090325

 
Low blood sugar this morning
SO WEAK AND TIRED


Make a list of all vegetables by allergen crossreactivity and GI/GL so we know what we CAN eat

Neighbor talk
Weeping from exhaustion but stayed out of charity

I hurt so bad. I'm so weak and dizzy and unsteady. I'm scared and I want to cry. What's happening?

Exercise made me feel a bit better. I'm notably less weak and confused. But I still feel crushed and completely drained.

I don't want to copypaste any more articles. I don't want to force myself to read every news update in my inbox. I'm so tired. My brain is shattered. I want to cry. God I just want to REST and READ SCRIPTURE.
But these bloody tabs are too important. Let me finish them and then I beg God to make it stop. No more tabs. Just the Bible. Please.

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https://onepeterfive.com/sin-suggestion-pleasure/

"Original Sin is a condition, not a moral action. It refers to a darkened intellect, a weakened will, and an inclination to evil. In order to be healed from this wound, all men need the grace of God through Our Lord Jesus."

"Actual sin is any willful thought, word, deed, or omission contrary to the law of God”.

"a suggestion to sin, stemming from our fallen condition, is NOT an “actual sin.” ...there is no need to go to confession for suggestions to sin [because] suggestions to sin are NOT actions of a man’s will, but happen to him without involvement of his will."

"Suggestions ("logismoi") are thoughts, emotions, and inclinations that are internal... they come from: the world, the flesh, and the devil."

"In particular in our flesh, wounded by Original Sin, psychological factors like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder can create an overwhelming inclination toward scruples."

"There are many factors that can help heal a soul from evil thoughts. One aspect is what we put into our imagination. Evil suggestions can be mitigated by a strict discipline of=
1. praying the rosary every day,
2. practicing mental prayer every day, and
3. restricting all evil images (like movies) as much as possible.
This helps keep your imagination focused on the things of God and helps to heal this faculty of the pollution of the world, the flesh, and the devil."

⭐⭐‼️‼️💔💔💜💜"Especially if you are... struggling with a severe psychological condition, this healing may take years. But persevere... for our Lord has given His infallible promise: "Come to me, all you that labor, and are burdened, and I WILL refresh you" (Mt. 11:28)."

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️"...Emotions can also be suggestions to sin. For example, a sudden flare of anger may arise in you and be overwhelming. But still, if your WILL has NOT yet acted, you have NOT SINNED.
You must learn over time to moderate your emotional life. Emotions arise from our sensual appetites, and Original Sin causes our sensual appetites to overwhelm our souls. As we grow in virtue, we must learn to govern our emotional life with our intellect and will. Again, this takes time."

‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️"Additionally, on the level of sensual appetites, it is crucial to FAST. The reason is that it curbs our concupiscible appetite, which is attached to impurity, clouding our intellect... the vice of folly, which is opposed to wisdom, is caused primarily by sins of the flesh. Therefore, fasting can moderate this sensual appetite, and this also gives great help to healing a darkened intellect.
(BTW "Appetite" is "The spontaneous movement of a faculty to a good, naturally suitable to itself, or away from something evil to it. When the movement is toward an object, the appetite is called concupiscible and corresponds to desire; when movement is away from an object, it is irascible and becomes some form of resistance.")

"But most of all, frequent reception of Holy Communion is essential. In this great sacrament, our venial sins are cleansed. In this we also place our trust in the LORD’s power and NOT our own. Overcoming these difficulties requires the cessation of trusting in ourselves and turning all of our trust to God.
On the level of suggestions to sin, we must have the humility to see ourselves AS disordered BUT to trust that God is infinitely greater than our worst evil. By ourselves we are sinners, yet with God, we can become holy... these two truths— distrust of self and trust in God— are the foundation of the spiritual life... This is because only God is totally above nature, and, by supernatural grace, can give power to man to overcome his enemies."

We next move to the second stage of sin, and this is where the distinctions become difficult. This is because under Original Sin, it is difficult to distinguish in our minds when we examine our conscience. This is why, especially with scruples, we must trust in God and not primarily our own intellect when examining our conscience.

Pleasure is something more complex, because we may say pleasure can be found in different faculties and powers of the human soul and body. On the one hand, there is a certain pleasure intellectually, as when a man sees a beautiful array of stars and marvels. This intellectual pleasure is an immediate apprehension by the intellect of beauty and does not involve the will.
There is also a sensual inclination to pleasure, such as when a man who is hungry sees and smells a delicious plate of his favorite food. His concupiscible appetite is immediately inclined to this pleasure. Still, his will has not yet acted.
In these two examples, we introduce suggestions into our intellect that are not necessarily suggestions to sin. As I emphasized above, even evil suggestions are not actual sins. What makes a sin a sin is always an action of the will. [A] willful act [is] “that which proceeds from an internal source of action accompanied by knowledge of the end sought”.
So we first have the intellectual pleasure we mentioned, as well as the sensual pleasure inclination. What happens next is that your will makes a choice. You may choose to turn toward the pleasure or turn away. In other words, by our will, we may choose to continue to have this pleasure or not. If the pleasure is in something good, then the choice to indulge it is also good. But if that pleasure is in any way evil, then taking pleasure is also evil."

""The suggestion is the first bad thought that is presented to the mind: this is no sin, but, when rejected is an occasion of merit. “As often as you resist, you are crowned.” The delectation takes place when the person stops, as it were, to look at the bad thought, which by its pleasing appearance, causes delight. Unless the will consents to it, this delectation is not a mortal sin; but it IS a venial sin, and, if not resisted, the soul is in danger of consenting to it: but, when this danger is not proximate, the sin is only venial.
Thus, the action of the will enters in at the pleasure stage of sin. Here is where we may commit a venial sin by “entertaining” an evil thought: choosing to continue to have pleasure in something sinful."

"...If this pleasure is against purity, it is not venial, but mortal, since these pleasures lead immediately to consent by a proximate danger."

"Recall that a willful act includes an action of the will and knowledge of the thing sought; [with] the following distinction: “if the knowledge is intellectual the voluntary act is perfect; if it is sense-knowledge the voluntary act is imperfect”. By this we may distinguish between willful pleasure and willful consent. In the former, a soul simply chooses to have more sensual pleasure — normally venial, unless it is against purity. In the latter, he moves his intellect to intentionally pursue this pleasure — this may cause a mortal sin, depending on the gravity of the thing sought. That is why consent is the final internal stage of sin, which immediately leads to the first external stage: act. This is why our Lord connects the internal sin of adultery with the external, and the internal sin of murder with the external."

"In a man’s labors under scruples and Original Sin, it is crucial that a soul seek and find a knowledgeable confessor in order to untangle these distinctions to bring clarity and peace to his mind. If no good confessor can be found, seek the support of a spiritually mature and charitable friend. Read the spiritual classics, and practice mental prayer. When tempted to despair, pray the Act of Hope continually. Persevere in prayer, and God will grant you rest from your enemies in due time."

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https://onepeterfive.com/scrupulosity-pride/

"...scrupulosity is “a state of groundless fear rather than the judgment of a sound mind"... the signs of scruples: an excessive anxiety about previous confessions, protracted accusations of irrelevant details, stubbornness that refuses to accept the decisions of the confessor. Scruples affect a soul devoted to God and sensitive to offending Him. Take heart, brother: many saints have struggled as you do.
But know the truth: scrupulosity is the trick of the Devil, who takes your sin and casts fear into your heart. He says you are unforgivable, or that you are such a sinner that you are beyond God’s mercy. Thus, it is often tied with the sin of despair, which is a sin against hope. He even causes you to feel a pleasure, causing you to think this is virtuous. But this is pride. Why is it pride? Because the tribunal of God says, “I absolve you from your sins.” But you refuse the tribunal of God. You are imagining a tribunal that is higher than God. Who are you to judge God’s own judgment of you? “Be you humbled under the mighty hand of God” — both in His punishments and His mercies. Do not pridefully exalt yourself above Almighty God. You are not above or beyond God’s mercy, for God’s mercy HAS been applied to you. Our Lord Jesus shed His Precious Blood to merit for you this mercy. Do not scorn His sufferings on the pretense that you are unworthy. Yes, you are unworthy. But God has made you worthy by the Blood of Jesus Christ."

"...The foundation of the spiritual life is distrust of self and trust in God. Scrupulosity uses pride to reverse this. It pridefully refuses God’s mercy and causes a soul to trust more in its own thoughts and deliberations than in the power and mercy of God. Besides the pride regarding confession, scrupulosity also manifests itself in a paralyzing anxiety about sin. Scruples causes a man to agonize over the question: did I sin? Was this a sin? Am I sinning?
Stop trusting in yourself. Get out of your head. You are trusting in yourself to know the answer. Instead, follow this strictly and shun every other anxiety:
• Ask the Holy Spirit to enlighten you with this prayer: Come Holy Spirit, enlighten my mind, that I may know the sins that I have committed either by thought, word or deed, and give me the grace of true contrition.
• Think as objectively as possible: did I sin? If necessary, ask a trusted friend. A good, objective guide is Prummer. Do not take more than five minutes on this. Set a timer if you need to.
• Now be silent before God and truly listen. Do not take more than two minutes on this. God will show you the sin, OR He will be silent.
• If you have sinned, immediately use this as an occasion for humility (see below). If He is silent, trust in Him.
This method is based on trusting in God’s mercy. God “will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4), and again, “every one that shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Joel 2:32). Trust in these promises from God. If He is silent, trust that you have not sinned, and continue as before. If you have sinned, He WILL show you, because He desires your salvation."

