A WordPress Blog-THE CHURCH MILITANT Ephesians 5:11-"And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them". This Christian News Blog maintains a one stop resource of current news and reports of its own related to church, moral, spiritual, and related political issues, plus articles, and postings from other online discernment ministries, and media which share the aims to obey the biblical commands to shed light on and refute error, heresy, apostasy, cults, and spiritual abuse. ALL CONTENT FROM HTTPS://RATHEREXPOSETHEM.BLOGSPOT.COM MOVED TO THIS NEW BLOG, MAY 2020
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
Three Christians in New Jersey were charged with violating the state’s anti-bias intimidation statute, specifically for “shouting homophobic rhetoric directly in front of Allure Salon,” based on the citing officer’s wording, after the trio preached to the salon owner and an employee who are both openly homosexual.
Kombe Sefelino, Daniel Stephen Courney and Lydia Ortiz were all charged under two different sections of the state’s “bias intimidation” statute during an outreach outside of the notorious Metropolitan Medical Associates abortion facility, also known as “The Englewood Center for Women,” in Englewood, NJ.
Christians, as well as others, have been gathering outside of the facility for years to oppose abortion and to engage in other speech activities. In January, Sefelino, Courney and Ortiz had spread out on the sidewalks nearby to effectively communicate the word of God and gospel of Jesus Christ to as many people as possible in the area which happened to be outside of the salon.
According to one of the citing officer’s summons’, the Christians “targeted … the owner, Rogelio Molina, who is homosexual” by preaching against homosexuality. On another citation, a salon employee, John Cacella, was written as the “target” of “homophobic rhetoric.”
N.J. attorney Demetrios Stratis, who is representing the Christians in the proceedings, told Christian News Network that his clients were there to be a voice for the voiceless and to preach the word of God to all, not just homosexuals. He explained that his clients’ delivered “a message of love” for Molina and Cacella’s souls and that only by repentance and faith can men be saved from the wrath to come, and he also cited that their actions were legally protected First Amendment activity.
The charging Englewood police officer, marked as “P. O Layne” on one of the summonses wrote:
“Within the jurisdiction of this court, with the purpose to intimidate an individual or group of individuals because of race, color, religion, gender, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, or ethnicity, specifically by, on numerous separate occasions, shouting homophobic rhetoric directly in front of Allure Salon, targeted at the owner, Rogelio Molina, who is homosexual, in violation of N.J.S. 2C:16-1A(1), a crime of the fourth degree,” a summons reviewed by Christian News reads.
According to Stratis, if they are convicted of this fourth-degree charge, they can each be sentenced up to 18 months in prison.
The citation further documented N.J.S. 2C:33-4A under New Jersey’s harassment law, which is what enabled the anti-bias charge.
“Within the jurisdiction of this court of this court, with the purpose to harass another, make or cause to be made a communication or communications in a manner likely to cause annoyance or alarm, specifically by, on numerous separate occasions, shouting homophobic rhetoric directly in front of Allure Salon, targeted at the owner, Rogelio Molina, who is homosexual, in violation of N.J.S. 2C:33-4A, a petty disorderly person offense,” the summons states.
Bergen County Assistant Prosecutor & Bias Officer Vered Adoni
Stratis said that he spoke to the prosecutor assigned to the case—identifying her as “the head of the Bias Crimes Unit in the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office”—and attempted to reason with her by explaining that his clients do not solely focus on homosexual sin. Stratis said that he told her that all sin “prevents us from having a relationship with Jesus Christ.” However, according to Stratis, the prosecutor fully intends on moving forward with the charges as homosexuals are a “protected class” under the statute.
In a call to the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, a representative stated that Vered Adoni is in charge of the “Bias Unit” and is an assistant prosecutor. Christian News Network, however, was unable to reach anyone for comment by press time.
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
A friend of mine told me an apocryphal story that left me with a cold shudder. He is an old-fashioned left-leaning "liberal" and a strong advocate of public education. All his children attend public schools. In fact, he is vehemently opposed to the idea of promoting private schools on the premise that its implementation will result in a more stratified society because, he believes, poor whites and blacks will be disproportionately disqualified from attending such institutions.
In good faith, he has always entrusted his children’s education to what I had typically referred to as Government Schools. He was confident that his children would receive a robust education from K-12 grade.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, he was forced to monitor the classroom activities of his children. Unemployment had left him more time to inconspicuously sit-in -- especially on the classes of his 6th grader son.
