NEW BOOKLET: TRANSGENDERISM & OUR CHILDREN

NEW BOOKLET: 
TRANSGENDERISM & OUR CHILDREN
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FIRST SEE OUR PREVIOUS POST:
 SCHOOL IGNORES PARENTS, GIVES 11 YEAR OLDS “LGBT” WORK~
“I AM JAZZ” TRANSGENDER BOOK FOR YOUNG CHILDREN EXPOSED
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BY Maria Kneas and Lois Putnam
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
 

NEW BOOKLET: TRANSGENDERISM and Our Children by Maria Kneas and Lois Putnam is our newest Lighthouse Trails Booklet.
The Booklet is 18 pages long and sells for $1.95 for single copies.
Quantity discounts are as much as 50% off retail. Our Booklets are
designed to give away to others or for your own personal use. Below is
the content of the booklet. To order copies of TRANSGENDERISM and Our Children, click here.
Transgenderism and Our ChildrenTRANSGENDERISM and Our Children
By Maria Kneas and Lois Putnam
Marilyn, a 70ish grandmother, walked through
the international airport in Denver, Colorado, thinking about the
flight she would be taking in less than an hour. She noticed a young
couple up ahead and saw that the man had a baby in a front pack. The
baby looked to be around six months old and was peering out at the
moving crowd of people. Marilyn stopped when she reached the couple
(she never could resist babies) and said, “What a darling baby that
is. Is it a boy or a girl?”
The father looked Marilyn in the eye and said,
“We don’t believe in gender labeling for babies, so for now it is just
“baby” until it is old enough to decide whether it wants to be a boy
or a girl.” Marilyn was speechless and shocked. She looked deep into
the man’s eyes, hoping for some understanding. She tried to respond,
but her words were frozen. As she walked away, still in shock, she
pondered on the future of that little child and knew she had just
witnessed a tragedy. This true account is unfortunately indicative of
the times in which we live.

Transgender

By Maria Kneas
The Bible says, “God is not the author of
confusion” (1 Corinthians 14:33). Therefore, anything that promotes it
is in opposition to God and His ways. If you want to see some serious
confusion in action, then look at a photo of a bearded man wearing a
dress and high heels.1
In the Bible, God makes clear distinctions
between light and darkness, good and evil, male and female, adults and
children, animals and humans, plants and animals, living and
inanimate. These distinctions or separations are clearly important to
God, and anything that attempts to destroy these distinctions is
trying to undermine foundational principles that God established. Such
efforts constitute rebellion against God, and the end result is
attacks against Christians who try to live according to biblical
principles and morality. This is part of what Dr. Henry Morris calls
“the long war against God.”2
The transgender movement is a prime example of
this conflict because the stated goal of transgender activists is to
“burn the binary.” By that, they mean making people become incapable
of thinking in terms of male and female. In an article titled, “We’ll
Win the Bathroom Battle When the Binary Burns” written by Riki
Wilchins (an activist who has gone through sex change surgery), he
describes this as being the “dominant, hetero-binary structure of boy
vs. girl.”3
This kind of thinking can make your head spin,
but you did read that correctly. There are some people out there who
literally want to get our society to the point where we become
incapable of thinking in terms of male versus female. They don’t want
us to be able to tell the difference between boys and girls (and
definitely not to say it publicly), and they want to train children to
think like that at early ages. They also want to punish Christian
parents who try to protect their children from this. In reality, the
transgender movement has made Christianity and what it stands for its
sworn enemy.
There are also other movements which are trying
to destroy the distinctions that God created. For example, there are
attempts to legalize pedophilia.4 This denies the differences between
children and adults. There are efforts, which confuse animals with
humans, to legalize bestiality,5 to give animals the right to file
lawsuits,6 and to combine human and animal DNA.7 There are even
attempts to erase the distinctions between living creatures and
inanimate things (e.g., New Zealand has given citizenship to a river,8
and Saudi Arabia has given citizenship to a human-looking robot named
Sophia9).
Thus, the transgender movement is part of a
broader, more far-reaching attempt to make people become unable to
rationally relate to the world God created. This deliberate denial of
reality is opposed to reason, biblical morality, and common sense.
Transgenderism is especially harmful because it results in undermining
the sanity, faith, and morals of children, starting at very young
ages. A growing number of American public schools are pushing
transgenderism on five-year-olds in kindergarten.10 In England, this
is being done to two-year-old children.11
The Williams Institute is a public policy
research institute and lobby group based at the UCLA School of Law. It
was created to promote the LGBT agenda. One of their scholars wrote
an article saying that three and a half percent of American adults
identify as being lesbian, homosexual, or bisexual, and 0.3% of adults
identify as being transgender.12 That means that less than one-third
of one percent of adults identify as being transgender.
How can such a small group have such a huge
impact on our culture? What are the goals of these activists? And how
is this going to impact Christians?
Kaeley Triller Haver is the Co-Founder of Hands
Across the Aisle Women’s Coalition. She says that the transgender
movement is “religious indoctrination of a cult-like nature.”13 That
makes sense to me because I have a friend whose brother got trapped in
Scientology. The level of intensity, delusion, and propaganda
involved with transgender activism reminds me of the kind of
heavy-duty pressure and brainwashing that my friend’s brother went
through in Scientology. He tried to get out, but they were able to
force him to stay.
Jane Robbins is a senior fellow at the American
Principles Project. She says that the transgender movement is
creating social chaos by undermining families, parental rights, and
“the very foundations of human existence.” She calls it “a diabolical
but ingenious way of remaking society.”14
As we will see below, transgenderism is the
beginning of a kind of denial of reality that expands to include race,
age, and species (human versus animal). Eventually, it winds up with
people who claim to be things that don’t even exist. Once upon a time,
people who seriously denied reality like this were said to be
delusional or mentally ill. But now, some people are trying to
normalize such delusions and make them become politically correct.
We all need to develop the ability to deal with
painful realities. For example, I’m a cancer survivor. Years ago, I
had radical surgery, followed by chemotherapy. That was a painful
process to go through, but it saved my life. If I had decided to
“identify” as being healthy instead of taking care of that very real
problem, then I would have died a slow and painful death.
When people deny reality, the loving thing to
do is to help them deal with it in realistic ways—not go along with
their delusions. Having us agree with their delusions may make them
feel better for the moment, but the long-term results can be
catastrophic. Truth trumps feelings.

A Continuum of Denying Reality

TRANS-GENDER: When men imagine
they are women (or vice versa), that is transgender. Instead of
trying to get their thinking to line up with reality, these people try
to force reality to change in order to line up with their
imagination. This starts out with wearing different clothing and
eventually can wind up with people getting sex-change surgery and
taking hormones in order to try to look like what they feel like. But
“trans” goes even further than that. For example, some people think
they are an animal trapped inside a human’s body. And some people have
found other ways to try to re-define themselves.
I’m going to describe some very strange things.
You may want to see them with your own eyes, so I have provided all
of these with endnotes giving Internet articles and links. If you go
to these articles, you will be able to see lots of photos.
TRANS-AGE: A married man with
seven children decided he is really a six-year-old girl. He left his
wife and children and has found an older couple who took him in.15 A
grown man with children believes he is a child, and in order to live
out his fantasy, he has abandoned his wife and seven children.
TRANS-RACE: Rachel Dolezal was
born white, but she identifies as being black. She used to work for
the NAACP, but when it was discovered that she was really white, she
lost her job. She is calling for “racial fluidity” to be accepted.16
The state of Delaware is proposing an education
regulation that allows children to self-identify their gender and
race without the knowledge or consent of their parents. That includes
attending gender-specific classes about sexuality and participating in
sports as members of their self-chosen gender.17 In other words, a
white girl can formally claim to be a black boy (or vice versa) and
act accordingly without having her parents know anything about it.
TRANS-SPECIES: The early stage
of trans-species can be seen in “human pups.” These are people who
dress up like dogs. They can take this to extremes such as sleeping in
a dog training crate. There are thousands of “human pups” in England
alone. “Furries” carry this a step further and take on the persona of
the animal. This can include sexual behavior. A “fur” convention in
Reno, Nevada drew 3,000 people, 700 of whom were in “fursuits.”18
With the “fur pups” and even with the “furries,”
there is strange thinking and behavior, but it is reversible. If
these people change their thinking, then they can take off their
costumes and go back to a relatively normal life. However, there are
other people who make drastic changes that cannot be reversed. We see
that with the transgender people who get sex-change surgery. Clothing
can be changed, and hormone therapy can be reversed, but the surgery
is permanent.
There is a man who believes he is a tiger
trapped inside a human body. He has gotten his entire body and face
tattooed to look more like a tiger. He has had surgery and dental work
done so that his face and teeth look more tigerish. He has gotten
false whiskers implanted into his face.19
Another man identifies with his pet parrot so
much so that he got his ears cut off in order to look more like him.
He also got his face and eyeballs tattooed, and he wants to get
surgery in order to make his nose look more like a beak.20
TRANS-REALITY: There is a man
(who became a transgender woman) who believes he is a female dragon
trapped in a man’s body. He has had his ears and nose removed in order
to look more like a dragon. He has extensive tattoos, including eye
coloring, and he has a forked tongue.21 This man also has a child, a
beautiful little boy. I can’t imagine what this must be doing to his
son.

