Reykdal Showcases Bias, Misinterpretation of Human Rights and Religious Liberty at OSPI

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As a former member of the Washington House and Senate, I’ve had many opportunities to work with Chris Reykdal, currently Washington’s Superintendent of Public Instruction. Chris is a very intelligent, genuine, and honest man – someone I, despite our many disagreements, have always respected.

But I will admit that I was a little surprised last week to see Reykdal go so far as to claim that a federal Department of Education rule regarding religious institutions hiring only people who practiced and believed in their religion was, in fact, a violation of human rights. (Of course, this could open a deeper conversation about the meaning of human rights, but we’ll save that for another day).

His tweet was in response to an Orlando Sentinel reporter’s story about faith-based schools in Florida who receive federal funds through an authorized state voucher program.

While the frustration expressed by Reykdal did include his interpretation of the separation of church and state, it appeared to me that he was actually more concerned that faith-based schools were allowed to receive funds and simultaneously not be expected to violate their own statements of faith and beliefs on marriage, sexuality, and human identity.

At its core, I believe this tweet is actually a confirmation of the fact that a hostile pagan or radical secular anti-Christian agenda is now dominating WA state’ public school system. While I believe that progressives, pagans, and the new radical left greatly and perhaps intentionally misunderstand the intent behind the concept of the “separation of church and state,” the fact that government would expect any religious entity to abandon the very tenets of its own faith in order to receive public funding is ridiculous, and counter to the 200 plus-year history of our country.

This statement by the Washington education chief was a direct appeal to force schools to be abandon their religious beliefs on marriage or sexuality, and to adopt the radical progressive or pagan moral positions. In order words, we want the state to spend money to turn all Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and others into believing Pagans and atheists.

Of course, no organized religion can survive when a tyrannical government is able to force religious organizations to hire teachers, preachers, or leaders who teach or work against the organization’s own stated faith.

The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing a case right now, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, which may overturn the bigoted, KKK-supported Blaine Amendments (of which Washington has one) which prohibits faith-based schools, from receiving public funding for educating children while allowing only pagan or radical secular schools to receive money.

Mr. Reykdal, I cannot predict the future, but if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns the Blaine Amendment and rules in favor of religious freedom, I can promise you that Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other religious believers will demand parental choice and abandon, in mass, the harmful, leftist-dominated, highly sexualized, public-school systems, in favor of private charter schools. The Family Policy Institute of Washington will be a leader in this fight for religious freedom and parental choice in schools.

The first line of the U.S Constitution’s First Amendment is clear and unambiguous: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

It is time Chris Reykdal and the leftist, secular establishment here in Washington state reject KKK-supported Blaine Amendment provisions and end the blatant discrimination and prohibition against Christians and other faithful religions in regard to school funding.

The battle against religious bigotry begins this year here in Washington State.

Women Under Attack by Democrat-Controlled Legislatures

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HB 2201, a bill to protect women’s sports in Washington State, has been introduced by Rep. Brad Klippert (R-Kennewick).

Women’s sports have long been a method for women to achieve scholarships or compete on the world stage. If women are forced to continue competing against male athletes, who, in every way other than their own claim, are men and have a clear biological advantage in many cases, women’s athletic achievement will be at significant risk.

Several states are seeking to implement these protections for women in 2020.

As the war on biology by pagan activists and anti-science radicals has progressively devolved over the last few years, the distinction between male and female, once soundly protected by the scientific realities of chromosomal anatomy, has been intentionally blurred and distorted in a social experiment aimed at creating a utopian, “genderless” world.

While many of the national stories on the issue of gender and “gender dysphoria” tend to focus on children, one of the more immediate casualties of this political social experiment is actually true, biological women.

Pagan and anti-science activists have spent a lot of time and resources selling society a narrative that men and women actually have no biological distinctions, and that gender is a mere “social construct” that need not be applied any longer. Despite a general appreciation for observed science in many states, many of these activists have actually been somewhat successful in their sales pitch.

Even the Olympic Committee has relaxed its previous requirements that men who claim to be women must have sex reassignment surgery before being allowed to compete as a woman. Now, it merely takes a verbal statement, “I am a woman,” to compete – even on the Olympic stage.

It isn’t hard to imagine scenarios where biological women are significantly diminished or even eliminated from their own sports.

Even the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), an organization comprised of typically-liberal radical feminists, believes that leftists have gone too far in their efforts to promote a genderless world, and have actually implemented policies that hurt women.

