Transgender

Gender-Neutral Pronouns An Attack on “Being” | The Imago Dei

Published by Papa Giorgio
  • Moral standards…presuppose absolute moral standards, which in turn presuppose the existence of an absolute personality. In other words, they presuppose the existence of God. But what God?… Of all the major religious traditions, it is only biblical religion that affirms a God who is both personal and absolute. [Only biblical religion sees] that the idea of absolute personality is closely linked to the ideas of a Creator-creature distinction [as reflected in the imago Dei], divine sovereignty, and the Trinity. Compromise these and you compromise the personality of God. This precise pattern of thought is found only in the Bible and in traditions which are heavily influenced by the Bible. Is it then too much to say that morality presupposes the God of the Bible? I think not. — John Frame

I have been wanting to connect the reason I see gender-neutral pronouns like, they/them, ze/zim, sie/hir, are being used by the post-modern Left. The real — bottom line reason — is it dilutes evidences for God and every human’s “Imago Dei” Norman Geisler notes that “[t]he only ‘common ground’ with unbelievers is that they too are creatures in God’s image and live in God’s world.” Continuing he says,

  • But there are no common notions or methods; non-Christians approach the world differently from Christians, and they view it differently. We have a common world with unbelievers but no common worldview. The contact point with unbelievers is the imago Dei. But even here the “point of contact” is the “point of conflict,” for “if there is no head-on collision with the systems of the natural man there will be no point of contact with the sense of deity in the natural man.” Conflict is inevitable because of human depravity and sin.

I will emphasize our personal being in our language to bolster the point in this paragraph

Let me explain a bit more. Part of the Imago Dei in us all is that we get our “being” from it [“It” – the Ultimate Being]. In other words, an example I use is “can you refer to yourself in the womb of your mother without using personal pronouns? We have an “I” in our being. But that “I” has not always existed… it itself was brought into being by my, or your, parents. Who likewise had being, but “contingent ‘being,'” as they relied on others for their being.

I know, it is tough. But this “being” I am speaking of is argued well below, and is an excellent apologetic for God and the Christian worldview. Excerpted from my post, “Kalam Cosmological Argument ~ History and Argument“

PUT THUS:

We spoke of the universe as “the collection of beings in space and time.” Consider one such being: yourself. You exist, and you are, in part at least, material. This means that you are a finite, limited and changing being, you know that right now, as you read this book, you are dependent for your existence on beings outside you. Not your parents or grandparents. They may no longer be alive, but you exist now. And right now you depend on many things in order to exist–for example, on the air you breathe. To be dependent in this way is to be contingent. You exist if something else right now exists.

But not everything can be like this. For then everything would need to be given being, but there would be nothing capable of giving it. There would not exist what it takes for anything to exist. So there must be something that does not exist conditionally; something which does not exist only if something else exists; something which exists in itself. What it takes for this thing to exist could only be this thing itself. Unlike changing material reality, there would be no distance, so to speak, between what this thing is and that it is. Obviously the collection of beings changing in space and time cannot be such a thing. Therefore, what it takes for the universe to exist cannot be identical with the universe itself or with a part of the universe.

(From “Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God“)

An excellent short video explaining this all is this one,

Contingency Argument SPEED RUN!

In other words, our “being” has a Cause in His “Being.” Plato saw this dimly in his Theory of Forms:

Plato’s Theory of Forms is a philosophical concept that explains the nature of reality. The basic question goes something like this:

We can see trees, cats, circles and many other things in everyday life, and we can easily recognise each one as the thing it is supposed to be. But, if we look closer, we never really see anything like a “standard cat.” Every cat is different, and so is every tree and every drawn circle. Especially with geometric forms, they are never perfect. Every circle we can see in our world is either broken, distorted, pixelated, or in a myriad of other ways not “a perfect circle.” In fact, a perfect geometrical circle would need to be drawn with a line that does not have any thickness, and so would be invisible!

So how is it, Plato asks, that we are able to identify circles, trees and cats if have actually never seen a “standard” thing of each kind?

There are two worlds, Plato says: the world of physical objects and the world of Forms. The world of physical objects is the world we see around us, while the world of Forms is the world of abstract concepts and ideas. The Forms are perfect, unchanging, and eternal, while the physical objects we see around us are imperfect, changing, and temporary.

Norman Geisler explains this in differing ways with the following. And note, I have more in-depth reproductions of his arguments in the second half of this post — along with the PDF reproductions for download. But I am here desperately trying to dumb the argument down to make the broader point. Which is, the “pronouns” being foisted on us ARE AN ATTACK on the foundation of truth and reality, which is rooted in God’s “Being”, Image, transferred to us in a finite, now fallen way.

Based on Sufficient Reason

(See an excellent article at The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

P1) A contingent being exists.

  1. This contingent being is caused either (1) by itself, or (2) by another.
  2. If it were caused by itself, it would have to precede itself in existence, which is impossible.

P2) Therefore, this contingent being (2) is caused by another, i.e., depends on something else for its existence.

P3) That which causes (provides the sufficient reason for) the existence of any contingent being must be either (3) another contingent being, or (4) a non-contingent being (necessary) being.

  1. If 3, then this contingent cause must itself be caused by another, and so onto infinity.

P4) Therefore, that which causes (provides the sufficient reason for) the existence of any contingent being must be either (5) an infinite series of contingent beings, or (4) a necessary being.

P5) An infinite series of contingent beings (5) is incapable of yielding a sufficient reason for the existence of any being.

P6) Therefore, a necessary being (4) exists!

Based on the Principle of Existential Causality

  1. Some limited, changing being[s] exist.
  2. The present existence of every limited, changing being is caused by another.
  3. There cannot be an infinite regress of causes of being.
  4. Therefore, there is a first Cause of the present existence of these beings.
  5. This first Cause must be infinite, necessary, eternal, simple, unchangeable and one.
  6. This first uncaused Cause is identical with the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition

A mix of both

  1. Something exists (e.g., I do);
  2. I am a contingent being;
  3. Nothing cannot cause something;
  4. Only a Necessary Being can cause a contingent being;
  5. Therefore, I am caused to exist by a Necessary Being;
  6. But I am personal, rational, and moral kind of being (since I engage in these kinds of activities);
  7. Therefore this Necessary Being must be a personal, rational, and moral kind of being, since I am similar to him by the Principle of Analogy;
  8. But a Necessary Being cannot be contingent (i.e., not necessary) in its being which would be a contradiction;
  9. Therefore, this Necessary Being is personal, rational, and moral in a necessary way, not in a contingent way;
  10. This Necessary Being is also eternal, uncaused, unchanging, unlimited, and one, since a Necessary Being cannot come to be, be caused by another, undergo change, be limited by any possibility of what it could be (a Necessary Being has no possibility to be other than it is), or to be more than one Being (since there cannot be two infinite beings);
  11. Therefore, one necessary, eternal, uncaused, unlimited (=infinite), rational, personal, and moral being exists;
  12. Such a Being is appropriately called “God” in the theistic sense, because he possesses all the essential characteristics of a theistic God;
  13. Therefore, the theistic God exists.