Who Defines Reality?

According to the Bible, God created everything.
Therefore, God is the one who defines reality. The oldest sin in the
book is to want to be like God (Genesis 3:5). That is what led to the fall of Adam and Eve, and it’s also what caused Lucifer to fall.
When the Bible describes a time of lawlessness
and apostasy in ancient Israel, it says that “every man did that which
was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6). The problem was that men
were trying to define right and wrong for themselves instead of
accepting what God has to say about it.
Have you ever noticed how many times in the
Bible God tells people what is right and what is wrong? The point is
that we don’t see the really big picture; only God does. And
therefore, only He is qualified to determine what is right and what is
wrong. Our job is to take what God says to heart and try to live by
it. God told us:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are
higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my
thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8-9)

Most transgenders (and trans-speciesists, etc.)
probably don’t realize it, but when they try to define who or what
they are themselves, instead of accepting the way that God created
them, they are trying to play God. They are setting themselves up
above God. That is a recipe for moral and spiritual disaster, and it
can have devastating practical consequences.
For example, what will happen to children in
Delaware who try to change their gender and/or their race without
telling their parents? What will happen to that little boy whose
father claims to be a female dragon? Is that his daddy or his mommy?
Or is he living with a dragon? And what will happen to the children of
that man who now claims to be a six-year-old girl? That level of
rejection and abandonment must be devastating, and their father’s
example of denying reality could set them on the path for tragic
events in their lives.
People who are afflicted with such problems
need our prayers. The loving thing to do is to try to help them
overcome their delusions and become what God created them to be.
God knows what He is doing. When He created us,
He did not make a mistake. He knew what we should be. Our job is to
come into agreement with God.

Weaponizing Sexual Anarchy

Like humanism and communism,22 sexual anarchy23
activists want to destroy Christianity and undermine Christian
morality. Sexual anarchy of all kinds is being used as a weapon to
attack Christianity. The transgender activists seem to be especially
adept at creating a lot of chaos in a short time.
With communism, we can look at their goals to
see how they overlap with those of the transgender movement. On
January 10, 1963, a congressman read 45 communist goals into the
Congressional Record. These were excerpted from Cleon Skousen’s book The Naked Communist. They include the following:

Undermine cultural standards of morality
Make LGBT behavior appear to be “normal, natural, healthy”
Infiltrate churches and undermine belief in the Bible
Discredit and undermine the family
Reduce parental influence over children
Take control of the psychiatric profession and use it to control people24

The Bottom Line

When God set boundaries for our identity and
our sexuality, He did that in order to protect us. What people have
been doing makes it all too obvious that fallen human beings need
God’s protection. We need to do things God’s way, as described in the
Bible. If we don’t do that, then we will self-destruct, and we are
likely to harm others in the process.
The sexual anarchy movement is producing
“experts” who want to tell us what to think and how to live. However,
God knows more about us than such people do. Therefore, we need to
trust what God says in the Bible instead of falling prey to the
delusions of self-proclaimed “experts.”

I Am Jazz

By Lois Putnam
In Sacramento, California at the Rocklin Academy charter school, a kindergarten teacher read the transgender picture book I Am Jazz;
and after reading it, she presented a little boy to the class as now
being a little girl. You can imagine how perplexing and unsettling
this incident was to these little ones as well as to their uninformed
parents.
A board meeting at the school caused a huge
confrontation between upset parents and a defensive teacher and school
board. In the end, the board boldly asserted that topics dealing with
“gay, lesbian and transgender issues” are open for discussion at
Rocklin and that parents may not always be notified before such
discussions occur. The board also maintained that opting out of these
discussions promotes a “discriminatory environment . . . prohibited by
law.”1
On December 7, 2017, nationwide “Community/School Readings” of I Am Jazz
took place in schools, libraries, LGBTQ centers, houses of worship, and
homes.2 The book is the true story of transgender Jazz Jennings
written for ages 4-8 filled with LGBTQ indoctrination. It is written
to sanction the idea that one can be born with what is known as GD or
“Gender Dysphoria” and that “coming out” and choosing your own gender
can be done even at a preschool age. Inside I Am Jazz’s cover
jacket, it reads, “From the time she was two years old, Jazz knew
that she had a girl’s brain in a boy’s body.” It continues, “She loved
pink . . . and didn’t feel like herself in boy’s clothing.” It ends,
“This confused her family, until they took her to a doctor who
diagnosed Jazz as transgender and explained that she was born this
way.” These three sentences concisely spell out what the book hopes to
teach.
I Am Jazz’s final page is titled,
“TransKids Purple Rainbow Foundation” and states, “TKPRF is committed
to the premise that Gender Dysphoria is something children can’t
control, and therefore, society needs to embrace them.” It insists,
“Families need to support their children and allow them to grow up
free of gender roles.” This page’s purpose is to convince readers of
the need for transgender acceptance everywhere. Nowhere does it tell
how a growing number of doctors, psychologists, and other
professionals are challenging the claims that people are born this
way. Nor does it tell about the abusive drug cocktail of hormones
trans children later take or the dreadful surgeries that complete the
“transitions.”
Because I Am Jazz is being used to
propagate the transgender movement, particularly to young children,
let’s take a closer look at this book, the so-called “essential tool
for parents and teachers.”3

I Am Jazz Co-author—Jessica Herthel

Jessica Herthel, the book’s co-author, is a
Broward County, Florida mom of three and an all-out advocate of the
transgender agenda. Herthel, having met Jazz’s mom at a community
function, soon formed a friendship with her and her little boy who
became “a trans girl” renamed “Jazz.” Herthel then went on to co-write
the book with Jazz, telling what it is like to be a trans kid.
As a result of writing I Am Jazz, Herthel
has become a recognized LGBTQ advocate on many fronts. It began with
her volunteering for the Florida Broward County Schools (sixth largest
district in the USA) where soon she was designing inclusive lesson
plans and purchasing diverse books for elementary classrooms. Later,
she became the primary content editor of “Broward County’s LGBTQ
Critical Support Guide” presented to all district administrators in
2014. After, Herthel worked as the Education Director at the Stonewall
National Museum and Archives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida,  which is a
nonprofit that shares the culture of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender people and the role they play in society.
Beyond Florida, Herthel travels nationwide spreading the trans-kids agenda using I Am Jazz
as a jumping off point. This message has taken her to such diverse
places as: Mt. Horeb Public Library, Mt. Horeb, WI (the Mt. Horeb School
System refused to allow her to read I Am Jazz in a public
school setting, so it was read in the public library); Temple Bat Yahm,
New Port Beach, CA (welcoming Jewish congregation for all including
the LGBT community); and The Human Rights Campaign “Time to Thrive”
Conference in Dallas, TX. (HRC partnered with the National Education
Association and the American Counseling Association to reach out to
LGBTQ youth.)4
The Human Rights Campaign considers Jazz
Jennings their foundational “Youth Ambassador.” HRC has a website
called www.welcomingschools.org with lesson plans to aid in creating
LGBTQ-inclusive schools. Its “Top 10 Books for a Welcoming School”
includes I Am Jazz and an accompanying lesson. I would urge
you to check out this site to view this invasive school agenda; while
it gives the appearance of being about safe schools and stopping
bullying, much of its material is about other causes.5