He was shocked, one afternoon, to come upon an assignment being conducted during an English class in which all the white students in the zoom online course were required to place their arms beside a brown paper bag. How his 6th grader had acquired a crisp brown paper bag was a mystery to him. The teacher asked them if they noticed a difference in color between their skin and the brown paper bag. All of the white students nodded, and some verbally assented. The teacher asked them if the color of the bag looked close to the color of some of the students identified as black in the class. His son peered at the zoom screen and raised the icon button identifying his acknowledgement. The teacher then announced with full moral rectitude and intransigence the following:
If your skin color is different from the color of the paper bag, then you are part of a problem in America known as systemic racism that does irreparable harm to all black and brown people in America. Further, if your skin color is different from the brown paper bag and you are identified as white you enjoy something called white privilege which means you are practicing racism every day without knowing it.
Each such student that had a different color than the brown paper bag bore collective guilt. The teacher then went on to ask the class if they had ever heard the term, “Reparations.”
Out of some sense of visceral, atavistic paternal protection, my friend slammed down his son’s computer and told him to go to his room for a while. He said he stood with his fingers pressed into the metal cover of the computer, shaking with incredulity.
I explained to him that guilt implied wrong-doing and that because his son at age twelve had committed no egregious harm against any black person that he would eventually grow to feel a burgeoning sense of resentment. Over time, as his mind grew more focused and the charges against him repeated had been codified into a cultural norm, he would feel that he was the real cause of all harms directed at black people. I said that something evil and sinister was going to take root in his son’s psyche.
My friend grew alarmed. But I pressed on. His son, I told him, would grow to feel resentment towards black people. It would be mild at first; a contemptuous discharge fueled by a growing sense of his superiority and empowerment that he, by the power of his whiteness, could cause so much harm and that he, by that same magical power of whiteness, could alleviate the misery and suffering of blacks. I told him it would not end well, His son’s curriculum would include a phalanx of black and white progressive nihilists who would call for the annihilation of “whiteness” which, his mind would come to understand as: the annihilation of all white people from the earth including himself. His son, I told him, runs the risk not just of becoming a racist, but of a white supremacist. Becoming a white supremacist, he will come to believe, will be his only default position from which to protect his life from the early stages of assault being waged against it -- starting with the seemingly benign comparison between his skin color and that of a brown paper bag. And all this from white liberals masquerading as anti-racists.
Be careful how you proceed with his education, I warned him. It is not too late for you to assume responsibility and assert control of his mind by extracting him from one of our many national security threats destroying our American civilization: our Government schools on the tertiary level, and our nation’s universities. The decision is yours.
Doubtless, readers have been keeping up with reports of how our public schools have become inundated with what is becoming known as “Culturally Responsive Teaching.” Teachers are required to implement “action civics” in the classroom, leading students in activism on behalf of various causes.
A school district in San Diego conducted a “white privilege training” for its white teachers who were told they were racist for being white, and for upholding racist ideas and policies. They were made to feel ashamed for teaching on stolen Native American land.
Seattle Public Schools also held racially charged teacher-training sessions that accused them, unequivocally, of murdering the souls of black children every day through systemic institutionalized, anti-black, state-sanctioned violence. They, too, were told they were natural racists because of their mere possession of white skin, and that they had to self-consciously reject their “whiteness.” Any objection to their indictment of being racists, they were told, no matter how well-argued or factually grounded, would be dismissed as a reflex of their whiteness, as “lizard brain,” which was proof of their white fragility.
These stories come on the heels of decolonized courses in which Shakespeare, Homer, Chaucer, and other classics are expurgated from curricula in high schools and colleges in the United States (I cannot keep up). The idea first started by Rutgers that grammar is racist has been extrapolated on to the disciplines of science and math -- they, as well, are racists disciplines, we’re being told.
It is obvious that today’s cultural activists are guilty of massive child abuse in our classrooms. They have criminalized independent thinking, logic, reason, and so, have ended up conceptually breaking the minds of our children. They have usurped the purpose of education from one of learning to one of, ultimately, Marxist indoctrination and the destruction of the values that undergird American civilization. They are using children as political pawns, weapons of mass destruction, and objectified instruments in their war against the United States of America.
They have declared war on this country’s children and their precious minds -- openly, vulgarly, and with full forethought of malice.
