Pew Research recently released a report on an accelerating trend in the U.S. — adults who were raised in Christian homes and who formerly described themselves as Christian leaving the Christian faith and joining the growing number of religious “nones.” According to Pew, nearly a third of those raised Christian describe themselves as “nothing in particular” as adults. This trend is expected to continue in the next few decades. Combined with a decrease in “transference” — that is, children who were raised in Christian homes becoming Christians themselves — Pew’s research team predicts that between 2050 and 2070, the majority of Americans will not describe themselves as Christians.
This trend is sobering because it shows that a growing number of people are living their lives without the hope of the gospel. While some of the decline in Christianity in the U.S. is likely due to a shift in cultural attitudes toward Christianity leading to fewer people describing themselves as Christians without holding strong convictions, the rise of “deconstruction” has seen a not insignificant numberof young people who once expressed zeal for their faith now rejecting Christianity.
Pew’s prediction is that this shift won’t see its full effectuntil 30 to 50 years from now. However, their research and research from other groups show that America’s teens and young adults are already experiencing this shift. Atheism is more widespreadamong Generation Z than any previous generation in the U.S. Just over half of America’s teenagers are Christians, and a little less than half of adults in their 20s.
A study released earlier this year 43% of adults between the ages of 20 and 65 say that children and teens with gender dysphoria should not be subjected to puberty-blockers, cross-sex hormones, and so-called “sex reassignment” surgery. However, a more recent study asked a slightly different question. This study asked if people believed that transgenderism is a healthy condition and whether they were willing to say so publicly. 64% said that it was not a healthy condition, but only 30% were willing to say so publicly. 78% were opposed to children being encouraged to undergo gender transition. Similarly, 63% of American adults were opposed to redefining sex to include “gender identity.”
The majority of children who struggle with gender dysphoria become comfortable with their bodies by the time they reach adulthood if they do not undergo social or medical “transition.” “Transitioning” a child signs him up for a lifetime of invasive medical interventions that come with serious, lifelong consequences. Because God’s Word accurately describes his world, we know that the biblical view of gender and sexuality is the truthand that our bodies follow that design.
U.S. Senate Considers Abortion Extremism, Senator Tina Smith Praises Planned Parenthood
On Monday of this week, the U.S. Senate voted on the most radical abortion bill in history.The “Women’s Health Protection Act” would have established a “right” to abortion in federal law and removed state-level protections for the unborn, allowing abortion up until birth in all 50 states. The bill would also have preventedthe government from holding abortion facilities to certain medical standards and would have removed limits on mail-order abortions. In a vote that fell almost entirely along party lines, it did not receive the 60 votes it needed to pass. Both of Minnesota’s Senators, Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, voting in favor of abortion extremism.
Amid growinginternationalpushback on the transgender movement’s so-called “gender affirmative” approach to gender dysphoria and the rush to give minors experimental treatments including puberty-blockers, cross-sex hormones, and irreversible surgeries, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) has released new draft guidelines recommending a less radical approach than they have held to in the past. Rather than immediately rushing adolescents into a lifetime of hormone “treatments” and surgeries, the draft guidelines recommend mental health evaluation and several years of monitoring for adolescents with gender dysphoria, although they continue to encourage harmful and irreversible procedures after that.
WPATH, an international organization headquartered in Minnesota, plays an extremely influential role in the use of so-called “treatments” such as cross-sex hormones and “gender transition” surgery. Throughout the rest of the draft guidelines, WPATH continues to recommend so-called “gender affirmative treatments” that have caused permanent harm to young people and adults, yet the proposed draft offers slightly more protection to adolescents struggling with gender dysphoria than recommendations from major medical associations in the U.S. WPATH’s shift, slight though it is, also shows that on an international level, the transgender movement is recognizing that they may be held accountable for the damage they have caused.
WPATH’s draft guidelines added a chapter on adolescents requiring a full mental health evaluation and several years of monitoring before receiving cross-sex hormones or surgery. The guidelines continue to recommend irreversible surgeries for minors, including mastectomies for girls as young as 15 and “bottom surgery” for 17-year-old girls, although they do not recommend similar surgery for boys under 18. The guidelines also removed requirements that adults receive mental health evaluation, despite the fact that many adults who have detransitioned have spoken up about how the mental health struggles that were driving their gender dysphoria were not adequately addressed when they sought help.
A recent study released by George Barna found that 39% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 identify as LGBTQ and that 30% of adults under the age of 37 do. The study’s findings also point to a significant shift that is taking place in the worldview of younger Americans, especially when it comes to how they think about identity — the study reported that 75% of young adults are searching for a purpose and that, while over half describe themselves as religious, 74% believe that all faiths are equal.
