‘We have moved quickly in a single generation or two from hesitant tolerance of perverse behaviors to a general attitude of mindless indifference toward them.’

Fr. Donald Haggerty, The Hour of Testing

An embarrassment for many Christians today is God’s dislike of homosexual activity. We appear to like such activity, if our silence is any indication.

I’ve yet to hear any sane Christian express dismay over Renee Good’s weird flip into the arms of Rebecca Good (Renee had two prior marriages to men). Instead, the Christian devout extol indiscriminately Renee’s devotion to Jesus, echoing her ‘wife’ Rebecca’s adulation: ‘Renee was pure, pure love . . . a Christian who knew we are here to keep each other safe and whole.’

Note to any person who cares for children. Two mommies or two daddies cannot create a sure foundation on which children thrive. The gold star study on ‘gay’ parenting by Dr. Mark Regnerus from 2012 (Renee and Rebecca were raising a son from Renee’s second marriage) was just replicated by sociologists at Cornell University. The result, again? Kids need a mother and a father. ‘Gay’ parents undercut the ‘wholeness’ they wish for their kids.

I’m sure Renee possessed good qualities. I sorrow over her death and decry the ferocity of Trump’s efforts to weed out immigrant ‘criminals.’

That’s not my point. Renee’s Christian ‘devotion’ was seriously compromised by homosexual activity (like anyone’s). Seriously devout Christians don’t ‘gay’ marry. Call her many things, but in between martyr and sainthood, might we hold fast to the courage of our other convictions? Renee died a divided Christian as God Himself defines the divisive nature of sin.

Have we forgotten the golden thread that runs throughout Scripture and Church teaching: man for woman, woman for man, God’s image revealed in the good-enough love of two who conceive life and fight for that life over a lifespan? That matters to God, so much so that in the words of Scripture scholar and friend, Dr. Robert Gagnon, ‘Same-sex intercourse constitutes an inexcusable rebellion against the intentional design of the created order’ (The Bible and Homosexual Practice).

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Christians consent to this rebellion by saying and doing nothing that might help compromised Christians repent. Where was Renee’s pastor in all this? Her family and friends? When Renee lost her second husband and became a single parent, where was the Church that rallied around her and protected her family from bad solutions like a lesbian lover? She needed a village; that’s why we exist as Kingdom communities. Instead, we seem unable and unwilling to guide our most vulnerable members.

At a recent gathering, I met two old friends, now lapsed Christians, whose devotion to actively ‘gay’ friends have contributed to the cooling of their once zealous devotion: ‘I could never tell a person how to live her sexuality,’ one opined. Rather than grappling with how best to love a friend in truth, we embrace what God cannot. And lose our faith. Both of these Christians are now, at best, ‘non-practicing’ due to others’ sinful practices.

The road goes down and down. HBO’s biggest hit in years, Heated Rivalry, has ignited popular media and countless libidos with its alien fire. It’s a series that features six men (hockey players?! go figure) who engage constantly in explicit ‘gay’ sex. Rainbow writer and director Jacob Tierney extols his series as a dream come true: ‘Premium smut . . . I don’t want to traffic in gay trauma but in gay joy!’ Apparently, those rejoicing are not just rainbow dudes but ‘straight’ women who comprise nearly half of its viewership. Bizarre. One female reporter from the Atlantic writes that Heated Rivalry is ‘healthy, a sign that many people are game for sexy content when it’s done thoughtfully and creatively—when it serves a purpose.’

Huh. I thought the purpose of sexual love was to unite men and women for life so that their kids might have a fighting chance to reproduce the same freedom.

Do we still believe in the beauty and viability of God’s plan? In Scriptural prohibitions of ‘gay’ sex? If so, then start flinching again when a person refers to his or her spouse of the same-sex or laughs at shows like Heated Rivalry. Hell to pay for both. Have we assimilated boundary-violating sin to the degree that we confirm, even perpetuate it in others? We should fall face down before the Cross for mercy. May our repentance liberate deceived loved ones to do the same.

‘The generation of baby boomers’ kids, whose parents did their utmost to pass on nothing…where were these young people to find what no one wanted to pass on to them?’

Chantal Delsol

Men perish without a vision of who we are and who we could become. Shame and self-loathing hang like smog over the thousand ways we’ve squandered our power: drugs, porn, gaming, partaking of either sex. Toxic masculinity? Whatever…

Charlie Kirk gave ‘em Jesus. He, with real vision, engaged the young, summoning them up from debasement. He provided a track on which they could take steps to maturity. Kirk exemplified America’s evangelical genius, blending spiritual renewal with sexual wholeness: ‘You want to live the good gift you are? Then humble yourself before Jesus and redirect holy earthy energy to loving a real woman’ (paraphrase mine).

Charlie embodied that Gospel message. His favorite verse? Eph. 5:25—‘Husbands love your wives like Jesus loved the Church, pouring Himself out for her.’ More than anything, Charlie wanted to live that truth in serving wife Erika. That mattered more to him than huge rallies or a political sweep. He knew he had to answer to God for his main call.

Kirk conveyed something uniquely American—as practical as it is evangelistic—in calling men into Jesus’ Kingdom where new life is defined by how responsibly a man serves others, beginning with the women in his life.

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Kirk knew something of the masculine genius as articulated by Walter J. Ong (see In Search of the Masculine Genius). Ong and interpreter Christian Raab highlight a strong corollary to St. John Paul’s teaching on the ‘feminine genius’ (‘On the Dignity and Vocation of Woman’). Ong highlights (with unfortunately highbrow language, so please excuse my paraphrase) our masculine essence, body, soul, and spirit. We are change agents—naturally antagonistic—beginning in the womb when a power surge of testosterone differentiates us with a penis. From there, we aspire to be ‘other than mother’ with a slight antagonism toward the feminine, a kind of developmental protest that our sisters need not make. The ‘exteriority’ of our sexuality—our outer directedness—means we are most confirmed and empowered when engaging the world around us, including the women in our world. Here we experience the awful truth and temptation of our expendability. We can have sex with a woman and leave her, while she is forever changed by the child she now bears.

Whether we men truly man up and employ our brain differences (more focus and compartmentalization, less fear, and more willingness to risk harm in another’s defense) and greater physical power has something to do with Jesus. We can mobilize and we can squander.

Realizing that tension, Kirk gave men Jesus. Only the guy who allows Jesus to raise up what pleases Him can mobilize toward maturity. It requires more than a birthright (I’m a guy, so you must respect me…).

Masculine genius requires Jesus. Real men need new birth. Times editorialist Ross Douthat captured that ‘essence’ when he wrote of Kirk’s memorial: ‘Kirk’s martyrdom provides the impetus for a genuine revival…to the extent that Kirk is remembered and emulated primarily for his faith, maybe we’ve just seen a tipping point.’