And former Olympic athletes are weighing in, too.

Ana Paula Henkel, a former Brazilian Olympic volleyball player, had this to say: “This rushed and heedless decision to include biological men, born and built with testosterone, with their height, their strength and aerobic capacity of men, is beyond the sphere of tolerance. It represses, embarrasses, humiliates and excludes women.”

While it’s certainly possible to make sound logical arguments on behalf of women’s sports, we also believe that the Bible was clear about God’s design and intention for mankind: “Male and female created he them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created” (Genesis 5:2 KJV).

If you want to protect women’s sports, want to push back on progressives’ gender-fluidity push, or even simply have a reverence for biological science, please call or email your legislators and ask them to support HB 2201. You can find your legislator and their contact information here.

The Murder School

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We’ve written before about the fraudulent nature of the “pro-choice” label. If you weren’t convinced then, you should be after reading this. The nation’s premier abortionist training school, the University of California San Francisco, is coaching future abortionists to convince conflicted mothers into killing their babies.

The UCSF Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health is a “medical school” through which the abortionist training program, known as the Kenneth J Ryan Residency Training Program, is run. The program was founded in 1999 by former National Abortion Federation president Uta Landy and is funded by billionaire abortion activist Warren Buffett to the tune of about $50 million per year.

Between chapters regarding the different methods of killing preborn human beings, their “Early Abortion Training Guide” contains a section on pregnancy counseling. In it, abortionists are coached through the process of convincing pregnant mothers to kill their offspring. The following are suggested lines for use by abortionists:

  • “You are a responsible person and may be making the most responsible decision by not continuing the pregnancy.”
  • “Being a hard decision doesn’t make it wrong.”
  • “It sounds like you are being thoughtful and making the responsible decision.”
  • “It sounds like you are choosing to do the thing based on what is going on in your life.”
  • “What I hear is that you are making this decision because you care about your future and everyone involved.”
  • “It sounds like this is the best decision for you and you should give yourself credit for making that decision.”

Later in the chapter, directions are given for convincing religious mothers to kill their babies. This includes giving them books regarding the supposed moral affirmation of abortion given by different faiths and referring them to religiously identifying pro-abortion organizations. The objective of this spiritual counseling is to figure out “what is getting in the way of [the mother’s] feeling like a good person,” and finding a way to justify child sacrifice within the framework of her religious beliefs.

Nowhere in the “Pregnancy Options Counseling Techniques” section of the guidebook is any alternative to abortion addressed. These people would have you believe they’re “pro-choice.”

Of course, that’s nonsense. They are abortion enthusiasts and profiteers. No money is made and no ground taken in the sexual revolution by referring pregnant mothers to adoption agencies or legitimate, non-murderous hospitals.

Their objectives are clear and the necessary response on our part, equally so. We must relentlessly call abortion what it is, murder, and call the abortionists at UCSF and elsewhere what they are, murderers. Many have given up the pretense of even denying these accusations leaving no good reason for us to let them off the hook by choosing soft language.

Further, we need to act like abortion is murder. Act as though you live in a society that has killed 60 million innocent babies because you do. There are people all over the state doing great work to expose the evil of abortion. That message needs to be amplified and your involvement helps accomplish that.

James Silberman is a guest contributor to the FPIW Blog from Gig Harbor, WA.  James is Created Equal’s Media Relations Specialist and editor of the Created Equal Blog. You can also find his writing at The Federalist and on Twitter.  He can be reached at james@createdequal.org.

Do Parents Have the Right to Seek Help for Their Children?

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Who decides what medical or mental health care is best for your child? Would it surprise you to know that in the mental health arena the ‘age of consent’ is only 13 years of age in Washington?  Like laws surrounding abortion, parents of adolescents are potentially cut out of the decision making and mental health care of their teenage children.

When it comes to mental health treatment for issues of sexual orientation or gender identity, it could be even worse.

Conversion therapy, the use of talk therapy to help children suffering from questions of Sexual Orientation or Gender Dysphoria, was banned in Seattle as of August 2016.

The legislation sponsored by Councilmember M. Lorena González made the practice of conversion therapy on minors by licensed medical or mental-health professionals punishable by fines of up to $1,000. It also prohibits the advertising of conversion therapy.

In 2017, the Washington state senate introduced SB5722, which would extend the ban to minors statewide. When the legislature returns early in 2018, the debate is set to continue.  If such a ban were to pass, parents would not be able to seek mental health treatment for their children who may be struggling with gender identity or sexual orientation issues.