It is time to apply an intransigent and implacable counterassault against their efforts. We know where they are and who they are.
The battle is, first, a philosophical one. We must proudly defend our first principles and our unassailable constitutive values that define America: our free market system of capitalism, our sacred Constitution and its Bill of Rights, a philosophy of individualism, reason, and American exceptionalism.
To destroy this movement, we must, first, abolish public education, that is, all government schools from K-12 to our public universities that have become national security threats and indoctrination centers for anti-American, and Marxist, and post-modern ideologies. They have to be shut down. Your tax dollars cannot fund these institutions any longer.
A future secretary of education and philosophically-minded future leaders must prepare for the complete eradication of the Department of Education. Education must be placed back in the hands of parents, and morally speaking, ought to be privatized. If as the New Cultural Leaders say, state teachers are racists -- then, alright, they must all be fired.
Private learning institutions should no longer receive any funding from the federal government, or from any state governing agencies that mandate an activist curriculum.
This is a contentious position to hold. I am willing to entertain the idea of issuing school vouchers for the use of a child’s private school tuition. This is also a more divisive issue among reasonable people, as it involves the use of public funds to pay for a child’s education. Some will argue, therefore, that vouchers still involve the state’s role in education. A safer alternative, it seems to me, and one predicated on the moral principle that people are responsible for the procreative choices that they make -- not society -- is to implement a unilateral tax credit for education for all parents. All one would have to do to qualify is to have a child or children that one wishes to educate in a private school. One would not be taxed on the portion of one’s income that is needed to send one’s child to school. This would certainly dis-incentivize more people from having more children than they can afford to educate. Among competing private schools in a free market, it simply would not be in the fiscal interests of private educators to leave broad swaths of people outside the system. We have seen where the emergence of private online universities has provided a plethora of opportunities for those whose income levels do not permit easy entrance into traditional, high-tuition universities, to receive an education.
I think a conversation about the two possibilities outlined is a healthy way to begin rooting out the existence of government schools from our republic.
To fight a war, one must start at the root by defeating the adversary’s strategies and methods. Strategies will follow as I continue to write on this topic. For now, I simply want those brown paper bags destroyed, those government schools closed forever, and American children given back to the safety of their parents. They are innocent. The future is theirs. And they deserve a shot at making something magnificent of it, and of their minds.
Hey guys. I have a new video. I interviewed Denise McAllister, which is something that I've been wanting to do for some time, for she is able to expose the hypocrisy of 'canceling' by mainstream figures within conservatism. Also, for those who are interested, I do publish updates to my Telegram channel (https://t.me/TheCrusaderGal) and there is a discussion group attached to it, where you are welcome to join the chat.
Cancel culture is widely condemned by conservatives, but some of the biggest names in the conservative movement collaborated together to disappear Denise McAllister after she criticized homosexuals - the 'protected group' of the conservative establishment. The supposed 'leaders' of the conservative movement don't actually care about conservative values in the least. McAllister blows the whistle on the fact that people like Ben Shapiro (Daily Wire), Ben Dominich (The Federalist), and even Fox News aren't what we think they are.
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
Jihadis and Islamic supremacists see the world in terms of strength and weakness. If you project an image of weakness and appeasement on the world stage, they will be emboldened.
“‘Turkey continues to increase its presence in Africa,'” by Burak Bir, Anadolu Agency, February 22, 2021:
Given the rise in the number of Ankara’s diplomatic missions across Africa, Turkey’s foreign minister said on Monday his country’s presence in the continent continues to increase.
“The African continent with its 33 Least Developed Countries [LDCs] is in need of solid leadership and support from its developed partners for economic growth, social progress, woman and youth empowerment,” said Mevlut Cavusoglu.
Speaking at the Africa Regional Review Meeting for the 5th UN Conference of the Least Developed Countries (LDC5), the Turkish foreign minister said there is still much to be done for helping the least developed countries especially at a time when the world is facing additional challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“A decade ago with the Istanbul Programme of Action, we put forward an ambitious vision for LDCs. Since then, the LDCs have achieved progress in bringing the people out of poverty. However, only three countries have graduated from the LDCs category in the last decade,” he said.
The foreign minister added that Turkey, as the co-chair of the Group of Friends of the LDCs, will continue to do its best to help them reach their objectives on economic growth, social progress, woman and youth empowerment….
