If you bring your gender-confused child to one of these clinics, they will put your child on the path to destroying their fertility, to mutilating their sexual organs, and to a hundred other long-term physical problems due to suppressing puberty, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries. So-called “gender affirming healthcare” is a nightmare, and it is claiming the lives and health of children across this country. 

Matt Walsh has posted a thread on Twitter that is currently going viral. It features videos from the transgender clinic at Vanderbilt in Nashville. You need to watch these videos to understand just how disturbing the treatment of gender-confused children really is.
The videos reveal that the doctors are performing gender “affirmation” surgeries on children because it’s a “big money maker.” According to Vanderbilt, surgeries removing children’s healthy sexual organs are lucrative because they require a lot of “follow ups.” Which is another way of saying that cutting off healthy organs often results in life-altering, long-term, painful complications. That’s why “follow-ups” are required. But it’s a big “money maker” for the doctors, so no problem as far as they are concerned.
The videos also reveal that Vanderbilt has warned medical providers not to have any conscientious objections. Any medical provider raising religious objections to sterilizing and mutilating children will be deemed “problematic” and will face “consequences.” Vanderbilt also has partnered with a group of transgender activists who will police medical providers to make sure that they don’t step out of line.
I am going to post the videos below so that you can see them all. As you do, keep in mind that what you are seeing has been going on for years. You are seeing what is called “gender affirming healthcare.” It is not based on science but on transgender ideology and propaganda. If you bring your gender-confused child to one of these clinics, they will put your child on the path to destroying their fertility, to mutilating their sexual organs, and to a hundred other long-term physical problems due to suppressing puberty, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries.
Read More
Related Posts:

How many of you are taking your eyes off Christ to see if there are any other cute alternatives in the room? Paul says that he is jealous to make sure that he presents Christ’s bride to him not as a roving-eyed adulteress but as a single-minded, pure bride. Paul means for all of us not to be roving-eyed adulteresses but to be single-minded in our devotion to Christ. We never take our eyes off the prize, and the prize is Christ. 

For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband, to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.  –2 Corinthians 11:2-3
The law of Moses implies that it is the father’s responsibility to present a pure bride to her betrothed husband (Deut. 22:13-21). Paul says that he plays the father of the bride in Christ’s “betrothal” to his church. His goal is to present God’s people to Christ a as pure virgin at the wedding ceremony.
Even in our own modern wedding ceremonies, we at least symbolically portray the same thing. A bride wears white to symbolize purity. A father walks the bride down the aisle to present her for marriage to her fiancé and to say that the responsibility of care and protection now belongs to the groom.
One of the best parts of a wedding ceremony is watching the faces of the bride and groom when they first see each other as she comes down the aisle. Their eyes lock, they are looking at one another, and everything and everyone in the room fall away from their attention. All of us watching are craning our neck to see the beautiful bride. Then we are leaning and looking to make sure we see the look on the groom’s face as his eyes meet hers. We want to witness the mutual delight reflected on their faces.
But imagine for a moment what it would be like if while walking down the aisle, their eyes don’t meet.
Read More
Related Posts:

Christian parents have to stand in the gap for their children. Christian parents must not delegate the moral formation of their children to those who are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness, which is what so many public schools across the country are doing right now.

One of the hardest things to read today are biased news reports aimed at gaslighting parents who are concerned about LGBT indoctrination at public schools. Case in point: A headline in The Washington Post yesterday reads “Claim that sex ed ‘grooms’ kids jolted Nebraska politics a year before it swept the nation.” The story goes on to describe the efforts of parents in Nebraska to push back against the state’s efforts to introduce LGBT propaganda into their children’s public school curriculum. Lest you think this an unbiased report on a bellwether social issue in Nebraska, the subtitle reads:
The unsubstantiated claim led to a backlash against sex ed that helped topple local Republican Party leaders and propelled a wave of far-right candidates for local and statewide school board [emphasis mine].
The authors want readers to know up front that the parents opposing LGBT sex-ed in public schools are doing so with claims that are “unsubstantiated.” After all, parental concerns must be “unsubstantiated” because (according to The Post) there are no large-scale studies showing that LGBT-indoctrination “grooms” children. You know, the Science™.
What a farce. Do parents have to wait for large-scale studies before they can know that it’s wrong for their children to be force-fed instruction about “orgasms” and “masturbation” (both of which were a part of the proposed curriculum)? I haven’t seen any large scale studies on the effects of eating tide pods, but no responsible parent feeds their kids tide pods until the right studies get published. And believe me, there are plenty of “tide pods” in Nebraska’s proposed curriculum.
The Washington Post really buries the lede on this score. The story is long, and the entire first half of it portrays parents as wacky and extreme for opposing the curriculum. You have to read about half way through this marathon of an article before finding out what’s actually in the curriculum. The Postdescribes the curriculum this way:
Kindergartners would learn medically accurate terms for body parts, including genitalia, and about interracial and same-sex families. They would also learn about “consent” and “how to clearly say no.” First-graders would learn the definitions of gender identity and gender-role stereotypes. The meaning of sexual orientation would be explained in third grade.
Read More
Related Posts:

