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.
This week a House committee considered a group of bills known as the “Equal Rights Amendment.” Far from upholding rights as the name suggests, these bills would discriminate against women. In a statement to the State Government Finance and Elections Committee, Minnesota Family Council’s Rebecca Delahunt wrote, “The bills’ discrimination of women is one among many concerns regarding the ERA. These bills seek to create a gender-neutral culture and erase women from participation in society.”
Earlier in the session, Minnesota Family Council’s Policy Director, Veronica Missling submitted the following testimony regarding this group of bills:
Minnesota supports equality before the law for all Americans, but that’s not what the Equal Rights Amendment actually does. Men and women already have equal protections under the 5th and 14th Amendments, and numerous Minnesota laws already prohibit sex discrimination in employment, education, housing, and many other areas.
This week True North Legal General Counsel Renee Carlson and Minnesota Family Council’s Assistant Policy Director Rebecca Delahunt submitted written testimony forthe House Preventive Health Policy Division’s hearing on HF 2516, a so-called “conversion therapy ban” that would threaten First Amendment rights and would infringe on the client-counselor relationship by limiting what licensed therapists and counselors can sayto clients who are struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria. You can read Minnesota Family Council’s testimony below and True North Legal’s testimony here.
Minnesota Family Council represents tens of thousands of families across the state, and we urge you to oppose HF 2156.
The proposed “conversion therapy” ban is in fact a threat to the ability of all Minnesotans to set their own therapeutic goals and to receive the counseling they believe is right for them. It interferes directly in the relationship between mental health professionals and patients, and it would limit the rights of parents and children to seek appropriate care.
This week True North Legal General Counsel Renee Carlson and Minnesota Family Council’s Assistant Policy Director Rebecca Delahunt submitted written testimony forthe House Preventive Health Policy Division’s hearing on HF 2516, a so-called “conversion therapy ban” that would threaten First Amendment rights and would infringe on the client-counselor relationship by limiting what licensed therapists and counselors can sayto clients who are struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria. You can read True North Legal’s testimony below and Minnesota Family Council’s testimony here.
True North Legal is a non-profit legal organization that advocates for life, family, and religious freedom on behalf of all Minnesotans. We offer the following high-level analysis regarding significant legal and policy concerns relating to HF 2156.
“Conversion Therapy Ban” proposals prohibiting licensed mental health professionals in the state from practicing so- called conversion therapy raise significant legal and policy concerns relating to medical access for all Minnesotans. These bans are unnecessary, unconstitutional, and cause more harm than the good these bills propose to remedy.
Parents’ rights to direct the education of their children does not end when their child goes to school. But are Minnesota schools allowing parents to exercise that right? History is telling. Over the last decade local state agencies, educational organizations, lobbyists, school boards, and administrators have created policies that undermine parental rights. Consider these few examples:
· Minnesota State High School League’s (MSHSL) decision to allow males to play on female sports teams despite significant parent testimony opposing the board’s changes;
· The Minnesota Department of Education’s (MDE) implementation of the Transgender Toolkit over the objections and concerns of many parents;
· The Public Educator Licensing Standards Board’s (PELSB) lack of transparency with regard to changing teacher licensing standards and cultural competency as statutorily defined.
Practically, these changes opened the door to school policies that: Circumvent parental notice in matters relating to students’ physical and emotional health, discipline students for acting consistent with various religious and moral upbringings, teach students about sexuality and how to obtain contraceptives without parental knowledge, and allow teachers to use curriculum that would be considered pornographic in almost any other context outside of diverse literary content.
Nearly 100 years ago the U.S. Supreme Court recognized the constitutional right and responsibility of parents over their minor children, especially in matters relating to their child’s education and upbringing, holding “a child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations…” After all, as the Court later affirmed, “parents possess what a child lacks in maturity, experience, and capacity for judgment.”
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.
You have probably heard much about the so-called “infrastructure bill” over the past few weeks, culminating with its passage in the United States Senate just a couple of days ago. The bill now heads to the House of Representatives for a vote. But did you know that the infrastructure bill isn’t just about highways, railroads, and broadband?
That’s right – tucked away in the bill are hidden provisions known as “SOGI language.” SOGI stands for “sexual orientation and gender identity.” The infrastructure bill, which just passed the Senate, proposes to elevate the SOGI groups to federally protected classes, even though those classes are poorly defined.
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.