The American Psychological Association (APA) calls transgender, an “umbrella term for persons whose gender identity, gender expression or behavior does not conform to that typically associated with the sex to which they were assigned at birth.” The diagnosis often assigned these individuals by the clinical community is Gender Dysphoria. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) contains separate criteria for diagnosing it in adults and adolescents versus children.

While it is typically recognized that adult citizens of the United States have full jurisdiction over their own medical choices, those under 18 are considered under the authority of their parents. A debate, on these terms, surrounding the appropriate treatment for children and adolescents who may be transgender is taking shape all around the world.

The Daily Mail recently profiled parents who felt the state-sponsored, National Health Service (NHS) in England was pressuring their kids to go through with medical procedures to change their sex. The article reports that one mother was shocked to find her child being referred to a specialist transgender clinic, after only a 40-minute evaluation. Some of the parents made claims that their children only began hating the biological sex they were born after cases of extreme bullying by other students and that NHS employees refused to listen to their claims.

The rush to label children transgender comes on the heels of the NHS signing a “memorandum of understanding,” which is nearly identical to implementing a ban on conversion therapy. The memorandum makes it illegal for staff to challenge the person’s gender confusion.

It is pertinent to note that the science on this matter has not been settled yet either. There is much debate in the medical community as to whether transgender is a clinical disorder and furthermore if those who don’t adhere to the gender binary deserve protections similar to that which is guaranteed based upon immutable characteristics like race.

Dr. Quentin Vanmeter, a pediatric endocrinologist from the American College of Pediatricians does not view transgenderism as a civil rights issue. He says that transgenderism is a mental health issue, and there is no scientific evidence that it’s a physiological phenomenon. He believes that treating it as if it’s a natural phenomenon and speaking about it as a civil rights issue is doing a disservice to the children struggling with this type of mental illness.

He’s not alone either, former Chief of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, Dr. Paul McHugh, also believes that being transgender is a psychological problem, not a biological phenomenon. He thinks that transgender individuals should be referred to mental health counseling, not surgery.  A statewide ban such as Seattle’s on talk-therapy for minors dealing with gender dysphoria would make this impossible.

With a degree of doubt cast on the advocacy of LGBT groups painting transgender as a biological phenomenon and not a psychological problem, parents need to be skeptical of hormone therapies and sex reassignment surgery, which hold the potential to alter a child or adolescent’s  life indefinitely.

Parents should have the right to explore all of the options available for their children and adolescents and make the decision that seems most appropriate to them, not the state.

Genevieve Malandra is a contributing writer to Family Policy Institute of Washington.

The Devil Hit the Jackpot

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[Editor’s Note: As FPIW prepared to post this entry, the following quote appeared on a Facebook Friend’s timeline; it serves as an excellent introduction.  “What a jackpot the devil hit with the sexual revolution. Hard to imagine it delivering for him more than it has (including its own ongoing, no-end-in-sight genocide).”]

It comes as little surprise to those veterans of the so-called “culture wars,” who have for decades been predicting the catastrophic consequences of abandoning traditional sexual norms in favor of the spirit of the age. Nonetheless, it is astonishing to stand at a distance and survey the carnage it has wrought on our society. The damage of the sexual revolution is most clearly seen in the mass slaughter of innocents via abortion, the prevalence of STDs in America today, and sky-high rates of porn usage.

Undoubtedly, the bloodiest fruit of the sexual revolution is the normalization and legalization of elective abortion. Since Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton forced abortion on all 50 states in 1973, more than 55 million babies have been dismembered, starved, and burned alive. Our medical waste buckets are full of the dead bodies of our children, and we have no one to blame but ourselves. If this were all, it would be enough to condemn the sexual revolution and abandon its precepts to the trash heap of history. Unfortunately, it doesn’t end here.

It turns out that ram-rodding “comprehensive” sexual education classes into our schools and giving billions of dollars to Planned Parenthood is not enough to create institutions capable of handling the fallout from the sexual revolution and a culture dominated by casual sex. As evidence, one need look no further than the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). According to recent CDC statistics, at any given time 110 million Americans, or about 1 in 3, has an STD. Mind you that these numbers include both the very young and the very old, so If they were isolated for just the sexually active the numbers would be even higher.