While Barna’s numbers are significantly higher than those reported by Gallup earlier this year, both studies show that the number of young Americans who identify as LGBT has increased dramatically in recent years. Writers like Abigail Shrierhave pointed out that social contagion plays a significant role in the number of young people suddenly identifying as LGBT, and especially in the rise of transgenderism. As school curricula, the entertainment industry, woke corporations, and other champions of the LGBT movement insist on reducing male and female to rigid and cartoonish stereotypes, young people are encouraged “to look constantly for landmark feelings or impulses, anything that might point toward ‘genderfluid,’ ‘genderqueer,’ ‘asexual,’ or ‘non-binary.’”
Last week Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison joined 18 other attorneys in asking a federal court to remove religious freedom protections for colleges and universities. In an amicus brief filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, the attorneys general urge the court to rule against Christian colleges and universities in the case Hunter v. U.S. Department of Education. The lawsuitis seeking to stripreligious colleges and universities of fundingfor holding to Biblical beliefs on marriage and sexuality.As Al Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, put it, this lawsuit “is a deliberate effort by a major means of coercion to bring an end to institutions of Christian conviction, that operate as colleges and universities and seminaries.”
Although the case focuses Christian colleges and universities,initially, the only defendant in the case was the Department of Education. By suing the Department of Education, the lawsuit would have been able to target religious institutions without giving them an opportunity to speak in their own defense. This was especially concerning given the federal government’s reluctance to come to the defense of religious freedom.
In many ways, the decision to terminate a pregnancy is not unlike the decision to go through transition: It is a fundamentally private choice that can be made only by the individual in question — a person who alone knows the truth of their heart, who alone can understand what the consequences of their choices will be in the years to come.
While Boylan is incorrect in how the two movements are two sides of the same coin, it is true that abortion and transgenderism are rooted in the same set of ideas. Both rest on the assumption that one’s “true self” or personhood can be separated from biological realities and both have a distorted understanding of the purpose of medicine.
Just as the abortion movement insists that an unborn child is not a person even though science has proven that life begins at conception,the transgender movement insists that a person’s “true self” can be separate from his or her physical body. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Justice Anthony Kennedy infamouslystated, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." In that statement, he captures the mindsetthat is behind both abortion and transgenderism — the idea that each of us has the “right” to define our own concept of existence.
This week is Banned Books Week,a week that the American Library Association claims “brings together the entire book community — librarians, booksellers, publishers, journalists, teachers, and readers of all types — in shared support of the freedom to seek and to express ideas, even those some consider unorthodox or unpopular.” However, in a year that saw major corporations engaging in viewpoint discrimination, two books that faced bans this year for daring to question the transgender agenda, When Harry Became Sally by Ryan T. Anderson and Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier, were notably absent from this year’s “Challenged book list.” As Thomas Spence, President of Regnery Publishing noted, Banned Books Week is proving itself to be nothing more than a “gimmicky promotion [that] caters primarily to those who believe that schoolchildren should have access to anything bound between two covers without the interference of those busybodies we call parents.”
Earlier this year, Amazon removed Anderson’s book on transgenderism without any warning or explanation. When they finally broke their silence, they doubled down, insisting that When Harry Became Sally, which had been listed on their website for three years without any issues, violated their standards.
“Until I’m told otherwise, I prefer to call you ‘they,’” wrote a Yale Law School professor in a Washington Post op-ed this week. Professor Ian Ayres explains that his new “default rule” of using gender-neutral pronouns until told otherwise keeps him from “misgendering” students. “I would never intentionally misidentify someone else’s gender — but I unfortunately risk doing so until I learn that person’s pronouns. That’s why, as I begin a new school year, I am trying to initially refer to everyone as ‘they,’” he explains. He goes on to encourage readers whose “preferred pronouns” are either he or she to adopt “he/they” or “she/they” instead “because it would give others the freedom not to specify your gender when referring to you.”
In other words, at one of the top universities in the world,a law professor would like all of his students, and for that matter, the population at large, to join him in a daily denial of the reality of male and female. To refer to someone as “they” until you have learned his or her “gender identity” is to pretend that humans are fundamentally gender-neutral. This denies an essential reality of what it is to be human. As Carl Trueman recently remarked in First Things, “when we decry pronouns that assume the reality of bodily sex, we are coming close to denying the universal truth that all humans are embodied beings.” To be human is to be embodied, and to be embodied means that we are either male or female — “he” or “she,” not “they.”
A recent Wall Street Journal investigation offered a glimpse into the world that a minor when scrolling through Tik Tok, the most popular social media platform among America’s teenagers. It wasn’t pretty. The journalists set up 31 fake Tik Tok accounts posing as 13–15-year-old users and discovered that the algorithm very quickly started showing them sexually explicit content, sexual violence, and links to OnlyFans. The fact that the age set on each of the 31 accounts was set at 15 or younger made no difference as pornographic content and links made their way into each account’s feed.