“Turkey Announces Massive Military Exercise in the Aegean,” by Tasos Kokkinidis, Greek Reporter, February 22, 2021:
Turkey announced on Monday that it will conduct large-scale naval exercises in the Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea between February 25 and March 7.
The announcement came from the Turkish Ministry of Defense, which said that Turkish Naval Forces will launch the exercise dubbed “Blue Homeland 2021.”
The Turkish Army and the Air Force will also participate in the drill.
More than 80 ships to take part
According to the announcement, the purpose of the exercise is to evaluate the preparedness of the headquarters, units and ships affiliated with the Naval Forces Command.
A total of 82 ships, 5 maritime patrol aircraft, 12 naval helicopters and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Amphibious Marine Corps troops will participate.
In addition, general purpose and attack helicopters from the Land Forces Command, and F-16, F-4 and HIK (Airborne Warning and Control) aircraft from the Air Force Command, will also take part….
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
The Biden administration is being aided by the United Nations in its effort to bring previously deported migrants back into the United States to have their asylum cases adjudicated.
Under the Trump administration, the Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as “Remain in Mexico,” required that foreign nationals who entered the country illegally be relocated to Mexico in order to await the resolution of their cases. Biden ended the program upon entering office.
The Democrat instead wants would-be migrants in such circumstances brought back into the country, and the UN is helping him do it.
“Hundreds of migrants signed up on Friday within hours of the launch of a U.N. website that allows migrants with active cases to register remotely to be processed at the U.S.-Mexico border,” reported Reuters. “The United States and the United Nations are evaluating the locations of migrants and costs associated with possible flights and land transportation within Mexico.”
According to the outlet, the United States, Mexico, and international organizations are attempting to devise ways to register migrants, transport them to the border, test them for the coronavirus, and “get them to their U.S. destinations.”
The Biden administration has even considered paying for flights to bring migrants back into the country.
Dana Graber Ladek, chief of mission for the UN’s International Organization for Migration in Mexico, said that “Nothing is in place yet. Right now we’re still exploring all of the possibilities.”
Biden’s policies have led to a growing number of unaccompanied minors crossing the country’s southern border.
Human smugglers working in the region have also been telling would-be migrants to attempt the journey now, saying the new administration would prove more lenient than its predecessor.…
The Biden administration has also discontinued the practice of sending children back to Mexico or their home countries if they were traveling with an adult who wasn’t a parent. The change is in line with immigration law, which forbids the government from quickly deporting unaccompanied children — defined as any child not traveling with his or her parent. But the change has sent more children to HHS shelters as well.
Reports from U.S. Customs and Border protection officials also show an increase in the number of unaccompanied alien children crossing the southern border. Border Patrol agents apprehended 5,871 unaccompanied minors in January 2021, up from 4,995 in December 2020 and 3,076 in January 2020.
Shelters for illegal-alien minors are running out of space, per the Wall Street Journal. Mark Greenberg, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, told the Journal, “They’ve seen very large growth in a very short period of time. The closer you get to 100% capacity, the harder the system is to manage.”
Biden took a number of steps to move his immigration agenda forward immediately upon entering office. In his first day in the White House, he halted construction of the Wall, gutted President Trump’s travel ban, and placed a 100-day moratorium on deportations (although a federal judge indefinitely blocked the latter).
Democrats have introduced Biden’s amnesty plan in Congress. If signed into law, the program would immediately give green cards to millions of illegal aliens considered farmworkers, as well as to those enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and those who hold Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
All other illegal aliens who do not fall into the above categories would be given TPS before being allowed to apply for a green card and eventually receive American citizenship within an eight-year period.
Along with the amnesty would come increases to the number of immigrants allowed under visa categories, swelling the amount of legal immigration to the United States.
Amnesty has received support from the corporate wing of the Republican Party. Billionaire GOP mega-donor Charles Koch wrote in a recent op-ed that the two major parties should “come together” to give legal status for those who have broken federal immigration law to come into the country without permission.
“Whether it’s a path to legal status for undocumented immigrants, including Dreamers who were brought to America as children, improving the visa system or improving border security, lasting progress will require congressional action by both political parties,” Koch argued. “And getting Congress to step up depends on the American people speaking out.”
The American people should speak out — not for amnesty, as Koch says, but against it.
They don't want you to think critically, they don't want you to read and now they are removing books they deem "hate speech". How long until the Constitution and Declaration of Independence are ruled hate speech or terrorist manifestos?
Forget critical thinking, they don't even want you to read!