"If you have fallen into sin, the demons will rush at you to cast fear and anxiety into your heart. Instead of succumbing to their pride and despair, humble yourself. Recognize your utter dependence upon God’s grace to overcome this, and pray... "WHEN YOU REALIZE that you have been wounded by sin, whether through weakness or malice, do not lose your courage or become panic-stricken. Turn to God with a great and humble confidence saying: “See, O Master, what I am able to do. When I rely on my own strength, I commit nothing but sins.”
Meditating on this, recognize the extent of your humiliation and express to our Lord your sorrow for the offense committed. With an unperturbed heart, indict your vicious passions, especially the one that has occasioned your fall, and confess: “O Lord, I would not have stopped at this had not Your goodness restrained me.”
Give THANKS to God, and more than ever, give to Him the complete love of your heart. What generosity on His part! You have offended Him, and, despite this, He extends His hand to prevent another fall."
The Enemy wishes to make you fall, and then by scrupulosity to increase your pride and blindness and reliance on yourself. Reject his machinations. If you fall, use the occasion for a greater humility and greater dependence upon God. Your sin was caused by trusting in yourself. Turn your trust away from yourself, therefore, and trust in God. You must thank God that He has prevented a greater fall. Maintain your peace, and run to confession."

"Despair [is] a sin against hope. Despair is “conforming our mind to a false opinion about God”. Another name for a false opinion about God is a heresy. What is this false opinion? It is that God will refuse pardon to the repentant sinner. On the contrary, St. Thomas quotes Ez. 18:23: “I desire not the death of the sinner, but that he should be converted, and live.”
Therefore, you must ask God to strengthen the virtue of hope within you. Shun despair by praying the Act of Hope until you believe these words through and through: “O God, relying on Thy almighty promises and the infinite merits of Christ, I hope to obtain remission of my sins and everlasting happiness with Thee. In this hope I intend to live and die.”
It vital to understand that God does not cast paralyzing fear or anxiety into your heart. This is the work of demons. This fear causes you to focus on yourself and trust in your own wisdom. True fear of Lord is the beginning of true wisdom because it brings forth humility. Humility causes a man to focus on God and distrust Himself. Therefore, reject all paralyzing fear and anxiety as from the demons. Utilize sacramentals and trust in God’s power and not your own. Realize that anxiety is evidence of attachment to creatures, and renounce all attachments and love suffering. Know that peace is the fruit of charity, which is union with God. Strive with all your energy to maintain your peace, because this means maintaining your union with God. Peace will come after much suffering. “Cast thy care upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee: he shall not suffer the just to waver for ever” (Ps. 54:23).

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https://meaningofcatholic.com/2019/06/09/who-are-the-enemies-of-holy-church/

"...not only does the Church have enemies, but in her prayer she fights against them manfully with great violence."

"...those who are still breathing members of the Church form the part known as the “Church militant.” It is called militant, because it wages eternal war with those implacable enemies, the world, the flesh and the devil. These three enemies are the source of all temptations. These are the three enemies defeated by our Lord in his own temptation, and these three enemies are renounced in our baptism."

"...we can merit nothing for our salvation without God’s power through supernatural grace. Grace present in the Sacraments and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit are the ordinary source of God’s supernatural power.
In Confirmation – the Sacrament of the Holy Spirit – a man receives full initiation as a Christian warrior:
"By Confirmation we are armed and arrayed as soldiers of Christ, publicly to profess and defend His name, to fight against our internal enemy and against the spiritual powers of wickedness in the high places."
When grace is operative within us, we have power to use the weapons of a Christian to overcome our enemies and truly merit our salvation. The weapons of every Christian are the Three Eminent Good works: prayer, fasting, almsgiving.
Each weapon is specifically aimed at each enemy, but taken generally they include all good works.

• Alms are against the world. This can be defined as performing good works for your neighbor, particularly in giving material aid to the poor. Instead of allowing the world to pressure you to sin, good works call the world to convert to Christ. Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven (Mt. v. 16).

• Fasting is against the flesh. It may be defined as denying the inclinations of our disordered desires, particularly by limiting food. Instead of allowing the flesh to pressure you, fasting calls the flesh to submit to Christ. I beat my body and bring it into subjection: lest perhaps, when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway (I Cor. ix. 27).

• Prayer is against the Devil. It is defined as lifting the mind and heart to God, particularly during private prayer. Instead of allowing the Devil to pressure your mind and heart, you call your mind and heart to Christ. For thee my flesh and my heart hath fainted away: thou art the God of my heart, and the God that is my portion for ever (Ps. lxxii. 26).

"The purpose... is to unite Catholics against the enemies of Holy Church. Therefore let every man go to God for his power and his weapons. Let every soul fight manfully against these enemies, and the gates of hell will not be able to withstand us."


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https://onepeterfive.com/a-tlm-girl-in-a-novus-ordo-world/

"But this [sanctity of the priest] was more than garments. It was the way he moved, turned, and genuflected; a seamless motion, a quiet mystery unfolding, his every move a prayer. Something extraordinary was happening on the altar, and I was not the only one who noticed–my Bible study friends recognized it too. There was a reverence and rhythm of beauty that made our daily Mass routine less routine. Gone were the days of casually entering the church; we were prayerfully ascending the mountain, and boy, did we love it there."

"Fear of the unknown, letting go of control, and the real possibility of losing something we love are obstacles the enemy loves to throw in our way to prevent us from a deeper union with God.
We want to follow Jesus, we may even deny ourselves sometimes, and suffer a little for Him, but lose everything? That’s where we draw the line. And I get it. Even if what we are losing is for our benefit, when the road gets hard, it’s difficult to trust that God is leading us to something better. I can understand why the Israelites wanted to return to Egypt; there are times that I long to go back; when I cry out to the Lord, “What have you done to me, bringing me out of the [world], where I was casual and comfortable and had no idea what I was missing?"
...Every time the devil holds up one of these earthly “losses,” the Holy Ghost floods His light on the bigger picture, reminding me of a truth the world is hellbent on my forgetting: My life is not about me. The Mass is not about me. Worship is not about me. Authentic discipleship has never been described with words like easy, feel-good, or convenient; rather, it is characterized by self-denial, suffering, rejection, and even death."

"As much as I long for Church companions, coffee dates, and a Mass that’s a hop, skip, and a jump away, the greatest longing of my heart runs deeper; it longs for an interior transformation, a life centered on Christ, an other-worldly experience–in a word, heaven. At the end of my life, when I come face to face with God, He is not going to ask how many people knew my name; He is going to reveal whether or not He recognizes my own. As terrifying as this is, I believe there is no better preparation for this moment than... a liturgy that is teaching me to pray humbly, and reverently; one that closes the door on the modern world and immerses me in the eternal; a Mass that brings me to my knees and directs me towards God, as I enter into the mystery of Christ’s sacrifice. I won’t lie–there are times that I struggle. But I have found the pearl of great price, and it is worth selling everything."

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https://meaningofcatholic.com/2019/08/02/conquer-effeminacy-and-be-a-man-five-things/

"effeminacy is a reluctance to suffer due to an attachment to pleasure"... effeminacy as a vice is not the same thing as femininity as a perfection given by God to women. Femininity is good, whereas effeminacy is disordered... it directly tears down the perfections of masculinity, which in particular are ordered toward the virtue of fortitude... Since effeminacy is an attachment to pleasure and an avoidance of suffering, the man of God must reverse both of these to gradually develop a moderation toward pleasure and a desire for suffering... The goal is to become detached from the pleasure [worldly] things give so that even if you have to use them, you can say truly “I do not want this consolation.”...we should use this prayer any time we are forced by necessity to accept some created pleasure of any kind. This is because the man of God is detached from every created pleasure and adheres to Jesus Christ alone: Whenever, therefore, any creature seeks to enter and to seize a portion of our heart, we must utterly refuse it admission; and then we ought to turn to Jesus Christ, and say to him: My Jesus, Thou alone art sufficient for me. I do not wish to love aught but Thee: Thou art the God of my heart; and God is my portion forever."

"chastity is the denial of pleasure (suffering), whereas [carnal] sin is a reluctance to deprive yourself of pleasure because of your attachment to it."

The will follows the intellect (I q82 a3). How you think will determine how you act. When you begin to see the truth about effeminacy, you will eventually find these things utterly abhorrent because of their effeminate character, and love what is truly masculine: suffering for the love of Jesus Christ. That's why cutting out TV and movies will help here, since these images especially train our minds to believe errors about masculinity.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️ "Instead, the most powerful remedy is undoubtedly the Holy Rosary. As we have stated before, this prayer perfectly combines mental prayer and vocal prayer. Since so much of our bondage is in the images we have permitted into our memories, mental prayer is crucial to reverse this attachment and adhere rather to images of what is true: the life and virtues of our Lord and our Lady."

"Once you have renounced all unnecessary pleasure, you must work to acquire a love for suffering. From my view, the easiest way to start is to fast weekly... Because effeminacy is an attachment to pleasure and fasting is detachment from pleasure... it is a crucial tool to use to overcome effeminacy.
Further, it is the concupiscible appetite which experiences pleasure from bodily goods... Thus when you fast, you are also fighting against lust. Fasting must be loved by all men of God... [Fasting is] capable of teaching you the disciplines needed to overcome effeminacy."