IN OTHER WORDS, our being, the “I” that we experience the world through IS AN APOLOGETIC, EVIDENCE of God!

Our being has a logical argument from Thee Being.

Our being (ways in which something can exist or occur or to be presented, or stand) is rooted in a theistic argument that is much surer in it’s premises and explanations.

That aside, the Marxist [read here atheistic] attack on Western values and truth is rooted itself in negating the Judeo-Christian aspect of historical truth, or knowing Part of this argument is the enquiry into “what we can know.” Our Declaration of Independence and Constitution either state or assume this:

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

[….]

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

[….]

“We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States…”

This title of Supreme Judge of the world establishes God not only as the Creator of the world but also as the source of moral law. This statement is in opposition to the idea of Deism, which says that there exists a supreme being or creator who set the universe in motion but does not intervene in human affairs or the natural world. This statement suggests that those writing the declaration believed that the God of the Bible was the ultimate judge of good and evil.

The final mention of God in the Declaration of Independence labels God as the giver of Divine Providence.

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

This is a statement of trust in the divine’s oversight and actions that would result in declaring independence from Britain. These four mentions of God show that the founding fathers had a clear belief in moral truth which originated from a supreme being. In an article for Intercessors for America, Tyler O’Neil states, “The leaders who formed our country based their arguments for independence on the laws of God, and they trusted Him to guide America through its struggles. They looked to faith as a bulwark of freedom, not as its opposite.”

What Role Did Religious Beliefs Play in the Founding of the United States?

Many religious backgrounds made up those living in Colonial America at the time of the Declaration of Independence and the writing of the U.S. Constitution. Puritans, Anglicans, Quakers, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Presbyterians, and Jewish congregations were all represented within the American Colonies.

It is well documented that 51 of the 55 delegates at the Constitutional Convention claimed to hold Christian beliefs. Even Benjamin Franklin, a proclaimed Deist, gave a call to prayer that contained several references to scripture on June 28th, 1787, when the Constitutional Convention was struggling to agree.

“The Constitution doesn’t explicitly mention God but references frequently concepts central to Christianity like morals, reason, and free will,” says David Barton, founder of WallBuilders, a Texas-based group dedicated to promoting America’s Christian heritage. …

(CHRISTIANITY)

In other words, attacking the foundation of knowledge and beings able to know moral truths and reality is at the heart of the pronoun issue. It is both an attack on our freedoms here in America, as well as an attack on our freedoms discovered via Western culture writ large.

WOMEN IN APOLOGETICS notes the foundation of “truth” in part of their post:

Truth

There seems to be little consensus where there was once clarity on what constituted male and female, boy and girl, man and woman, he and she. This is evidenced in the growing number of people who identify as transgender (those who experience gender dysphoria, a condition that describes the “psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity”) or those who identify themselves using other nontraditional gender terms. As such, it is becoming somewhat common for people to state or list their preferred pronouns in conversation, on social media, before meetings, or in email signatures. For example, during the 2020 election season, several Democratic presidential candidates put their preferred pronouns on their social media profiles.

In contrast, the Christian worldview asserts that God created people to be either male or female. Genesis 1:27 reads, “So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female He created them.” God did not intend for sex and gender (identity) to be separate from one another; they are synonymous. To adopt a different worldview on sex and gender would be to reject the truth. Nevertheless, the culture today is attempting (with some success, unfortunately) to convince Christians differently. 

To not call someone by their preferred pronouns, like,  xe/xir/xirs, ze/zir/zirs and fae/faer/faers, is liked to a “human rights violations.” In fact, those prouns are an attack on what it is to be human.

Our essence.

Our being.

Dennis Prager says it is a war on human order. Which is a war on God:

Genesis 3:5 has the serpent (the Devil) tempting Adam and Eve. Half-truths are the best the Serpent can come up with, but the commentary I love on this verse will follow. I will highlight some points in it. 3:5 reads: “In fact, God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (CSB).

Here is the commentary:

The climax is a lie big enough to reinterpret life (this breadth is the power of a false system) and dynamic enough to redirect the flow of affection and ambition. To be as God,25 and to achieve it by outwitting him, is an intoxicating programme. God will henceforth be regarded, consciously or not, as rival and enemy. Against this human arrogance ‘the obedience of the one’ and his taking ‘the form of a servant’ show up in their true colours (Rom. 5:19; Phil. 2:7).

So the tempter pits his bare assertion against the word and works of God, presenting divine love as envy, service as servility, and a suicidal plunge as a leap into life, ‘All these things will I give thee …’; the pattern repeats in Christ’s temptations, and in ours.

— On knowing good and evil, see on 2:9 [see below].

25. Or, gods (AV). The word ’ĕlōhîm can be used generically to include the angelic orders; see on 1:26.

2:9

…. The knowledge of good and evil is perhaps best understood in this living context. In isolation it could mean a number of things, many of them with biblical support. The phrase can stand for moral or aesthetic discernment (e.g. 1 Kgs 3:9; Isa. 7:15); yet Adam and Eve are already treated as morally responsible (2:16, 17) and generally percipient (3:6) before they touch the tree. It could be a hebraism for ‘everything’ (i.e. man is not to covet omniscience); yet it can hardly mean this in 3:22. It has often been regarded as sexual awakening, in the light of 3:7; recently R. Gordis suggested that this tree thereby offers a rival immortality to that of the tree of life, in the procreation of a family and a posterity. This too is open to several objections, including the fact that 3:22a is incompatible with it (heaven is sexless in the Old as in the New Testament), and that God instituted marriage after forbidding the use of the tree that is said to symbolize it.