I Am Jazz—Its Transgender Agenda

I Am Jazz is designed to be read to
preschool through grade three, introducing them to transgender ideas. 
Herthel begins by presenting Jazz as a “girl” whose favorite color is
pink and who likes girly things like drawing, dancing, and putting on
make up.  Most of all, Jazz is mesmerized by “mermaids.”
Now, Jazz’s best friends are Casey and Samantha
with whom Jazz plays dress up in high heels and princess gowns. They
also do fun things like turning cart wheels, or jumping on
trampolines.  However, as a “sad-faced Jazz” says, “But, I’m not
exactly like Samantha and Casey.”
To explain, there’s a page of kids’ drawings
showing a very unhappy Jazz. Below this, Herthel unleashes these
troubling sentences, “I have a girl brain, but a boy body. This is
called transgender. I was born this way.”
Herthel records Jazz’s transition saga as a
two-year-old boy starting with Jazz’s mom saying he was a good boy,
and him correcting her as he retorted, “No Mama.  Good GIRL!” Herthel
also writes, “At first my family was confused. They’d always thought
of me as a boy.”
The next pages show Jazz’s brothers and sister.
His brothers comment that his dress-up antics are “girls stuff” while
his sister comments that his girl thoughts, dreams, and ambitions
made him “a funny kid.”
Whenever he went out, the text continues, his
parents had him wear his “boy clothes” which made him mad!  One then
reads this startling thought, “Pretending I was a boy felt like
telling a lie.” Talk about confusion. Just imagine a child’s
puzzlement to this thought.
Then came “an amazing day” when all was
changed; his parents took him to a doctor who asked many
questions. There, says the text, he heard the word “transgender” for
the first time. His parents heard the words, “Gender Dysphoria.”
That night, relates Jazz, for the first time
his parents told him, “Be who you are.” This caused him to smile and
smile as he went to bed dressed in a girl’s nightgown. Do what you
want, and whatever makes you happy is the sense one gets here, making
one think of Judges 17:6 that reads, “. . . every man did that which
was right in his own eyes.”
The book fast forwards to Jazz at school. Here,
like Jazz’s family, his friends and teachers were “confused.” Upset
with his teacher, Jazz found it hard to have to use the boy’s bathroom
and be on the boy’s teams. Jazz longs to be with Casey and Samantha.
Finally, the teachers change their minds, allowing Jazz to use the
girl’s rest room and to play sports with the girls.
At this point, Jazz shares how mean some of the
children are. “This,” says Jazz, “makes me feel crummy.” Here, of
course, the teacher would stop and talk about not bullying or making
fun of someone who is different. The children listening to I Am Jazz
are made to take sides with Jazz because “being different like this
is special!” The book ends with a beaming Jazz who declares, “I am
having fun. I am proud. I am Jazz.”

I Am Jazz—The Celebrity

What has been the result of reading and sharing
this innocent looking, but oh so influential picture book? Well, Jazz
has been promoted as one super star—one courageous reality star (TLC
TV)—one influential teen (Time Magazine)—one true to myself person (I Am Jazz)—one
amazing LGBTQ activist (Human Rights Campaign)—one honorary
co-founder (TransKids Purple Rainbow Foundation)—a trans-kid poster
child. And I must add—one exploited young person!
How sad one feels for a child such as Jazz,
whose parents, believing they were doing this in love, allowed him to
become a trans kid following the world’s upside-down transgender
ideology guidelines, and how much more should the reading of this story
make us mindful of the children suffering because of it. It should
make us want to do all we can to stop others from following in Jazz’s
footsteps. A wonderful verse to memorize and share with children is
found in Psalm 139:14 which reads, “I will praise thee; for I am
fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my
soul knoweth right well.”

I Am Jazz—The Consequences

This picture story is meant to tug at one’s
heart. Its story leads its readers to believe the lie that children
can be born with gender confusion and that if such behaviors are
sanctioned by a doctor, as in Jazz’s case, even young children can
identify as a trans kid. But this book is only part of the story. For
as a transgender child gets ready for puberty, harmful hormones must
be taken, after which comes invasive surgery. To understand these
procedures, please read quotes from the article referenced below.
Dr. Michelle Cretella is the President of the American College of Pediatricians. A July 3, 2017 Daily Signal article,
“I’m a Pediatrician. How Transgender Ideology Has Infiltrated My
Field and Produced Large Scale Child Abuse” lays out some facts. Dr.
Cretella begins by commenting that transgender ideology not only has
infected our laws ( e.g. bathrooms) but “has intruded into the lives
of the most innocent among us—our children.”6
Dr. Cretella says there’s a “new normal” where
doctors in gender clinics are “affirming children who are distressed
by their biological sex.”7 This condition, she writes, once dubbed
gender-identity disorder, was renamed “gender dysphoria” in 2013. Now,
these doctors, as did Jazz’s doctor, “tell parents to treat their
children as the gender they desire, and to place them on puberty
blockers around 11 or 12 if they are gender dysphoric.”8 And if by
sixteen, they insist they’re trapped in the wrong body, cross-sex
hormones are then given. After, teens as young as sixteen may
have “bottom surgeries” or “sex reassignment surgeries.” As of a
recent piece I read, Jazz is now at this frightening point.
In her article, Dr. Cretella lists eight basic
facts about transgenderism including: twin studies that show no one is
born “trapped in the body of the wrong sex;” puberty blockers have
not proven safe; cross-sex hormones are associated with dangerous
health risks; neuroscience shows youth lack adult ability for risk
assessment; and transition-affirming procedures haven’t solved
transgender suicide. She states that the transition-affirming
movement, said to help children, is inflicting a grave injustice on
them, adding:

These professionals are using the myth that
people are born transgender to justify engaging in massive,
uncontrolled, and unconsented experimentation on children who have a
psychological condition that would otherwise resolve after puberty in
the vast majority of cases.9

Dr. Cretella finishes with these sobering words:

These harms constitute nothing less than
institutional child abuse. Sound ethics demand an immediate end to the
use of pubertal suppression, cross-sex hormones, and sex reassignment
surgeries in children and adolescents, as well as an end to promoting
gender ideology via school curricula and legislative policies. It is
time for our nation’s leaders and the silent majority of health
professionals to learn exactly what is happening to our children, and
unite to take action.10

How about the silent majority of Christians? What are we doing?

Parent’s Response 

In the case of the Rocklin Academy reading of I Am Jazz, parents
banded together to confront the board. When the board declared they
would not necessarily notify parents prior to using such materials, nor
could parents legally opt out of these presentations, many
parents pulled their students out from Rocklin. Parents must work toward
having the right to opt out their students
should gender-related materials be presented just as they now can opt
out when sexual materials are used.11
Fearing harsh reaction to their stories, two Rocklin parents anonymously went to Fox News
Martha MacCallum to tell of their children’s reactions to the
academy incident. The first parent told how her daughter, after being
present at that kindergarten reading, while bathing caught a reflection
of herself with her hair slicked back, and tearfully cried she had
changed into a boy. The other parent told how her daughter (now a first
grader) on the playground greeted the “trans girl” that had been
presented in the kindergarten that June day by his male name and was
promptly reprimanded by the principal for “misgendering his new name.”12
In sum, Christian parents must be active at
their schools, be informed of transgender issues, be able to talk with
their own children, be into the Word so as to be able to stand for
truth, and be into prayer for their children, family, and schools.