There are consequences to sexual immorality. The most severe consequences are eternal for those who do not repent and turn to Christ. But there are temporal consequences as well, and diseases like Monkeypox are evidence of that. 

Rod Dreher wrote yesterday about the hypocrisy of public health authorities in 2020 who mandated lockdowns for COVID but who made exceptions for Black Lives Matter protests. Our ruling class’s inconsistency during the summer of 2020 was obviously not being driven by hard science but by social concerns. If you belonged to a favored group (like a BLM protest), then you were allowed to gather. If you belonged to a disfavored group (like a church trying to gather for worship), you were not allowed to gather. While churches were being harassed by local governments for continuing to meet, enormous BLM protests continued apace. The entire spectacle demonstrated in spades that public health authorities are not always basing their guidance on “the science.”
To some extent, it seems like public health authorities may be at it again with their response to the Monkeypox outbreak. Today, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared Monkeypox to be a “Global Health Emergency.” The director general of the WHO overruled a panel of advisors to get this done—a panel that remains divided whether Monkeypox is an emergency. The director general explains his extraordinary decision, “We have an outbreak that has spread around the world rapidly through new modes of transmission, about which we understand too little, and which meets the criteria” for a public health emergency.
Monkeypox is a disease that causes flu-like symptoms and causes excruciating rashes and lesions on the surface of the skin. It is spreading primarily among gay men through sexual contact. The Washington Post reports, “Infections in the ongoing outbreak are reported overwhelmingly among men who have sex with men, and experts believe close contact during sexual activity is a major driver of transmission.” Likewise, The New York Times says, “As of Friday, New York City had logged 839 monkeypox cases, nearly all of them in men who have sex with men, according to the city’s Department of Health.”
The New York Times continues:
Many patients in the current outbreak have developed lesions only in the genital area. Some — especially those who develop sores in the throat, urethra or rectum — have suffered excruciating pain.
“I was scared to use the bathroom actually,” said one recent patient, Gabriel Morales, 27, a part-time model based in New York City. “I can’t even describe it. It feels like broken glass.”
This is only the seventh time in the last 15 years that the WHO has declared a worldwide public health emergency with the most recent being the COVID outbreak in 2020.
Read More
Related Posts:

This posture on the left makes their position look brittle and indefensible. I don’t see how it wins anyone over to their side—especially since common sense is working against their position. No reasonable person believes that a person’s right to life is based on their location vis a vis the birth canal. Their right to life relies entirely upon whether or not they are a person. But many on the left cannot tolerate a reasonable discussion about that. They want to sneer and emote as a substitute for reasoned arguments in defense of their position.

Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the consequences of the Supreme Court’s abortion decision in Dobbs v. Jackson. The Democratic majority called three pro-abortion witnesses, and the Republican minority called two pro-life witnesses. I watched most of the hearing and listened to sworn testimony from all five witnesses. You would be hard-pressed to find a more stark expression of the division in our nation than what is on display in this testimony.
Three witnesses lamented the overturning of Roe and argued in favor of new federal legislation to ensure abortion rights through all nine months of a woman’s pregnancy. They also argued that restricting abortion rights in any way is an expression of racism and misogyny. An abortionist from Planned Parenthood testified that she is angry and made the incredible claim that the Court’s overturning Roe is “a stain on our history as a country” and that “Abortion is normal. Abortion is an act of love. Abortion is health care.”
The two pro-life witnesses were worlds apart from the abortion activists who testified. They defended pro-life crisis pregnancy centers against the scurrilous claim that they didn’t really offer healthcare. They showed that crisis pregnancy centers offer medical services to women for free, whether or not those women choose to have an abortion. They also showed that crisis pregnancy centers care for these women for years free of charge after their abortion. After the angry abortionist testified that abortion is loving healthcare, the director of a crisis pregnancy center testified that abortion is anything but healthcare and is the taking of a human life. She shares a powerful testimony about a young woman forced into an abortion by her parents. It is worth watching:
At one point during the hearing, Senator John Cornyn of Texas asked the pro-abortion witnesses when a human child’s life begins to have value. He pressed them about why a newborn child outside of the womb has value but 24 hours earlier while in the womb didn’t have value. None of the pro-abortion witnesses would even acknowledge the question. They simply continued with their pro-abortion platitudes about “choice.” Senator Cornyn’s reasonable question was essentially met with the mind-numbing mantra, “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians” (Acts 19:28-34). See below:
Read More
Related Posts:

If you are a Southern Baptist and you care about the pro-life cause in the SBC, now is the time to make your voice heard. Speak up for the incremental gains we have made over the last several decades, and keep pushing the ball down the field until we get into the endzone.

I am writing this short essay as an appeal to Southern Baptists who care about the pro-life cause. Right now, there is an effort underway by what I believe to be a tiny minority in the SBC to reverse the SBC’s longstanding commitment to the pro-life cause. They call themselves “Abolitionists,” but they are not the only ones who support the abolition of abortion. All sides of this debate want to see abortion abolished. The Abolitionists, however, condemn and repudiate the pro-life movement’s efforts to restrict abortion in whatever measure possible.
After the Roe decision in 1973, the pro-life movement eventually coalesced around an incrementalist strategy to abolish abortion. Pro-lifers realized that because Roe prevented them from passing laws to outright end abortion, they would have to take whatever ground they could to save as many unborn lives as possible. So we have tried to pass parental notification laws. We’ve supported the Hyde Amendment to prevent taxpayer funded abortions. We’ve supported fetal heartbeat laws in an attempt to outlaw abortion. We supported and passed a ban on the reprehensible procedure known as partial birth abortion. Etc.
The so-called Abolitionist movement condemns all of these measures as compromises with evil. The abolitionists even oppose any exception to save the life of a mother. The only laws or public policies they support are ones that completely abolish abortion all at once. Anything short of that fails to honor the humanity of the unborn. Not only do Abolitionists oppose pro-life policies, they also publicly condemn and shame pro-lifers as compromisers with evil.
To use a football analogy, pro-lifers would love to have a 100-yard touchdown run. But if that isn’t possible, then pro-lifers are eager and willing to take 5-10 yard runs in a sustained drive down the field toward the same end. Abolitionists only accept 100-yard touchdown runs. Anything short a 100-yard touchdown run should be condemned and repudiated as a grave compromise with evil. That’s the difference between the pro-life movement and so-called Abolitionism. It’s not about the final goal of abolishing abortion but about how to get there. Pro-lifers will take whatever ground they can get. Abolitionists are all-or-nothing.
If we had followed an Abolitionist strategy, we would not be on the cusp of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. The Mississippi fetal heartbeat law that is the basis for the Supreme Court’s recently-leaked Dobbs decision is a pro-life, incrementalist law. Abolitionists oppose that law and thereby support an all-or-nothing approach that would have undermined the most significant pro-life victory in two generations.
Southern Baptists have expressed themselves clearly decade after decade in resolution after resolution to be on the side of the pro-life movement. Southern Baptist resolutions have long supported incrementalist measures to abolish abortion. We have put ourselves on the side of those moving the ball down the field 5-10 yards at a time. We would welcome a 100-yard dash for the endzone. But short of that, we’ve been more than willing to support measures to take whatever ground we can get. That is why we have supported legislation to outlaw partial birth abortion, to keep the Hyde Amendment in place, to pass parental notification laws, etc. Our record on this goes back at least 41 years.
Read More
Related Posts:

The problem here is that this basic structure of reality is at odds with ascendant transgender ideology, which says that being a man or a woman is entirely disconnected from biological realities but rather is rooted in what a person thinks themselves to be at any given moment. If a biological male thinks he’s a woman, then he is a woman. If a biological female thinks she’s a man, then she’s a man. Thinking makes it so!