During the weekend of Kirk’s memorial, I was in Europe leading men into their ‘masculine genius’; on one hand, owning our natural gifting while also facing our limited capacity to realize genius without Jesus and humble reliance on brothers. It was marvelous: men facing a spectrum of frustration in serving women well, including those grappling with same-sex and dysphoric desires. More love, more power. We are all just guys aspiring to heaven through Jesus and one another: greater the weakness, deeper the love.

I love Charlie’s response to a ‘gay-identified’ college student: ‘Don’t identify based on your same-sex attraction. You are a complete human being…I want to get away from this idea that you are ‘gay’ anything.’

I am roused by Kirk’s faith and witness. Our challenge as American Christians? Distinguish Kirk’s Jesus-centered virtue from votes. How do we not get confused by Kirk’s strains of Christian nationalism?

How can we praise God for some of Trump’s antics: blowing up drug runners, loosing troops on city streets, rounding up immigrants? Our president’s arbitrary use of force and fearmongering suggests masculine power in need of refinement.

We can worship Jesus, be faithful to those we love most, and work out, in fear and trembling, how to best apply the Gospel in the public square.

‘The distance between the human and divine is such that politics cannot take over what is sacred along with everything else: a separation is necessary…Thomas Aquinas defended Aristotle’s belief that politics is strictly a human affair.’ —Chantal Delsol

Discerning how Church informs state requires genius, the kind that comes from power made perfect in the fire of Jesus’ love, full of truth and grace. I pray that the Spirit evident at Kirk’s memorial will continue to convert all of us, including Trump and company. America’s greatness hinges on it.

Thanks for reading—I’d love to hear your thoughts. Join the discussion below.

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What the film fails to convey is why anyone would want to be a Christian in the first place. OK, OK, screenwriter Peter Straughan (an admittedly lapsed Catholic) never aimed for an altar call at film’s end. But he bludgeons his intention to show us how the Church ‘re-finds her spiritual core’ amid today’s challenges.

Spiritual core? I thought that was Jesus manifest in faithful people who work together to achieve holy ends, in this case, choosing a new leader.

All we see in Conclave are a bunch of cloak-and-dagger post-believers uncertain and unhappy about how they got there in the first place. The cardinals (and one nun on a hot tin roof) repel each other. This center cannot hold.

Conclave’s high-end production seduces and distances us. Old-world beauty is offset by rituals and vestments and Latin prayers that cultivate more suspicion than respect: what goes on here, anyway? The elegantly ordered Church is more shadow than light.

At core is doubt. Jesus brought not the Kingdom of God but the kingdom of doubt. So goes a stirring homily by lead Ralph Fiennes (magnificent), who addresses his fellow cardinals by insisting that ‘certainty is the enemy of tolerance and unity,’ that ‘faith lives only through doubt’, and finally, ‘we need a pope who sins and doubts!’ No prob with the former—we all fail.

But to fail to believe? Jeez. We all know how complicated the world is. For this reason alone, we need clear and certain faith wisely applied by Christian leaders.

We, the faithful, approach life’s impossible barriers through One who makes the Way. No one involved in Conclave got that memo.

Concave men. Men without chests. Cardinals who need to reboot or get booted. Men who need to stop and gain wisdom from nuns stressed out on the periphery. Point well-taken: men, flesh out the Imago Dei with trustworthy sisters and get grounded.

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None of this quite prepared me for Conclave’s preposterous finale. Throughout the film, we catch sight of a slightly ghostly priest, a Mexican who was made a cardinal for daring feats of agape in dangerous places. An unknown, he goes to the head of the conclave and gets elected leader of a billion Christians.

Then, in the film’s last couple minutes, we discover (gasp!) the new pope-to-be—self-named ‘Innocent’—is intersex. As an adult, he discovered interior feminine organs and chose not to have them removed because, in his words: ‘I am what God made me to be, and my difference makes me more useful.’

The screenwriter tries to say that in a male-dominated church world, we need a man who is also a woman to balance things out.

Conclave gets it all wrong. Intersex is a broad term for a host of biological sex development disorders. As a rule, the handicap is recognized at birth; one is determined to be either male or female and has surgery to correct the aberration of other-sex vestiges. (I’ve walked alongside such intersex Christians who clearly identify as either male or female).

Sadly, many invoke ‘intersex’ as the basis for transgender thinking (‘I was born with a disconnect between my body and my thoughts about my body’). False. Trans-fantasies are a psychological and spiritual disorder, not rooted in biology.

The ‘concave’ pope-to-be may be virtuous, but not because of hidden female genitals. If the rest of the cardinals are any indication, even ‘Innocent’ will crumble under the weight of corrupt Rome. Conclave dramatizes a Church under the sway of a faithless ideology that leeches light from Jesus and His members.

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Not easy. Most of the guys who work at my fav coffee joint pretend to be girls. Unconvincing and socially confusing. I try to relate but stumble because I do not know who stands before me. Trying to erase one’s biological sex is inhumane, starting with the ‘transitioning’ person.

As developing human beings, we just want to belong—to be known and blessed in our unique personhood that is foundationally either male or female. ‘Trans’ culture makes that impossible. Teachers, pastors, counselors, politicians and parents who think themselves ‘merciful’ for championing another’s false sexual self should think again. They contribute to a living hell.

Trump is right: his executive order to define sexuality in two parts—male or female—is a common sense truth that provides a track on which all persons can make sense of reality. Whether we like it or not, each of us is a sexual ‘self’ encased in a body—a guy’s or a girl’s. Some of us need a little more help integrating that as a good thing. So be it. Let’s provide the help that makes people thrive.

When Episcopal Bishop Budde publicly exhorted Trump at his inauguration to be merciful to rainbow families, she meant to say: ‘Leave them alone; you scare them by taking away their ever-expanding list of sexual selves.’ Trump is being merciful by insisting on reality for all persons. Giving people what they ‘want’ in their troubled selves is not mercy. It’s advocating bad solutions for deep problems. Pastors should know better and not publicly convey their ignorance.

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On the other hand, Budde scored when she implored Trump to be merciful to immigrants by not criminalizing them. Shout it from the rooftops. Aliens in America are not remotely equivalent to persons insisting on sexual re-identification. The mess we’ve made of the border requires nuance and compassion as families risk a divisive, tenuous future. (I realize immigration is a complicated issue; I simply offer my lay, not expert, opinion.)

Catholic Bishops said it best: dignity doesn’t hinge on citizenship. The Church’s insistence is modest and just. While Biden provided ‘protected’ spaces from immigration enforcement like schools, churches and health care facilities, Trump has rescinded those spaces, making them fair game for raids. ‘All people have a right to fulfill their duty to God without fear. Turning places of care, healing, and solace into places of fear and uncertainty for those in need…will not make our communities safer,’ says the Church.

