Truth-as-identity is not appealable beyond the assertion of identity. Unfortunately, there isn’t much we can do to change this trajectory in the short term. Both Biden and his Education Department deserve condemnation for federalizing the issue. Yet as Trump’s Education Department made clear in 2017, they believe the issue of whether schools should accept the claim that a person can choose his or her own sex is to be decided by states and local school districts. The political solutions thus range from “adopt transgender orthodoxy at a moderate pace” (proposed by the Democrats) to “adopt transgender orthodoxy at a slower pace” (Republicans). Both eventually end up in the same place—the entrenched establishment of transgender orthodoxy.

The Story: The Department of Education’s new rule’s expanding protections for LGBT+ students could lead to punishment for those who disagree with transgender orthodoxy.
The Background: On April 19, 2024, the Department of Education released a 1,577-page document issuing its final regulation under Title IX, intended to clarify sex discrimination by educational programs receiving federal financial assistance. Title IX is a federal civil rights law passed as part of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any education program or activity that receives federal funding.
Key points of the final regulations include:

Clarification on Title IX’s definition of sex-based harassment and expanded scope of sex discrimination protection, covering stereotypes, pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity
Mandatory responses from schools to sex discrimination incidents
Required supportive measures for affected individuals, ensuring access to education and fairness during grievance procedures
Enhanced protections against discrimination based on pregnancy and related conditions, including specific accommodations like lactation spaces
Reinforcement against retaliation towards individuals exercising their Title IX rights
Support for the rights of parents and guardians in the grievance processes of minors
Prohibition of discrimination against LGBT+ individuals, aligning with the Supreme Court’s Bostock v. Clayton County

This last element is likely to be most significant. In the landmark case of Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), the Supreme Court ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on sex, also protects individuals from discrimination based on his or her sexual orientation and gender identity. In this Title IX final rule, the Department of Education incorporates the Bostock decision’s reasoning, expressly prohibiting discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics in federally funded education programs.
One issue not addressed by this regulation is transgender athletes. At a briefing on the regulation’s release, education secretary Miguel Cardona said separate guidance on transgender athletes is forthcoming.
“The Department recognizes that standards for students participating on male and female athletic teams are evolving in real time,” Cardona said. “That’s why we’ve decided to do a separate rulemaking on how schools may determine eligibility, while upholding Title IX’s nondiscrimination guarantee.”
The new regulations will not apply to religious educational institutions. Such institutions controlled by a religious organization may claim an exemption from Title IX provisions that conflict with their religious tenets. The religious exemption in Title IX applies to educational institutions or entities controlled by religious organizations and not to individual students or employees exercising their religious beliefs.
The final compliance deadline for schools and colleges to implement the new regulations is August 2024.
Why It Matters: In 1997, Richard John Neuhaus, a Catholic priest and founder of First Things magazine, proposed Neuhaus’s Law: “Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed.”
He meant that when orthodox beliefs are treated as optional within a church or group, they’re tolerated only conditionally. The orthodox are allowed to hold their beliefs (e.g., that a person’s gender is determined by biology) but cannot assert that their views are normative for everyone. Over time, a new liberal orthodoxy arises (i.e., that a person’s gender is determined by chosen identity) that’s intolerant of the old orthodoxy. This new orthodoxy is based on experiential truths (“I feel, therefore I am”) and identity politics rather than on doctrine, tradition, revelation, or even biological reality.
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It is sin that has procured the shortness and the miseries of this life, as Moses lamentably sets out before the Lord, who is full of pity. But his prayer opens with a fourfold comfort for the church against temporal troubles and this world’s miseries.
1. The Lord’s Kindness to His People in All Ages
The first comfort is drawn from the Lord’s kindness to His people in all ages. “Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations” (Psalm 90:1)
When we pray therefore, we must lay hold on the offer of God’s kindness according to the covenant of grace, and look on God as gracious to us in Christ. Moses here, and others elsewhere, when they come as supplicants in prayer they begin with renewed acts and expressions of faith.
God’s people in any given place and age are one body with God’s people in all ages preceding and following. They may lay claim to all the privileges of God’s people before them. Here the church in Moses’ time joins itself with all the Lord’s people in former times, for the use of succeeding ages which were yet to come. “Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.”
The Lord’s people are strangers in the earth, partly because they have no certain residence in this world, and partly because they have such a poor reception among the people of the world, but especially because at heart, in their affections, they are pilgrims in this world. However, this does not mean they lack a resting place. They have a dwelling in heaven, that is, God Himself, in whom they dwell by faith. They find in Him rest, and food, and protection, and comfort. In fact, in His heart they have had a lodging “in all generations.”
The troubles and miseries of this life make the godly to search out what participation they have in God, and another life. What pinches them on earth makes them seek their abundance in heaven.
2. The Decree of the Eternal Covenant
The second comfort of the believer against the miseries of this short life is taken by Moses from the decree of their election and the eternal covenant of their redemption, settled in the purpose and counsel of the blessed Trinity for their advantage. In this covenant it was agreed before the world existed that the Word to be incarnate would be the Saviour of the elect. Moses says, “Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God” (verse 2).
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I’m not saying that if you love God, you have to vote Republican. I am saying that God’s Ten Commandments should inform our votings for and our votings against. And too bad for “progressives” if they continue to forget and scorn the Lord’s bedrock guidance. As the old saying goes, the Word of God is an anvil that’s worn out many hammers.