In the context, however, the emphasis falls on the prohibition rather than the properties of the tree. It is shown to us as forbidden. It is idle to ask what it might mean in itself; this was Eve’s error. As it stood, prohibited, it presented the alternative to discipleship: to be self-made, wresting one’s knowledge, satisfactions and values from the created world in defiance of the Creator (cf. 3:6). Even more instructive is the outcome of the experiment; see on 3:7. In all this the tree plays its part in the opportunity it offers, rather than the qualities it possesses; like a door whose name announces only what lies beyond it.

Derek Kidner, Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary, vol. 1, Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1967), 67–68, 73.

Yep. It is all a big lie. And the extreme gender confusion with it’s high rate of suicide is literally “a suicidal plunge as a leap into life.”

And the battle goes on…

And another point. Lets say you work at a Starbucks in West Hollywood, and you have 4-people who each have chosen a preferred pronoun[s]. For example, here are some of the choices:

  • So one person uses “xe, xem, xyr, xyers.”
  • Another uses “ne, nem, nir, nerself.” 
  • Yet another uses “ci, cer, cer, cirs.”
  • And lastly this person uses “ve, vis, ver, verself.”

How is one supposed to keep track of all that hogwash so as not to get fired? It is impossible for even these 4 to keep it straight. In Michigan they are making these felonies:

A new Michigan bill would make it a hate crime to cause someone to “feel terrorized, frightened, or threatened.”

The Michigan Hate Crime Act, designated HB 4474 , passed in the state House on Tuesday and now goes before the Michigan Senate.  It will replace the existing Ethnic Intimidation Act and expand the categories of people protected by the law.

The new bill would include “sexual orientation” and “gender identity or expression” as classes protected against intimidation.

[….]

If passed, the hate speech legislation would make violators guilty of a felony punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of $10,000.

(DAILY CALLER | see DAILY WIRE as well)

AMERICAN THINKER notes this religious attack implicitly at the beginning of their article:

God-fearing people recognize that the effort to demolish the two God-given genders is a shaking of the fist at the Almighty. After all, the first chapter of the Bible says: “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27). This paradigm empowers females who are created in the imago dei. They are different from males, but equal to them at the level of essence. Nature and biology confirm God’s binary design.

Unfortunately, we live in a post-Christian society. Sane arguments often fall on deaf ears. The secular elites who control education and the media have marginalized those who provide biblical explanations. Given this sad reality, might there be another way to end the compelled speech of pronoun lunacy in which people can decide by which pronouns they will be referred?

[….]

For example, if someone asked another person about me: “What do you think of Newt?” They would need to respond something like: “I hate Newt. He is a tyrant. He never does what you ask of her.” Note that “he” is used when Newt is the subject of the sentence, and “her” is used at the end when Newt is the object of the sentence. If they failed to honor my preferred pronouns and said, “…He never does whatever you ask of him…” this would be a violation. I would report this, and press charges, if possible.

Mary could likewise insist on her pronouns being “She” and “Him.” Those speaking or writing about Mary would have to write something like: “I appreciate Mary. She is a great friend. I have no better friend than him. She is a great listener.” Or she could insist on “He” and “Her” (as does Newt).

Can you imagine if as many people as possible insisted upon this practice? Might it cause the regime of verbal tyranny to collapse? Though we are in the process of butchering English with the improper use of “they,” the mind can factor in this mutation and get used to it. However, since native English speakers calculate pronoun case automatically and subconsciously, it would be nearly impossible to speak and write in a way that could satisfy those who insist on different gendering pronouns that are case-dependent.

Yep. It is impossible to satisfy such people. This thinking “wresting one’s knowledge, satisfactions and values from the created world in defiance of the Creator.”

SOME APOLOGISTS DISCUSS THE ISSUE:

Douglas Groothuis w/Melissa Dougherty

Today, I interviewed Dr. Groothuis about the craziness we see around us and what we can do about it. Dr. Groothuis holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and is a Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary. He is the author of sixteen books and has also published over thirty academic articles in journals as well as dozens of pieces in publications.

Nancy Pearcey w/Babylon Bee’s Ethan Nicolle

Editor-in-chief Kyle Mann and creative director Ethan Nicolle welcome Professor Nancy Pearcey. She is professor of apologetics and scholar in residence at Houston Baptist University and author of several books, most recently Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality. Prof. Pearcey’s books also include Total Truth, Finding Truth, The Soul of Science, Saving Leonardo and How Now Shall We Live? (co-authored with Chuck Colson). They talk about sexuality, gender, abortion, and Christianity’s high view of the human body.

Topics Discussed

  • Abortion… scientific human life vs modern Personhood Theory
  • Biological Sex vs Gender
  • The Christian’s high view of the material world and the human body due to belief in the incarnation of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, and the new heaven  and earth.
  • Trusting in a design vs individual revolt against nature and biological realities
  • Language as a front in the culture war
  • All of our actions endorse a worldview
  • What about people who identify as “gay Christians” or some other adjective placed before the word Christian?
  • Nudity in medieval Christian art

Unnamed People w/Melissa Dougherty

There’s a postmodern ideology that is plowing through our world that aims to dismantle all societal and moral norms. This ideology is responsible for how we have gotten to the point in society where language is rebranded and “sex” and “gender” are separate. Now, there are supposedly unlimited genders. If this isn’t disturbing enough, the logical conclusion of this ideology (which really functions like a religion) is that age should be flexible, too. Kids should have the freedom to choose what age they identify as… as sexual beings. This ideology says this is good, liberating, and empowering.

This is completely shocking. And absolute garbage that should be talked about and brought to light.

Pro Female Shirt Likened to Swastika!? #WarOnWomen

Published by Papa Giorgio
  • Trans identified males are taking medals, team berths and sponsorship dollars away from women. And not a single athletic brand is standing up for the protection of women’s sports.– Jennifer Sey’s Substack

Wow. The Democrat Left is cray-cray…. and in all their redefining of fascism, Hitler, and the like as normal thoughts of common sense, they — in the end — diminish real evil. Making it nothing but a passing thought/weapon to emote about something they disagree with rather than a real historical evil meant to warn of actual dangers of man’s nature.

FLASHBACK POST: Female athletes have lost nearly 900 medals to transgender rivals competing against them in women’s sporting categories, an eye-opening United Nations report has revealed. (RPT)

BREITBART fills us in on the latest misuse and diminishing of real evil:

A pair of teenage girls at a California high school are accusing officials in their athletic department of comparing their “Save Girls’ Sports” t-shirts to “swastikas.”