The video at the bottom of this post is queued up to an extraordinary exchange that occurred at yesterday’s [03/22/22] Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Senator Marsha Blackburn asks Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson if she can define what a woman is. Here’s a transcript of what they said, and you’re not going to believe it.
Blackburn: Do you agree with Justice Ginsburg that there are physical differences between men and women that are enduring?
Jackson: Um, Senator. Respectfully, I’m not familiar with that particular quote or case, so it’s hard for me to comment as to whether…
Blackburn: Okay… Do you interpret Justice Ginsburg’s meaning of “men” and “women” as male and female?
Jackson: Again, because I don’t know the case, I don’t know how I’d interpret it. I need to read the whole…
Blackburn: Okay. Can you provide a definition for the word woman?
Jackson: Can I provide a definition? No.
Blackburn: Yeah.
Jackson: I can’t.
Blackburn: You can’t?
Jackson: Mm. Not in this context. I’m not a biologist.
If there is a better exemplar of our times, I don’t know what it is. Here we have a Supreme Court nominee who either can’t or won’t offer a definition of what a woman is. Why? Because she claims that she’s not a biologist. Really? I guess that explains why I couldn’t make a sandwich today. I gave up when I realized that I wasn’t a baker and couldn’t confirm the identity of the bread in my pantry.
Okay, okay. I know I’m descending into the absurd here, but you get my point. Do you have to be a vet to recognize a dog? Do you have to be a butcher to recognize ground beef? This line of reasoning is indeed absurd, but here we are. And it’s probably a good time for us to take the full measure of the moment we are living in.
Have we really come to the point that a sitting judge and nominee for the highest court in the land cannot define what a woman is? Think how fast transgender propaganda has taken root in our culture that this very basic question would produce a blank stare and an “I don’t know” from a sitting judge.
Read More

Would we not be better off to scrap deconstruction and maintain the Christian category of sanctification—which involves putting off old erroneous ways and beliefs and putting on righteousness through the power of the Holy Spirit? It is grounded in faith and hope and love and has glorification as its endpoint. This is the grammar of the Christian faith, and the project of deconstruction really has nothing useful to add to it.

Kirsten Sanders has an interesting definition of deconstruction in an article for Christianity Today. She writes,
Deconstruction, by which I mean the struggle to correct or deepen naive belief, is a significant part of learning theology. Christians should engage in the task to move beyond simplistic conceptions to belief in a God who is vaster than they can comprehend.
As near as I can tell, this definition of deconstruction is what Christians usually refer to as sanctification. It’s that normal experience of growth whereby the Holy Spirit enables believers to forget what lies behind and to strain toward what lies ahead (Phil. 3:13). It involves repentance from error and growth in patterns of righteousness. It involves setting aside defective views of God and His word and embracing the true meaning of God’s revelation of Himself.
But as I read Sanders, she wishes to subsume all of this under the rubric of deconstruction. I think this is a bad move for several reasons.
First, as a category, deconstruction doesn’t sit well as a synonym for spiritual growth. Actual spiritual growth involves a constant “putting off” and “putting on” according to God’s revealed will. Deconstruction, on the contrary, is defined by “putting off” and has no fixed standard.
Read More

Complementarianism neither stands nor falls on EFS. Those who think it does have confused the essence with an accident and raise questions whether they even know what the doctrine is.