So, not only do the people who control the media and government not want you to think critically, apparently they would prefer altogether if you weren't able to read. In this video I cover the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization document "Education for Sustainable Development toolkit".
This document was published October 2006 and talks about "sustainable education" which according to the authors essentially means more education is a bad thing.
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
Representative Jimmy Panetta (D-Calif.), joined by nearly three dozen other Democrats on Tuesday, sent a letterto President Biden expressing legitimate concern over his having unilateral control of the nuclear codes:
Vesting one person with this authority entails real risks.
Past presidents have threatened to attack other countries with nuclear weapons or [have] exhibited behavior that caused [foreign] officials concern about the president’s judgment….
While any president would presumably consult with advisors before ordering a nuclear attack, there is no requirement to do so. The military is obligated to carry out the order if they assess it is legal under the laws of war.
Under the current posture of U.S. nuclear forces, that attack could happen in minutes.
While Democrats feigned concern over control of the nuclear codes — the 45-pound briefcase called the “nuclear football” — when Donald Trump was in the White House, this time their concerns are likely real.
During Monday’s ceremony honoring Americans who have died from COVID, Joe Biden suffered a massive brain freeze:
The only way to spare more pain and more loss, the only way … these millstones no longer mark our national mourning … these milestones, I should say, no longer … no longer moke … mark our national mourning.
On Tuesday, during a virtual phone call from the White House to a childcare worker in Columbus, Ohio, Biden was asked, “When are you going to see us in Columbus?” Biden answered, “Well, I’m going to be back in Columbus,” adding:
I was in Columbus, actually now it’s about literally 35 days or so ago … I came through on a whistle-stop on a train.
The actual event in Ohio occurred on September 30, 146 days ago, and it was in Cleveland, not Columbus.
A virtual cottage industry has sprung up compiling Biden’s gaffes. For those with the stomach for it, The Scoop has a ten-minute-long video of his more famous, or infamous, gaffes.
During the campaign, a joke was made about Biden’s dementia that might, if he were to become president, cause him to set off nuclear war by mistake, thinking he was pushing the button on the TV remote.
Now, considering that he is the present occupant of the Oval Office, it’s no joke.
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine (born Richard Levine), President Joe Biden’s pick for assistant secretary of health at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has long defended experimental transgender “treatments” for children. Levine, who identifies as transgender, has refused to say whether or not he has undergone medical interventions for his own gender identity, telling The Washington Post in 2016 that such “treatment” is a private matter.
Levine, a pediatrician who worked at Penn State Hersey Medical Center from 1993 to 2015 and who teaches pediatrics and psychology at Penn State College of Medicine, has given lectures on how to perform sex changes on children since at least 2012, The National Pulse reported. In 2014, Levine argued that adults should give children latitude to choose their genders. He coached adults, “try not to force them one way or [the] other.”
In 2017, Levine recommended cross-sex hormones for children in their mid-teens. According to a video of his speech obtained by The National Pulse, Levine warned about the dangers of going through “the wrong puberty” and encouraged hormones to prevent the natural process of adolescent development.
“So what if you’re going through the wrong puberty? What if you’re a transgender young woman — meaning male to female — and now your voice is dropping, you’re getting bigger, you’re getting hair everyone, and you’re growing those [testicles]. And what if you’re a transgender young man, and now you have breast development you’re experiencing, it’s terrifying,” Levine argued.
He lamented that “basically, there was no treatment for individuals that were under 18” under earlier guidelines. By 2017, however, new pro-transgender guidelines approved the use of experimental drugs that supposedly “block” the onset of puberty and cross-sex hormones.
Help us STOP Joe Biden’s radical agenda by becoming a PJ Media VIP member. Use promo code AMERICAFIRST to receive 25% off your VIP membership.
Levine noted that children’s hospitals still do not encourage these kinds of “treatments” for pre-pubertal children but that changes at the onset of puberty.
“The first phase at the young adolescent age is to give what they call a pubertal blocker, medicine to block the progression, low doses that you gradually increase,” Levine explained. The treatment supposedly ensures “that they never go through the wrong puberty. That way for a transgender woman, male to female, their voice doesn’t drop, they don’t have hair… for a transgender man, they don’t have breast development, they don’t have periods.”
“So you block puberty, and then you can, at the appropriate time, send them into puberty consistent with their gender identity,” Levine argued.