Equally concerning is the astronomically high rate of porn consumption. A 2014 Barna survey found that 79% of men aged 18-30 reported watching porn at least monthly. This piece is not an article on the harm of pornography—abler pens than mine have devoted themselves to that question more efficiently than I can in this blog. Suffice to say that porn is not a laughing matter, and its prevalence in our society is an awful testament to the pervasiveness of the sexual revolution.

It becomes difficult to separate these three consequences from each other, and this is understandable because they are related. They are different fruits from the same deadly tree. Enough souls have been broken and spirits crushed by the insidious lies of the sexual revolution. As David French recently wrote in National Review: “Now is the time for Christians to leave their defensive crouch, to approach the public square with confidence. A wounded and broken sexual culture searches for answers. Who are we to withhold the truth?” In light of the sad state of our culture, the church must prepare itself to love and serve the survivors of the deadliest revolution of our time—the sexual revolution.

Porn statistics found at- https://www.provenmen.org/pornography-survey-statistics-2014/
David French’s quote is from- http://www.nationalreview.com/article/452683/sex-consent-morality-culture-ruined-sexual-revolution

Bryce Asberg is a contributing writer to Family Policy Institute and a full-time student at Hillsdale College.

With more teens “sexting,” should we abandon child pornography laws?

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Do minors have a First Amendment right to take and distribute sexually explicit photos of themselves? The answer is no, according to a 6-3 ruling by the Washington State Supreme Court.

A 17-year-old in Spokane was charged with and convicted of “dealing in depictions of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct” under state law after he texted a picture of his erect genitalia to a 22-year-old woman. Arguing that the First Amendment guarantees his right to express himself by sending sexually explicit images of himself to others, he appealed to the Washington State Supreme Court after the appeals court affirmed the trial court’s decision.

Astonishingly, the ACLU and supposed children’s rights organizations Columbia Legal Services and TeamChild filed a brief to the court on behalf of the 17-year-old defendant. In their brief, the organizations argued that the court’s ruling would “jeopardize thousands of minors across the state by criminalizing increasingly common and normative adolescent behavior [using phones to distribute sexually explicit pictures of minors].”

To some extent, the ACLU and their friends are right. Children shouldn’t be forced to register as a sex offender simply because they voluntarily took pictures of their genitalia and consensually swapped it with someone from school (most of the time, law enforcement show no interest in pursuing such offenses). There exists a significant difference between an adult distributing pornographic images of minors, a high school boy sending pictures of his naked minor girlfriend to his friends, and a high school student texting lewd photos of him- or herself to someone he or she knows. Our state laws should be updated to reflect the growing phenomenon of sexting, a practice that wasn’t even technologically possible decades ago when these child pornography laws were enacted.

On the other hand, states have the legal authority and moral responsibility to criminalize the distribution of sexually explicit images of minors. It makes no difference that sexting has become “increasingly common and normative adolescent behavior.” That the practice is becoming increasingly prevalent is all the more reason to make clear that such behavior will not be tolerated.

Indeed, the same reasoning used by the ACLU and their friends is often also used by those who promote the distribution of birth control and prophylactics to high school students. “The kids are already having sex,” they say, “so we should ensure that they can have consequence-free safe sex.” But this logic was proven faulty by a study published this summer in The Journal of Health Economics showing that pregnancy rates fell by over 40% after cuts were made to contraceptive-based sexual education programs in England.

Minors who practice sexting are simultaneously engaging in distributing and possessing child pornography. Washington State has rightly criminalized this behavior. Although our laws should be modified to recognize the reality of voluntary consensual sexting among youths, we shouldn’t abandon the prohibition on (and penalties for) child pornography merely because more children are engaging in it. If anything, the sexting epidemic only proves that these laws are needed now more than ever.

Yakima School District Principal Instructs Teachers to Lie to Parents

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A Yakima teacher is blowing the whistle on school administrators who he claims instructed him and his coworkers to “engage in active deception towards parents with regard to trans-gendered students.”

In a Facebook post on August 28, Jeremy Wuitschick, a teacher at Lewis and Clark Middle School in Yakima, WA, gave details about an interaction with the principal at a staff meeting:

YSD [Yakima School District] PARENTS PLEASE SHARE: Today our principal instructed teachers to engage in ACTIVE DECEPTION TOWARDS PARENTS with regard to trans-gendered students that ask to be called a name of a different gender. I am a teacher at Lewis and Clark Middle School.

I confirmed this by repeating this question three times to my principal in front of a group of 50 people.