Teacher’s Response

Christian teachers too must prepare themselves for the time that they will be required to read such a book as I Am Jazz
Do your research now. Prayerfully prepare for a coming day when one
must either comply with the godless demands of the public schools or
leave one’s job. As Daniel of old, in whom was found “an excellent
spirit,” one must stand up, and as the old song “Dare to Be a
Daniel” challenged, “Dare to be a Daniel, Dare to stand alone!, Dare to
have a purpose firm! and Dare to make it known!”
In today’s world, there are many who want to
silence “God-fearing upstanders”—school systems and
pressure-group organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign to name
a couple. How is this done? By taking away rights to stand up for
beliefs and by labeling these upstanders with all kinds of names. And
as some do, “shouting you down!”  One such eminent doctor, Dr. Paul
McHugh, now 85, has been maligned and mocked and called
a “transphobe.” Why is this? Of  “transgender” children, Dr. McHugh
dared to write such things as this:
Misguided doctors at medical centers . . . have
begun to treat this behavior by administrating puberty-delaying
hormones to render later sex surgeries less onerous—even though
the drugs stunt the children’s growth and risk causing sterility.13

Your Responsibility—Be An Upstander, Not A Bystander!

Whether or not you have children or
grandchildren in the public schools, you as a Christian must stand
firm in your convictions. Whether or not the transgender agenda has
yet to come to your school or your school system, you as a Christian
must not be a bystander! Get busy, become familiar with
the transgender movement, and be an upstander—that is one who is not
afraid to stand up for something in which he believes—in this case,
the plight of little children of whom our Lord Jesus said in Matthew
18:6:

But whoso shall offend one of these little
ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were
hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the
sea.

The transgender agenda is already being
practiced in some schools and is soon coming to schools
nationwide. For the sake of our children, we cannot be apathetic; we
must stand up for truth. Remember Paul’s admonition in Ephesians
6:10-11, “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the
power of his might.  Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be
able to stand against the wiles of the devil.”

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good
evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put
bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20)

To order copies of TRANSGENDERISM and Our Children, click here.
Endnotes For Maria Kneas’ Section
1. Alasdair Glennie and Jennifer Newton, “Before She Had a Beard” (Daily Mail,
May 11, 2014; this has several photos of him with a beard wearing
fancy women’s clothing and high heels,
www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2625866/Winner-whisker-Austrias-bearded-lady-conquers-Eurovision-Russias-rage.html).
2. Dr. Henry Morris, The Long War Against God (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, April 2000).
3. Riki Wilchins, “We’ll Win the Bathroom Battle When the Binary Burns” (The Advocate, April 29, 2016, www.advocate.com/commentary/2016/4/29/well-win-bathroom-battle-when-binary-burns).
4. Jack Minor, “‘Gay’ Laws Set Stage for
Pedophilia ‘Rights’: Psychologist Claims ‘Minor-attracted Persons’
Normal as Heterosexuals” (WorldNetDaily, July 18, 2013, www.wnd.com/2013/07/gay-laws-set-stage-for-pedophilia-rights).
5. Pete Winn, “Senate Approves Bill That Legalizes Sodomy and Bestiality in U.S. Military” (CNS News, December 1, 2011, www.cnsnews.com/news/article/senate-approves-bill-legalizes-sodomy-and-bestiality-us-military).
6. Arin Greenwood, “Chimpanzees Sue For Their Freedom (With a Little Human Help)” (Huffington Post, December 2, 2013, www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/02/chimpanzee-lawsuit-personhood_n_4369377.html).
7. Rob Stein, “In Search For Cures, Scientists
Create Embryos That Are Both Animal and Human” (NPR, May 16, 2016,
www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/05/18/478212837/in-search-for-cures-scientists-create-embryos-that-are-both-animal-and-human).
8. Kathleen Calderwood, “Why New Zealand is
Granting a River the Same Rights as a Citizen” (ABC, September 6,
2016,
www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/sundayextra/new-zealand-granting-rivers-and-forests-same-rights-as-citizens/7816456).
9. Chris Weller, “A Robot That Once Said it
Would ‘Destroy Humans’ Just Became the First Robot Citizen” (Business Insider, October 26, 2017, http://nordic.businessinsider.com/sophia-robot-citizenship-in-saudi-arabia-the-first-of-its-kind-2017-10).
10. Margot Cleveland, “The Transgender Agenda Hits Kindergarten” (National Review, September 4, 2017, www.nationalreview.com/article/451047/transgender-agenda-schools-some-wont-even-let-parents-opt-out).
11. Liam Deacon, “Teachers Warned Not to Say ‘Boys’ or ‘Girls’ as It ‘Reminds Pupils of Gender’” (Breitbart,
November 23, 2017; this involves two-year-olds in England,
www.breitbart.com/london/2017/11/23/teachers-boys-girls-reminded-pupils-gender).
12. Gary J. Gates, “How Many People Are Lesbian,
Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender?” (The Williams Institute, April 2011,

http://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/research/census-lgbt-demographics-studies/how-many-people-are-lesbian-gay-bisexual-and-transgender).
13. Dr. Susan Berry, “Parents and Students Stand Up to Forced Gender Ideology in Schools” (Breitbart, November 24, 2017, www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/11/24/parents-students-stand-forced-gender-ideology-schools).
14. Ibid.
15.Kate Ng, “Transgender Father Stefonknee
Wolscht Leaves Family in Toronto to Start New Life as Six-Year-Old Girl”
(The Independent, UK, December 12, 2015,
www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/stefonknee-wolschtt-transgender-father-leaves-family-in-toronto-to-start-new-life-as-a-six-year-old-a6769051.html).
16. Lucy Pasha-Robinson, “Rachel Dolezal: White
Woman Who Identifies as Black Calls for ‘Racial Fluidity’ To Be
Accepted” (The Independent, March 27, 2017,
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/rachel-dolezal-white-woman-black-racial-fluidity-accepted-transracial-naacp-a7653131.html).
17. James Barrett, “Proposed DE Education
Regulation Allows Children To Self-Identify Gender and Race—And
Without Parental Consent” (The Daily Wire, November 22, 2017, www.dailywire.com/news/23874/proposed-education-regulation-allows-children-self-james-barrett).
18. Chris Summers, “Secret Life of the ‘Human
Pups’: Weird World of the Grown Men Who Enjoy Dressing Up as Dogs in
Roleplay Craze Sweeping the Nation” (Daily Mail, May 21,
2016,
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3602177/Puppy-play-definitely-not-sex-TV-documentary-sheds-light-barking-mad-men-enjoy-dressing-dogs.html).
19. “Cat Man—the Human ‘Tiger’ Who Enjoys Climbing Trees and Eats Raw Meat Every Day” (Daily Mail, September 6, 2008, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1052934/Cat-Man–human-tiger-enjoys-climbing-trees-eats-raw-meat-day.html).
20. Jimmy Nsubuga, “Parrot Man Gets Ears Cut Off So He Can Look More Like a Bird” (Metro, October 16, 2015, http://metro.co.uk/2015/10/16/parrot-man-gets-ears-cut-off-so-he-can-look-more-like-a-bird-5443835).
21. “Transgender Former Banker, 55, Has Her Ears
and Nose Reformed to Transform into a ‘Dragon Lady’ With Scales, a
Forked Tongue and a Horned Skull” (Daily Mail, April 5, 2016,