Kaitlyn and Taylor, who play on teams for Martin Luther King High School in Riverside, California, say they were disrespected by school officials when they wore their “Save Girls’ Sports” shirts in response to a transgender player who rarely attended practice and should not have qualified, but who was still placed on a varsity team, displacing Taylor, Fox News reported.

Now the girls are suing their school.

“My initial reaction was like, I was really surprised, because it was like, why is this happening to me?” Taylor said. “There’s a transgender student on the team. Why am I getting displaced when I’ve worked so hard and gone to all of the practices, and this student has only attended a few of the practices.”

The girls allege in their lawsuit that school officials made them remove their activist shirts and were told they were creating a “hostile environment” at the school. They also say that officials said the shirts were the same as wearing a swastika.

[….]

Attorney Julianne Fleischer alleges that the school violated her clients’ First and Fourteenth Amendment rights and their Title IX protections.

“We’re seeing more and more women and young girls speak up and challenge these policies that are allowing biological boys to join and participate in these sports,” Fleischer insisted. “And so there’s lawsuits that are popping up all around the country. We’re hopeful that even with the incoming administration and Congress that we’re going to see real positive change to Title IX that actually upholds and safeguards the rights of women to participate in their sports and to be safe and to be able to compete amongst one another.”

[….]

For instance, a girls’ high school volleyball team at a Christian school in Merced, California, recently forfeited a game because they did not wish to compete against a trans player.

The Christian high school is only one of a growing list of school teams that are refusing to play against opponents with transgender players. A lawsuit was filed this year against San Jose State University (SJSU) and the Mountain West Conference for allowing a male athlete to play on the SJSU women’s volleyball team.

To date, five colleges have refused to play against SJSU over the school’s inclusion of transgender player Blair Fleming.

The National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA)  is also being sued by several groups over its policy of allowing transgender players to play as women.

A Couple Brave Girls Speak Out Against the #WarOnWomen

Daily Caller describes their longer video of the above clip, “Save Girls’ Sports” is now a Nazi phrase? These people will never learn, will they?”

PJ-MEDIA agrees, they haven’t learned what the issue… the real issue is about:

This past week has seen certain LGBT issues take center stage again after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) officially declared that sex-segregated spaces at the Capitol, like bathrooms and locker rooms, “are reserved for individuals of that biological sex.” This commonsense policy that protects women has prompted all sorts of outrage from the radical left. Naturally, the left doesn’t see it this way and is fuming over it.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said the policy is “endangering all women and girls.”

Her response was the epitome of stupid, but she wasn’t the only one distorting the issue.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) offered his office bathroom for Representative-elect [Tim] Sarah McBride to use and declared “There’s no job I’m afraid to lose if it requires me to degrade anyone.”

And then there’s Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), who said, “My GOP colleagues, who privately tell me they don’t hate LGBTQ+ people, should find the courage to reject the dehumanizing rhetoric. Your silence is deafening.”

Her tweet, dripping with the kind of condescension we’ve come to expect from progressive Democrats, misses the mark entirely. This isn’t about hate. The debate over policies like barring biological men from women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, and sports isn’t about hate — it’s about protecting basic rights and common sense. 

Americans have every right to defend spaces and opportunities specifically designed for women. These aren’t trivial issues — they involve fundamental questions of fairness and safety that, for some reason, the radical left has completely abandoned because it’s now owned by the transgender lobby.

Remember, it took a long time for women to get the same opportunities as men. Think about it. Title IX, the landmark federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in education, was only passed in 1972. Nearly fifty years later, the idea of biological men competing in female athletics has become the cause du jour of the radical left, completely undermining the intent and spirit of the law.

Men who claim to “identify” as women enjoy biological advantages that cannot be erased with plastic surgery or hormone treatments. It doesn’t matter what a man’s “preferred pronouns” are or if he puts on a dress. He’ll have higher bone density, muscle mass, and lung capacity, giving him an edge that his female athletes simply can’t match.

Allowing biological men into women’s sports effectively robs women of the chance to compete on an equal playing field and, sadly, has stolen accolades and opportunities from real women.

The same principles apply to private spaces like bathrooms and locker rooms. It’s not “dehumanizing” or “degrading” to say that women and girls deserve privacy and safety. It’s not hateful to expect boundaries rooted in biological reality. It’s about respect — both for real women’s needs and for the truth.

Balint’s claim that silence equals complicity is a typical identity politics tactic, demanding moral submission instead of fostering meaningful debate. And Democrats never want to debate the issues. Particularly this one. 

The real issue is the left’s refusal to acknowledge that concerns about protecting women’s sports and private spaces are grounded in science and shared by many Americans. Conservatives must reject the false narrative that defending women’s rights is anti-LGBTQ. This debate isn’t about hate but about fairness, dignity, and recognizing biological differences are real and cannot be erased.

A VOLLEYBALL UPDATE:

PJ-MEDIA writes about the lawsuit, I will follow that up with a HOT AIR update:

… Luckily, some college athletes have had enough of this type of nonsense, and they’re taking legal action.   

San Jose State volleyball player Brooke Slusser, along with SJSU associate head coach Melissa Batie-Smoose, and 10 other college athletes have filed a lawsuit against the school and the Mountain West Conference, the NCAA Division I conference in which the school plays.The women claim that their Title IX rights have been violated by SJSU allowing a transgender athlete on the volleyball team.  

“Among the allegations in the lawsuit are that SJSU coach Todd Kress gave the player in question preferential treatment, that the Mountain West amended its transgender athlete participation policy without following conference protocol and that the conference fostered an unsafe environment by allowing the athlete to play,” according to ESPN. 

Fox News reported that several female athletes were overlooked for scholarships because of the transgender player’s “physical dominance.” The lawsuit documents also suggest that Slusser felt her personal safety was in danger when the transgender athlete and another player got together and put a plan in place to have the ball spiked right at her head in a match with Colorado State. 

Upon hearing about the plan, Batie-Smoose attempted to stand up for the girls on the team by talking to Kress and filing a Title IX complaint, but she was suspended from the program. “They took away the only safe space we had,” Slusser said of losing her coach. She also accused the school of silencing people who were just trying to stand up for what’s right.   ….

HOT AIR posts on the growing legal challenge growing in California:

… Last week I wrote about a Title IX lawsuit filed by players and one coach against the San Jose State University women’s volleyball team. The lawsuit was filed because the SJSU team includes a trans woman whose athletic ability exceeds that of other members of her team or, according to the lawsuit, of any player on any women’s team.