Me: “Are you instructing teachers to actively deceive parents?”

Principal: “Yes.”

This issue is most troubling to me (not transgenderism but rather being told to lie to parents about what is going on at the school with their child).

One teacher raised the classic objection to dishonesty and lying; what if she accidentally makes a mistake and forgets which “reality” is the correct to articulate to a parent.

It is important to note that my objection is to intentional deception by agents of the state towards parents with regard to their own children, I HAVE NO PROBLEM CALLING ANYONE WHATEVER THEY WISH.

The school grounds its policy in federal FERPA (Family Education Rights and Privacy Act) legislation, but this is not a legally coherent argument. According to FERPA 34 C.F.R. Part 99.4, “An educational agency or institution shall give full rights under the Act to either parent, unless the agency or institution has been provided with evidence that there is a court order, State statute, or legally binding document relating to such matters as divorce, separation, or custody that specifically revokes these rights.” FERPA was carefully worded to prevent school districts like Yakima from turning it into a weapon to be wielded against parents of middle schoolers. That’s not stopping YSD, however.

This is the latest manifestation of a disturbing trend of state powers encroaching on the ability of parents to act as parents to their children. In 2010, a 15-year-old student at Ballard High School was given birth control by the school nurse without notification of the parents. The birth control failed, and the girl became pregnant. School officials then told the girl that they would cover all expenses including a taxi ride to and from the abortion clinic provided she withheld all information about what had occurred from her parents.

A few weeks ago, a California kindergarten teacher read books to her students explaining that perceptions of one’s body need not conform to the reality of their body. Afterwards, the class hosted a “gender reveal” for a gender dysmorphic boy who was attempting to look more like a girl. “My daughter came home crying and shaking so afraid she could turn into a boy,” one parent said at a public meeting following the incident, according to The Federalist. The parents of the students were not made aware that this would take place.

At Nova Classical Academy in Minnesota, lawsuits over sex-related issues have forced the school to keep all sex-education curriculum and sex-related policies hidden from parents and not allow parents to opt out of any classes or assignments regarding sexual morality. Joy Pullman at The Federalist wrote extensively on the situation:

“This month’s settlement after 16 months of litigation requires the school to make all uniforms available to both sexes, pay LGBT organizations to ‘train staff’ in politically correct behavior every three years, and ‘not adopt any gender policy that allows parents to opt out of requirements in the gender inclusion policy because of objections based on religion or conscience.’ This lawyer and Federalist contributor, after reviewing the settlement, said it appears to ban the school from even notifying parents of its sex policies.”

The sexual revolutionaries have no shame. They indoctrinate kindergartners with objectively false and harmful ideas about human nature. They push sexual activity on children as soon as young girls are old enough to take carcinogenic hormonal birth control. They put kids on a trajectory of sexual immorality and then grease the skids towards abortion. They do all of this, and you might never even know.

If it weren’t for the few brave enough to publicly reject leftist sexual orthodoxy and exclusion of parents from kids’ lives, we wouldn’t know of any of this. Legal theorists on the side of secular, anti-family “progressives” believe that the state grants you the right to be a parent and thus also has the authority to take away your parental rights. This particularly insidious understanding of the sacrosanct parent-child relationship is trickling down to the district level. It is up to parents to make sure public school officials don’t get away with it.

James Silberman is a guest contributor to the FPIW Blog. He is a pro-life activist from Gig Harbor, WA, and a student at Whitworth University.

Spokane Public Schools Consider Using Planned Parenthood Sex-Ed Curriculum

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Spokane Public Schools district board members were scheduled to vote on a proposal last month that would implement a sexual education curriculum developed by Planned Parenthood. Although the vote was postponed following significant community backlash, the curriculum may still be adopted when the school board meets again this fall.

The “Get Real” curriculum emphasizes sexuality from a perspective of gender fluidity. It also represents a significant conflict of interest.

“The organization who makes this material stands to benefit when young people are sexually active and when they need abortions,” John Repsold, a member of HGDCAC, told The Spokesman-Review.

Despite the district’s decision to delay the vote, it remains likely that Planned Parenthood’s curriculum will be used to educate the youth of Spokane come September. Repsold expects only three of the committee’s 15 members will vote against the new program.

One member of the Human Growth and Development Citizens Advisory Committee (HGDCAC), which provides guidance to Spokane Public Schools on issues of sexuality, is Rachel Todd, an education director at Planned Parenthood.