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3524063/Transgender-woman-Eva-Tiamat-Medusa-ears-nose-removed-dragon-lady.html).
22. See my book How to Prepare for Hard Times and Persecution to read about the effects of these belief systems. Also see Berit Kjos’ website, www.crossroad.to, for extensive documentation on humanism and communism.
23. According to the Urban Dictionary,
the meaning of “sexual anarchy” is: “A school of philosophy and other
thinking that believes that anyone should be free to have sex with
anyone else from one’s relatives, minors, or any other person etc. and
that marriage should be abolished because it is too restrictive”; https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sexual%20anarchy.
24. Donna Calvin, “The 45 Communist Goals as Read Into the Congressional Record, 1963” (April 2011, http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/watchwomanonthewall/2011/04/the-45-communist-goals-as-read-into-the-congressional-record-1963.html).
Endnotes For Lois Putnam’s Section
1. One of the news stories that covered the
Rocklin Academy story is Bradford Richardson’s “Rocklin Academy
Doubles Down on Transgender Lessons for Kindergartners” (Washington Times, September 19, 2017, https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/sep/19/school-defends-transgender-lessons-kindergartners/).
2. Human Rights Campaign, “National ‘I Am Jazz’ School and Community Readings” (https://www.hrc.org/resources/i-am-jazz-a-guide-for-parents-educators-and-community-advocates).
3. From the publisher’s website:
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/315643/i-am-jazz-by-jessica-herthel-illustrated-by-shelagh-mcnicholas/9780803741072.
4. http://jessicaherthel.com.
5. Also check out the HRC’s I Am Jazz guidebook: https://assets2.hrc.org/files/assets/resources/IAmJazz-EventGuide.pdf.
6. Michelle Cretella, “I’m a Pediatrician. How
Transgender Ideology Has Infiltrated My Field and Produced Large Scale
Child Abuse” (Daily Signal, http://dailysignal.com/2017/07/03/im-pediatrician-transgender-ideology-infiltrated-field-produced-large-scale-child-abuse).
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid.
11. “Rocklin Academy Doubles Down on Transgender Lessons for Kindergartners,” op. cit.
12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DPTqzb8dLE.
13. Peter LaBarbera, “LGBT Activists Slam ‘the
Most Important Psychiatrist of the Last Half-century’ Because He
Debunks Transgender Ideology” (Lifesite News, May 15, 2017, https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/lgbt-activists-slam-the-most-important-psychiatrist-of-the-last-half-centur).
To order copies of TRANSGENDERISM and Our Children, click here.
Other Lighthouse Trails Books & Booklets in This Series:
Six Questions Every Gay Person Should Ask by Michael Tays Carter
The
Message “Bible” – A Breach of Truth: How Eugene Peterson’s The
Message Omits Homosexual Sin & Other Strange Deletions, Additions,
& Alterations
by John Lanagan
The Color of Pain: Boys Who Are Sexually Abused and the Men They Become by Gregory Reid

CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER OR THE HOLY SPIRIT-IT CAN’T BE BOTH

CONTEMPLATIVE PRAYER OR THE HOLY SPIRIT-
IT CAN’T BE BOTH
BY RAY YUNGEN 
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
 

Two authors from Great Britain portray a stunningly clear picture of New Age spirituality. They explain:

[T]he keynote of it appears to be a movement
for synthesis derived from an understanding of the underlying unity
behind all things and the sense of oneness that this brings.

This oneness of all life is the crux of the New Age movement.1

Catholic monk M. Basil Pennington defined the contemplative spiritual worldview in his book Thomas Merton My Brother. He related:

The Spirit enlightened him [Merton] in the
true synthesis [unity] of all and in the harmony of that huge chorus
of living beings. In the midst of it he lived out a vision of a new
world, where all divisions have fallen away and the divine goodness is
perceived and enjoyed as present in all and through all.2

The first viewpoint describes God as the
oneness of all existence. In Merton’s new world, God is perceived as
being present “in all and through all.” It certainly appears that the
same spirit enlightened both parties. The only difference was Merton’s
revelation worked in a Christian context just as occultist Alice
Bailey predicted. Unfortunately, this context is now commonplace in
Catholic circles, becoming so in mainline Protestant churches, and
being eagerly explored and embraced by an ever-increasing number of
evangelical Christians.

Evangelical leaders now debate whether such
spiritual truths as resting in God are the same as contemplative
silence. Based on documentations I have been presenting for many
years, I believe contemplative prayer has no place in true
Christianity. Scripture clearly teaches that with salvation comes an
automatic guidance system—the Holy Spirit. Lewis Sperry Chafer, in his
outstanding book Grace: The Glorious Theme, spells out this truth with crystal-clear clarity:

It is stated in Romans 5:5 that “the Spirit
is given to us.” This is true of every person who is saved. The Spirit
is the birth-right in the new life. By Him alone can the character
and service that belongs to the normal daily life of the Christian be
realized. The Spirit is the “All-Sufficient One.” Every victory in the
new life is gained by His strength, and every reward in glory will be
won only as a result of His enabling power.3

Richard Foster
Richard Foster

Show me a Scripture in the Bible in which the
Holy Spirit is activated or accessed by contemplative prayer. If such a
verse exists, wouldn’t it be the keynote verse in defense of
contemplative prayer?

None exists!

I want to emphasize what I believe cuts through
all the emotional appeal that has attracted so many to teachers like
Richard Foster and Brennan Manning and really boils the issue down to
its clearest state.

In his book Streams of Living Water,
Richard Foster emanates his hoped-for vision of an “all inclusive
community” that he feels God is forming today. He sees this as “a
great, new gathering of the people of God.”4

On the surface, this might sound noble and
sanctifying, but a deeper examination will expose elements that line
up more with Alice Bailey’s vision than with Jesus Christ’s. Foster prophesies:

I see a Catholic monk from the hills of
Kentucky standing alongside a Baptist evangelist from the streets of
Los Angeles and together offering up a sacrifice of praise. I see a
people.5

The only place in “the hills of Kentucky” where
Catholic monks live is the Gethsemane Abbey, a Trappist monastery.
This also, coincidentally, was the home base of Thomas Merton.
MONK DAVID STEINDL-RAST, SECOND FROM RIGHT, WITH OPRAH WINFREY SECOND FROM LEFT:
 https://gratefulness.org/content/uploads/2017/10/kristi-oprah-brdavid-anthony.jpg
Let me explain this significant connection. In the summer of 1996,
Buddhist and Catholic monks met together to dialogue in what was billed
the “Gethsemane Encounter.”6 David Steindl-Rast, a Zen-Buddhist
trained monk and close friend of Thomas Merton, facilitated this
event.

During the encounter, presentations on Zen
meditation and practice from the Theravedan Buddhist tradition were
offered.7 One of the speakers discussed the “correlation of the
Christian contemplative life with the lives of our Buddhist sisters
and brothers.”8

For these monks and the Baptist evangelist to
be “a people,” as Richard Foster says, someone has to change. Either
the monks have to abandon their Buddhist convictions and align with
the Baptists, or the Baptists have to become contemplative style
Baptists and embrace the monks’ beliefs. That is the dilemma in
Foster’s “great gathering of God.”

Mystic David Steindl-Rast once asked Thomas
Merton what role Buddhism played in his going deeper into the
spiritual life. Merton replied quite frankly: “I think I couldn’t
understand Christian teaching the way I do if it were not in the light
of Buddhism.”9

rp_Thomas-Merton.jpg
Thomas Merton

Did Merton mean that in order to understand
what Christianity really is, you have to change your consciousness? I
believe that is exactly what he meant. Once he personally did that
through contemplative prayer, Buddhism provided him with the
explanation of what he experienced. But again the catalyst was
changing his consciousness. This is what I am warning Christians
about. Contemplative prayer is presenting a way to God identical with
all the world’s mystical traditions. Christians are haplessly lulled
into it by the emphasis on seeking the Kingdom of God and greater
piety, yet the apostle Paul described the church’s end-times apostasy
in the context of a mystical seduction. If this practice doesn’t fit
that description, I don’t know what does.

You don’t have to change your consciousness to
grab “aholt” of God (as Brennan Manning insists). All you need is to
be born-again. What Steindl-Rast and the other Gethsemane monks should
have been telling Buddhists is, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh
away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).

In his book, Ruthless Trust, Brennan
Manning mentions that once Baptist Sunday school teacher, now New
Ager, Sue Monk Kidd eventually came under the mentorship of Dr.
Beatrice Bruteau who authored the book What We Can Learn From the East. Since that title is self-explanatory, it’s easy to understand why Dr. Bruteau would write the preface to a book like The Mystic Heart
by mystic Wayne Teasdale. In the preface, she touts that a universal
spirituality based on mysticism is going to save the world.