Amen! Gilded America retreats into a tarnished age by fearmongering. Let’s fix the border and treat valuable contributors to American life with dignity. Give them back protected spaces like churches. Trump, restrain yourself. Have mercy on aliens, for you and your people were once aliens, too. And J.D.Vance, please don’t say dumb stuff like the USCCB is more interested in their bottom line than humanitarian concerns. Unfair and unjust.

Bishop Budde, you err in advocating for immigrants in the same breath you champion bad sexual solutions for vulnerable people. Apples and oranges. Human dignity belongs to all people, beginning with persons split off from their sexuality and extending to careful expressions of justice for aliens in America. We need a united, nuanced Gospel!

In her double-barreled exhortation, Budde misfires and splits the Gospel. She widens the divided state we are in. I expect nothing less from Trump (his way or the highway) but more from the Church of Jesus Christ. May all Christians make every effort in this season to nuance the Gospel with mercy and truth.

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The movie Babygirl looks at the morality of ‘consent’ after a decade of #MeToo and cancel culture. Does a woman’s ‘yes’ to her own degradation justify it? Writer/director Halina Reijn thinks so and employs a slightly idealized version of herself in Nicole Kidman ‘to tell a cautionary tale of what happens when one suppresses her own desires.’ Reijn describes her film as an effort to work out ‘extreme confusion and shame about her sexuality and body.’

I’m not familiar with Reijn, but I like what I know about Nicole Kidman. She appears to be a committed mom and wife, a Catholic, and a seriously hardworking actor who favors edgy projects over her faith.

In Babygirl, Kidman explores her longing to be dominated by men, thoughts her character Romy describes as ‘dark and disgusting and monstrous’ and, well, just who she is.

Romy wants to be mastered. The guy she allows to dominate her is a young man with the power to calm down an aggressive dog; the two meet as he calls Fido off her on a city street. Babygirl explores Romy’s consent into descent—to becoming that beast who welcomes his control. Her last sexual gasp is fueled by a fantasy of herself as that dog.

Ok weird. But we are all capable of monstrous desires, and many, like me, have acted them out like animals. Thank God for one woman’s consent!

St. Paul says it like this: ‘When we were kids, we were all slaves to something. But God chose this woman, Mary, who brought forth Jesus to give us the privilege of becoming children of His Father. He gives us His Spirit of sonship so when we are on the verge of descending (yet again) into lesser selves, we can cry out from our deepest place: Father! We don’t have to be slaves to anything or anyone anymore’ (Gal. 4:7-9).

Slaves no more. I am grateful for Mary’s consent. That bride wore boots! She’s fierce, smashing every deception. Poet Denise Levertov says this of her: ‘We are told of meek obedience. No one mentions courage. The engendering Spirit did not enter her without consent. God waited. She was free to accept or refuse, choices integral to humanness.’

Mary’s brave ‘yes’ frees us to say ‘yes’ to our truest selves as children of the Father. Even in weak moments, disordered desire needn’t drive, define, or deride us. One greater lives in us. Together, we cry out ‘Abba’ and ascend into dignity amid many choices to the contrary.

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Today is Mary’s Day in the Catholic Church. Surrounded by those who say ‘yes’ to bringing forth the Savior in the spirit of one who did just that, we pray for 2025 to be a year of freedom from slavery and freedom for others.

Babygirl wants something else. In Reijn’s words, the film helps each ‘to be true to the beast inside you, to be more at ease with the darkness.’ As that haggard notion unraveled before my eyes, I understood the toll it takes to be faithful to one’s demons. Kidman’s naked beauty—on full display—did not charm. It was alarming. How could a woman of such stature submit to be filmed as a slave to male domination? At times Kidman appeared dissociative, as trapped by her ‘master’ as by the camera itself.

Reijn and Kidman exchanged their souls for ‘art.’ They gained the world.

Such brave consent, declare the critics! Another Oscar for Nicole! Does that compensate for her children now being subject to a mother who humiliated herself in dehumanizing acts for the world to see at will, over and over again? The celebrities who wore ‘little girl’ sex-wear to the premiere of Babygirl? Demonized guys who finally feel vindicated by the lie that all women want to be dominated and demeaned?

Consent is costly. Jesus, look not on our sins but on the faith of Your Church. Mary, Mother of God, pray for us.

Though the Court won’t rule on the ban until spring, it appears likely that it will uphold the right of Tennessee and another 24 states that currently refuse such ‘medical’ treatment for children claiming to be the other sex.

We can be happy about that possibility. We can pray that the Court will uphold common-sense morality. Like ethnicity, sex is immutable. We must defend ferociously the dignity of every male or female’s civil rights. That does not apply to funding risky and unproven medical interventions to do the impossible, e.g., to ‘change’ one’s sex.

Like Sweden and the UK, the USA is finally beginning to refuse false solutions to the complexity of sexual dysphoria.

My question for all Christians who wince at men posturing as women and vice-versa: what is our answer? Are we prepared to be a community that knows how to accompany those who believe they are trapped in the wrong body in prayerful fellowship?

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We have created a culture that permits confused young children to cultivate other sexual ‘selves.’ I believe that this is as much of a social phenomenon as it is a psychological and spiritual distortion. (Educators and clinicians throughout our country believe that sex is mutable and that a dysphoric child should be encouraged to ‘trans’ identify to ward off more significant distress, especially suicide.)

OK, got that. I have been to countless seminars where really smart Christians rearticulate this cultural nightmare, again and again. Yet they offer no answers to the child in distress.

It’s not enough to refuse him or her sexual reassignment. How does a sexually lost child reintegrate his or her original sexual dignity?

That is the most relevant question in this entire ‘trans’ mess. What are our answers? How do we prevent a child from adopting such a personal delusion in a culture that insists on fake answers?

We need empowered counsel if we are to refuse puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and surgery to those seeking sex change.

Do we have any true answers? Does Jesus and His Church?

What persuades one to begin to refuse his or her sexual birthright at three or four years old? Equally, what helps confirm his or her unique sexual identity as male or female without resorting to heavy-handed stereotypes?

As we await the Supreme Court decision on whether states are free to refuse false solutions for children at odds with themselves, we must contend for real answers to wounded children in our midst.

Common sense morality hinges on common sense restoration.

Two weeks ago, a Roman Catholic priest from Milwaukee came out as ‘gay’—made by God that way—to his congregation in an effort to integrate his ‘gay’ self and to help LGBTers follow his path to authenticity.