Spokane children aren’t the only targets of Planned Parenthood educational programs. The nation’s largest abortion corporation is also one of the most prominent distributors of sexual education materials. Furthermore, Planned Parenthood intends to begin establishing clinics inside public schools, starting with Reading, PA.

Planned Parenthood has used its access to children and teens to sexualize them in ways that can only be described as child abuse. Its sexual education materials encourage masturbation, pornography use, sexual experimentation,  promiscuous sex, and alternative sexual lifestyles (see video below).

In 2014, Live Action published undercover footage showing Planned Parenthood employees teaching 15-year-old girls how to engage in violent and otherwise perverted forms of sexual activity. The lessons included bondage sex, torture sex, nipple clamps, horse whips, flogging, choking during sex, urinating and being urinated on during sex, defecating and being defecated on during sex, double penetration, pornography consumption, how to hide porn use from parents, pretending her boyfriend is a dog or a horse, being “punished” by her boyfriend, toddler fetishes and numerous other dangerous and dehumanizing sexual perversions.

It is unsurprising that Planned Parenthood teaches kids these things. Their business model depends on widespread sexual immorality in order to increase demand for their sex-related products. Planned Parenthood acquires lifelong customers when they expose children to these behaviors at a young age.

Yet the Spokane public school district is still considering bringing Planned Parenthood’s sexual education curriculum into the classroom.

Planned Parenthood is a billion-dollar abortion corporation that seeks to warp our children’s views of sex.  They simply cannot be allowed access to students.

It is incumbent upon us all to do something. Please contact the following Spokane Public School administrators to voice your displeasure with their decision (as always, please be respectful in your communication):

Deanna Brower (Board President): DeanaBrower@spokaneschools.org

Susan Chapin (Board Vice President): SusanChapin@spokaneschools.org

Jerrall Haynes (Board co-legislative Liaison): JerrallHaynes@spokaneschools.org

Paul Schneider (Board Co-Legislative Liaison): PaulSchneider@spokaneschools.org

Michael Wiser (Board Member): MikeWiser@spokaneschools.org

Shelley Redinger (District Superintendent): ShelleyR@spokaneschools.org

Temira Hatch (HGDCAC Chair): temira@northtowninsurance.com

Hershell Zelman (HGDCAC Immediate Past Chair): (509)-747-2234

Sasha Carey (HGDCAC Member): Sashadaniel@hotmail.com

Ian Sullivan (HGDCAC Member): Ian@OdysseyYouth.org

John Andes (Chase Middle School Principal): JohnAnd@spokaneschools.org

Robert Reavis (Garry Middle School Principal): RobertR@spokaneschools.org

Kim Halcro (Glover Middle School Principal): KimHal@spokaneschools.org

Jeremy Ochse (Sacajawea Middle School Principal): JeremyO@spokaneschools.org

Carole Meyer (Salk Middle School Principal): CaroleM@spokaneschools.org

John Swett (Shaw Middle School Principal): JonS@spokaneschools.org

Ken Schutz (Ferris High School Principal): KenS@spokaneschools.org

Marybeth Smith (Lewis & Clark High School Principal): marybethsm@spokaneschools.org

Steve Fisk (North Central High School): SteveF@spokaneschools.org

Lisa Mattson (On Track Academy Principal): LisaMat@spokaneschools.org

Lori Wyborney (Rogers High School Principal): LoriWy@spokaneschools.org

Julie Lee (Shadle Park High School Principal): JulieL@spokaneschools.org

Cindy McMahon (The Community School Principal): CindyMc@spokaneschools.org

James Silberman is a guest contributor to the FPIW Blog. He is a pro-life activist from Gig Harbor, WA, and a student at Whitworth University.

 

The Collateral Damage of the War on Reality

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As two more recent stories indicate, the war on gender has nothing to do with bathrooms.

In the first story, a Canadian parent wants their child’s birth certificate to be the first to identify a baby as neither male or female. The parent, who identifies as neither male or female, had this to say about the baby.

“I’m recognizing them as a baby and trying to give them all the love and support to be the most whole person that they can be outside of the restrictions that come with the boy box and the girl box.”

While all of this started as a call for compassion for the tiny percentage of the population who feel like they are the “other” gender,  it has quickly led to rejecting the idea that there is anything that can be known from one’s anatomy.

But asking children to reach conclusions about things they know nothing about is self-evidently silly.