It seems that all these people want a better
world. They do not seem like sinister conspirators like those out of a
James Bond film. Yet, it is their niceness that rejects the reality
of the fundamental separation between Man and God. It is their sense
of compassion that feeds their universalism. It is idealism that makes
Manning so attractive and causes him to say that Dr. Bruteau is a
“trustworthy guide to contemplative consciousness.”10

The irony of this is that Manning is completely correct in his statement—Dr. Bruteau is
a reliable guide to contemplative awareness. She has founded two
organizations, the Schola Contemplationis (school for contemplation) and
the very Christian-sounding Fellowship of the Holy Trinity. With the
latter, she is promoted as “a well-known author and lecturer on
contemplative life and prayer.”11 Both of these organizations
incorporate Hindu and Buddhist approaches to spirituality. This should
come as no surprise because Bruteau also has studied with the
Ramakrishna order, which is named after the famous Hindu swami Sri
Ramakrishna.

The Ramakrishna order is dedicated to promoting
the vision of Sri Ramakrishna. He was known for his view that all the
world’s religions were valid revelations from God if you understood
them on the mystical level. He was an early proponent of
interspirituality. According to the book, Wounded Prophet, Henri Nouwen even viewed him in a favorable light and esteemed him as an important spiritual figure.

Sue Monk Kidd (author of The Secret Life of Bees)
became enamored with contemplative spirituality while attending a
Southern Baptist church. We could possibly dismiss that and say she
was just an untaught member of the laity who was spiritually lacking
in discernment. Maybe her spiritual dryness was a result of her not
being grounded firmly enough in the faith. But what about the leaders
and pastors whom so many look up to and who are considered trusted
individuals in the church? Surely they are able to discern what is
spiritually unsound. It seems safe to make this assumption. Right?
Unfortunately, this is no longer the case.

Endnotes:

1. Ursula Burton and Janlee Dolley, Christian Evolution (Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, GB: Turnstone Press, 1984), p. 101.
2. M. Basil Pennington, Thomas Merton, My Brother (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1996), pp. 199-200.
3. Lewis Sperry Chafer, Grace, the Glorious Theme (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing, 1977 Edition), pp. 313-314.
4. Richard Foster, Streams of Living Water (San Francisco, CA: Harper, 1998), p. 273.
5. Ibid., p. 274.
6. Credence Communications Catalog, Gift Ideas Edition.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Frank X. Tuoti, The Dawn of the Mystical Age (New York, NY: Crossroad Publishing, 1997), p. 127.
10. Brennan Manning, Abba’s Child (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1994), p. 180.
11. Virginia Manss and Mary Frohlich, Editors, The Lay Contemplative (Cincinnati, OH: St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2000), p. 180.

MUELLER WORKED WITH HAMAS LINKED GROUPS TO PURGE COUNTER-TERROR TRAINING OF MATERIAL OFFENSIVE TO MUSLIMS

MUELLER WORKED WITH HAMAS LINKED GROUPS TO PURGE COUNTER-TERROR TRAINING 
OF MATERIAL OFFENSIVE TO MUSLIMS
BY ROBERT SPENCER
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
 

As I noted here,
this purge was several years in the making, and I was – inadvertently –
the one who touched it off. In August 2010, when I gave a talk on Islam
and jihad to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force — one of many such
talks I gave to government agencies and military groups in those years.
While some had counseled me to keep these talks quiet so as to avoid
attracting the ire of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic
Relations (CAIR), the possibility of that pressure seemed to me to make
it all the more important to announce my appearances publicly, so as to
show that the U.S. government was not going to take dictation from a
group linked to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Those who had urged silence were proven correct, however, for the
Obama administration was indeed disposed to take dictation from CAIR.
CAIR sent a series of letters to Mueller and others demanding that I be
dropped as a counter-terror trainer; the organization even started a “coalition” echoing this demand, and Jesse Jackson and other Leftist luminaries joined it.

At the FBI, Mueller made no public comment on CAIR’s demand, and so
it initially appeared that CAIR’s effort had failed. But I was never
again invited to provide counter-terror training for any government
agency, after having done so fairly regularly for the previous five
years. CAIR’s campaign to keep me from taking part in counter-terror
training was, of course, not personal. They targeted me simply because I
told the truth, just as they would target anyone else who dared do so.
Everyone else who told the truth was similarly targeted and purged.

“Judicial Watch: Mueller Worked With Radical Islamists to Purge
Anti-Terror Training Docs Offensive to Muslims,” by Michael W. Chapman, CNS News, January 23, 2018 (thanks to Lookmann):

Commenting on Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is
investigating President Trump for alleged “collusion” with Russia,
Judicial Watch said that, as FBI director under President Obama, Mueller
purged the Bureau of all anti-terrorism training material that was
deemed “offensive” to Muslims. This was done, said Judicial Watch, “after secret meetings between Islamic organizations and the FBI chief.”


Judicial Watch obtained the documents on Mueller and the Muslim
groups after filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against
the FBI in July 2012. Mueller had met with the Muslims groups on Feb. 8,
2012, after which the curricula purge took place, said Judicial Watch.


“As FBI director, Mueller bent over backwards to please radical Islamist groups and caved into their demands,” said Judicial Watch. “The
agency eliminated the valuable anti-terrorism training material and
curricula after Mueller met with various Islamist organizations,
including those with documented ties too terrorism.”


“Among them were two organizations— Islamic Society of North America
(ISNA) and Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR)—named by the
U.S. government as unindicted co-conspirators in the 2007 Holy Land
Foundation terrorist financing case,” said the government watchdog
group.


After that Feb. 8, 2012 meeting, FBI Director Mueller “assured the
Muslim groups that he had ordered the removal of presentations and
curricula on Islam from FBI offices nationwide,” said Judicial Watch.

“The purge was part of a broader Islamist operation designed to
influence the opinions and actions of persons, institutions, governments
and the public at-large. The records obtained by Judicial Watch also
show similar incidents of Islamic influence operations at the
Departments of Justice and State, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the
Obama White House.”

Judicial Watch further reported, “Mueller’s actions have had a
widespread effect because many local law enforcement agencies followed
the FBI’s lead in allowing Islamic groups like CAIR to dictate what
anti-terrorism material could be used to train officers. Among them are
police departments in three Illinois cities— Lombard, Elmhurst and
Highland Park—as well as the New York Police Department (NYPD).”

“In the case of the Lombard Police Department,” said Judicial Watch,
“CAIR asserted that the instructor of a training course called ‘Islamic
Awareness as a Counter-Terrorist Strategy’ was anti-Muslim though there was no evidence to support it. Like the FBI, Lombard officials got rid of the ‘offensive’ course. The NYPD purged a
highly-acclaimed report that’s proven to be a critical tool in
terrorism investigations after three New York Muslims, two mosques and
an Islamic nonprofit filed a lawsuit.”

“Considering Mueller’s role in much of this, it makes him a bizarre
choice to lead the heated Russia investigation,” said the watchdog
group.

Judicial Watch’s report on Mueller can be read here

POPE DENOUNCES “TERRIBLE TERRORIST MASSACRE” IN KABUL: “HOW LONG MUST THE AFGAN PEOPLE BEAR THIS INHUMAN VIOLENCE?”

 https://cruxnow.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/330200220-1024x683.jpg
POPE DENOUNCES “TERRIBLE TERRORIST MASSACRE” IN KABUL: “HOW LONG MUST THE AFGAN PEOPLE BEAR THIS INHUMAN VIOLENCE?”
BY ROBERT SPENCER
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
 

How long? Well, sir, considering that you deny the existence of the
motivating ideology behind such attacks and oversee the shunning in
Catholic circles of those who identify it, I’d say indefinitely, insofar
as you’re actively hindering proper analysis of this threat.