Blazing a trail with his fiery witness? Nah….Father Gregory Greiten’s effort leaked poisonous gas into the Church; he made smoke, not fire by reducing the God who answers His children with fire to a toothless ancient who wearily confirms our fractured lives. For this Jesus suffered an agonizing death and descent into hell? The smoke that shrouds and chokes, not the fire that illuminates and awakens our authentic selves, is the effect of churchmen who render God impotent.

I struggle to include in a brief blog all the errors in Greiten’s thinking. Let me try.

First, there is no such thing as a ‘gay’ person, if by that one means an individual who is intrinsically rooted in same-sex attractions. That is a popular myth. A person is not born a homosexual or transgender or a bisexual. He or she is born to realize her or his dignity as a beloved daughter or son of the Father and as a gendered gift to the whole world. Father Greiten disagrees; he purports that ‘God created him to be gay.’ Says who? Not God…

Secondly, Greiten confuses one’s feelings with an identity. I suspect, like many persons (myself included) with a history of same-sex attraction, the depth and persistence of such desires can tempt one into forming a ‘self’ around them. But such identity formation is alien to the call of Christ. He invites every follower to surrender all other identifications and to take up the Cross as the mark of the new and true self (Jn. 12:25). Every priest should know this. If a fatherly leader loses sight of that Cross, how dull the vision for a weaker son! Smoke, not fire.

Thirdly, every priest should know that the Church names homosexual desires as disordered in that they frustrate openness to life, the unitive and procreative purposes of our sexuality. Jesus upheld His Father’s will for man and woman together to constitute His plan for sexual love (Matt. 19:4-6). Of course, many live far from that reality. No matter! God has made a way for persons with disordered desires to be drawn into His merciful gaze and so be ‘loved out’ of every other identification, especially one based on disordered desires. That a priest should base an identity on disordered desires and then urge others to follow his example is beyond me. Better put, because Jesus’ love has shattered every effort of the ‘gay’ world to name and animate me, I would say that Greiten’s example is beneath me.

Fourth, what to say to the response to Greiten’s witness? His congregation gave him a standing ovation and, apparently, his Archbishop blessed his ‘coming out.’ That is for me the worst news of all. It reflects a worldly church nearly dead to the power of the Gospel. Nearly dead. I would put her in St. Paul’s category of being ‘struck down but not yet destroyed’ (2 Cor. 4:9). She lives still because Jesus lives just as I live today to the beauty of Jesus and my wife and kids and grandkids and a whole new horizon that Jesus opens for every longing, broken heart.

The Church must reclaim her truth and her witness today. You who, like me, share a history of disorder vanquished only by the greater love of Jesus—let us arise in this hour and become the Church who illuminates the Cross amid shadow and smoke. Let our lives shine forth the glory of Him who authors and redeems true personhood.

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Someone urged me to ‘stay in my lane.’ I’d have swerved out of mine if I sought to persuade you with overwrought assumptions. But I wouldn’t be true to Jesus and you if I didn’t admit my impasse and seek a way through it. Thanks for helping.

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After the presidential debate—the worst display of American politics I’ve ever seen—we’ve nowhere to go but up. And Cher, start packing. You promised to leave America if Trump gets elected and as of last night he did.

I am among the minority of Christians who are really unhappy about that. I can’t vote for a man who still believes he won the last election while cheering on thugs who overtook the White House on Jan 6th. Trump changes reality to suit his own darkened one. He leads us into unreality.

And Biden can no longer function in reality. Rather than feeling sorry for a person with brain loss, I dislike his pride for not passing the baton. Pray for a lucid moment, a humble one, in which he does.

Two men driven and deluded by pride. Christian, pray for America.

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Its premise is simple: white middle-class kids overexposed to the sun (Newport Beach never looked better), drugs, and each other discover unhappiness in their quest for truth. Jesus discovers them. Ah, youth! This community revolutionized ‘church’ by mobilizing folky music, simple preaching, and young charismatic players to reach a generation aching for meaning.

Any Christian today who entered or renewed faith through a melodic, accessible invitation to ‘know Jesus’ owes this revolution a debt of gratitude.

I loved Kelsey Grammar’s poignant yet underplayed portrayal of a pastor (Church Smith) who himself ‘gets saved’ by the Spirit gifting him with compassion for kids he had scorned as lazy druggies. Chuck’s conversion into a pretty good father of a tough-to-father bunch challenges aging ‘Jesus-people’ like me to weep for a new generation that confuses ‘trans-rights’ with righteousness.

Still, my familiarity with the material, combined with a slight allergy for ‘Jesus’ media, gave me pause about:

Greg Laurie as the epicenter of the Revolution. Great guy and ministry, but just one of many sons and daughters who established the beachhead. I realize Greg wrote the book on which the film is based, but he edits history a bit by becoming the revolution’s shimmering star. At one point he says something like: ‘I just want people to remember my name.’ We will.

Lonnie Frisbee. This ‘John-the-Baptist’ of the revolution, played amusingly by Jonathan Roumie (Jesus in ‘The Chosen’) with an almost fey Jack Nicholson-twang, is one complicated guy. Forerunner Lonnie initiated this revolution with Smith. Both prodigal and prophet, Lonnie possessed a disarming evangelistic candor plus an anointing of the Spirit to heal that was breathtaking. Annette and I witnessed him serving people we pastored and marveled at his precision.

I was more floored by Lonnie’s lifelong addiction to same-sex relationships (he died of HIV in ’93). Though Lonnie refused to get help from me, I helped restore a few young men whom Lonnie had seduced. Hear me: the problem is and was never Lonnie’s tendencies--it was his refusal to get the help he needed. No immoral proclivity needs to drive the saints. We take the wheel, wholly surrendered. Lonnie never learned to drive.

His unchecked weakness combined with his magnetism as a minister made him a danger to himself and vulnerable guys. And Lonnie’s gifts incited a revolution. Revolutions are complicated.

Lastly, Jesus Revolution started as a potent fusion of solid preaching and Spirited signs and wonders; it ends with Bible teaching and altar calls, a yawning revival. Laurie associates Frisbee’s spiritual gifting (moving in power to prophesy and heal) with him being a diva—paired with the peculiar Kathryn Kuhlman and unwilling to be checked by pastor Smith. Maybe so, but Frisbee’s frailties can’t be blamed for the faith that fanned into flame a messy revolution that continues to restore messier people. John Wimber, for example, who took over the Vineyard movement from founder Gulliksen, committed his entire life and a global movement to keep the Word/Spirit fullness alive and well.

No revolution without the fire. Maybe we can learn something from the failure of a few. No need for divas and posers and abusers: just fan into flame the gift He gives.

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I’m happy today. Amid the din of enraged women and the myriad legal battles to come, I breathe clean air and envision a new greening of America. We’ve excised something rotten from the rolls: a ruling that was anti-life and thus anti-Christ.