"When we speak of emotions or “passions,” we are referring to those movements of our concupiscible or irascible appetite that produce various emotions (love, joy, desire, hatred, fear, anger, etc). Now these movements of themselves are not sinful, since sin is in the will. They can be, however, disordered, and incline your will toward evil. Thus they are not entirely neutral.

...there is a difference between antecedent and consequent emotions. A properly ordered soul, that is perfected in Jesus Christ, is ruled by the intellect. The intellect knows the truth and moves the will to do the good (remember: the will follows the intellect). Then the emotions are ordered by the will toward the good. This is consequent emotion. The emotions are a consequence of the will ordering them toward the good.
For example, during an arduous battle, the warrior who has the virtue of perseverance orders the irascible appetite toward the good and produces the passion of courage.
Or again, the emotion of joy is produced when the intellect knows the true and the will rests in the good."

"As a result of Original Sin, every man's will is weakened, his intellect is darkened, and he is inclined toward evil. This means that he has antecedent emotion. His emotions flare up and influence him before his intellect and will can do anything.
...The passion of anger arose in your irascible appetite so vehemently that it moved your intellect and will to commit sin instead of the other way around... It was a disordered, antecedent emotion that was not ruled by your intellect.
Consequent emotion, then, is truly masculine, whereas antecedent emotion inclines us toward effeminacy, particularly by our attachments in our concupiscible appetite, which seeks pleasure."

"However, we must further distinguish between the perfect and sinners like us. A truly ordered emotional life is only enjoyed by the perfect. To us sinners, we cannot avoid the burning of antecedent emotion even daily, and it is foolish to think we can be perfect after only a short time of penance. Our fathers repented in dust and ashes for decades before they attained perfection. What pride for us to become discouraged if we fail even after a year in this!
Therefore, we must take this knowledge about emotions and use it as a method of acquiring humility. When antecedent, disordered emotions arise, first cry to God and say: “O God, behold how disordered I am without Thy grace! Grant me the gift of self-knowledge.” Then stop and think."

"This brings us to our third distinction: feelings and emotions. We may distinguish them like this:
Irrational passions = emotions
Passions + reason = feelings
Since our emotions are governed by our intellect, stopping to THINK breaks the cycle of overwhelming, antecedent emotion. All that is necessary is to stop, think, and ask yourself: “Why am I having this emotion?” Sometimes you may not get the answers quickly (or at all) but other times it becomes clear why an emotion is arising. Once the source is clear we can then distinguish between truth and falsehood.
Much of our antecedent emotional life is based on falsehood. In particular, the allurements of pleasures discussed above are ALL falsehoods. They promise happiness but NEVER deliver.
Since the intellect is ordered toward knowing the true, we must press our minds toward the true source of happiness.
Because of our fallen state, we hate suffering, even though it is suffering that will help us to attain true happiness.
When your emotions arise because of your reluctance to suffer, raise your mind to God and say: "I thank Thee, Holy Father, that Thou hadst, in love for Thy son, disciplined me so that all my earthly affections may be stripped away and I may Thine and Thine alone."
Truly consider the fact that God in His charity has permitted some suffering to you so that you may be united to Him. THIS is the ACTUAL Truth. When we meditate on the truth, our emotional life quiets down because it must submit to the truth by nature. Nothing can conquer a man who knows the truth and wills the good.
On the other hand, sometimes emotions are based on truth, for example, courage or joy as was mentioned above. These we may call “feelings,” which CAN be used toward the good. When you think about your emotions and determine them to be based upon truth, you can then moderately will them (while avoiding any attachment) toward the good. For example, if we are inflamed with the passion of courage to overcome some difficulty and attain a good end, we can will this more and more to attain this end."

"We can also use properly ordered feelings to excite the OPPOSITE passion in order to act AGAINST disordered passions and temptations. ...when we reject an evil thought (excepting lust), we can then bring it up and crush it AGAIN, strengthening a proper feeling toward it: "First, whenever you are assaulted and buffeted by the impulses of the lower nature, you must resist them manfully, so that the higher will may not consent. Secondly, when the assaults have ceased, excite them again, so as to have an opportunity of overcoming them with greater force and energy. Then challenge them again a third time, so as to accustom yourself to repulse them with scorn and horror. These two [additional] challenges to battle should be made in the case of every unruly appetite, with the exception of temptations of the flesh."" [But] this moderation of our emotional life takes decades. Do not fall into prideful discouragement because you still struggle with your emotions. This process WILL take MUCH time and energy but through God's divine grace you WILL overcome this aspect of effeminacy."


"The mother loves and nourishes the boy. The father loves and strengthens the man. [But] mothers, because of the errors of feminism, have dominated the home. As a result a young man never truly grows into a man because this disordered home cannot properly help him through the transition from his mother to his father and thus become a man."

"Ideally, a man has a strong father who is the head of the household, and the boy becomes a man through him. (Then a man takes the Virgin Mary as his mother and becomes the protector of his birth mother, not the other way around!)."

"God has given men the perfections necessary to build each other up into men. A woman is not given this perfection in the same way (she has other important gifts not treated here), and so a woman looks for her man to be her man, and is [justly] irritated when she is forced to “mother” a man as if he were a boy."

"When a man has the support of his brothers, he can then truly die for his wife like a man and care for her as she deserves. He will not rely on her to fulfill all of his emotions, but will be perfectly grounded in Jesus Christ, ready to suffer and die for her and the children if necessary."

"Man support helps men sort out their emotions from their feelings. Talking to another man helps you see if your emotions are based on truth or falsehood. Talking to your woman about this will only make her feel unstable and unprotected, since she has to deal with your volatile emotions. Rather, if you have a feeling (reasoning + emotion), you can share this with your woman, and have a rational conversation. Your woman is not your mother."

"You are not alone... Fight the good fight, and God will give you the victory in time."

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https://onepeterfive.com/effeminacy-and-the-false-gospel-of-psychology/


"All of mankind is trying to solve the problem of suffering. Throughout time, no less than in our day, a multitude of false religions and false gospels have arisen to solve the problem. In our day, the false gospel of Marxism says that revolution—violent or otherwise—will end suffering. This false gospel gained great power... with the help of another, lesser known false gospel, that of psychology.
The false gospel of psychology... says that suffering is a result of outmoded rules which hamper sexual and emotional desires. The solution to suffering, says this false psychology, is to break all the rules in order to fulfill your desires and let your emotions out. Thus comes the psychological word “repression” or “repressed” into colloquial speech, referring to someone who is not psychologically “developed.” In no small part we may ascribe this extreme ideology to the failure of the parents of the baby boomer generation to teach their children how to suffer.
In the wake of the extreme suffering of World War II, that generation could not bear any more suffering, and so they spoiled their children who, when they came of age in the 1960s and 70s, did not know how to suffer and embraced en masse the false gospel of psychology. This false gospel led quickly to the evil of Marxism as its close ally—both preaching sexual “liberation,” “freedom,” and “revolution.” ...This led to the pervasive vice of effeminacy, which is a reluctance to suffer due to an attachment to pleasure."

‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️ "This false gospel of psychology swallowed the conciliar Church, and they stripped the Sacred Liturgy of everything that does not make people “feel good.” Many clergy were more concerned with making people “feel good” than preaching the hard truths of the Gospel and repentance. Even worse, many men identified the charity and mercy of Jesus Christ particularly with this false “niceness” and “feelings.” The great good of suffering and asceticism were jettisoned in favor of the false gospel of psychology.
This was Bugnini’s famous justification for gutting the liturgy of our fathers so that Protestants would feel welcome: “It is the love of souls and the desire to help in any way the road to union of the separated brethren, by removing every stone that could even remotely constitute an obstacle or difficulty, that has driven the Church to make even these painful sacrifices”. In the same way, the Liturgy of Hours specifically justifies their censoring of certain Psalm verses and entire Psalms for “psychological” reasons. Finally, in the new lectionary, “texts that present real difficulties are avoided for pastoral reasons"."

"The core change over the course of the twentieth century was one of purpose or allegiance—leaving behind ascetical discipline, having disdain for religious tradition, and adopting the therapeutic mentality, a popular belief that fulfillment of the human person springs from emotional desire in a quest for self-definition, or self-actualization, without regard to an objective philosophical, religious or moral truth. Further, the therapeutic mentality views sin as a social concern and discourages loyalty to religious authority; it is profoundly anti-ascetical.
Allegiance to the therapeutic mentality has dislodged ascetical habits and manners, and it now holds sway over the attitudes of the clergy, just as it strengthened its materialist grip on western societies for nearly a century. Mental health experts and educators, as the main purveyors of the therapeutic mentality, know little of the spiritual life and are ignorant of ascetical discipline."

"...Bishops, who have oversight of the parish priests and seminaries, and who have been at the center of the crisis management, do not speak much, if at all, about ascetical discipline. Priests give few indications that they know or care about ascetical discipline. But most clergy seemed well versed in language of the therapeutic mentality... Instead of embracing the great good of suffering, Catholics became effeminate and terrified of suffering."

"Against this perversion, the Church proclaims the truth... The Christian Church preaches the Gospel of Christ Crucified and provides in Him the answer to the problem of suffering. The salvation of man was wrought by the suffering of the cross, and now every Christian soul must bear their own cross in order to be saved as He said: If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me (Mt. 16:24)."