During practices in August 2024 immediately before the 2024 season Slusser and Batie-Smoose saw that Fleming was hitting the ball with more force than in 2023 and far harder than any woman they had ever played or coached with or against.

Where Fleming stood out was spiking the volleyball and blocking on the front row due to Fleming’s leaping ability and hitting power, which far exceeded that of any player in the conference and was the most explosive of any player that SJSU’s Associate Head Coach has observed in collegiate women’s volleyball…

Fleming’s spikes were estimated to be traveling upwards of 80 miles per hour, which is faster than a woman hits a volleyball.

Now the University of Utah has filed a motion to join that lawsuit.

Utah State University has filed a motion to join a federal lawsuit against the Mountain West Conference, challenging the organization’s transgender participation policy.

The move comes after the state’s Republican political leaders — including Gov. Spencer J. Cox, Senate President Stuart Adams and House Speaker Mike Schultz — urged the university to join the lawsuit that was filed last week in U.S. District Court by 11 volleyball players and one coach in the Mountain West.

USU volleyball player Kaylie Ray is one of the 12 plaintiffs in the original lawsuit. According to Utah State’s motion, the Aggie volleyball team took an anonymous survey and 11 players, including Ray, decided to not play an October match against San Jose State “due to concerns of fairness and to communicate that they do not agree with the TPP (transgender participation policy) and hold strong personal and political beliefs that transgender women should not be permitted to compete in women’s sports.”

BRAVO! ??????

Klinefelter Syndrome Is Treated, Not Normalized | Gender Binary

Published by Papa Giorgio

I have recently come across a list of “sexes” pictured to the right. The person posting this noted:

  • Saw this and wanted to copy it and share it. We love our black-and-white dichotomy because it’s so easy to then label and categorize folks. But it is a LOT more complex than that. Not asking ANYONE to change their conclusions. Just become more aware of the complexities so that you don’t look so ignorant when you post simplistic memes and such…..

A few years back I looked into an example from this list, which I will excerpt how rare these are:

  • The term Klinefelter syndrome (KS) describes a group of chromosomal disorder in which there is at least one extra X chromosome to a normal male karyotype, 46,XY. XXY aneuploidy is the most common disorder of sex chromosomes in humans, with prevalence of one in 500 males. Other sex chromosomal aneuploidies have also been described, although they are much less frequent, with 48,XXYY and 48,XXXY being present in 1 per 17,000 to 1 per 50,000 male births. The incidence of 49,XXXXY is 1 per 85,000 to 100,000 male births. In addition, 46,XX males also exist and it is caused by translocation of Y material including sex determining region (SRY) to the X chromosome during paternal meiosis.

A great – short – video regarding the most common occurrence from above is this:

HEALTHY MALE recommends this treatment of this most expressive DISORDER:

Infants and children with Klinefelter syndrome should be examined by their doctor at least every two years to monitor their physical development.

They may need support from specialists to manage any problems with speech, learning, behaviour or psychiatric issues.

Testosterone treatment might be prescribed for boys with Klinefelter syndrome who have a very small penis.

Monitoring the growth and hormone function of boys with Klinefelter syndrome in the lead-up to puberty helps guide decisions about testosterone treatment, which may become necessary.

Testosterone treatment is recommended to many adults with Klinefelter syndrome.

If you have Klinefelter syndrome and are not receiving testosterone treatment, your hormonal function should be checked every 12 months.

I emphasized “disorder” because I have been wanting to connect a thought by C.S. Lewis discussing morality. But as you read the below, a substitution of this debate regarding “the binary” view can be inserted.

[T]his Law or Rule about Right and Wrong used to be called the Law of Nature). . . .

This law was called the Law of Nature because people thought that every one knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it. They did not mean, of course, that you might not find an odd individual here and there who did not know it, just as you find a few people who are colour-blind or have no ear for a tune. But taking the race as a whole, they thought that the human idea of decent behaviour was obvious to every one. And I believe they were right. If they were not, then all the things we said about the war were nonsense. What was the sense in saying the enemy were in the wrong unless Right is a real thing which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and ought to have practised? If they had had no notion of what we mean by right, then, though we might still have had to fight them, we could no more have blamed them for that than for the colour of their hair.

I know that some people say the idea of a Law of Nature or decent behaviour known to all men is unsound, because different civilisations and different ages have had quite different moralities.

But this is not true. There have been differences between their moralities, but these have never amounted to anything like a total difference. If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own. Some of the evidence for this I have put together in the appendix of another book called The Abolition of Man; but for our present purpose I need only ask the reader to think what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five. Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to—whether it was only your own family, or your fellow countrymen, or everyone. But they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked.

But the most remarkable thing is this. Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining “It’s not fair” before you can say Jack Robinson. A nation may say treaties do not matter; but then, next minute, they spoil their case by saying that the particular treaty they want to break was an unfair one. But if treaties do not matter, and if there is no such thing as Right and Wrong—in other words, if there is no Law of Nature—what is the difference between a fair treaty and an unfair one? Have they not let the cat out of the bag and shown that, whatever they say, they really know the Law of Nature just like anyone else?

And an older quote that makes the above point, sorta, for law is this:

…Proponents of gay marriage fail utterly to comprehend the idea that laws are made with society, not the individual, in mind. That is why they also fail to grasp the idea that law is predicated upon averages, not outliers. Interestingly, both libertarians and progressives suffer from this lack of under­standing.

[….]

But more often they try to undermine the link between marriage and childrearing by pointing to outliers—marriages in which couples choose not to have children or cannot have them because at least one partner happens to be infertile. But this argument only reveals the weakness of the progressive understanding of the law. Put simply, rules that are justified by the average case cannot be undermined by the exceptional case, otherwise known as the outlier. Thus the old maxim, “Hard cases make bad law.”…

Mike S. Adams, Letters To A Young Progressive (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2013), 81, 82.

Adam and Eve would have been made fully, male and female. Many years later the curse brought mutations into the mix. We do not “add” to god’s ideal, we keep it all the while showing love and respect for the Imago Dei to all without changing societal norms, sports, culture to fit or adapt to outliers… genetic mutations. We treat these disorders.

Treat them.

This is key.

You do not treat the normal, but abnormal.

An article notes that for the first time in the U.K., a major London hospital has launched Europe’s first multidisciplinary clinic for children with the rare genetic condition Klinefelter syndrome.