Strength rises from the Spirit of Truth who ‘delights not in the death of anyone’ (Ez. 33:11). I am quickened to build up the living to know the whole good of our sexual personhood. May we goad one another to offer our ‘gift’ wisely and well over the course of a lifespan. Christopher West urges pro-lifers ‘to renew our commitment to helping men and women embrace the true beauty and splendor of the divine plan for creating us male and female’ lest we contribute to ‘the illusion of thinking we can build a true culture of human life without experiencing the true meaning of love and sexuality’ (St. JP II).

Take heart and courage. Change is in the air. I happily proceeded to Santiago Chile, empowered by the whole truth of God’s will for our good lives. We departed from a United Airlines gate ablaze with rainbow flags and slogans; as subtle as Trump’s self-congratulations, the terminal featured a 100’ by 20’ photo-op rainbow booth where LGBTQ+ers preened and took selfies to their hearts’ content.

Tempted by contempt, I took my seat on the plane and was greeted by a flight attendant who confided: ‘Thanks for your videos. Everyone around me insists on celebrating something that limits life. Your ministry gives me hope for friends who can know Jesus and break the low ceiling over them.’ ‘Wow,’ I prayed, ‘Jesus, You move the faithful to declare Life and invite others into it!’

At our conference in Santiago, Abbey and I gave all to honor the good gift of our sexual humanity—‘we always and everywhere represent God in the gift of our biologically-destined sexuality’—and the power of Almighty Mercy to reconcile us to our unique, glorious expressions of masculinity and femininity. This group drank it in, including a young devout woman who had been identifying as a man. ‘I’ve never heard such a clear teaching before,’ she admitted. We prayerfully cared for her and will continue to do so through the Living Waters community there.

Happily, we do more than exhort the sin-weary ‘to get it right.’ We offer ‘firm and clear guidance towards responsible manhood and womanhood based on…the sexual complementarity of men and women’ (R. Reno, First Things.) Anything less is careless. Jesus gives more through His Church, Word, and Spirit, and through wise Supreme Court justices who liberate Life. Rejoice in that liberty. Happy Day!

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I just attended my own funeral. I chuckled as self-described queer/gay/’uranian’ (yeah, really) Greg Johnson pronounced repeatedly the death of any organized effort to assist persons on the rainbow spectrum to be reconciled to God’s design for human sexuality.

I pinched myself. Yeah, still here. As are myriad men and women happy to allow Jesus to take them down to the end of themselves so He can restore their original dignity—male and female, made in His image. Johnson, a reformed smarty pants, employs his take on the 40-year-history of Exodus International to make his point. ‘See, even Alan Chambers (the last Exodus president who shut down the organization in 2013) declared no-one changed.’ Honoring Chambers as a reputable mouthpiece is like believing Trump won the election after all.

Johnson cites me repeatedly as a relic, a well-intentioned cadaver (still toxic), yet he never bothered to pick up the phone and give me a chance to qualify his ‘take’ on me and the forty years of service to Exodus that I represent. Instead, he revises history from his roost as a Revoice leader—‘gay-identified’ folk who ‘care’ for their rainbow peers rather than the ‘cure’ approach of Exodus. To paraphrase Johnson, Jesus can’t or won’t alter one’s disordered desires so let’s just gather with the homies in St. Louis once a year (Revoice conference), sing hymns, hear heady confusing talks, and celebrate our status as sexual minorities and mixed orientation marriages. I may still be alive and well but I’m dead to that blather.

Still, Johnson claims Christian orthodoxy and gives us a solid take on Gen. 1-3 as the reason why he as gay/queer/’uranian’ can never in good conscience commit homosexual acts. Weird split: celebrate your gay ‘ethnos’ but don’t do the dirty deed. That seems disintegrated to me. Jesus came to redeem us at the source of all our adulteries—the heart (Matt. 5:27-30). We who still claim that Jesus can redeem our hearts enough to break lust’s grip and free us for normal love need not apologize. We are just living the Gospel.

The paradox? Johnson asserts that Exodus’ ‘change’ claim ‘obscures the Gospel.’ Huh? Bro, we are not foisting a yoke on fragile people. We are simply applying your Gen. 1-3 hermeneutic consistently. Jesus does free us to get back to the garden, sexually-speaking. Anything less defies our dormant nature, what God already placed within us. The catastrophe of sin that disintegrates all of us, sexually-speaking, is no match for Jesus, who gave all to redeem our deep divides. Through turning to Him, He awakens Eden-in-us, what is most authentic. That was Exodus. That is still Jesus’ way out of Egypt.

Perhaps it is you who obscure the Gospel, not Exodus.

And it is wrong, pure and simple, for you to add that Exodus ‘redefined spiritual growth as the absence of temptation.’ What? Said who? My Exodus experience always revolved around the rawest of disclosures, however inconvenient and crucifying to the perfectionist. The closer I got to Jesus, the more I saw and said the dirt. That’s still my ‘Exodus’ from sin.

I speak on behalf of a host of Exodus-related colleagues you codify as dead who are more alive than ever with the hope of Jesus: Anne Paulk, Joe Dallas, Garry and Melissa Ingraham, Linda Seiler, Elizabeth Woning and Kenn Williams, Bob Ragan, Jason Thompson, Stephen Black, and Ricky Chelette (to mention just a few). Their lives pour into the soil of churches everywhere to create deep rich ground for the redemption of fractured lives. You tread on sacred ground by framing them as ‘fostering emotionally unsafe and even abusive spaces…’ How dare you make holy, humble people ‘abusers’ to justify your dabbling in queer culture. And in Jesus’ name!

And therein lies my biggest squawk with your eulogizing us and revoicing our history. For the last 40 years, we have offered concrete care for persons that help liberate the transforming power of Jesus and His community. You offer nothing solid, just platitudes: Jesus loves you. Come hear me speak at Revoice. Join a church that embraces sexual minorities. Empty words.

You preach a truncated Gospel that acknowledges sexual design then abjectly refuses to apply it to persons with certain disordered desires. As a result, you bar Jesus from doing what He does best—rescuing sinners from what dishonors us, our fellows, and our God.

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History repeats itself...A madman, consumed with a lust for power and possession, is implementing his plan without regard for anyone. Everything in me screams: ‘NO!’ And tears flow. For us Poles, war is a huge wound. Many of us have grandparents who remember World War II. We still carry its marks. I can see my grandmother escaping from transport to a German labor camp. I remember my grandfather, who fought at the front, and years after the war remained terrified that the Germans would come back. My grandmother's brother, when he was only 16, was dragged out of his home by the Soviet soldiers and died in Siberia. In Poland, there are many monuments commemorating the death of millions of innocent people with the inscription: NEVER AGAIN...