It’s not just Tick Tock — in their book Treading Boldly Through a Pornographic World, Daniel Weiss and Joshua Glaser report that, while 18% of 13–17-year-olds report that they seek out pornographic content on a weekly basis, over 20% say that they come across it unintentionally on a weekly basis. We live in a pornified culture, and parents today are presented with the challenge of navigating a world in which most children will have been exposed to pornography by the time they turn 13 and a growing number of children are addicted to pornography. In light of this sobering reality, it is imperative that families and churches gain a clear understanding of this issue and respond wisely as we embrace beauty of God’s design for sexuality and reject the distortions that our culture offers.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and his “husband” Chasten recently created a stir by announcing that they had adoptednewborns Penelope Roseand Joseph August.In a rather uncomfortable photo-op, the two men are pictured in a hospital bed as if one of them had just given birth,despite the glaringly obvious fact that neither of them ever have or ever will. Not pictured, somewhere, out of frame, Penelope and Joseph have a mother who recently brought them into the world. And they will grow up without her.
But what is the response coming from mainstream media and fawning twitter followers? “Beautiful!” “Wonderful” “Hope for the future!” If the future is children being raised without a mother (or without a father) in order to fulfill adults’ desires,then the future is not as rosy as people claim.
Placing the desires of adults over the needs of children should not be normalized and it certainly should not be celebrated. These two little ones will grow up with anything money can offer, but what they will be missing is something that money can never buy: a mother.
Parents and school board members in Russell County, Virginia rejected the Virginia Department of Education’s radical transgender policies in a unanimous vote last Friday.The policies were enacted by the VDOE after the Virginia legislature passed a bill mandating the change.However, as the Family Foundation of Virginia has pointed out,the policies required by the legislature present an unconstitutional attack on freedom of religion, free speech, parental rights, and the privacy and safety of students. The Family Foundation is also part of a lawsuit challenging the VDOE’s unconstitutional policies.
VDOE’s model policy would allow students to access restrooms and locker rooms on the basis of their “gender identity” rather than their biological sex, require students, teachers, and staff to refer to students using their “preferred pronouns,” disregarding any religious objections they may have, and event encourages schools to conceal information from the parents of students who are struggling with gender dysphoria and help students “transition” behind their parents’ backs. At a Russell County Board of Education meeting last month, parents pointed out that these policies are not rooted in science but are “a mandatory promotion of a sexualized agenda.”
21 state attorneys general are calling out the Biden administration’s pro-LGBT policiesfor threatening religious freedom, freedom of speech, and privacy rights. In a letter sent to the administration last week, the attorneys general address the recent guidance issued by the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission and the Department of Education expanding the definition of “sex” to include gender identity and sexual orientation in compliance with a January executive order from President Biden. The letter points out that States and individuals were not given any opportunity to submit feedback through the public comment process as the EEOC and Education Department finalized policies in response to a presidential executive order earlier this year. Instead, the guidance was issued unilaterally by the respective agencies.
Last year in Bostock v. Clayton County the Supreme Court redefined “sex” in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to include gender identity and sexual orientation. Immediately after taking office, President Biden issued an executive order requiring all federal agencies to adopt the Court’s sweeping redefinition of the word “sex and to implement policies that include sexual orientation and gender identity in their definition of sex-based discrimination.
A Minnesota school district agreed to a $218,500 settlement with a former student who claimed that she was discriminated againstwhen her school did not allow her to access the boys’ locker room and restroom. In 2015, Helene Woods’s daughter, who had begun using masculine pronouns and adopted the name Matt, informed officials at the Buffalo-Hanover-Montrose School District that she wanted to use the boys’ restroom and locker rooms. The school refused, instead arranging for “Matt” Woods to use a single-occupancy bathroom and changing room. This, however, did not solve the situation. In 2019, Helene Woods filed a lawsuit against the District on behalf of her daughter. This week the District agreed to a settlement in the case.
In a statement, the District said that it has not admitted to any wrongdoing. Nor should it! The school district took steps to accommodate Woods when she brought up her discomfort, and did so in a manner that did not compromise the privacy of other students. However, as part of the settlement, Buffalo-Hanover-Montrose School District agreed to policy changes that allow students access to bathrooms and locker rooms and compete on sports teams that match their self-professed “gender identity” rather than their biological sex.
On January 1, a California state law allowing male inmates who identify as female to request transfer to women’s prisons went into effect. Since then, the state has received over 250 transfer requests from men asking to be transferred. According to documents obtained by Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), more than one man who has already been transferredhas been convicted of sexual assault. Due to a similar policy in Washington state, Washington Correctional Center for Women currently houses a serial rapist. Connecticut and Massachusetts have both passed similar legislation.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Abigail Shrier explains that, unlike most men’s prisons, women’s prisons do not separate inmates based on the severity of their crimes. Also unlike men’s prisons, Central California Women’s Facility in Cowchilla, which currently houses eleven male inmates, houses eight inmates to a room, with a sink and toilet inside the cell and only a cowboy door for modesty. This allows neither privacy nor escapefor women who are uncomfortable or feel unsafe being housed with male prisoners.