All the spiritual masters extol the great good and value of suffering. Fr. Ignatius of the Side of Jesus puts it this way:
"Learn, O my soul, in what manner thou shouldst accept whatever God sends thee. It may be a heavy Cross that he sends thee, but remember that it is imposed upon thee by God Himself. Thou wilt never be called upon to suffer as much as Jesus, and unless thou bearest thy Cross after Him, thou wilt never partake of His glory."
Lorenzo Scupoli puts it this way:
"You must toil and make every effort, especially at the beginning, to embrace tribulation and adversity as your dear sisters—desiring to be despised by all, and to have no one who entertains a favorable opinion of you, or brings you comfort, but your God.""

"Suffering comes from an inordinate attachment to the things of this earth, and lack of attachment to one Unchanged and Unmovable God. Effeminacy and the false psychology have for their root an attachment to earthly, sensual pleasure, whether sexual, emotional or otherwise. The true Gospel of Christ Crucified sees these things in their true light: merely as parts of a created order designed by God. We must practice detachment from these things and enjoy them only in a proper manner.
Réginald Marie Garrigou-Lagrange writes that "We must detach ourselves from the goods of the body, from beauty, from health itself; it would be an aberration to cling to them more than to union with God. And we cling to health far more than we think; if it were irremediably taken from us, it would be a true sacrifice for us, and one that may be asked of us. All these things will pass away like a flower that withers… When we receive consolations in prayer, we must not dwell on them with satisfaction; to do so would be to make of this means of drawing near to God an obstacle that would hinder us from reaching Him. It would be the equivalent of pausing in a selfish fashion over something created and making an end of the means. By so doing, we would set out on the road of spiritual pride and illusion.  All that glitters is not gold; and we must be careful not to confound an imitation diamond with a real one. We should remind ourselves of our Savior’s words: "Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God and His justice; and all these things (all that is useful to your soul and even to your body) shall be added unto you." Therefore we understand that adversity is good for us in order to deliver us from illusion and make us find the true road again.""

"This spiritual axiom of suffering and detachment is of vital importance for all Catholics to recover on a basic spiritual level. This is particularly difficult in an age when instant pleasure is available online... This effeminate pleasure and hatred of suffering is a plague which must be rooted out before we can dream of a return to Tradition. The Imitation of Christ condemns our folly: "Unless a man be disengaged from all things created, he cannot freely attend to things divine… And unless a man be elevated in spirit, and free from attachment to all creatures, and wholly united to God, whatever he knows and whatever he has is of no great importance."
Or again in another place:
"…How is it that you look for another way than this, the royal way of the holy cross? The whole life of Christ was a cross and a martyrdom, and do you seek rest and enjoyment for yourself? You deceive yourself, you are mistaken if you seek anything but to suffer, for this mortal life is full of miseries and marked with crosses on all sides. Indeed, the more spiritual progress a person makes, so much heavier will he frequently find the cross, because as his love increases, the pain of his exile also increases.
Yet such a man, though afflicted in many ways, is not without hope of consolation, because he knows that great reward is coming to him for bearing his cross. And when he carries it willingly, every pang of tribulation is changed into hope of solace from God. Besides, the more the flesh is distressed by affliction, so much the more is the spirit strengthened by inward grace. Not infrequently a man is so strengthened by his love of trials and hardship in his desire to conform to the cross of Christ, that he does not wish to be without sorrow or pain, since he believes he will be the more acceptable to God if he is able to endure more and more grievous things for His sake. It is the grace of Christ, and not the virtue of man, which can and does bring it about that, through fervor of spirit, frail flesh learns to love and to gain what it naturally hates and shuns.""

"The solution to suffering is not the effeminate imaginings of the psychologists, but the holy cross of Jesus Christ our Lord. The great good and value of suffering lies in the union of a soul with Christ Crucified, to the point where a man will love suffering as his “dear sister” because it strips him from attachments to the earth and attaches his heart to his Lord and King. Let us put away the foolishness and childishness of the psychology of effeminacy. When I became a man, I put away the things of a child (I Cor. 13:11). Do manfully, and let thy heart take courage (Ps. 26:14) and take up the cross of Christ Crucified.


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https://meaningofcatholic.com/2019/07/22/secret-christian-happiness/

"We rightly hate our own soul when we indulge not its carnal desires, when we subdue its appetites, and wrestle against its pleasures...

"Through suffering, we renounce all earthly attachments (a godly hatred) in order to adhere to Jesus Christ alone."

"Suffering is caused when we are attached to some convenience, desire or person. This attachment means we are relying on this earthly thing to make us happy. When they inevitably fail, it causes suffering because they are not making us happy. When this happens, most Christians try to soothe their emotions with psychology instead of accepting the cross.
Instead, Christians must understand that suffering is a blessing from God. When the emptiness of creatures is discovered through suffering, our heart’s attachment is loosed, so that we can adhere to Jesus Christ alone. In Him alone is all our happiness, for Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever (Heb. xiii. 8). He says Come to me all you that labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you (Mt. xi. 28). When your attachments cause you suffering, Jesus Christ says come to me. When your desires are not fulfilled, Jesus Christ says I will refresh you. Accept this suffering and give yourself to Jesus Christ alone."

"Only when we renounce all attachments can we then love others for God’s sake... if we renounce our attachments and adhere to Jesus Christ alone, we can then truly love others. When we have attachments, we want others to make us happy and do our will. When we renounce these attachments through suffering, we are not seeking happiness in others. Instead, by placing all of our desire in Jesus Christ, we can then love others for the sake of Him, not ourselves.
Try this with your spouse, friend or child. Just for today, renounce all expectation of happiness from them. Detach yourself from every earthly happiness they can give you. Then only love them to please Jesus Christ. You will soon lose interest in what you want, and find yourself focused on what Jesus Christ wants. Then your love for them will become more and more selfless. Then whatever joy they give, you can receive as a gift from God. Then your love can be pure because you will find your true happiness in the Uncreated, not the created. Here is rest for your soul, and true happiness unto eternal life."


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In a wonderful way you clarify
The mystical obscurities of Sacred Scripture
And Truth itself teaches you
The highest mysteries.


These words are hard to utter, for when I speak it is myself that I am reproaching. I do not preach as I should nor does my life follow the principles I preach so inadequately.
    I do not deny that I am guilty, for I see my torpor and my negligence. Perhaps my very recognition of failure will win me pardon from a sympathetic judge. When I lived in a monastic community I was able to keep my tongue from idle topics and to devote my mind almost continually to the discipline of prayer. Since taking on my shoulders the burden of pastoral care, I have been unable to keep steadily recollected because my mind is distracted by many responsibilities...
My mind is sundered and torn to pieces by the many and serious things I have to think about. When I try to concentrate and gather all my intellectual resources for preaching, how can I do justice to the sacred ministry of the word? I am often compelled by the nature of my position to associate with men of the world and sometimes I relax the discipline of my speech. If I preserved the rigorously inflexible mode of utterance that my conscience dictates, I know that the weaker sort of men would recoil from me and that I could never attract them to the goal I desire for them. So I must frequently listen patiently to their aimless chatter. Because I am weak myself I am drawn gradually into idle talk and I find myself saying the kind of thing that I didn’t even care to listen to before. I enjoy lying back where I once was loath to stumble.
    Who am I — what kind of watchman am I? I do not stand on the pinnacle of achievement, I languish rather in the depths of my weakness. And yet the creator and redeemer of mankind can give me, unworthy though I be, the grace to see life whole and power to speak effectively of it. It is for love of him that I do not spare myself in preaching him.

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Give me the grace, Good Lord:
To set the world at naught.
To set the mind firmly on You and not to hang upon the words of men’s mouths.
To be content to be solitary.
Not to long for worldly pleasures.
Little by little utterly to cast off the world and rid my mind of all its business.
Not to long to hear of earthly things, but that the hearing of worldly fancies may be displeasing to me.
Gladly to be thinking of God, piteously to call for His help.
To lean into the comfort of God.
Busily to labor to love Him.
To know my own vileness and wretchedness.
To humble myself under the mighty hand of God.
To bewail my sins and, for the purging of them, patiently to suffer adversity.
Gladly to bear my purgatory here.
To be joyful in tribulations.
To walk the narrow way that leads to life.
To have the last thing in remembrance.
To have ever before my eyes my death that is ever at hand.
To make death no stranger to me.
To foresee and consider the everlasting fire of Hell.
To pray for pardon before the judge comes.
To have continually in mind the passion that Christ suffered for me.
For His benefits unceasingly to give Him thanks.
To buy the time again that I have lost.
To abstain from vain conversations.
To shun foolish mirth and gladness.
To cut off unnecessary recreations.
Of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and all, to set the loss at naught, for the winning of Christ.
To think my worst enemies my best friends, for the brethren of Joseph could never have done him so much good with their love and favor as they did him with their malice and hatred.
These minds are more to be desired of every man than all the treasures of all the princes and kings, Christian and heathen, were it gathered and laid together all in one heap. Amen.

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https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/bishop-schneider-vatican-lgbtq-pilgrimage-an-abomination-pope-leo-must-make-public-reparation/

Bishop Athanasius Schneider expressed “horror” at the Vatican’s endorsement of the “LGBTQ Jubilee pilgrimage,” rebuking priests who support homosexuality as “spiritual criminals” and “murderers of souls.”