We find it hard to believe that this is happening again. It is scary and heartbreaking. A powerful wave washes over us--a wave of uncertainty, sense of threat, helplessness, and anxiety for what the future might bring. There is a profound objection in me against the suffering of the Ukrainian nation and the lack of respect for life. My grief is proportional to the destructive power of evil impacting them.

Still, I want to believe that history will not repeat itself. I want to believe that those who have real influence will make bold decisions to stop the evil, and it will be different from what happened 83 years ago. I believe that care for human life will prevail, that human dignity might be the highest value.

Above all, I believe that our lives are in the hands of the mighty God!

‘Holy Spirit, Spirit of peace, please come and renew the face of this Earth! Restore order and true freedom to the Ukraine!’

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‘There’s something deeply corrosive about attempting to live in such a way that demands everyone agree with you.’ Sonny Bunch

One highlight of our ‘Integration’ week at the TOB Institute was witness Steven Thanh, a Vietnamese immigrant, who articulated beautifully how Jesus and Church (including therapy and Living Waters) are restoring his manhood after a life marked by same-sex trauma and wandering in the ‘gay’ wilderness. Moving. Verifiable.

Dr. Joe Nicolosi Jr. just documented how therapy that identifies and resolves past traumatic memories results in freedom: an overall increase in client well-being and shifts from same to opposite-sex attraction.

And Dr. Paul Sullens rolled out his excellent study of persons who have pursued therapy for sexual integration; published in the world’s largest most rigorous journal of peer-reviewed psychological research, Sullens found that such therapy reduces suicidal tendencies, increases client well-being, and concludes that efforts to restrict or ban such therapy ‘due to elevated harm are unfounded.’

The world may never know. On the same day that Steven witnessed joyfully to his integration, Facebook and Instagram dropped Desert Stream from its accounts without warning. Deleted. Censored.

Big Tech also dropped Nicolosi’s YouTube platform. And a host of other ministries, including the Restored Hope Network, found accounts cancelled in a flash.

What is going on? Why are persons pursuing sexual integration in accord with Christian conscience being deprived of inspiration and empirical support of their goals?

LGBTQ+ person and their supporters can’t handle other points-of-view. So they cancel them. Kangaroo court judges rally and spew their vitriolic judgments online; they declare sharp thinkers like Nicolosi ‘conversion therapy’ monsters and Desert Stream’s healing groups coercive and abusive. They frame bright witnesses like Steven as under our spell, victims of torturous charlatans.

Listen to how a mysterious group like Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) describe us and a grab-bag of related organizations (including RHN and Nicolosi’s): ‘These practices {of conversion therapy} are inherently degrading and discriminating…they attempt to teach LGBTQ+ people that they are not perfect the way that they are…tragically, ongoing reporting indicates that forms of violent torture continue to surface in attempts to change the sexuality of LGBTQ+ people…’ I laughed out Ioud at these unfounded claims then proceeded to teach at training on Pope St. John Paul ll’s glorious call for every person to cultivate ‘a deep orientation to the personal dignity of what is intrinsic to masculinity and femininity’ (TOB 131:4).

Wow. That is integration—reconciliation to my sexual gift so I can confirm her value! Torturous and coercive? Nah. Simply an invitation for anyone to immerse in the love that restores wounded adult children and unites them to their sexual gift. Beaming Steven reminded me that healing is a fact for those who seek.

I don’t laugh at the aims of GPAHE to censor human freedom by persuading Big Tech to drop us and our friends. Their outrageous claims contradict far-reaching research on integration therapy. Yet Big Tech is listening to GPAHE and cancelling us. Now YouTube, Facebook and Instagram make our moral decisions for us. How? By refusing to hear another perspective. Perhaps this exposes the fragile confidence LGBTQ+ people have in their ever fracturing and multiplying ‘gender selves.’

Let persons have their truth. But give us our truth too. Banning Christian sexual dignity (in thought and therapeutic practice) from social media platforms bars seekers from the freedom that could be theirs. Ask Steven.

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Our kids have been snatched from us. The robber seeks to destroy them at core. He snags them with self-hatred then woos them with a host of selves—gay, lesbian, bi, queer, trans, questioning—anything to wreck their sexual dignity. And render them barren, impotent.

He has blinded a generation to their sexual value and thus blunted any aspiration to become who they are as gift, man to woman, woman to man. He stokes hatred in them toward anyone who resists, rallying them around a misbegotten ‘justice.’

Parents who conceived and raised ‘him’ or ‘her’ and who cannot embrace the child’s ‘new’ gender, or celebrate the ‘gay’ wedding,’ become adversaries, ‘haters.’

Parents cave. Celebrity Jamie Lee Curtis, a usually straight-talking, common sense, 12-stepper stammers all over herself in the pretense that her hulking son is now a woman. No-one believes he is her but all must pretend. Today we bow before the emperor of this world who has effectively silenced the persons God entrusted to champion the original dignity of sons and daughters.

Last night I dreamed of a group of young people who were violating each other sexually in a variety of configurations. No shame. Next I was in a small house at night and I noticed the front door was ajar. Intruder! I ran to the next room where I encountered a skulking figure in the corner. Too terrified to cry out, I threw myself on the robber who vanished, leaving only a baby, his eyes covered in dirt and beginning to cry in my arms.

Pray with me today for our children and for our authority to bind away the strongman in their lives and set them free to resume the journey to Jesus and sexual integrity. Of all the questions on this most recent Barna study, the most popular ‘yes’: ‘Searching for purpose in life.’ Rainbow justice promises much and delivers nothing. Only Jesus, only Jesus.

Fittingly, today is the Feast of St. John Paul ll who initiated ‘World Youth Day’ and led a generation to the ‘freedom of the gift’ with these words: ‘It is Jesus you seek when you dream of happiness. He is waiting for you when nothing else satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted…it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices.’

‘Father, through the intercession of all the saints, including our friend John Paul, draw our children back to You. Wake them up to the darkness overtaking them. Lead them back with kindness. Forgive us for our sins; make us your conduits.’

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Eve Tushnet, in her article ‘Conversion Therapy is Still Happening in Catholic Spaces – and its effects on L.G.B.T. people can be devastating’, subtitles a section ‘Leaving Space for the Cross.’ We find this incredibly ironic. How far does the Cross go? Does the Cross lay claim to every aspect of our lives, even our sexual identities?

The Cross must go to the essence of our being, laying claim to our sexuality. In order for the Cross to reach such depths, disciples must surrender completely to Jesus.