The centre at the Evelina Children’s Hospital will aim to improve diagnosis of children with the condition, which can cause serious problems including infertility and cardiovascular disease.

Around one in 660 men are affected by the condition.

Males with the condition are born with an extra X chromosome. Typically, a male baby has one X and one Y chromosome and a female baby has two X chromosomes.

Klinefelter syndrome can also cause problems with learning, attention, energy levels and socialising.

[….]

Infertility or relative lack of testosterone can be treated with gonadotrophin-releasing hormone or testosterone replacement therapy, but patients need access to a range of medical specialties including geneticists, endocrinologists, neurodevelopmental and psychological support.

The clinic will bring all these specialties together under one roof.

MSM Argues/Admits One of the Reasons Trump Won | #WarOnWomen

Published by Papa Giorgio

Before the video, here is some good X comments via Thomas Chatterton Williams:

Content aside. One of the reasons podcasts have exploded their audiences while cable news dwindles is that it’s actually just unbearable as a viewer to watch a bunch of people shout over each other instead of fully making their points.

[The] man can’t even complete a sentence before he’s called a transphobe and accused of using a slur with a level of indignation that is unhinged.

Who at CNN likes this and believes it’s serving their audience?

Dennis Prager has said this for years in a memorable quip, S.I.X.H.I.R.B. ~ sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted. Somehow “Transphobia” needs to be added. Maybe, SIXTHIRB, like you have a lisp… lol. Remember Hillary’s version?

  • “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”

Speaking about the CNN debate, Coleman Hughes notes:

Okay, here is what started out just as the CNN video, but blossomed into this monstrosity. Lol.

More from the NEW YORK POST:

Female athletes have lost nearly 900 medals to transgender rivals competing against them in women’s sporting categories, an eye-opening United Nations report has revealed.

The study — titled “Violence against women and girls in sports” — stated that more than 600 female athletes have been bested at various events by competitors who were born male.

“According to information received, by 30 March 2024, over 600 female athletes in more than 400 competitions have lost more than 890 medals in 29 different sports,” the report said.

“The replacement of the female sports category with a mixed-sex category has resulted in an increasing number of female athletes losing opportunities, including medals, when competing against males.”

The wide-ranging report, compiled by Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, was presented to the UN General Assembly earlier this month.

[….]

“Women and girls already have many odds stacked against them that impede their equal and effective participation in sports. In addition, their ability to play sport in conditions of safety, dignity and fairness has been further eroded by the intrusion of males who identify as female in female-only sports and related spaces,” 

Is This the End of Women’s Sports? (PLUS MORE)

Published by Papa Giorgio

PRAGER UIf we don’t believe that biological men have a significant advantage over biological women in sports, then why did women’s sports ever need to be created in the first place? Let’s stop fooling ourselves.

I have more posts that include Selina Soule, the girl in the above video:

  • The Destruction of Women’s Sports No Big Deal… To the Left (March 2019)
  • Girls’ Civil Rights Violated By Trangender “Athlete” (August 2019)
  • The Trans War On Women #FairPlay (May 2020)

1995 NIKE AD – From youth sports to collegiate athletics to the Olympics, female athletes in every sport and at every level deserve a safe and fair playing field.

What about this “intersex” charge? Does this then change our position as to being allowed into a female sport? No. XY is still present, as well as high levels of testosterone during puberty giving a life-long advantage over other [genuine] females:

Jessica Gill’s Insights Into “Intersex” | Plus: Poor Mans Podcast Stuff

Took the XY 46 Seconds | #WarOnWomen

Published by Papa Giorgio

Damon Imani on Angela Carini losing to Imane Khelif in just 46 seconds in a women’s boxing match at the 2024 Olympics in Paris.

Here are some of my pics I cobbled together:

What is the response by the Left?

  • This is VOX’s [read here, typical Democrat] use of the race card to dismiss nature or nature’s God. It is all the Left has, per their modus operandi: demean and slander in order to dismiss without having to encounter sound evidences/arguments.

HOT-AIR has this:

Everybody I don’t like is Hitler, and every opinion I don’t like is Nazism. 

That, my friends, is what leftists think, and there are no limits to their weirdness. 

Are you a Nazi? Even if you don’t think you are, you are simply fooling yourself. Everybody who hasn’t rioted, looted, chopped off anybody’s genitals, or supported those who have had it done is a Nazi too. 

A you not a member of the Communist Party or at least the Democratic Socialists? You are likely a Nazi. Have you kissed a person of the opposite sex? Do you have a coherent answer to the question “what is a woman?”

Nazi. 

Nazi Nazi Nazi.

That, my friends, is the state of our discourse, or at least it is when you are talking with a leftist. …..

(Read It All)

SOUTH PARK

Menstruating “Men” | + Freedom Toons

Published by Papa Giorgio

(UPDATED TODAY, MAY 2023, ORIGINALLY POSTED IN MAY 2017)

See: Men Can Menstruate? (#Science) and | Helping Men Menstruate… No, Really!

Just some examples of the Leftist lunacy by people who lecture us about “following the science”

We hit the streets to ask people if they think men can menstruate. The college kids think yes and the streets beg to differ, watch the video to find out why!

This particular update comes by way of PJ-MEDIA, and has an example of a Democrat candidates (plural) running for the 2020 nomination for his party. Here are some examples:

…And yes, it appears that the Menstrual Equity Act is a real thing. H.R. 1882, otherwise known as the Menstrual Equity For All Act of 2019. Apparently Beto thinks women across America have never heard of a pharmacy. Oh but wait, this absurd legislation isn’t just for women! According to GovTrack, this legislation will “increase the availability and affordability of menstrual hygiene products for individuals with limited access, and for other purposes.”

Individuals. Because men have periods too! Duh! Beto may not have gotten that memo, but Cory Booker and Julián Castro did. …

Here is the bit by Julian Castro that got those who love science scratching their heads:

Here is the above in print via THE DAILY WIRE:

On Wednesday, during the Democratic presidential debate, Julian Castro, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under former President Barack Obama, decided biological men should be given the same rights to an abortion as biological women, stating, “Let’s also not forget someone in the trans community, a trans female, is poor, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have the right to exercise that right to choose.”

Trans females are biological men who claim identity as women.

Castro’s answer was triggered by NBC News’ Lester Holt, who asked, “Secretary Castro, this one is for you. All of you on stage support a woman’s right to an abortion. You all support some version of a government health care option. Would your plan cover abortion, Mr. Secretary?”