When a child asks “What am I?”, it doesn’t help if all the adults look back at them and ask, “I don’t know, what are you?”

The adults are supposed to know things the kids don’t.

Still, it could be worse.

While some parents are choosing not to impose a gender, other parents don’t have the same patience.

In this story, three, queer parents of a three-year-old that they dubbed “queerspawn” have determined that their child is transgender.  The author of this story describes himself as transgender and asexual.  He says this about the child.

He was assigned female at birth, but his non-conforming behavior was clear and consistent from day one. It started with his hair. He hated wearing it long, and he hated it when we did anything with it. No ponytails, no braids — nothing. He also refused to wear dresses and skirts.

The child probably can’t be trusted to sleep through the night without wetting the bed, but we’re supposed to believe she has a grasp on gender norms as expressed through hair length and clothing and the awareness to understand both their significance, how to reject them, and the consequences of doing so.

While sure their child is transgender, they now wonder whether she will be queer as well.

I don’t wish him any more marginalization and oppression than he’ll already face as a trans person. But I can’t help but think that if he’s queer, there’ll be yet another community he can join, another supportive place for him to vent about that oppression. There are other queer people who will listen and sympathize with him beyond his family. He will need those people when he gets older and flies away from us.

Some parents hope their kids have an adventure, a healthy family, a place that makes them happy, and life-long love.

Other parents label their three-year-old transgender, hope she is attracted to men, which they say would make her gay because they think she’s a boy, and then hope she finds a community to vent about oppression.

Sadly, in 2017, this qualifies as parenting.

I have no doubt these parents want the best for their child.

But it’s hard to know what is good for your child when your view of the world has replaced the concepts of “good” and “bad” with “preferred” or “not preferred.”

We can all understand the appeal of a world is which nothing is inherently wrong, and the only possible consequences of our behavior were environmental which would allow us to manage the fallout by simply fixing the environment.

If, however, that world doesn’t actually exist, if our pursuit of our preferences continues to collide with the natural laws of the universe, the only actual outcome of our pursuits will be pain.

As is usually the case when adults make mistakes, kids will end up as collateral damage in our war on reality.

 

 

The Politically Correct Defense of Gender Identity is Concealing Much Worse

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We’re told over and over that it’s purely hypothetical to suppose that any man would ever use gender identity activism or laws to sanction unethical or criminal behavior. As if we were speculating about angels dancing on pinheads.

This is false. We’re having it proved again, this very month.

National Geographic’s gender issue is a case in point. Featured in one of its photo spreads are Alok Vaid-Menon and Cherno Biko.

Vaid-Menon wrote an essay describing little girls as “kinky,” in seeming allusion to the idea that child sexual abuse could be consensual or desired, and you can read it here.

Cherno Biko’s essay appearing to confess to the rape of a trans man, a female living as a man, for the purpose of impregnation is the reason why I first started writing here at FPIW, and you can find links to both versions of that essay here.

Then there’s the women’s march. Except that it’s neither just for women, nor even just about us.

What started as a simple idea has been taken over by a strain of sex industry activism merged with transgender ideology, and summed up flawlessly by the fact that Janet Mock has insisted that the platform include so-called “sex workers’ rights.”

The march platform was in fact changed to call for the liberation of the prostituted from exploitation, and Mock demanded that it be changed back to reflect the political interests of the sex industry. A group representing the interests of sex industry survivors has been banned from the march following this incident.

While I empathize with Mock’s experiences as a young person trafficked in the sex trade, I find it objectionable that, as an adult, Mock has used their media platform to compare child sex trafficking to liberation from slavery. What decent parent would want such a life for their child, any child? What responsible media outlet would allow any other adult victim of child sexual abuse the opportunity to represent such abuse as positive? It’s unfortunate that Mock was groomed by exploitative adults at a young age. It’s also a serious problem that Mock has chosen to be a spokesperson for other abusive adults.

I have no doubt that very few people truly share or endorse the politics of these individuals, particularly their apologies for, or praise of, sexual exploitation. But I wonder, what will it take for those truly concerned with social justice and feminism to take a good look at what they’re endorsing by having these individuals act as movement leaders?

*Silence is the pseudonym of a radical, progressive feminist.

“For reasons of personal safety and livelihood, I cannot disclose my real identity. But I can tell you this much: I’m a progressive feminist who has spent years working on the front lines of the left. I have opposed conservatism my entire political life in the most strident of terms; under other circumstances, I wouldn’t admit to even reading this site.”