“I went for two appointments and after the second one I had my letter to go get on cross-sex hormones.”
“[My therapist] didn’t really go into what my gender dysphoria might be stemming from. We only did a few sessions.”
“When everything that I set out to do was done, I still felt incomplete.”
These are the words of the young men and women who recently spoke to 60 Minutes about why they left the transgender movement. In each case, they sought help for gender dysphoria and depression and were very quickly put on a path toward cross-sex hormones and surgery only to experience regret after the fact. Sadly, stories like theirs are becoming all too common. Amid a rise in rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) the transgender movement continues to push for unquestioning affirmation when a young person is struggling with the feeling that they were born in the wrong body and encourage young adults, teenagers, and even young children to undergo puberty-blockers, cross-sex hormones, and irreversible surgeries.
After watching biological males win their athletic events, fouryoung women in Connecticut stood up to the policy that cost them titles, opportunities, and potential scholarships. This week, a federal judge dismissed their case challenging the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference’s policy allowing biological males to compete in female athletics. Rather than weigh the merits of the case, the judge dismissed it as no longer relevant because the two male athletes who had been competing have since graduated. With the help of Alliance Defending Freedom, the four athletes are appealing the ruling.
In 2017, the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) began to allow biological males who identify as female to compete in female athletic events. Very quickly, two male athletes, Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood began to dominate in girls’ track and field, and young women watched by the sidelines as their athletic events were won by young men. Alliance Defending Freedom has noted that two male athletes had, between the two of them, taken 15 women’s state championship titles and more than 85 opportunities to participate in higher-level competitions from female track athletes in the 2017, 2018, and 2019 seasons.
The Biden administration is appealing a federal judge’sruling affirming that religious hospitals should not be required to perform gender transition surgeries in violation of their deeply held beliefs.
In January, U.S. District Court Judge Peter Welte cited the Religious Freedom Restoration Act when he ruled in favor of Sisters of Mercy, an order of nuns committed to providing medical care to people in need. The Biden administration wants to see this ruling overturned and has filed an appeal in hopes of forcing religious hospitals to comply with the transgender agenda. Recently appointed HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra is leading the charge.
On Monday evening, Bloomington became the ninthMinnesota city to adopt a so-called “conversion therapy ban.” Other cities that have adopted these bans include Minneapolis, Saint Paul, Duluth, and Rochester. With Bloomington joining their ranks, that means the five largest cities in Minnesota have adopted counseling bans. These draconianbans prevent minors who are struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria from receiving counseling to help them live in accordance with their biological sex.
By policing what a licensed counselor or therapist may say to his or her clients, these bans inappropriately infringe on the relationship between mental health care providers and their clients. Under Bloomington’s ban, mental health professionals can be fined $500 for their first violation and $1000 for subsequent violations if they offer counseling that does not fall in line with the LGBT agenda.
It is not the place of elected officials to determine who gets counseling care and who doesn’t, and yet that is exactly what these bans do. These bans prevent families and individuals from pursuing and licensed professionals from offering counsel that accords with their Christian beliefs.
For young people struggling with gender dysphoria, counseling bans leave them to be ushered into social transition and medical “treatments” that carry tragic life-long effects and do not improve mental health outcomes. The vast majority of minors struggling with gender dysphoria who do not “transition” become comfortable with their biological sex by the time they reach adulthood.
This week Arkansas made history by becoming the first state to protect children with gender dysphoria from puberty-blockers, cross-sex hormones, and mutilating sex-reassignment surgeries. On Monday, Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson vetoed the bill, arguing that it abandons conservative principles of limited government. Thankfully, the legislature overrode his veto on Tuesday afternoon.
By claiming that this bill goes against conservative principles, Hutchinson disregards the seriousness of so-called “gender-affirming treatments” for children with gender dysphoria, which prevent the normal development that happens during puberty. These “treatments,” which often dismiss underlying mental health concerns, are experimental, and have dangerous side effects, leaving children chemically castrated. Chemical interventions are frequently followed by mutilating surgeries to create the appearance of opposite-sex genitalia, and double mastectomies have been performed on girls as young as 13.
“Limited government” does not mean that the government should allow experimentation on children, or that we cannot unequivocally say that it is wrong to tell a child that he or she was born in the wrong body. And “limited government” certainly does not mean that the government gets to abdicate its responsibility to protect children from abusive practices at the hands of adults.
