Steve and Terry recently attended a meeting put on by a group that is concerned by the new school curriculum that is being implemented in BC and Alberta. This curriculum normalizes homosexuality, transgenderism, etc., and teaches children to accept and celebrate it. Most people (even some teachers!) are unaware of this curriculum, and many parents and grandparents who are aware are greatly concerned. Steve and Terry discuss their experience with this meeting and what they learned from the presentations.
Coming to a School Near You
Outro Music
Call on Me
by Kick Lee
As a Christian I find this podcast VERY VERY disappointing…
My family member works in the public school system and this curriculum is very lightly taught AND the word “accept” is the focus more than “celebrate”.
Accept Accept Accept
ps. I come from a point of view where 3 classmates of my child committed suicide.
I came across this episode, as I noticed the more recent episodes with Jenn and Paul, and I’m troubled by your choice to host these two individuals on your podcast. I’m well acquainted with their views, and I chose not to listen to your episodes with them, as I don’t want to spoil my weekend. Their actions to bend the truth behind who and what transgender people are show their true nature.
I am a transgender woman, a lesbian, and a Christian. Rather than seeing a bridge that needs to be made between the LGBTQ community and the Christian community, the question should be, “How can Christians include LGBTQ people within our community”. The narrative of building a bridge implies that there are two sides, and that the purpose of the bridge is for dialogue, and to allow people to cross over. It implies that I cannot be in both places at once. I would have to choose one side, or the other.
While I grew up in the Lower Mainland, I would have loved to have had SOGI 123 while I was growing up. Instead, I had to deny my identity to survive through the stigma attached to queerness, and gross misinformation about what and who trans people are. The message that SOGI 123 teaches is not “indoctrination” or “coercion”, just awareness, understanding and acceptance.
The statistics that Paul Dirks are actually incorrect. Another transgender christian wrote an op-ed covering this: https://vancouversun.com/opinion/op-ed/opinion-parents-not-getting-all-the-facts-from-sogi-critics
There should be no problem with teaching that LGBTQ is normal. And the only point of celebrating it is to fight against the stigma that still persists through society. By nature, bullying is more targeted towards queer youth, so it only makes sense to understand that and counter anti-gay/queer bullying in a more targeted manner. I interpreted your sentiment as “all bullying matters” or, all bullying should be counteracted.
Again, it’s not indoctrination. It is normal. There is not a conspiracy theory. We just want to be able to exist, and we want queer kids to know that it’s ok to be queer.
The reason why confidentiality is important is that it betrays a child’s trust. It’s not like when a kid discloses sexual harassment. There is no harm that is happening by the kid being queer. Maybe the school could ask the child for permission to talk to their parents about it. Maybe the school could encourage the kid to talk to their parents. Maybe, the school could help the child determine if it would be safe to come out to their parents. Because this is the most significant worry that a queer kid has — will my parents reject me? I know it was the most significant thing for me, and I know many queer folk who have been completely rejected by their family. Conversion therapy has a lasting legacy of causing suicide, and that is a very common response by parents when they try to “work through the issue”. “Parental authority” just sounds like the right of the parent to be able to force their kid back into the closet and grow up to be the image of what the parent wants them to be.
While the modern nuclear family is nice, it’s not the only familial arrangement mentioned in the bible and there is no need for it to be the only familial arrangement in our modern times. Especially, as mentioned, that many queer folk are completely rejected and abandoned by their family, we have to have some other framework in our culture to support people who cannot fit into such an arrangement.
Talking about “what’s great about being a boy / girl” is literally the kind of thing that made me go more into the closet. Whenever there was a “this is what girls do better”, I would go out of my way to strive to do that better — but that didn’t stop me from liking stereotypically guy things, like computers and lego, etc.
And finally, being trans doesn’t try to say that gender and sex assigned at birth are completely separate. I mean, more than 98% of people are cisgender; there has to be a link with that kind of correlation. But just that there are people who do not fit into the strict binary and the strict assignment. Saying that gender is a social construct does not mean it doesn’t exist. Money is a social construct, and it definitely affects our lives in huge ways.