Besides all that is below, Pope Francis has claimed fancifully
that “authentic Islam and the proper reading of the Koran are opposed
to every form of violence.” It has become a superdogma in the Catholic
Church: if you don’t believe that Islam is a Religion of Peace, you will
be ruthlessly harassed and silenced by the U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops and the hierarchy elsewhere as well. The bishops of the Catholic
Church are much more concerned that you believe that Islam is a
religion of peace than that you believe in, say, the Nicene Creed.

“Leave them; they are blind guides. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” (Matthew 15:14)

“Pope Francis Condemns Taliban Attack: ‘How Long Must Afghan People Bear Such Inhuman Violence?,’” by Thomas D. Williams, Breitbart, January 28, 2018:

On Sunday, Pope Francis denounced the “terrible terrorist
massacre” carried out by Islamic militants of the Taliban in the Afghan
capital of Kabul Saturday.


After his usual midday prayer
of the Angelus in the Vatican Sunday, the Pope turned to the news of
Saturday’s slaughter, addressing the thousands of pilgrims gathered in
Saint Peter’s Square.


“Yesterday painful news arrived from Afghanistan telling of the
terrible terrorist massacre carried out in the capital city of Kabul
leaving nearly one hundred dead and numerous injured,” he said.


“A few days ago, another serious attack also on Kabul had sown terror
and death in a large hotel,” he continued. “How long must the Afghan
people bear this inhuman violence?”…

Pope Francis caused a media stir in early 2017 when he denied the existence of Islamic terrorism.

“Christian terrorism does not exist, Jewish terrorism does not exist,
and Muslim terrorism does not exist. They do not exist,” Francis said
in a speech to a world meeting of populist movements in the Vatican last
February….

“The poor and the poorer peoples are accused of violence yet, without
equal opportunities, the different forms of aggression and conflict
will find a fertile terrain for growth and will eventually explode,” he
said….

“There are fundamentalist and violent individuals in all peoples and
religions—and with intolerant generalizations they become stronger
because they feed on hate and xenophobia,” he said.

The pope’s earlier statements suggesting economic roots to terror provoked
a strong public reaction from the Islamic State terror group, which
insisted that their sole motivation is religious and sanctioned by Allah
in the Qur’an.

Pope Francis “has struggled against reality” in his efforts to
portray Islam as a religion of peace, declared an article in the ISIS
propaganda magazine Dabiq, before going on to urge all Muslims to take up the sword of jihad, the “greatest obligation” of a true Muslim.

Some months before, the Pope Francis appeared to suggest that all religions are equally prone to violence and that Islam and Christianity are fundamentally the same in this regard.

“If I speak of Islamic violence, I must speak of Catholic violence,”
Francis said. “And no, not all Muslims are violent, not all Catholics
are violent. It is like a fruit salad; there’s everything.”

UK: THERESA MAY GOVERNMENT REJECTS PETITION FOR FREE SPEECH ACT & END TO “HATE SPEECH” LAWS

UK: THERESA MAY GOVERNMENT REJECTS PETITION FOR FREE SPEECH ACT & END TO 
“HATE SPEECH” LAWS
BY ROBERT SPENCER
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
 

“Hate speech” laws are a tool of the powerful to silence dissenters.
The person or group empowered with determining what is and is not “hate
speech” has total power over the public discourse, and can criminalize
any perspectives that the government does not favor. “Hate speech” laws
are, in short, a tool for tyranny, and the freedom of speech is a
society’s foremost protection against tyranny. The May government is the
betrayer and destroyer of Britain, which is, of course, finished.

“Tory Government REJECTS Petition for a Free Speech Act,” by Jack Montgomery, Breitbart, January 28, 2018:

The British government has rejected a petition calling for a Free Speech Act and an end to laws against so-called ‘hate speech’.

“For several years now the government has been infringing people’s
most basic rights to speak freely on matters, by deeming their speech
‘offensive’ or ‘hateful. and declaring that such speech, even online,
warrants being fined or jailed,” the petition suggests.

“We demand the legal right to Free Speech, in an Act which will bring
an end to the ludicrous notion that ‘hate speech’ and ‘offensive
speech’ deserves people be imprisoned or charged … Ideas must be fought
with other ideas, not with force.”

The petition system
in the United Kingdom allows citizens to have petitions published on a
parliament.uk website, subject to certain conditions. The Government is
supposed to respond to petitions which pass 10,000 signatures, and the
Backbench Business Committee is supposed to “consider” petitions which
pass 100,000 signatures for a parliamentary debate.

The Home Office, led by Amber Rudd MP, responded
on behalf of Prime Minister Theresa May’s administration as the Free
Speech petition reached around 16,000 signatures — rejecting it out of
hand.

“The Government is committed to upholding free speech, and
legislation is already in place to protect these fundamental rights,”
the statement begins — then immediately contradicts itself, adding:
“However, this freedom cannot be an excuse to cause harm or spread
hatred.”

The statement explains that British citizens have “a right to freedom
of expression under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human
Rights (ECHR)”, but that “This is a qualified right … This means that
free speech is not absolute.”

The right to freedom of expression as described by Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights
is certainly qualified, with the document spelling out in no uncertain
terms that free speech rights are “subject to such formalities,
conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are
necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national
security, territorial integrity or public safety, for the prevention of
disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the
protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the
disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the
authority and impartiality of the judiciary.”

Critics have pointed out that, far from providing citizens with the
right to freedom of expression, the European Convention in fact provides
governments with the right to restrict freedom of expression on the
flimsiest of pretexts, with the caveats concerning the protections of
“morals” and “the reputation or rights of others” appearing particularly
open to abuse.

The authorities under have if anything appeared more enthusiastic in
cracking down on free speech since the nominally conservative Tory Party
returned to office in 2010, with the police dedicated significant
resources towards arresting people for making “offensive” online
comments despite swingeing budget cuts.

Figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act revealed that
police forces increased arrests under section 127 of the Communications
Act 2003, which makes it illegal to intentionally “cause annoyance,
inconvenience or needless anxiety to another”,  by up to 877 per cent between 2014 and 2016….

CHURCH OF ENGLAND URGES “UNCONDITIONAL AFFIRMATION OF TRANSGENDER PEOPLE…WITHIN THE CHURCH”

  “A PERVERSE GENERATION”
trans people are cherished and loved by God, who created
them, and is present through all the ‘twists and turns’ of their lives.”


Luke 9:41


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And Jesus answering said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you, and suffer you? Bring thy son hither.


Matthew 17:17


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Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me.

CHURCH OF ENGLAND URGES 
“UNCONDITIONAL AFFIRMATION OF TRANSGENDER PEOPLE…WITHIN THE CHURCH”
BY HEATHER CLARK
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
 LONDON — The House of Bishops for the Church of England is urging its 
churches to affirm those who have gender dysphoria and says that “everyone’s 
Christian journey—like the journey to find one’s true identity—is unique.” The 
development has raised concern among evangelical groups, which state that the 
notion is an affront to the Creator and the gospel.

William Nye, the secretary for the House of Bishops, released a
document this past week that provides an update on talks among Anglican
leaders regarding the welcoming of “transgenders” into the assembly.

As previously reported,
last July, the General Synod voted to approve a motion that
“recognizing the need for transgender people to be welcomed and affirmed
in their parish church, call[ed] on the House of Bishops to consider
whether some nationally commended liturgical materials might be prepared
to mark a person’s gender transition.”


Chris Newlands from Blackburn, Lancashire proposed the motion,
stating, “I hope that we can make a powerful statement to say that we
believe that trans people are cherished and loved by God, who created
them, and is present through all the twists and turns of their lives.”

In 2015, Newlands told reporters that he concocted the idea after
being approached by a girl who identifies as a boy, who wished to be
baptized again under her male name.

“I said, ‘Once you’ve been baptized, you’re baptized,’” Newlands
recalled to the Guardian at that time. “[But] he said, ‘But I was
baptized as a girl, under a different name.’”

“I said, ‘Let me have a think about it.’ So we did, and then we
created a service, which was an affirmation of baptismal vows where we
could introduce him to God with his new name and his new identity,” he
said.