“My reaction was a silent cry of horror, indignation, and sorrow,” the auxiliary of Astana, Kazakhstan, said regarding the Vatican’s approval of an LGBT-themed “pilgrimage” on its Jubilee website, in an interview with Diane Montagna, a journalist in Rome.



Montagna had highlighted the fact that photos captured an array of rainbow paraphernalia in St. Peter’s Basilica, as well homosexual male couple “brazenly holding hands there, one with a backpack saying F*** the Rules,” at the conclusion of their “pilgrimage.”

What took place there could be described as an “abomination of desolation standing in the holy place,” in the words of Christ (cf. Mt. 24:15), said Bishop Schneider.

He pointed out that the embrace of homosexuality by these “pilgrims” contradicted one of the very key meanings of the Jubilee Year and the Holy Door: “Leading man to conversion and penance,” as Pope John Paul II explained in the Bull of Indiction of the Holy Year 2000. 

“There were no signs of repentance and renunciation of objectively grave homosexual sins … on the part of the organizers and participants in this pilgrimage,” noted Schneider. “To pass through the Holy Door and participate in the Jubilee without repentance, while promoting an ideology that openly rejects God’s Sixth Commandment, constitutes a kind of desecration of the Holy Door and a mockery of God and the gift of an indulgence.”

The bishop had strong words for the Vatican authorities who “collaborated de facto” in this open rejection of God’s commandment, expressed aptly in the “f*** the rules” message. 

“They stood by and allowed God to be mocked and His commandments to be scornfully cast aside,” said Schneider.

When asked to compare it to the Pachamama scandal, he noted that while direct transgression of the First Commandment is even more grave, the endorsement of sodomy – a sin that cries to Heaven for vengeance – “amounts to a form of indirect idolatry.”

“Both events must be publicly repaired by the Pope himself. This is urgently needed, before it is too late, for God will not be mocked,” said the bishop.

Bishop Francesco Savino, vice president of the Italian Bishops Conference, welcomed “everyone” to receive Holy Communion at a Mass for the “pilgrims,” Montagna then pointed out. Schneider affirmed that assent to “all of the Church’s teaching” is a precondition for receiving Christ in the Eucharist, as was expressed by St. Paul: “Anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself. (1 Cor. 11:29). 

He added that this has been clearly stated by the Catechism of the Catholic Church: “Anyone aware of having sinned mortally must not receive Communion without having received absolution in the sacrament of penance” (n. 1415). 

Furthermore, it notes, “Sacred Scripture ‘presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, [and] tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.… Under no circumstances can they be approved’ (n. 2357).”

READ: Science agrees with the Catholic Church: Homosexuality is disordered

Thus, by granting these LGBT groups passage through the Holy Door and approving their “pilgrimage,” Vatican authorities in effect rejected “the very doctrine they are bound to uphold.”

Schneider said his message for participants in the LGBT “pilgrimage” is one of compassion, and he called for all Christians to show compassion towards not just those living homosexual lifestyles, but those who support its legitimization and “persist in it unrepentant and even proudly.”

“For when a person consciously rejects God’s explicit commandment prohibiting any sexual activity outside a valid marriage, he places himself in the gravest danger – that of losing eternal life and being eternally condemned to Hell,” said the prelate.

“True love for such persons consists in calling them, gently yet persistently, to genuine conversion to God’s revealed will,” he continued, adding that such people are “ultimately unhappy” even when they have suppressed their conscience.

“We must be filled with great zeal to save these souls, to free them from poisonous deceits. Those priests who confirm them in their homosexual activity or in a homosexual lifestyle are spiritual criminals, murderers of souls, and God will demand a strict account from them,” Schneider declared.

To those who defend Pope Leo XIV amid the Vatican’s approval of the LGBT scandalous “pilgrimage” because he did not receive a delegation from them or send them a message, Schneider said that “one cannot reasonably presume naivety on his part,” because it was “entirely foreseeable” that an LGBT activist group would take advantage of the Holy Door to promote their sinful lifestyle.

Furthermore, by meeting with Father James Martin, S.J., a heretical pro-LGBT priest, as well as pro-homosexual “marriage” Sister Lucia Caram, Pope Leo XIV has expressed that he is not opposed to their “heterodox and scandalous teaching and behavior – particularly since the Holy See offered no clarification afterward and did not correct Fr. James Martin’s triumphant messages circulated on social media,” noted Schneider.

He pointed out that in doing so, Pope Leo XIV broke with the precedent of all popes before Francis, who “neither received officially nor posed for photographs with those who, by word or deed, openly rejected the doctrinal and moral teaching of the Church.”

“There is a common saying that goes: ‘Qui tacet consentire videtur’ – ’He who is silent is taken to agree,’” Schneider added.

The prelate called upon all Catholics to “make a collective act of reparation for the outrage committed against the sanctity of God’s house and the holiness of His commandments,” and implored Pope Leo XIV to follow in the footsteps of Pope John Paul II, who Montagna noted had denounced the first “World Pride” event in Rome during the Great Jubilee of 2000.

“Should Pope Leo XIV make public acts of regret and even reparation, he will lose nothing; should he fail to do so, he will forfeit something before the eyes of God – and God alone matters,” said Schneider. 

“May Our Holy Father Pope Leo XIV take to heart the following words of Our Lord which He once spoke through St. Bridget of Sweden to one of his predecessors (Pope Gregory XI)”: 

Uproot, pluck out and destroy all the vices of your court! Separate yourself from the counsel of carnal-minded and worldly friends and follow humbly the spiritual counsel of My friends. Get up like a man and clothe yourself confidently in strength! Start to reform the Church that I purchased with My Own Blood in order that it may be reformed and led back spiritually to its pristine state of holiness, for nowadays more veneration is shown to a brothel than to My Holy Church. My son, heed My counsel. If you obey Me in what I told you, I will welcome you mercifully like a loving father. Bravely approach the way of justice and you shall prosper. Do not despise the One Who loves you. If you obey, I will show you mercy and bless and dress you and adorn you with the precious pontifical regalia of a holy pope. I shall clothe you with Myself in such a way that you will be in Me and I in you, and you shall be glorified in eternity (The Book of Revelations, Book IV, chap. 149).

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https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/gender-ideology-and-violence-cultural-confusion-and-the-spiritual-battle?


Philosophers from Aristotle to Aquinas remind us to begin with first principles: to see things as they really are. Even Marcus Aurelius counseled, “Of each particular thing, ask, what is it in itself?” Strikingly, this same wisdom is expressed in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), albeit through the words of a villain. 
In the context of assisting a student detective in tracking down a serial killer, Dr. Hannibal Lecter—both psychiatrist and serial killer—taunts Clarice Starling: “First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius.” The line is frightening because it exposes a perennial truth: evil begins when we refuse to acknowledge the true nature of things. Gender ideology does just this, denying the most basic truth of our humanity: that we are male and female. And as recent school shootings tragically show, such denial does not remain abstract; it can culminate in violence against the most innocent.

Ironically, the film goes further still. In one exchange, Clarice protests, “Dr. Lecter, there’s no correlation in the literature between transsexualism and violence. Transsexuals are very passive.” To which Lecter replies, “Clever girl. You’re so close to the way you’re going to catch him—do you realize that?” Even here, Hollywood conditioned audiences to disconnect transgenderism from violence, even while viewers watched the film’s antagonist, Buffalo Bill, murder women in order to construct a grotesque “woman suit” as a substitute for sex reassignment. The message was clear: gender confusion could be exploited for shock but never acknowledged as having any real-world consequences.


What Hollywood once exploited for shock, society now refuses to confront in reality. And the cost has been devastating. On August 27, 2025, 23-year-old Robert Westman, who’d been wrestling with gender dysphoria, carried out a horrific attack at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis. During the back-to-school Mass, Westman, who had his name legally changed to Robin, fired through the church windows with multiple guns, killing two kids and injuring 17 others before ending his own life. The FBI labelled it a hate crime targeting the Catholic community. 

Sean Fitzpatrick recently wrote an essay in Crisis Magazine titled “Transmurderer,” highlighting how our culture fosters gender dysphoria and ignores its deadly consequences. Fr. Nick Ward has also reflected on the Annunciation shooting in Crisis Magazine (“Transgenderism and the Ruin of Souls”), offering a primarily pastoral and theological response that emphasizes the demonic roots of transgender ideology. My essay approaches the issue differently: by tracing the recent cultural and psychological dynamics of gender ideology before turning to its theological culmination, showing how in this case the shooter’s own writings explicitly testify to the demonic. The Annunciation atrocity cannot be explained solely by social disintegration; it must be considered an assault on truth itself, rooted in relativism, biological denial, and, ultimately, the demonic.

For decades, Hollywood has portrayed sexually ambiguous characters, often linking distorted gender identity to chaos, perversity, horror, or violence. Films like Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill (1980), Robert Hiltzik’s Sleepaway Camp (1983), Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game (1992), and Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In (2011) all returned to these discomforting themes. The Skin I Live In presents a bizarre story where a father kidnaps his daughter’s rapist, subjects him to forced sex-reassignment surgery, and later assaults him, illustrating how gender manipulation can be weaponized, even outside the trope of a deranged killer.

