaccurate and coercive information.
Abortion is not healthcare, and the fact that pro-life pregnancy centers do not perform abortions does not mean that they are not meeting health and resource needs. It is completely unreasonable to imply that pregnancy resource centers should be obligated to provide abortion, or that they are the cause of “healthcare” shortages because they don’t.
Schools in Madison, Wisconsin have decided to adopt a policy that allows children with gender dysphoria to secretly “transition” at school behind their parents’ backs. Under the policy, teachers are prohibited from informing parents if their student chooses to adopt a new name and pronouns and gain access to restrooms and locker rooms designated for members of the opposite sex. This policy was adopted in 2018 and was challenged by parents living in the Madison Metropolitan School District in December of last year when they sent a letter informing the district that they would sue if the policy was not changed. After the district refused to back down, the parents filed a lawsuit against the school district with the help of Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) and the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).
The school district’s guidance and policies handbook explains to teachers that, unless if a student gives the school permission to inform their parents, the school should not do so. The handbook goes on to say that,
All staff correspondence and communication to families in regard to students shall reflect the name and gender documented in Infinite Campus unless the student has specifically given permission to do otherwise. (This might involve using the student’s affirmed name and pronouns in the school setting, and their legal name and pronouns with family).
You’ve no doubt seen the direction the city is going in. And you've seen our steadfast campaign opposing so-called "Drag Queen Story Hour," which is a threat to children.
Now, there's another threat on the horizon.
Currently, Minneapolis Park Board ordinance PB2-21 states no one 10 years or older is allowed to expose their genitals, pubic area, buttocks or female breast below the top of the areola in a park or parkway, whether or not children are present.
But members of the Minneapolis Park Board are holding a hearing tomorrow (agenda here) to make public female nudity legal in Minneapolis parks and parkways under any and all circumstances.
Parks are, of course, a great resource for families with children. But many families are justifiably opposed to displays of female nudity in front of their young sons and daughters. The park board is continuing the trick that we've seen for several decades, but which is now accelerating: erasing the real differences between men and women.