As I have observed popular debates about complementarianism over the years, I have noticed how people often confuse what the doctrine is with other associations that have little or nothing to do with the teaching. In short, folks confuse the essence with the accidents.
What do I mean by confusing essence with accidents? An essential property of any object is a property that it must have, while an accidental property of an object is one that it happens to have but that it could lack (source). You may bite into an apple that happens to have a worm in it, but you would be painfully mistaken if you were to conclude that worms are part of the essence of an apple. The apple may be worse for the wear because of the worm, but an apple is an apple with or without the worm. Likewise, you may bite into an apple dipped in caramel. In that case, you can be sure that the apple has been greatly improved. But still, you know that the improvement is an accidental property of that particular apple. The apple is an apple with or without the caramel.
A similar dynamic is in play when we think about biblical doctrines. For example, I am a pastor in a Baptist church. Many Baptist churches across the country have Sunday School every week. Mine does, in fact. But it would be a mistake to conclude from that fact that Sunday School is a part of the essence of being a Baptist. A church can be Baptist with or without Sunday School. Being a Baptist neither stands nor falls on whether Baptist churches have Sunday School. If you think otherwise, then it’s likely that you don’t know what it means to be a Baptist.
This kind of confusion seems to be at the heart of many of the debates about complementarianism that I have observed over the years. Critics of the doctrine make much of the fact that some complementarians espouse essentially literal Bible translation, conservative politics, the eternal functional subordination of the Son (EFS), etc. Other critics point to abuse or misogyny carried out in the name of complementarianism. It is a profound mistake, however, to conclude that any of those things comprise the essence of complementarian doctrine. None of those things are definitional of the doctrine in any way. Some of those things arguably may seem like improvements to complementarianism. Some of them are obviously no improvement to any doctrine. And some of them are in fact in opposition to the essence of the doctrine (e.g., abuse, misogyny). But no matter how you rate them (improvement or detriment), none of them are complementarianism. The doctrine neither stands nor falls on any of them.
Read More

There is so much more to this conversation than Mason’s article lets on. There are serious, glaring theological problems with “Side B Christianity,” but Mason doesn’t address them. Rather, she caricatures and straw-man’s the sincere biblical and theological issues raised by those to her right. Nevertheless, these problems with the Side B paradigm endure, and Christians must engage them head-on with biblical discernment.

Christianity Today has published an article by a “Side B Christian” named Bekah Mason. For those unfamiliar with this terminology, so-called “Side A Christians” are those who believe that they can follow Christ while affirming homosexual identity and practice. “Side B Christians” are those who believe that following Christ means affirming gay identity while eschewing gay sexual behavior. Mason’s article is about the plight of “Side B Christians” who feel rejected both by LGBT folks on their left and by “orthodox churches” on their right. Mason argues that “Side B Christians are not a threat but an asset to orthodox churches.”
Readers would do well to reckon not only with the article’s argument but also with its problems. For example, Mason treats “Side B Christianity” as if its theological framework were uncontroversial. On her account, Side B Christians are simply people who are trying to be faithful to Christ in the face of “acerbic” conservatives who won’t let them be. But that is a caricature of the debate that has unfolded over the last 8 years or so.
“Side B Christians” treat homosexual orientation not as sin to be lamented but as an identity to be affirmed. Yes, they agree with Christians to their right that homosexual behavior is sinful and fallen, but they nevertheless don’t want to consign homosexual identity to a similar category. From Wes Hill arguing that being gay is “sanctifiable” to Grant Hartley‘s “Redeeming Queer Culture” to Gregory Coles‘ suggestion that gay orientation may be an aspect of God’s original creation design, it is clear that “Side B” folks aim to convince Christians that at least part of homosexuality ought to be redeemed rather than repented of. I don’t believe that Mason’s article is forthrightly dealing with these problems. Rather, she writes as if the debate is mainly due to the irrational rigidity of conservatives.
Mason also caricatures those to her right by claiming, “From conservative commenters, we hear that any acknowledgment of same-sex attraction is sinful.” I am one of the primary drafters of The Nashville Statement, and I know personally all of the other primary drafters. I can’t think of a single one who would agree with that statement. No responsible pastor would ever make such an asinine claim. The truth is that those of us who affirm Nashville believe that Christians should acknowledge and confess their sin no matter what it is. They should be honest about and face their own temptations and find help and strength from Christ to be faithful in the struggle. No one that I know of has argued anywhere that “any acknowledgement of same-sex attraction is sinful.” That claim simply isn’t true of any of the major parties to this conversation.
What we have argued is that same-sex sexual desire is sinful and that faithful Christians should repent of those desires whenever they experience them. They should not found an identity on such desires as though they were to be affirmed or commended. If gay orientation is any part of human identity, it would simply be an expression of the flesh. But the flesh is nothing to affirm or to celebrate. On the contrary, it is something daily to be put to death. The remnants of our sinful nature will be eradicated at the new creation, and that is why we must mortify our flesh even now (Romans 8:13).
Read More