Can the Cross break the back of disorder in our lives? Mary Healy writes: ‘Since today there are people with same-sex attraction for whom it seems innate and unalterable, the assumption is often made that to take the biblical teaching at face value is to condemn such persons to a life of loneliness, frustration and unfulfillment. But this assumption is incompatible with the witness of the New Testament. Same-sex attraction is simply one form of the disorder that is in every human heart due to the fall, although it can bring with it particularly difficult crosses. The gospel proclaims not only the forgiveness of sin but the healing of all these forms of disorder and the power to live a transformed life in communion with God and others.’[1]

Eve, leave room for the Cross! Allow it to break the back of every moral disorder. The Savior is not allergic to disorder. The Cross awaits, Eve, for you to let go of your commitment to ‘gay’ identification.

Surrendering to Jesus and His Cross is a process that requires walking partners. We need an empowered Church community. We need skilled helpers. That’s why we take issue with Eve demonizing a host of orthodox caregivers – orthodox in that they, unlike Eve, hold to a sound anthropology and thus a therapeutic trajectory for one’s right to become reconciled to the purpose of her sexuality.

Many of these healers are our friends: Rich Wyler, Richard Fitzgibbons, Fr. John Harvey and Courage International, Joseph Nicolosi, the Archdiocese of Denver, Christopher West and the Theology of the Body Institute, Dr. Bob Schuchts and the John Paul II Healing Center, and our very own Desert Stream Ministries. These colleagues are seasoned caregivers who give of themselves freely to those seeking help.

To portray them as dangerous, Eve uses anecdotal evidence based on questionable recall of counseling experiences. Time and time again, persons who reverse the healing path and embrace the LGBTQ+ lifestyle re-write their therapeutic histories as coercive to the point of caricature. We at DSM have witnessed this in churches and courts and government councils around the country. We’ve felt the impact of it in bad rulings that outlaw a person’s right to choose their therapeutic path. We conclude: the moral reversal into LGBTQ+ identification necessitates skewed self-justification. Orthodox caregivers become the enemy.

Eve’s choice of anecdotes sounds thin and unreal. ‘The therapist offered a tantalizing prospect: “He believed in complete healing of wounds and traumas.”’ ‘She said she wasn’t seeking conversion therapy. However, the Catholic psychologist from whom she sought help would not listen.’ ‘She said her therapist scolded her for “dressing like a boy”; he praised her for being “a highly compliant patient.”’ ‘That I would be healed by learning about [homosexuality] enough and praying enough.’ ‘Her therapist and her spiritual director both seemed to think that marriage was her only “shot at happiness,”’ recalled another interviewee. Ridiculous. No caregiver in her right mind would say that.

Desert Stream/Living Waters is mentioned, though Eve never asked our opinion. She casts a shadow on us based upon the suicide of a woman we never met, nor had we ever engaged with the caregivers who surrounded her troubled life. Because we did a conference within a 100-mile radius of the woman’s home, Eve infers that we contributed to her trouble. What we did just discover is that this woman spent her last 2 years in ‘gay’-affirming therapy and with a female lover. Eve, you falsely accuse us. And smear reputable caregivers.

Eve concludes with confusing and unchaste possibilities for her case studies. ‘She has explored relationships with woman, even though she still is figuring out “the moral piece” and how her sexuality and faith might find harmony.’ ‘I’m living with a man and want to pursue gay marriage.’ The last interviewee is living with his partner yet committed to a ‘Catholic sexual ethic.’ ‘We almost broke up because I said, “I’m never gonna be able to give you what you want.” And he said, “I don’t care about that. I want to be with you.”’

Eve’s alternate to ‘conversion therapy’ is a slippery slope. It appears to accommodate not only disorder but sin. ‘Gay’ celibacy and ‘gay’ friendships are still unchaste. The Church must be clear. Jesus came to break the back of any and all moral disorder in our lives. Leave space for the Cross, and don’t crucify Jesus’ members who champion Its power.

[1] Mary Healy, Living the Truth in Love, Part II (unpublished work). 2020.

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Eve Tushnet recently wrote an article in America Magazine titled ‘Conversion Therapy is Still Happening in Catholic Spaces – and its effects on L.G.B.T. people can be devastating.’ Throughout, her supposition seems to be that some people are fundamentally (naturally) homosexual. In other words, homosexuality is an immutable aspect of the human nature in certain persons, especially her interviewees. Any effort to grow beyond their homosexual condition is impossible and therefore hurtful to them.

Tushnet’s anthropology (‘LGBT people’) skews her effort. She misuses the language of ‘orientation,’ claiming that some (mostly) Catholic organizations seek to ‘change people’s ‘sexual orientation,’ and ‘create a heterosexual identity for someone who experiences same-sex attraction.’ Tushnet is herself a ‘gay-identified’ Catholic. She extends that mantle over each ‘victim’ of reparative therapy who she mines for anecdotal evidence. She gets what she assumes. Examining brokenness that undergirds same-sex desires and seeking restoration for core contributors (family-of-origin fractures, sexual trauma, early peer rejection and isolation, etc.) is futile. Why? These persons have a fixed, immutable same-sex orientation. She concludes what she presumes: attempting to move beyond a homosexual ‘orientation’ damages ‘gay’ people and anyone who encourages such repair is abusive.

In challenging Eve’s faulty starting point, we must look at the essence of human nature. Pope Benedict XVI prophetically spells out the pivotal call to revere man’s nature. He says: ‘Man too has a nature that he must respect and that he cannot manipulate at will. Man is not merely self-creating freedom. Man does not create himself. He is intellect and will, but he is also nature, and his will is rightly ordered if he respects his nature, listens to it and accepts himself for who he is, as one who did not create himself. In this way, and in no other, is true human freedom fulfilled.’[1]

We as human beings do not determine our orientation. Humanity’s orientation is determined by the One who created us. Our orientation is not ‘gay’ or ‘straight.’ Our orientation is determined by the design written in our beings. Our bodies are the key to our orientation. To claim that orientation is fixed by mere sexual appetites forfeits the design.

When we look at the nature of the human person, we can then determine our destiny, direction, orientation. J. Budziszewski writes: ‘A natural inclination is not whatever I desire…the point of the adjective “natural” is precisely to call attention to design. It is natural for me to be attracted to the opposite sex, even if I am attracted to my own…it is natural for me to eat a varied diet, even if I prefer nothing but donuts. It is natural for me to use my lungs to take in oxygen, even if I am addicted to sniffing glue. The mere fact that I want something means little by itself…what matters is not how we incline…what matters is how we naturally incline – by the design, according to the Designer.’[2]

We cannot say that one who experiences disordered desire (e.g., same-sex desires) is somehow disqualified from these foundational starting points. To presume so mars human nature. We mar our nature when we deem a ‘gay’ identity natural. The ‘gay’ identity manipulates orientation as to accommodate a sexual desire not written in the logic of the design. Wrong presuppositions skew reality. To do so binds our freedom, poisons our Catholic ethos, and offends the Designer.