Gene Simmons even played a flamboyant, psychotic hermaphroditic villain in Never Too Young to Die (1986), showing how far pop culture was willing to exploit gender confusion for shock value. At times, the transgender element is explicit, as in Ed Wood’s Glen or Glenda (1953) or William Castle’s Homicidal (1961). Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon (1975) took a different angle: Al Pacino’s character robs a bank to fund his partner’s sex-reassignment surgery, motivated by his desire to marry him.

It is worth noting that both Psycho’s Norman Bates and The Silence of the Lambs’ Buffalo Bill were inspired by real-life murderer Ed Gein, who committed gruesome acts such as unearthing corpses, killing two women, and crafting a human skin suit to embody his deceased mother. These themes have captivated and horrified the public. Gein’s crimes will soon be depicted in Netflix’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story (2025).

Across both mainstream and obscure cinema, the message has been clear: distorted gender identity does not represent true liberation but is a source of danger, ambiguity, and mental instability. Contrast this scenario with modern cinema, television, educational systems, government policies, and mainstream media, where now, all too often, transgender identity is depicted as empowering and heroic. This narrative has become so pervasive that it has led to a cultural contagion, with unprecedented numbers of children and adolescents questioning their identities.

Nevertheless, for years, the cultural imagination was shaped by images of violent men attempting to erase or redefine their sexual identity. Yet when real-world cases emerge, society’s leaders insist there is no connection.

In 2023, there was the case of the Nashville Covenant School shooter, a 28-year-old woman, Audrey Hale, who identified as male. She left behind a manifesto seething with rage against Christians. When parts of it leaked, showing targeted hatred of children, the media quickly buried the story. Gun control and mental health became the talking points.

Similarly, media coverage of the Annunciation Catholic School shooting followed the same evasive script as Nashville. Despite Westman’s own videos and manifesto, where he praised Hitler, glorified past shooters, and explicitly targeted Catholic children, The New York Times claimed the “motive is a mystery.” The reality could not have been clearer: a hatred of the Church, a fixation on satanic imagery, and a willful desecration of innocence.

Such an assault extends beyond human life into the spiritual domain of a deep rebellion against God and the image of His likeness most purely reflected in children. Christ’s words are sobering: “If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea” (Matthew 18:6). Even if the shooter did not seek to mislead the children who died, the violence against them and the trauma left to survivors stand as a direct offense against the Creator.

Whenever a shooter fits the progressive narrative, the white, male, conservative identity is magnified. When the shooter is transgender, it is minimized or erased. As political commentator Charlie Kirk observed in response to the Annunciation Catholic School shooting, “First Nashville, now this. How many times makes a trend?” These tragedies echoed not only Nashville but also the 2019 STEM School Highlands Ranch shooting in Colorado, where Maya McKinney, a transgender student, opened fire on classmates. While such cases remain relatively rare, their recurrence is disturbing. And yet mainstream media and cultural elites continue to downplay or ignore them, even as they celebrate transgenderism as liberating and heroic.

Beyond school shootings, other cases across the past six decades also reveal that violence has, in some instances, intersected with transgender identity. Leslie Elaine Perez was convicted of a Houston murder in 1965. CeCe McDonald pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2012 after a fatal altercation in Minnesota. Amber McLaughlin, executed in 2023, had been convicted of the rape and murder of her ex-girlfriend in Missouri.

In 2022, Dana Rivers, who used to be a trans activist and teacher, was convicted of a horrific triple murder in California. Then there’s Alex Ray Scott, who received life in prison back in 2020 for crimes in Oklahoma, including child molestation, murder, and even decapitation. These cases, though statistically uncommon, underscore the danger of pretending that no such pattern exists. To deny them outright, while simultaneously magnifying the identity of non-transgender perpetrators, reveals an ideological double standard.

This broader context sets the stage for understanding why gender ideology is not only psychologically destabilizing but also spiritually dangerous.

Catholic philosopher Pablo Muñoz Iturrieta has documented these links in his book about gender ideology: Atrapado en el cuerpo equivocado (Trapped in the Wrong Body). He shows how rates of depression, suicidality, violence, and instability are significantly higher among those with gender dysphoria—and how affirmation often worsens these wounds.

The numbers shatter the culture of denial. Transgender-identified shooters remain statistical outliers, accounting for under 1% of mass incidents. Yet their presence in multiple high-profile school attacks, such as in the case of Hale in Nashvilleand most recently Westman in Minneapolis, is startling for a group comprising only about 1% of U.S. adults. Given their tiny share of the population, transgender shooters should be nonexistent. Yet their recurring role in school massacres exposes the instability bred by gender ideology—a reality our culture refuses to confront. 


Iturrieta’s recent dialogue with Capuchin exorcist Fray Claudio Calderón shows the roots of this violence go deeper than psychology. They touch the theological and enter the demonic.

Iturrieta noted that the Annunciation shooter’s diary described looking in the mirror and seeing not himself but Satan, who urged him to kill, telling him who, when, and how. Satan commanded him to take his own life afterward, sealing the act as a ritual sacrifice. In his writings, the shooter even confessed that killing Trump or Musk would be less satisfying than killing innocent Catholic children, whose purity gave him “more pleasure.” As Iturrieta commented, only the demonic could delight in desecrating innocence as such. Tweet This

Calderón confirmed what many in the Church fear to say: gender ideology is demonic. The devil is the father of lies and of ideologies that subvert life, truth, and beauty. Calderón called the situation an “epistemological evil,” an assault on both will and mind. As Calderón noted, demons thrive on confusion, distortion, and inversion.

In his work as an exorcist, Calderón has encountered cases where gender dysphoria vanished after deliverance. Demons, he explained, often exploit sexuality, inducing dysphoria, vexations, and obsessions. Sexuality is a favorite weapon because it reflects the image of God in both males and females. Such a distortion is a direct affront to God Himself.

The Christian Broadcasting Network recently underscored this same truth in their coverage. In discussing the Minneapolis shooter’s manifesto, which included anti-Christian and anti-Semitic messages, CBN’s Raj Nair and Billy Hallowell called the act “the most clear-cut demonic thing possible,” noting with Ephesians 6 that hatred of Jews, Catholics, and Christians is ultimately hatred of God Himself. (In fact, Westman had an image of Christ he would use as a shooting target.) Shooting children through the windows of a Catholic church is not just a crime or an illness; it is a manifestation of diabolical evil.

The mainstream media calls the motive a “mystery.” Health professionals and institutions that profit from and support gender ideology, whether they sincerely believe it or not, continue to insist that dysphoria has no connection with violence. Politicians tiptoe around identity categories, terrified of offending powerful lobbies. All the while, children are sacrificed in classrooms and houses of worship.

The overlooked connection, I argue, lies not in assuming all transgender individuals are violent—that would be unjust and unwarranted—but in how the societal denial of biological reality can intensify personal despair and rage, potentially leading to tragic outcomes as in the aforementioned cases.

As Christians, we cannot remain silent. To expose falsehood is not an act of hatred but of love, for only by recognizing the true nature of a thing can we prevent further tragedies and call souls back to the truth. The Catechism reminds us that “the dignity of the human person is rooted in his creation in the image and likeness of God” (CCC 1700). From the fictional horror of Buffalo Bill to the real tragedies in Nashville and Minneapolis, we see the same pattern emerge: gender confusion joined to hatred of innocence and the profanation of what is sacred. We are called to confront not only the cultural and psychological dimensions of this crisis but also the deeper spiritual battle, while entrusting to Christ the souls of Harper Moyski, Fletcher Merkel, and all victims of such violence.




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https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/just-facts-maam-7790/

Among the prejudices that (Martin says) hinder an honest discussion is the "assumption that being a gay priest means that one is, by definition, sexually active and incapable of chastity." I take "gay" to refer to a subset of persons with same-sex attraction, viz., those who have said "Yes" to their homosexual libido and ceased the struggle to rid themselves of it. Are such persons necessarily sexually active? No. Is it bigotry to believe that, in the aggregate, they are promiscuous? On the contrary, the empirical evidence for gay unchastity is so overwhelming that only a man demented by ideology can deny it.
Are gay priests an exception? The objective data proves beyond question they aren't... Many Catholics in the U.S. have lost their parish churches and have no Catholic school in which to put their children precisely because their bishops gambled properties not their own on the wildly improbable chance that gays were good priests -- and lost. Far from being a myth generated by "prejudice" (in the sense of a judgment made in advance of the facts), the sexual anarchy of gay clergy is so obvious a truth that it's all but impossible to see how it's still an open question for the bishops whether to admit gays to the priesthood..."

"Dr. Joseph Nicolosi put it well: "To speak of a gay Catholic is a contradiction in terms, like calling someone a pro-abortion Catholic." It's that simple. We're not talking about "generic" homosexuals here, not about appetites, we're talking about convictions and decisions-- specifically, the conviction that the Church is in error in her sexual teaching, and the decision to shape one's own life on the belief that this teaching is false, irrelevant, or changeable. Gay priests aren't sexually active by definition; they're dissenters by definition. Gay priests are subversives. Even if, contrary to fact, they were universally and perfectly chaste, even if they outshone straight priests in every behavioral respect, their contempt for Catholic doctrine would disqualify them outright. It's not a question of what outstandingly talented players gay priests are; the problem is they're fighting for the other guys. They want the wrong team to win."