Research shows that there are significant risks with sex reassignment surgery, including heart conditions, increased cancer risk, and loss of bone density.
Some endocrinologists have warned about the negative effects of “puberty-blockers” and cross-sex hormones.
“I call it a development blocker — it’s actually causing a disease,” Dr. Michael Laidlaw, an independent private practice endocrinologist in Rocklin, Calif. who consults with Sutter Roseville Medical Center, told PJ Media. The disease in question is hypogonadotropic hypogonadism. It occurs when the brain fails to send the right signal to the gonads to make the hormones necessary for development.
While endocrinologists — doctors who specialize in hormones and the endocrine system — are familiar with the disease and gladly treat it when a patient has been diagnosed, many of them are effectively causing their patients to contract the same disease in an attempt to affirm gender identity, Laidlaw said. “An endocrinologist might treat a condition where a female’s testosterone levels are going to be outside the normal range. We’ll treat that and we’re aware of metabolic problems. At the same time, an endocrinologist may be giving high levels of testosterone to a female to ‘transition’ her.”
Children with gender dysphoria (the condition of persistently identifying with the gender opposite one’s biological sex) are extremely unlikely to continue in that condition after puberty without medical interventions like “puberty-blockers.” Many realize they are not transgender, but instead gay or lesbian — like detransitioner Charlotte Evans, who launched a network for formerly transgender people.
Last year, Britain’s High Court ruled that children under age 16 lack the ability to consent to “puberty-blocking” drugs and cross-sex hormones that have irreversible life-long effects. Children who undergo such “treatments” often persist in transgender identity and lose their ability to have children later in life, so some refer to cross-sex hormones and “puberty blockers” as “chemical castration.”
Many states are considering laws that would prevent doctors from prescribing these experimental treatments for minors. However, it seems extremely likely Biden and the Democrats in Congress will further these dangerous treatments in legislation and regulations connected to the Equality Act.
By nominating Levine for a key HHS post, Biden has sent a dangerous message about transgenderism in medicine. Medicine, of all fields, should follow the science of biological sex over unclear notions of transgender identity. After all, Levine himself acknowledged that the causes of gender identity — which he defined as “who you feel inside” — remain unclear.
“The hypothesis that I will give you is that the organic basis of gender identity is the expression of neurodevelopment of the brain, which is biological — as opposed to a competing hypothesis that this is somehow psychological or developmental,” Levine said in 2017.
By contrast, biological sex is male or female and it traces back to the “X” and “Y” chromosomes of DNA. Biological sex determines how human beings develop, from the womb to the tomb, and some medicines work well for women when they do not work well for men, and vice versa. These differences justify sex-segregated sports, sex-segregated private spaces, and different rules for men and women in different contexts.
Yet Biden, Levine, and the rest of the transgender establishment are consciously muddying the waters of well-established biological fact. This carries significant consequences for the field of medicine — and it bodes ill for gender-confused children.
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational & research purposes:
During a Senate confirmation hearing, Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul questioned President Joe Biden’s nominee for assistant Health and Human Services secretary, Richard Levine—who changed his first name to “Rachel” after coming out as “transgender,” over Levine’s support for hormone blockers and the “genital mutilation” of minors.
Levine, who was appointed by Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, in 2017 as acting health secretary, had been confirmed three times by a Republican-controlled state Senate to serve as secretary of health and the state’s physician general. Biden has now nominated Levine for the assistant Health and Human Services secretary position.
“Genital mutilation has been nearly universally condemned. Genital mutilation has been condemned by the WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the United Nations Population Fund,” Senator Paul stated. “According to the WHO, gender mutilation is recognized internationally as a violation of human rights,” Paul asserted during his remarks.
Paul then questioned Levine on whether or not he believed that minors should be making decisions to mutilate their sexual organs.
“American culture is now normalizing the idea that minors can be given hormones to prevent the biological development of their secondary sexual characteristics. … Do you believe that minors are capable of making such a life-changing decision as changing one’s sex?”
Levine did not answer the question directly but in response stated that “[t]ransgender medicine is a very complex and nuanced field with robust research and standards of care that have been developed.”
“I will look forward to working with you and your office and coming to your office and discussing the particulars of the standards of care for transgender medicine,” Levine further stated.
In Matthew 19:4, the Bible states that Jesus said, “…Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female.”