It also throws thoroughbred healers under the bus, as Eve does in her article. We at DSM take issue with her indictment of caregivers whom she sullies by ascribing questionable ‘anecdotes’ to them. Next week we shall examine how persons who change their narratives, e.g., ‘I used to seek restoration for wounds related to my same-sex desires but now I just want to be “gay”’ revise history and demonize the healers who once helped them.

[1] Pope Benedict XVI, Address of His Holiness Benedict XVI: Reichstag Building, Berlin (22 September 2011), at The Holy See, www.vatican.va. [2] J. Budziszewski, What We Can’t Not Know (Dallas: Spence Publishing Company, 2003).

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(Ps. 11:3)

The man dressed as a woman shook the vial in his hands as he screamed at the receptionist—'This is a medical emergency; my meds are way off!’ She calmly explained that he would have to wait as we all did for our appointments.

This glimpse of transgender ‘health’ will multiply many times over as Biden just overturned a Trump decision that defined gender identity in biological terms. In redefining sex as non-biological, Biden sows to the wind and will reap a whirlwind. He severs his Catholic roots that defines humanity as a fusion of body and spirit on the ground of design, of inspired dignity. He reinforces the ‘transgender’ craze sweeping the west by promising unhindered access to medical ‘transitions’ for citizens in need of sound counsel, not surgery. By defining sexual identity as a state of mind, Biden splits body from spirit and encourages the vulnerable onto a restless quest that devastates all-involved, especially families who must now repent before the newly ‘gendered’ member. Diabolical nonsense.

A man feigning confusing womanhood, Dr. Rachel Levine, Assistant Director of Health Services and spokesperson for Biden’s ruinous new enforcement, said: ‘No-one should be discriminated against when seeking medical services for who they are.’ What he means is: ‘The state will ensure you can butcher yourself in a futile effort to become whom you never can be.’

What can we do? In the spirit of the Risen Christ, we can cry out for real justice for real persons swept up in the transgender craze. We must go deeper in our theological anthropology and take seriously the divine wisdom of our biological selves. We can seek, with all the mercy and love and advocacy that we as members of Jesus’ can muster, to help persons at odds with their male or female destinies to be reconciled to the gift of their embodied selves.

Jesus prays with and for us as we roll up our sleeves and move to redeem the confused, not concede to irrational thinking and limp advocacy. He is summoning a healing army for the ‘trans’ wreckage of our day. Where sin abounds, grace abounds more; it is up to us, an Easter people, to ensure that our churches are Kingdom venues of transformation for the ‘trans’-vulnerable.

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The most vulnerable. When I looked at ‘Rachel’ Levine, President Biden’s choice for Asst. Secretary of Health and highest ranking ‘transgender’ official ever, I saw a weary old man trapped in the illusion that he can transcend his birth sexuality. And I saw thousands of uncentered young people more inclined than ever to believe the deception that they can recreate their sexuality too.

The most vulnerable are not the Ivy League young women persuaded by peers and profs that they can be men (the reason high-end Abigail Shrier wrote ‘Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters’) but non-white kids from underprivileged, fractured homes who escape into ‘trans’ personas and get trapped in dead-end unrealities that violate their dignity and target them for others’ indignities.

Biden abets the violation of the ‘trans’ vulnerable. Hell-bent on ushering in a new era of LGBTQI equality, he has—in less than two weeks—summoned ‘Rachel’ to assist in overseeing US ‘health’, appointed a special global envoy for LGBTQI rights, encourages US embassies around the world to fly rainbow ‘pride’ flags, insists that the recent ‘Bostock’ SCOTUS decision to protect all ‘gender identities’ be applied to men pretending to be women who want to compete against women in college sports, and just signed an executive order to allow ‘transgender’ troops to serve openly in the US military. More boundary breaking orders to come…

Archbishop Gomez was correct. Not only has ‘our new President pledged to pursue certain policies and advance moral evils that threaten human life and dignity,’ he spent his first days in office ferociously initiating these policies. I despised many of Trump’s positions and welcome radical change in say, immigration. But I will fight for the most vulnerable. Biden’s unhinged commitment to spreading the pandemic of sexual fluidity must stop. It is a contagion released whenever a person of influence promotes the deception that ‘feelings’ make the man or woman, rather than the Designer of all-living.

Gone are the days of restraining sexual identity politics. While Trump refused to cede absolute power to gender-bending, Biden is building a national shrine to the gods and goddesses of self-created sexuality.

‘Jesus Christ revealed God’s plan of love for creation and revealed the truth about the human person, who is created in God’s image, endowed with God-given dignity, rights, and responsibilities, and called to a transcendent destiny.’--Archbishop Gomez

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Forgive me for my inability to call you ‘Eliot.’ I simply cannot. Please know that I am not dismissing your feelings, in your words, ‘how remarkable it feels to finally love who I am enough to pursue my authentic self.’ It’s just that I believe one’s authentic self has to answer to One greater than you or me. We don’t design ourselves. And I believe that authentic human integrity and happiness hinges on making peace with who this Designer made us to become. We fool ourselves and others by constructing a self in opposition to how we have been created as male or female.

Out of concern for your ultimate happiness, I cannot call you “Eliot.’ I’m sure that is painful to you; forgive me for injuring your feelings.

To me, ‘Eliot’ violates your integrity as a woman. And also the integrity of women everywhere who have fought hard to shape history in courageous expression of their genius. I saw you as one such woman. Now I wonder if you are dishonoring women in pretending to be a man. Does a masculine persona give you power that womanhood does not? Isn’t opting out of womanhood a slap in the face of every woman who stands on the uneven ground of misogyny and works as woman to create a level playing field for future sons and daughters? Empowered, gifted women like you who ‘trans’-identify take a step backward for all woman. Your coming out as ‘Eliot’ communicates to me that ‘men are better.’

Doubtless my inability to call you ‘Eliot’ will be viewed by you and the ‘trans’ community as hatred. I assume that’s why you describe your new trans ‘joy’ as ‘fragile.’ Maybe the primary reason for the protracted suffering of the ‘trans’ community is based on something other than persons like me who disagree with you. Perhaps it is the goal of becoming the opposite sex. I urge you to consider the futility of pretending to become what you can never become. In that way, the ‘trans’ quest is a journey to nowhere, an adolescence without end. Yet unlike a teen who can emerge out of awkwardness and into a mature man or woman, a ‘trans’ person will suffer affliction without end due to the futility of the path itself. The hard truth: we cannot change what is written on every cell of our being.

Ellen, ‘Eliot’ is an imposter. You are using your celebrity to invite vulnerable souls onto your futile path. Out of love for you, and them, I urge you to re-embrace your feminine genius.

Sincerely,

Andrew Comiskey

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