Castro answered, “Yes, it would. I don’t believe only in reproductive freedom, I believe in reproductive justice. And, you know, what that means is that just because a woman — or let’s also not forget someone in the trans community, a trans female, is poor, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have the right to exercise that right to choose. And so I absolutely would cover the right to have an abortion.”…

One comment from a Facebook post noted the “obvious,” (lol)

  • Why are MEN advocating for this??? That’s nothing less than gender appropriation! (TM) What’s more, it’s absolutely unacceptable male privilege! (TM) HOW DARE THEY! (sarc)

Here is the earlier post on the topic (posted May 2017)

I had to laugh at this… but it is sad at the same time that (a) people think this is a normal thing, and (b) watching this little girl struggle with the FACT that a man could never menstruate or have periods (cramps, mood swings, headaches, tender breasts, bloating, various food cravings, etc). Apparently she even did a Google search on the topic… how much do you want to bet this household leans progressively left. She seemed truly disappointed there was not a way to make a man menstruate [which will never happen — just like a vagina is not made out of a man’s penis.]

 This is with thanks to THE LIFE AND TIMES blog.

This should be combined with the lunacy exemplified in this recent story:

  • Brown University’s student body president will be hand-delivering menstrual products to all nonresidential bathrooms on campus, including men’s rooms, with the help of 20 other students.
  • The initiative is intended to communicate the message that “pads and tampons are a necessity, not a luxury,” and that not all people who menstruate are women.

(CAMPUS REFORM)

L&T notes this in his post: “The movement in the ‘Trans-‘” world is a bubble. The bubble is a dome of protection that guards you from truth, facts, and anything that makes you feel any slight discomfort.”

Here is the girls video that is attempting to help men with sex-changes to have “periods.” And note this girls struggle to not find anything online saying a man could menstruate, even after the mutilation done to his body.

Women use tampons to — essentially — remove blood in a controlled manner as to not ruin clothes, stay dry, and the like. NOW people will be inserting blood to simulate what my wife tells me is a hassle that allows for the miracle of life.

Like Life & Times, I am a Christian, and so have a religious matrix I view this topic through. But this should be just as black-and-white to the atheist evolutionist. That is, it has taken millions of years of survival-of-the-fittest to hone through natural selection and population growth the ability to procreate… the menstrual cycle being a part of that. Of course I don’t think the irreducible complexity of such a thing could ever be cobbled together by chance. That is another argument for another time. But assuming the sexes and reason for them from a strictly evolutionary and biological viewpoint should be just as perplexing [absolute] to those people.

We hit the streets to ask people if they think Men Can Have Babies. Some think yes and some no, watch the video to find out why!

“Professionals Know Best” Admit To Ruining Children’s Lives

Published by Papa Giorgio

Reality is a bitch! And even those involved in the delusion of thinking one can change sexes in people struggling with internal issues as deep as thinking they can be something they are not. JUST THE NEWS has this article n papers and conversations regarding this attempt to fix an issue that makes the matter worse. This is the subtitle to the article:

  • World Professional Association for Transgender Health members swap candid stories, seek advice in private forum, panel discussion. Testosterone wreaks havoc on women’s bodies over time. WPATH dismisses “scare tactics.”

So what is the main idea herein? JTN starts out with the breakdown:

  • A tranche of internal discussions among leaders and practitioners in the so-called gender-affirming-care industry stands to amplify concerns about the safety and effectiveness of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and genital surgeries on children with gender dysphoria.

Michael Shellenberger

Michael Shellenberger quickly explains these files and why he is publishing them (see his Twitter/X “THREAD“):

Of course we all know/knew this, but here is more professional and candid conversation by those pushing the idea and their seeing the wasteland they are making [reality] and trying to rationalize their choices. (The video below the article excerpts talks about this delusion, the time put into this “venture” [child abuse] and trying to continue the rationalization that they were “on the side of the angels”.) I mean, we are talking about double mastectomies on 12 and 13-year old females with perfectly healthy breasts. And politicians lie about it.

Take for instance Jamie Reed, someone dedicated to the task at hand, hitting the rough road of reality (NEW YORK POST),

In a stunning condemnation, Jamie Reed, 42, a former case manager at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, said she quit in November after four years “because I could no longer participate in what was happening there.”

“What is happening … is morally and medically appalling,” the whistleblower warned Thursday in a piece for The Free Press.

According to Reed — who describes herself as a queer “progressive” and married to a “trans man” — soon after she started working at the pediatric gender clinic, she was “struck by the lack of formal protocols for treatment,” leaving physician co-directors as the “sole authority.”

She said little was needed for kids to begin transitioning — a letter of support from a therapist “who they had to see only once or twice for the green light,” and a single visit for girls to an endocrinologist for a testosterone prescription. ….

(NEW YORK POST | An entire EPOCH TIMES interview with Jamie can  be see HERE)

See more on this via The Federalist: “Boston Children’s Hospital Touts Hysterectomies And Other Mutilation For ‘Trans’ Minors“

So… back to the JUST THE NEWS article…

A tranche of internal discussions …

…. [that] show members of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health admitting that some young patients or colleagues developed life-threatening medical conditions or even died after years of treatment.

These are more serious than the sexual dysfunction and developmental problems, such as sterilization, inability to orgasm, weaker bones and sudden spikes in brain pressure, already reflected in research and even federal guidance on gender affirming care.

“The WPATH Files” came from “one or more” people with access to the organization’s member discussion forum, whose conversations confirm that “transgender medicine is neither scientific nor medical,” Twitter Files journalist and contrarian environmentalist Michael Shellenberger wrote in a lengthy X thread Monday night.

Shellenberger’s Environmental Progress research group summarized and posted the leaked communications, which appear to have been copied from printouts based on the skewed orientation, squished spacing and degradation of forum pages.

“WPATH serves no purpose, contributes nothing beneficial to the field of gender medicine, and leads medical and mental health professionals astray,” says the report, written by journalist Mia Hughes. “Several European nations have already abandoned the group’s guidelines, indicating the extent to which WPATH has become obsolete.”

A 16-year-old patient developed “two liver masses” after several years on a menstrual-suppression drug and one year of testosterone, “and the oncologist and surgeon both have indicated that the likely offending agent(s) are the hormones,” a doctor wrote in the forum.

Another responded that a female colleague who identified as a man died of liver cancer, which “[t]o the best of my knowledge … was linked” to taking testosterone for nearly a decade.