Several years ago, I heard a Catholic radio commentator say that the Islamic Middle East was so focused on the “Great Satan” (America) and the “Little Satan” (Israel) that they might miss the fact that another “Satan” was approaching from their rear—an increasingly Christianized east and north. Despite the best efforts of those trying to suppress the faith in China, the “Stans,” and the hinter regions of Iran, God was working to transform those cultures and draw his people to himself—a nightmare for the mullahs, ayatollahs, and functionaries of Xi Jinping.
From the get-go, with a flurry of executive actions, President Joe Biden made our southern border more porous and moving to bring upwards of 20 million illegal immigrants “out of the shadows”—essentially an effort to secure a massive new voting bloc for his party. Pair that Hispanic surge with the Democrats’ already huge advantage with blacks, and the party of Pelosi and Schumer is beginning to make out victories as far as the eye can see.
Maybe not. Maybe there’s a Trojan Horse crossing near El Paso. Maybe the black voting bloc is a sleeping giant, about to awaken and roll over on them. And the reason could be religion.
Republicans are already seeing percentage gains among these voters. Politico’s Zack Stanton picked up on this trend in a November 12, 2020 piece, “How 2020 Killed Off Democrats’ Demographic Hopes.” Still, in the 2020 election, Hispanics went two-to-one for Biden and blacks went nine-to-one for him. But can this hold? I think not, and let me work briefly from the Ten Commandments to suggest why.
The Ten Commandments and Voting
Consider this: Hispanics and blacks overwhelmingly identify with some form of Christianity, whether Catholic or Protestant, and their Bible contains the Decalogue, for which they profess respect. Of course, some of their churches field ministers serving up a socialistic “grievance gospel,” a nasty brew of perpetual resentment lacking biblical warrant, and many of “the faithful” are not discernibly faithful. But there’s still a big connection between church and ethnic populace.
Because of that, it’s hard to see how these two groups—Hispanics and blacks—can long abide marching alongside leftist politicos. When these ethnic hikers pause for the night, they increasingly and disturbingly find themselves bivouacked with strange bedfellows.
Let’s run through the list: Commandments one through four concern basic reverence for God. Over a third of Democrats call themselves “unaffiliated” (“nones,” if you will), compared to only a sixth of Republicans. Then there’s the fifth commandment, the one about honoring your parents. So where do we find the “children of the ’60s,” the ones who liberated themselves from, and continue to distance themselves from, the allegiances and scruples of their parents?
Commandment number six forbids murder, which brings us to the black-on-black carnage in Democrat-led cities and the Democrat-platformed abortion mills, which destroy tens of thousands of innocent black babies for every George Floyd.
Commandment seven addresses sexual immorality, for whose proliferation and enforced normalization Democrats are taking the lead. Eight forbids stealing and thus honors the status of private property. Socialists, who find their home on the left, are impatient with this institution. Nine forbids false testimony. The epithet “liar” is thrown around as carelessly and viciously as “racist,” but a critical mass was reached in the Swamp with Comey, Brennan, McCabe, Schiff, Steele, and Clinton. (We’re not talking obvious hyperbole, honest mistakes, or even confusion from negligence, but rather willful misleadings for the sake of harming others and/or protecting yourself.) And finally, commandment ten, which condemns covetousness, the driver of the Left’s politics-of-envy car.
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