Full transcript of the exchange:
Senator Paul: (00:01) Genital mutilation has been nearly universally condemned. Genital mutilation has been condemned by the WHO, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the United Nations Population Fund. According to the WHO, genital mutilation is recognized internationally as a violation of human rights. Genital mutilation is considered particularly egregious because, as the WHO notes, it is nearly always carried out on minors and is a violation of the rights of children. Most genital mutilation is not typically performed by force, but as WHO notes, that by social convention, social norm, the social pressure to conform, to do what others do and have been doing, as well as the need to be accepted socially and the fear of being rejected by the community.
Senator Paul: (00:48) American culture is now normalizing the idea that minors can be given hormones to prevent the biological development of their secondary sexual characteristics. Dr. Levine, you have supported both allowing minors to be given hormone blockers, to prevent them from going through puberty, as well as surgical destruction of a minor’s genitalia. Like surgical mutilation, hormonal interruption of puberty can permanently alter and prevent secondary sexual characteristics. The American College of Pediatricians reports that 80 to 95% of prepubertal children with gender dysphoria will experience resolution by late adolescence if not exposed to medical intervention and social affirmation. Dr. Levine, do you believe that minors are capable of making such a life-changing decision as changing one’s sex?
Dr. Levine: (01:40) Well, Senator thank you for your interest in this question. Transgender medicine is a very complex and nuanced field with robust research and standards of care that have been developed. And if I am fortunate enough to be confirmed as the Assistant Secretary of Health, I will look forward to working with you and your office and coming to your office and discussing the particulars of the standards of care for transgender medicine.
Senator Paul: (02:05) The specific question was about minors. Let’s be a little more specific since you evaded the question. Do you support the government intervening to override the parent’s consent to give a child puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and or amputation surgery of breasts and genitalia? You have said that you’re willing to accelerate the protocols for street kids. I’m alarmed that poor kids with no parents, who are homeless and distraught, you would just go through this and allow that to happen to a minor.
Senator Paul: (02:37) I would hope that you would have compassion for Kira Bell, who’s a 23-year old girl who was confused with her identity. At 14, she read on the internet about something about transsexuals and she thought, “Well, maybe that’s what I am.” She ended up getting these puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, she had her breasts amputated. But here’s what ultimately she says now, and this is a very insightful decision from someone who made a mistake, but was led to believe this was a good thing by the medical community. “I made a brash decision as a teenager, as a lot of teenagers do, trying to find confidence and happiness, except now the rest of my life will be negatively affected,” she said. Adding that the medicalized gender transitioning was a very temporary superficial fix for a very complex identity issue.
Senator Paul: (03:24) What I’m alarmed at is that you’re not willing to say absolutely minors shouldn’t be making decisions to amputate their breast or to amputate their genitalia. For most of our history, we have believed that minors don’t have full rights and that parents need to be involved, so I’m alarmed that you won’t say with certainty that minors should not have the ability to make the decision to take hormones that will affect them for the rest of their life. Will you make a more firm decision on whether or not minors should be involved in these decisions?
Dr. Levine: (03:56) Senator, transgender medicine is a very complex and nuanced field. And if confirmed to the position of Assistant Secretary of Health, I would certainly be pleased to come to your office and talk with you and your staff about the standards of care and the complexity of this field.
Senator Paul: (04:13) Let it go into the record that the witness refused to answer the question. The question is a very specific one, should minors be making these momentous decisions? For most of the history of medicine, we wouldn’t let you have a cut sewn up in the ER, but you’re willing to let a minor take things that prevent their puberty and you think they get that back? You give a woman testosterone enough that she grows a beard, you think she’s going to go back looking like a woman when you stop the testosterone? You have permanently changed them. Infertility is another problem.
Senator Paul: (04:43) None of these drugs have been approved for this. They’re all being used off label. I find it ironic that the left that went nuts over hydroxychloroquine being used possibly for COVID are not alarmed that these hormones are being used off label. There’s no long-term studies. We don’t know what happens to them. We do know that there are dozens and dozens of people who’ve been through this who regret that this happened and a permanent change happened to them. If you’ve ever been around children, 14-year-olds can’t make this decision. In the gender dysphoria clinic in England, 10% of the kids are between the ages of three and 10. We should be outraged that someone is talking to a three-year-old about changing their sex. I can’t [crosstalk 00:05:27].
Speaker 3: (05:26) Thank you so much, Senator Paul. Senator Levine, thank you for answering the question. I will turn to Senator Baldwin.
