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Starting Again

I was born in the sixties.  But I am not a child of the 60’s.  My family was lower-middle class, and by the standards of the time, traditional in most every way.  Dad was a minister.  If he or mom had lived into their 90’s they would not have imagined the social changes we have witnessed in the last 20 years.  It would be too easy to say the sexual revolution of the 60’s caused all this change, as some conservatives maintain.  But the roots of this change go back much further than the swinging 60’s.  

So I’m embarking with some misgivings on a survey of cultural history.  There are deep intellectual and cultural traditions that have shaped our everyday lives.  We’ve come to a point in the Western world where the statement “I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body” is comprehensible to many public leaders, at least in public.  That phrase would be completely incomprehensible to my parent’s generation, in public or private, not to mention every preceding generation.  It is still incomprehensible to many, if not most people today. But if you express your bewilderment in public, say at many workplaces in the Western world, increasingly the odds are you will be regarded as stupid, immoral or worse.  You may be reprimanded for your irrational “phobia.”  You might even have your career derailed.  If you broadcast your view on a public forum, say Twitter, expect the Twitterati to pounce with the ferocity of a caged unfed Tiger.  In certain parts of the world you may even be charged with a hate-crime for your expressed incredulity at the latest massive cultural shift.  (See the following posts, here & here.)

As a 60’s poet might say, “The times they are a changin.”

The tectonic cultural shift in the last 20 years is quite breathtaking.  Regardless of what you think about gay marriage, we have gone from year 2000 where the majority of Americans were opposed to gay marriage to today where normalization of Transgenderism is fast approaching.

A long and winding road brought us to this point.  I want to offer a thoughtful and hopefully generous exposition, from a Classic Christian point of view, of how we got here.  As I go, I’ll be documenting some disturbing current events. (Read my next post). I hope that even those who disagree with Classic Christianity will find here a fair and readable assessment of our state of affairs. (post continues page 2)

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Authentic Masculinity

Responding to review of her book “The Toxic War on Masculinity” Nancy Pearcey has a few words about authentic masculinity from a Christian perspective:

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God Made Us Male and Female

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Biological Sex and DSD’s

Sex is ordinarily determined at fertilization. Our genetic code, either the presence of an XX or XY chromosomal composition, determines our sexed body. With extremely rare disordered exceptions the human organism begins down a road of male or female bodily differentiation.

Back to our Gender Unicorn for a moment.

You will notice under the section “Sex Assigned at Birth” a blue dot for “other/intersex.” In the past, what used to be called a “disorder” is now called by many a “difference.” In our decidedly ‘post-modern’ moment, a moment designed to disrupt the very concept of normal or the fact that a natural order exists, we are told by Gender Identity Ideologues that there are a variety of ways that humans can develop. Normal and abnormal categories are obsolete and quite frankly hurtful to those who have developed differently.

Of course any sensitive person is going to treat someone who has one of these rare disorders with love and respect. But we should not ignore the obvious for the purpose of advancing a gender fluid philosophical agenda. Christians can’t do that.

Also, it’s bad science.

Clinics are being pressured to reclassify “Disorders of Sexual Development” as “Differences of Sexual Development.” Some have adopted the new terminology over a concern about stigmatizing people.

But the distinction between order and disorder is operative everywhere in science and medicine. These categories are indispensable for understanding and directing treatments toward human well-being.

Disorders of sexual development (DSDs) occur in roughly one out of every 5,000 births. These disorders can result in ambiguous external genitalia and the incomplete development of reproductive organs. Chromosomal or hormonal defects produce these abnormalities. They are rightly regarded by most medical experts as pathologies in the development and formation of the male and female body. They are exceedingly rare.

But Gender Identity Ideologues use the fact of these rare disorders as a reason for positing a “third sex” “fourth sex” etc., along a spectrum of possibilities. They argue that because of these “differences” the old-fashioned male-female sex binary is obsolete. Some people are just non-binary, they say. As I wrote in a previous post this move is nothing more than the normalization of disorder for the purpose of pushing a gender expansive ideology. (At root this irrationality emanates from an ideology called Queer Theory.)

Remember the staff trainer, Elly Barnes? Here’s the graph from my post about Rev Randall :

In 2018 Rev Randall attended a staff seminar at Trent College, entitled “Educate and Celebrate.”  He raised an objection when the leader, Elly Barnes, instructed the staff to chant ‘smash heteronormativity.’  For his anti-celebratory concerns he became a marked man at the college.

Barnes’ ideological, dare I say religious, fervor leaves little wiggle room for those like Reverend Randall and myself who believe God made us “male and female.” We don’t believe heteronormativity is oppressive and something to be “smashed.”

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Email: blog@blueridgemountain.life

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“Banned Books Week” Hypocrisy

In a recent article, Used Book Store owner John B. Kuhner critiques the irony of “Banned Books Week,” noting that many featured books are not banned but heavily promoted and required reading.

He argues that the event has become a marketing ploy and a tool for ideological gatekeeping rather than a defense of free expression. Hypocrisy arises as the same entities that decry “banned books” often support the suppression of titles like Irreversible Damage, by Abigail Shrier and author Ryan T. Anderson’s book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment. 

“Banned Books Week” ends up protecting mainstream opinions while ignoring genuine censorship issues.

You can read more about this hypocrisy at: First Things.

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