Anywho, thanks for listening to me. Thanks for at least, acknowledging that the Christian community has done significant harm in the past and needs to change. And so, I hope you can listen to more transgender Christians, such as Lisa Salazar (as linked above), Austen Hartke, Shannon T. L. Kearns, and more “Side A” Christians in general.
May the Lord be with you.
Hi Emily,
Thanks for taking the time to comment. I do understand there are many trans or LGB people who think the way you do, and feel that anything other than complete agreement with their sense of identity is hateful. However, I am compelled by my understanding of the Word of God and the corroboration of the empirical data to believe that a healthy identity in Christ must be rooted in an acceptance of the body.
You may not know that I have an in-depth reply to Lisa Salazar’s op-ed, in which you can see my back-and-forth email conversation with researcher Ritch Savin-Williams. It is clear that my reading of the data is correct, however he disagrees with my application of it. Data by not only Savin-Williams, but also Sandfort, Ott, Katz-Wise and Diamond clearly shows that non-heterosexuality is extremely fluid in adolescence and the majority of LGBT identified youth will no longer be in whichever category within a relatively short period of time. This is simply data. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2RLhPxHMhWcUmM2UjZNcWczUWs/view?usp=sharing
Also, another study that has been released since this podcast shows the social contagion effect of gender dysphoria among adolescent girls. See this article by The Economist: https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/09/01/why-are-so-many-teenage-girls-appearing-in-gender-clinics
I would be very open to discussing what the literature says about these or other things related to sex or gender.
Paul,
No, I am not open to discussing with you, as your actions have made clear that you do not respect trans people, and my only interpretation is that you intend to continue to spread misinformation. I don’t even know why you think data is the key to turning someone’s heart. As I always make it clear, my heart and soul is devoted to living my life to the fullest, and living my life in Christ — in this, there is no other option than for me live my life as a woman who loves women (and loves Jesus, of course). The empirical data that matters is that I exist, and no, your use of data does not change who I am.
I’m well aware of the Littman study. It’s bunk. https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/08/rapid-onset-gender-dysphoria-study-criticism-is-not-censorship-its-good-science.html
I don’t even care about whether or not Savin-Williams is right about the meaning of his data. I just care about the leap you make to your conclusion, which doesn’t even make sense. When young people explore their identity, it’s not “simply data”. It’s their lives. It’s their experiences. Survey data exposes only one or two dimensions in their lives and boils it down to a few statistics. Whether or not sexual identity is fluid or not doesn’t impact whether or not we should support LGBT youth.
While in a mathematical concept, immutable means that it does not change, when it comes to sexual orientation and gender identity, immutable means this: that we do not have control over it. It does not change by external forces. So, the only outcome of actions to influence it to change is emotional and psychological harm.
God loves gay people. God loves trans people. My transition was a radical acceptance of my body: An acceptance that God made me trans, that God loves me and supports me through my transition, and whatever changes that come through medications and other procedures are a gift from God and nothing short of miraculous.
Before I came out, I was dead. My heart was dead, my soul was dead, my mind was a machine, and that machine was the only thing stopping my body from death as well. There was no chance of a healthy relationship with Christ in that scenario.
Your notion of “complete agreement” is a strawman — no, we’re not asking for complete agreement. I certainly didn’t ask for my parents’ complete agreement when I came out. But because they love me for who I am, and saw how I was once again alive and once again able to walk with Christ, they were able to accept me in all who I am. Your message is to tell parents to reject the love for their children. Hateful? Well, I can certainly say that it’s certainly not what Jesus taught.
So, if you think it’s so important to answer questions: What did you mean by “acceptance of the body”? To what conclusion does the data on fluidity lead you? What is your recommended response to the conclusions of the Littman study? If your answer is just “the data is interesting, that’s all”, well… I grew up in the church. I know what resources parents will choose when given the foundation of your data. Without any other conclusion, they often choose conversion therapy or at least, compel their children to repress.