Three years of testosterone gave a young woman pelvic inflammatory disease, with vaginal atrophy typical of postmenopausal women and “a persistent yellow discharge we often see as a result” of treatment, a nurse practitioner wrote. Hughes said PID’s fatal risks include ectopic pregnancy and “spread of infection to other body parts.”

The report states the names of members were redacted “except in the case of the WPATH president, surgeons, and other prominent members” and did not edit the files.

Only one WPATH member answered a request for comment, with “legal threats,” and an email obtained by Environmental Progress showed “WPATH advising against replying and informing the recipients that WPATH was seeking legal counsel,” the report says.

“WPATH is and has always been a science- and evidence-based organization whose recommendations are widely endorsed by major medical organizations around the world,” President Marci Bowers said in a statement the group gave Just the News.

“We are the professionals who best know the medical needs of trans and gender diverse individuals – and stand opposed to individuals who misrepresent and de-legitimize the diverse identities and complex needs of this population through scare tactics,” Bowers wrote. ……….

All this leads me to this excellent discussion about what was revealed by this WPATH admissions and the coming fallout. The opening and detailing of past medical hype and women and others who just went along professionals who best know  is eye-opening:

Join Genspect and FAIR in Medicine to discuss the WPATH Files Report with Stella O’Malley, Carrie Mendoza, MD, and Mia Hughes, the report’s author from Michael Shellenberger’s Environmental Progress. What are the key insights from the report and leaked documents? What have we learned about WPATH’s public versus private culture? How will this information impact advocacy moving forward? Join us for the first in a series of webinars about the WPATH Files from Genspect and FAIR in Medicine.

RELATED:

English Teacher Rosaria Butterfield Explains “Gay” Modifiers

Published by Papa Giorgio

A friend sent this to me from Instagram, but her name was known to me after watching this video: “Megachurch Pastor Andy Stanley Comes Out…“ — her part starts at the 4:56 mark in that video. You can hear the original audio there and compare it if you wish. I decided to fix the audio in that video as well and upload it to my Rumble: “Andy Stanley Denigrates God and the Bible.” I add subtitles to the below video for further clarity:

Some of her books are as follows (newer to older):

BONUS

While I have embedded this in other places on my site — both my older YouTube version and this newer one. However, this believer challenges fellow followers of Christ to to be witnesses, ambassadors, of God’s truth. In love.

Another upload of mine from years back explains this turning back from this sin of rewriting God’s plan for men and women. Here are Some helpful responses that can be inculcated to help respond to the issue, Well.

The below is from another post of mine, and it includes [trigger warning] videos by Ravi Zacharias. My thoughts, through others, on his more than apparent rejection of Christ’s healing of his sin, is spelled out HERE.

  • …and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me (Galatians 2:20)

Luther Comments:

“Yet not I.” That is to say, not in mine own person, nor in mine own substance. Here he plainly showeth by what means he liveth; and he teacheth what true Christian righteousness is, namely, that righteousness whereby Christ liveth in us, and not that which is in our own person. And here Christ and my conscience must become one body, so that nothing remain in my sight but Christ crucified, and raised from the dead. But if I behold myself only, and set Christ aside, I am gone. For Christ being lost, there is no counsel nor succour, but certain desperation and destruction must follow.

The following story starts will quote first BREITBART, following it will be a portion of an article (and audio) from an NPR PIECE.

(BREITBART) National Public Radio aired a remarkable interview on Sunday’s Weekend Edition with Allan Edwards, a Presbyterian pastor who is gay, yet lives a heterosexual life. Torn between his sexuality and his faith, he chose his faith–without trying to “convert” his attraction to men, and without trying to change his religion to fit his personal preferences. The conversation between NPR’s Weekend Edition and Edwards–and his wife–sheds light on an often overlooked constituency in the debate over gay marriage.

Edwards explains that he began to realize he was attracted to men during his teenage years, at the same time he was active in his church youth movement. He realized immediately that there was a conflict between his sexuality and his faith, and tried to find a justification in the Bible for living a gay life as a Christian. He could not, he says–and so he chose to live a heterosexual life, in accordance with the teachings of his church. He does not deny his gay sexuality, but does not act on those feelings, he says.

In that way, Edwards says, he is no different than anyone else. Everyone, he says, experiences some kinds of forbidden desire, or a sense of discontentment with their lives, and they have to adjust their behavior to their values and goals. He and his wife have a sexual relationship, despite his attraction to men, and they are expecting their first child. He is reluctant to judge others, but when pressed by Montaigne, says that he believes those who try to adjust Christianity to accept same-sex marriage are “in error.”

He acknowledges that others might call his lifestyle one of suppression–one that is doomed to divorce or suicide. He disagrees, and says that his relationship with God comes before other parts of his identity, including his sexuality….

…read more…

How did this young man come to find his identity within the Christian faith? Simple, if Jesus is who He claims to be, then he [pastor Edwards… and we/us] should believe what Jesus believes. Simple:

(NPR)

Allan Edwards is the pastor of Kiski Valley Presbyterian Church in western Pennsylvania, a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. He’s attracted to men, but considers acting on that attraction a sin. Accordingly, Edwards has chosen not to act on it.

“I think we all have part of our desires that we choose not to act on, right?” he says. “So for me, it’s not just that the religion was important to me, but communion with a God who loves me, who accepts me right where I am.”

Where he is now is married. He and his wife, Leanne Edwards, are joyfully expecting a baby in July.

[….]

He didn’t understand how he could resolve his feelings, he says, and had little support from his friends. “I didn’t know anyone else who experienced same-sex attractions, so I didn’t talk about it much at all,” Allan says.

But at a small, Christian liberal arts college, he did start talking.

“My expectation was, if I started talking to other guys about this, I’m going to get ostracized and lambasted,” Allan says. “I actually had the exact opposite experience … I actually was received with a lot of love, grace, charity: some confusion, but openness to dialogue.”

Allan considered following a Christian denomination that accepts gay relationships, but his interpretation of the Bible wouldn’t allow it, he says.

“I studied different methods of reading the scripture and it all came down to this: Jesus accepts the rest of the scripture as divined from God,” he says. “So if Jesus is who he says he is, then we kind of have to believe what he believes.”

…read more…

In other words, Christ’s claims and later His backing his claim with the Resurrection should make any one WANT to thank his/her creator by worshiping Him in obedience for the work done for each of us on Calvary. Pastor Edwards is building riches in his heavenly home in his obedience.