In this month’s guidance, the House of Bishops noted that a number of
synod members agreed with Newlands, and pointed to the words of member
Lucy Gorman, who asserted that the matter is ultimately about “having a
church that is eager to make sure you feel safe and accepted.”

“The House of Bishops welcomes and encourages the unconditional
affirmation of trans people, equally with all people, within the Church,
the body of Christ, and rejoices in the diversity of that one body,
into which all Christians have been baptized by one Spirit,” Nye wrote
in all bold to emphasize the statement.

He also noted, in light of discussions as to whether a person’s “new
identity” should be marked or recognized in any way in worship, that it
had been decided by the House that individual ministers can use the
existing Affirmation of Baptismal Faith, which it called “an ideal
liturgical rite which trans people can use to mark this moment of
personal renewal.”

“The Affirmation … gives priority to the original and authentic
baptism of the individual, and the sacramental change it has effected,
allowing someone who has undergone a serious and lasting change to
re-dedicate their life and identity to Christ,” Nye stated.

“In inviting ministers to use this rite, the House wishes to point
out that everyone’s Christian journey—like the journey to find one’s
true identity—is unique and encourages ministers to treat these possible
pastoral encounters accordingly,” he also asserted. “This approach,
familiar to all who care for people during other major life events,
takes into account each person’s unique experiences.”

Read the document in full here.

However, the release of the update from the synod drew concern from
evangelical groups in the UK, including the organization Christian
Concern, which opined that Nye’s words were an affront to the gospel.

“This is collusion with the blasphemous notion that someone can be
‘born in the wrong body.’ It is blasphemous because it claims that God
gave a person ‘the wrong body,’ when the bodies of people suffering with
gender dysphoria are usually perfectly healthy. Rather, it is their
minds and souls that are the site of suffering and confusion,” it said
in a statement.

“It is also collusion with hatred and resentment of the male or
female body, something that goes directly against what God said when He
created everything, namely that it was ‘very good’ (Genesis 1: 31),” the
group also noted. “It is therefore an attack on the triune God as
Creator of all things. The Christian faith makes no sense at all without
the history of creation and fall.”

“Gender transition is actually a moment of personal rebellion against
the way the person has been made by God. It is therefore a moment of
personal rebellion against God. This should not be celebrated or marked
by the church at all, let alone described as a ‘moment of personal
renewal,’” it lamented.

Gavin Ashenden also wrote for Anglican Ink
in July that the Church of England has presented a false Jesus to the
world in matters of both homosexuality and transgenderism—which is
especially dangerous and damning to those who are perishing.

“Where the real Jesus saves us from our sins and offers us renewal in
the image and furthers the likeness of God, the fake Jesus offers to
make us comfortable in our skins, cozy with our sexual appetites and
untroubled by having the central areas of who we are off limits to the
interference of God,” he outlined.

“This comes under the historic categories of both blasphemy and
heresy,” Ashendon continued. “It interferes with peoples’ salvation. It
replaces faith in the Living Christ with pseudo-therapy. It is an
abandonment of the heart of the gospel; and this is done by people who
when they use the words ‘Jesus, holy, love and acceptance,’ have twisted
the words to mean very different things from what the Church has always
intended.”

God’s law reads in Deuteronomy 22:5, “The woman shall not wear that
which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s
garment, for all that do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God.”

SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER CONCERNED AFTER HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT CLAIMS CHRISTIANS & MUSLIMS WORSHIP SAME GOD

 
SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER CONCERNED AFTER HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT CLAIMS CHRISTIANS & MUSLIMS WORSHIP SAME GOD
BY HEATHER CLARK
  
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
 ELGIN, Ill. — “Do you know what your children are being taught: Muslims 
believe in the same God as Christians and Jews?” That’s the question a school 
board member in Illinois recently posted online after her daughter came home 
with an assignment that included an article claiming that Christians and Muslims 
worship the same God.

Jeannette Ward of the U46 School Board posted the text of the assignment to her social media page
to show others the kinds of messages that are being presented to
students, and to outline why she voted no on the curriculum the previous
year.

“Judaism, Christianity and Islam are three of the world’s major
religions. While they have many differences, they all believe in the
same God,” the assignment read.

“In each religion, God is ‘revealed’ by a chosen messenger, called a
prophet. Some of the prophets that Jews follow were Noah, Abraham and
Moses. Christians follow these prophets too. They also think that Jesus
was another prophet of the same God,” it stated. “Later, Muhammad
founded Islam by declaring himself a prophet. He said he was the next in
the same line of prophets. He also said that he would be the last.”

The article also claimed that Jews, Christians and Muslims simply
assert that their teachings about that same God are the most accurate
and that these groups have brought violence into the world by seeing
others as being “beyond saving.”

“Muslims, Christians and Jews all worship the same complex God. But
each religion believes that its books and teachings reveal the true
nature of that God,” it read. “This disagreement has shaped the course
of history. The followers of each religion believe that only they will
be saved by God. They see all others as damned. This way of seeing
people, as damned by God and beyond saving, has led to violence and
hatred. It is why these religions both unite and divide.”

The assignment also included quiz questions that featured answers
such as, “Judaism, Christianity and Islam believe in the same God; in
all three religions, prophets revealed that God is complex and that only
certain people will be saved by God.”

Ward became concerned about the lesson that her daughter, who is in
the sixth grade, brought home from school as she called it “utterly
incorrect and false on many levels.” Her post drew much discussion, and a
number of clergymen have weighed in on the matter during the December
and January U46 School Board meetings, including even just this past
week.

One group of religious leaders stated that while they “sympathized”
with Ward’s concerns about the article, they also disagreed with Ward’s
“approach” in expressing concern.

“Each of us believes our own traditions are holy and true. Each of us
also believes that each person, regardless of religious tradition is
valued by God and is therefore worthy of dignity and respect,” they said
in a joint statement. “We believe that honoring these holy teachings of
our varied traditions means engaging in respectful dialogue and using
care when exercising the responsibilities and privileges granted to us
as leaders.”

Ward replied that she saw nothing wrong with her approach as she
simply shared the assignment and advised others about what children were
being taught in the district.

On Monday, a number of other clergy members and citizens spoke in
support of Ward, stating that she should be commended for bringing the
matter to light.

“To say that Allah of the Quran and the God of the Bible are the same
is simply absurd,” said Art Ellingsen, founder of Talk 2 a Pastor,
according to the Chicago Tribune.

“It’s not just something flying in the wind, it’s not just a
political issue, it is a faith issue, and faith issues are very
important to a lot of people in this community,” also said Mark Frusti
of Faith Lutheran Church.

Frusti was one of 12 pastors who also submitted a letter to the board, which served as a response to the statement from the other clergy, and also a means of support for Ward.

“Without proper guidance, this type of article can do nothing but
foster confusion and undermine the work of parents and faith leaders as
those responsible for the spiritual health and wellbeing of our
children,” they wrote. “For that reason, we strongly advocate for its
removal from use within the curriculum.”

As previously reported, in
2016, then-Wheaton professor Larycia Hawkins drew concerns after she
posted to social media a photo of herself wearing a hijab and claimed
that she was doing so to stand in solidarity with Muslims.

“I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a
Christian, are people of the book,” Hawkins asserted. “And as Pope
Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.”

Hawkins eventually left the college after controversy erupted, not
about her hijab, but her assertion that Christians and Muslims worship
the same God.

Some used the opportunity to outline why the concept is flawed in light of Scripture.

“Muslims hold that ‘God is one.’ Allah has no partners and assigning
partners to him is shirk, the highest blasphemy,” explained Thabiti
Anyabwile, pastor of Anacostia River Church in Washington, D.C., in a
blog post for the Gospel Coalition. “Christians believe ‘God is one in
three Persons.’ Each Person in the Trinity is fully and eternally God.
Yet there is one God.”

He noted that as Muslims do not worship Jesus, who is God, Christians and Muslims do not worship the same God.

“No one knows God who does not know the Son, who is the only mediator
between God and man,” Anyabwile said. “The goal of Christianity is the
salvation of sinners through the righteousness, substitutionary
atonement and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”