That’s where we see the hate. We know what you’re doing.
By acceptance of the body, I mean that we are created by the Lord as embodied persons. Christ came in the flesh as 1 John makes clear- he become a man, and was fully embodied. His body was raised, and all bodies will be raised on the last day to face judgment. Our bodies matter- they are us. We don’t want to be unclothed, as Paul says in 2 Cor, but to be fully clothed. Changing the body to match some subjective feeling or sense demands a couple presuppositions: that subjective feelings are better predictors of truth than the body, and that one knows what “man” or “woman” feels like without reference to the body.
The data on fluidity of non-heterosexuals leads me to believe that same-sex attraction is not remotely immutable- which is precisely what Lisa Diamond, a lesbian researcher, says in 2016’s “Scrutinizing Immutability”. It is academic consensus over the last 10 years that same-sex attraction is not immutable.
My recommended response to the Littman study is that children must be allowed to go through puberty because GD resolves after puberty in 80-90% of cases after that challenging time of sexual development. If we teach transgender ideology to children or adolescents they will “read” their pubertal/identity/development difficulties as “being trans”.
Have you read the experiences of Christians like Christopher Yuan or Rosaria Butterfield?
Paul,
If the body is the truth, and the truth is that I’m a woman, and God made me a woman, trans as I am, then I’ll be glad to be raised in my feminine body, thank you very much.
Please engage with me, instead of just repeating rhetoric. My revised interpretation of immutability is in line with the Diamond paper.
Finally, it’s clear that you don’t actually care about the literature, as you’ve now cited debunked statistics, and shown that you trust the discredited Littman paper.
My existence is not an ideology. I knew what being trans felt like before it was described to me, and the first time it was described, it was completely wrong and lead me to years and years of despair.
I have my own experience, and the experience of other affirming Christians. I’ll pass on your recommendations.
You have the patience of Job Paul. I have debated people such as this ad nauseam for a year-and-a-half and I have given up. There are all kinds of reasons for that which anybody who has seen my presentation will be able to glean without too much difficulty.
It is an extraordinarily difficult task to argue reality to those who live in delusions, the fault of course is not in the individual but in the establishment that reinforces these delusions despite the fact that in every other similar condition the rule has been to discourage delusions. I do not use the word delusion here to be insulting or mean, I use it because I believe it to be a reflection of truth and reality. Free Speech has been under assault in this debate, but I’m hardcore free speech and I will go to jail before anybody silences me. They will have to shackle and gag me to stop me from speaking truth. The quasi-fascist element driving the other side of this debate should be regarded as startling to anybody sensible. That the preeminent champion of the other side has threatened to have me charged as a hate criminal for speaking the truth is in my opinion one of the most dangerous developments in society in a very long time.
I am transgender. I live in truth, not delusion. I can dress and express anyway I like in the world and nobody can stop me. However, I have never untethered myself from physical reality, doing so is highly inadvisable and extraordinarily dangerous for children, and I will go up in flames before I ever back down on trying to get this garbage ideology out of our schools.
Furthermore, I regard this program as ultimately totalitarian in nature in the way that it tramples parental rights and freedom of religion. Once again, I will expel my last breath before I stop protesting this.
And the idea that hate is driving opposition to this program is I rather vicious and defamatory propaganda tool. And it largely Falls flat in my case, why on Earth would I want to spread hatred of transgender people? The notion is absurd, as are those that promote it.
As some, perhaps even you Paul, may have come to realize, I actually am not too terribly interested in the bogus big pharma funded science that fuels this. The scientific-medical research establishment has been beyond corrupt for a very long time, which is easy to confirm by anybody who cares to look at the number of fraudulent studies that have been exposed over the past 10 years and who those studies benefited. I’m more interested in common sense and protecting freedom from the rise of totalitarian agendas that grant the state more and more power.