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https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-prohibition-of-cross-dressing


It is noteworthy that the few times a woman is described as killing a man in biblical texts, she does so using non-traditional weapons. The anonymous woman from Tevetz (Judg. 9:50-57) throws a piece of millstone down on Abimelech’s head, and Yael (Judg. 4:17-22; 5:24-30) uses a tent peg to impale Sisera’s temple after he has fallen asleep. In the Apocryphal Book of Judith, the heroine kills Holofernes with his own sword, which may reflect evolving mores regarding women and weapons. However, Judith still uses the rather unorthodox means of getting the Assyrian general drunk in order to perform her task. This, however, is not enough evidence to point to כְלִי־גֶבֶר, a rather broad term, as specifically referring in this verse to male weaponry.

This understanding of the prohibition for women as being specifically about wearing armor and/or bearing weapons is also reflected in several Targumim, including Neophiti and Onkelos. Josephus seems to understand the entire prohibition within the context of warfare (Antiquities, Book IV, sections 293-301
The ability to successfully wield and use a weapon was a significant aspect of successful masculine performance, and this ability was seen as distinguishing men from boys (and women). See, e.g. Judg. 8:20 and 1 Samuel 17, both of which contrast men and boys in the context of handling weaponry. On the association of weaponry, and being able to handle weapons, with the societally predominant masculine ideal,

the epitome of hegemonic masculinity, noteworthy for his exceptional strength, bravery, and/or leadership ability, often in the context of warfare.

The goddess Ishtar/Inanna, whose cultic functionaries engaged in cross-dressing as part of their ritual activity, embodied both male and female characteristics and was associated with transformative powers, including the ability to turn men into women and women into men. 

This is the explanation suggested by Mary Douglas in Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge, 2012) 54-71. She contends that maintaining holiness involves “keeping distinct the categories of creation” (54), which means keeping separate that which should be kept separate. Lev. 19:19 has prohibitions similar to those in vv. 9-11 (though nothing similar to v. 5), so we know these other mixing concerns were not limited to Deuteronomy. We also know that some of these mixtures were common in ancient Israel. There are plenty of references to mules in the Bible (see, e.g. 2 Sam. 13:29; 18:9 and 1 Kings 1:33; 18:5), so we know horses and asses were sometimes “mixed.” We also have references to different seeds being planted in the same field (Isa 28:25), and priests wearing garments made of mixed wool and linen. Jacob Milgrom, in “Law and Narrative and the Exegesis of Leviticus xix 19,” VT 46.4 (1996): 546-547, suggests that the purpose of the prohibition in Lev. 19:19 was to limit such combinations to the holy, and thus mark them as off limits to lay people, to make a distinction between the priesthood and the lay population. This could be the case for the law in the Holiness Collection, though it is unclear if the authors of Deuteronomy had a similar motivation, or if their intent was to prohibit such mixtures as “illicit” outright.

Hoffner, “Symbols for Masculinity and Femininity,” 328-329, discusses the differences in symbols associated with masculinity and femininity in biblical texts, as well as in the larger ancient Near Eastern cultural milieu. Women are associated with items such as spindle and distaff (see Prov. 31:19; 2 Sam. 3:29), while men are associated with weapons, especially the bow and /or its arrows (2 Sam. 1:22; 22:35; 2 Kings 13:15 ff; Hos. 1:5; Ps. 127:4-5). In both cases, these symbols reflect the cultural ideal for each gender.  There are, of course, depictions of men and women in biblical texts that are exceptions to the rules, but the fact that they stand out as exceptions rather makes the point that gender expectations were pretty fixed.

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https://www.thetorah.com/article/what-does-deuteronomy-say-about-homosexuality





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https://couragegulfcoast.wixsite.com/blog/single-post/2017/10/10/Youre-Hurting-Me-Fr-James-Martin

Above all, I am a person, not a homosexual person.

There are only three kinds of persons: Divine, Angelic, and Human. The human person cannot be reduced to his or her experience. My identity is a beloved daughter of God, and can't be lowered to anything else.

Because of my nature as a human person, I am God's Creation, and His alone. God made me for Himself, and calls me to draw near to Him in this life so that I may remain with Him forever in the next.

In order to remain with God, I must follow His commands, and the teachings of His Bride, the Holy Catholic Church. If I'm going to follow those rules set out for me, I have to know what they are. What they really are. No watered down version of the faith is going to get me to Heaven.

I feel as though you're hesitant to say that acting on same-sex desires is wrong. It is inherently wrong, Father. God's design for conjugal love does not include the joining of man-and-man or woman-and-woman. It simply does not work.

Marriage is not a man made invention, and therefore is not ours to define. God intended marriage to be between one man and one woman, even the design of the human anatomy can attest to that! If we begin to deny this truth, we lose sight of who we are.

There's an identity crisis ravaging the LGBTQ+ community right now because we base our identities on who we're emotionally and/or sexually attracted to. We are so much more than that!

Calling my sexual desires "objectively disordered" is not "needlessly cruel." If I desire something that is not going to contribute to my holiness, then it needs to go unfulfilled. I cannot understand and bring to fulfillment God's plan for me by "satisfying" a desire that can lead to my demise. We all have desires that shouldn't go fulfilled; we all what things that we can't have. Me being able to sleep with a woman is no different than that. It's not cruel, it's what I need to hear, it is the truth.

 

Show me respect by reminding me and my brothers and sisters who we are, and all that we are called to be.

Call me what I am. Call me a child of God, loved by God, and called to greatness beyond my comprehension. See my value and my worth as a human person, and don't reduce me to an experience.

Show me compassion by walking with me and calling me to holiness, because holiness is for everybody.

You talk about how people with SSA are "unjustly discriminated against" in many ways. This is true. But I dare to say that feeding us a watered down version of the Gospel counts as unjust discrimination as well.

Call me to chastity and sanctity. Tell me that I can fight, and I am strong enough to carry my cross.

Insinuating that I need to have the rules bent for me, that I somehow just can't help acting on my desires, tells me that I am not capable of the same holiness as my brothers and sisters without SSA. It tells me that God doesn't love me enough to give me the grace and the strength to carry my cross with dignity, bravery, and courage.

Christ died for me. He told me to pick up my cross and carry it after Him. He is going to give me the strength to get to Calvary, and eventually Heaven.

Show me sensitivity by encountering me with authentic love, the same love that Christ would show me.

Know that in our hearts of hearts, inside our holy of holies, we want God. He made us for Himself, and He want us to go back to Him.

Show us His Face in your ministry, in the way that you love us, in the way that you encounter us. Please tell us what He would say, Father. Please tell us the truth, and walk with us on that road back to the one whom our soul loves.

 

I have had too many people try to preach the Gospel to me while leaving out the Cross. The Cross, the struggle, the suffering cannot be left out. Easter did not come without Good Friday, and we cannot get to Heaven without first fighting for it on earth.

The saints in Heaven fought for holiness while they were on earth. We cannot get to Heaven without a fight.

Do not try to make the fight easier for me, Fr. James, come with me, battle with me, and make me stronger.

I firmly believe that the next great saint of our age will be someone who lived with same-sex attractions.

We are called to holiness too, Father.

Please, do not drown out that beautiful call.


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https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2016/06/26/the-devil-you-say-2/

"...Cardinal Sarah described gender ideology as “demonic"... So did Bishop Paprocki of Springfield regarding gay marriage. A strong word, to be sure. But most people misunderstand why. Some take “demonic” for mere hyperbole: Something is not just bad, but really, really bad. Others see it as rash judgment of opponents– literally "demonizing" them. Still others take it as just an overstatement by "religious fanatics", who are "unhinged" anyway. But “demonic” is a sober and sobering assessment of the thought behind gender ideology. It’s not a judgment of people’s intentions. It doesn’t mean that those who endorse gender ideology are demonic or possessed. It means, rather, that the reasoning and results of that philosophy – no matter how innocently held – line up with the desires, tactics, and resentments of [the devil] himself.

Gender ideology repeats the basic lie of the evil one: “You will be like gods.” Of course, this lie lurks behind every temptation. Every sin comes from that prideful desire to supplant God. But in the arena of human sexuality, it has greater gravity.
God creates; man is created. God brings into being; man receives his being. Gender ideology proposes something else: that we are our own creators. In one of his last (and perhaps most important) addresses, Pope Benedict noted: "The words of the creation account: “male and female he created them” no longer apply. No, what applies now is this: it was not God who created them male and female – hitherto society did this, now we decide for ourselves. Man and woman as created realities, as the nature of the human being, no longer exist. Man calls his nature into question. From now on he is merely spirit and will. The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now becomes man’s fundamental choice where he himself is concerned. . . . But if there is no pre-ordained duality of man and woman in creation, then neither is the family any longer a reality established by creation. . . .the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being.
And if we find our bodies not in keeping with what we have determined ourselves to be, then we alter them accordingly. Against this, Pope Francis counsels: “Let us not fall into the sin of trying to replace the Creator. We are creatures, and not omnipotent. Creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift. At the same time, we are called to protect our humanity, and this means, in the first place accepting it and respecting it as it was created.”"

There’s also demonic hatred of the body. C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters chronicles the demonic resentment of God’s favoring us “hairless bipeds. . .[animals] begotten in a bed.” Why this hatred? Perhaps because the human body and soul are one. The soul, having so much in common with the angelic nature, is one with the body, having so much in common with animal nature. The devil takes this union as a personal offense. He (as we all experience) seeks to undo it – to divide us from our own flesh, to pit body and soul against each other. He masterfully leads us to worship the body one moment and abhor it the next. Death – the separation of body and soul – was, of course, his greatest victory.
There’s also the fact that the Word became flesh. God’s great act of generosity toward us embodied souls simply aggravates the devil’s envy. The Son of God assumed a human nature, including a human body. He saved us not only in, but through that Body. Why should this dignity be given to us, so inferior to the seraphim, and not to him, the highest of angels?
Fallen man is always at odds with his body. Christianity seeks to heal that division. Gender ideology seeks to codify it. The latter rests on the principle that there is no real relationship between body and soul. So absolute is their division that a person can be physically one thing and spiritually another.

Closely linked to this is the demonic hatred of procreation. The devil cannot procreate. But man does. Man and woman cooperate with God in bringing a new human person into being. The devil is envious because God is generous. Of course, gender ideology rejects the complementarity of male and female – and what their union accomplishes.
The Lord takes up natural truths – body, marriage, and family – and uses them as the template and means for His salvific work. He is the Word made flesh, the Bridegroom, the Son of Joseph and Mary, Who makes us members of God’s family. We grasp the significance of Jesus’ offering His Body on the Cross and in the Eucharist precisely because we know the body has significance. The permanent, faithful, and life-giving union of husband and wife enables us to grasp what it means that Christ is the Bridegroom and the Church His Bride.
The loss of these natural truths, therefore, inhibits our ability to understand the supernatural and grasp salvation. If the human body has no intrinsic meaning – if it tells us nothing about ourselves and can be adjusted as we see fit – then how can we appreciate the words, “This is my Body”?

If we have no lived experience of the complementarity of man and woman, of bridegroom and bride, then we are at a loss for understanding Christ the Bridegroom dying for His Bride. And neither can we grasp the meaning of God as Father, God as Son, the Church as Mother, etc. It’s in the devil’s interest to deprive of us of these natural signs of the supernatural.

Of course, these demonic tendencies have not popped up all of a sudden. They are his usual tactics. We have seen them conspicuously at work in the sexual revolution, in contraception, abortion, and IVF. Gender ideology rests upon these and promotes them to a new degree.
Recognition of the demonic is perhaps helpful. But it should also prompt us to an examination of conscience – to see how we ourselves have fallen for his tricks: by our little acts of prideful self-exaltation (which is really self-creation), by our own disdain or mistreatment of the body (our own and those of others), by our own unchastity (which demeans the power of procreation), by our damaging of how others can come to God.
Some of us may glimpse the demonic in gender ideology. But we all must repent for how we have personally yielded to it.




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https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/why-todays-church-is-feckless-against-transgenderism


Descartes gave us his cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). Kant gave us his transcendental idealism which, with its unknowable noumena, denied the reality of essences as they had always been understood. And Hegel one-upped Kant and made the noumena evolutionary and dialectic, as if the substrate of reality was in a constant striving toward a richer and higher existence.
these philosophical errors have infected the theological atmosphere of the Church. Therefore, we ought to consider how these errors have given us the framework for transgenderism and how, as a result, the modern Church finds itself without the philosophical underpinnings to deal with the problem effectively.


For Descartes, reality did not start with sensory data known from the exterior... no, reality started in one’s thoughts... If reality begins in the mind, then it is very hard to see how we could validate reality from outside the mind. If “I think, therefore I am” is sufficient to prove that I, in fact, am, then we cannot escape the temptation to define reality as we see it in our mind.

Kant, picking up where Descartes left off, did not necessarily doubt the reality of external things—as is not uncommon for a Cartesian—but he did conclude that created things could not really be known the way even a child knows things. If there is no essence, then we cannot look at a flower and say it is a nice flower or that it smells good. We can only say, “Look at those things which appear to have the characteristic of what is called beauty and which seem to correspond to the image of what I perceive as flowers because they look like other things I perceive to be flowers.” 

Hegel took that insanity even further and proposed that not only is there a subjective nature to reality, and not only is there no such thing as an essence, but the substrate of reality is really a dialectic between thesis and antithesis, from whence we get the synthesis. This synthesis is a higher being or reality than what came before, and reality evolves continually to an unknown point of perfection which will come at some point... With Hegel, we can say that transgenderism merely represents a state in reality where the thesis and anti-thesis of male and female have collided to give us the higher reality...

At best, we can expect some bishops to speak about the dignity of woman and how it is affronted, or the nature of gender found in biology... but the problem is that modern Kantian-Man does not care about biology! "Biology is but a social construct created by evil white men who believed that reality was real!"
As it stands, there is no arguing with the gender-theory mob because the mob does not believe that arguing can lead to a true conclusion because true conclusions do not really exist. Therefore, there is only force, which Antifa and other gender-crazy mobs are happy to facilitate.

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https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/the-moral-cowardice-of-ignoring-trans-adults

There seems to be a desire among those on the right to downplay the so-called “transitions” of adults who have gender dysphoria. The argument goes like this: “I don’t care what adults want to do to their bodies. They can chop off as many pieces as they want. Just don’t touch kids, because kids are too young to make those decisions.” This isn’t the moral position that so many claim it to be. If we accept that mutilation is [always] unhealthy and harmful—shouldn’t we be willing to [always] say so? ...Affirming their self-destructive choices is not an act of charity but of cowardice. It’s the easier position to take... By focusing exclusively on children, one appears to be taking the moral high ground. Don’t be fooled—this is an appeal to sentiment cloaked in [false] moral probity."

"People who desire to change their sex fit into at least one of two categories and often both:
1. Mental illness causes them to believe they "should be" the opposite sex.
2. They suffer a type of despair, in which they fail to see their own inherent value as they were created."

"...moral concession, undertaken to avoid unpleasant and likely costly conversations with adults about adults, is similar to what happened with the battle over homosexuality. That fight quickly slid from “We don’t care what you do in your bedroom” ...to, finally, “Just don’t teach it to our kids.” And now…here we are…

There’s a modern reluctance to even assert what is moral, deferring instead to the ascendancy of individual consciences (which are often poorly formed because people are being raised in an age of decadence). Engaging in this resignation avoids conflict and might best be summarized by the contemporary adage, “You do you.” Such people pontificate about “freedom” with an air of self-approval, as if they are completely opposed to all laws that are rooted in morality... This seems to stem from a misunderstanding of what freedom is, [which ISNT] the license to "do what you want"... Freedom [in truth] is the unimpeded ability to do what is good. [Therefore] Just laws are a reflection of true morality. That is what gives them their binding character; just laws make a claim upon our conscience because they articulate what is truly good and truly evil. Just laws that proscribe wicked behavior do so because of the recognition that moral evil is corrosive of individual and communal flourishing... Although it is true that not all of morality need be codified in public law, we fail as individuals and as a community if we fall silent in the presence of manifest wickedness that causes lasting harm to society and its members.

The modern desire for an amoral state is part of the problem. While those on the left have sought (and accomplished) a government that promotes their causes, as seen by the display of the LGBTQ+ flag on government buildings, many on the right seek only a “morally neutral” government. 
A “morally neutral” government, however, is a mythical creature—as unreal as the amoral man. If it were set up, it would immediately drift to one direction or the other, for it wouldn’t have the moral grounding to resist the current. It’s thus entirely self-defeating... something that has never existed and could never be sustained... there is and should be a moral basis for what we allow...

It is still accepted (sadly, with notable exceptions) that when someone has body dysmorphia and therefore wishes to remove an arm or become blind, it is unethical for a doctor to cooperate with the request. That’s because the problem is not his physical body, which is working as it ought, but his mind. The goal must be to help his mind, not to harm what is working well (the arm or the eyes, in the aforementioned examples). If it’s acceptable for us to refuse to mutilate these poor souls—whether children or adults—then we should be willing to say the same of those who wish to mutilate their genitals, take hormones that cause irreversible changes, or have their breasts removed. They are likewise seeking to “treat” that which is functioning as it was designed. 
Thus, these are not medical procedures because they are not healing. They do not have the potential or even goal of healing, only of placating an ill mind. Mutilation harms the individual in distress, denigrates the medical profession, and sickens society.
Those who demand that the procedures be performed are known for being fervent and even aggressive, but that alone isn’t reason to concede to actions that ultimately harm them. No matter how much a suicidal person asks for assistance or permission to end his life, we don’t kill him, we work to heal him. We see the dignity and value of his person even when he cannot.

There’s nothing wrong with focusing our lens on the most innocent and vulnerable of victims, those being children, and working to prevent them from being exposed to this dangerous ideology; but we cannot stop there. We must be willing to assert that these behaviors are harmful at any age and that it’s a disgraceful (and sinful) action to play any role in encouraging or facilitating them.

Any culture that deserves to endure must be capable of discerning, expressing, and encouraging the good. It must be willing to say no to perversions and activities that will cause its rot. We must have the wisdom to recognize that we are not only fighting for the children of today but for the tomorrows that they will inhabit.

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https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/how-many-genders-have-we-got

The illusion, so comforting to the dysphoric few, that gender is somehow a "performative act," a mere "social construct" we build on our own dime, without reference to the sheer givenness of a reality that comes ready-made from the Hand of God, has at last been shown the door. The conceit, so utterly absurd on the face of it, that gender is simply "what we do and not what we are," has finally been put to rest. 

There is a reality... and it exists even before we are moved to recognize and give it a name. We may not be reducible to our bodies, but we are surely rooted in them. And they remain, quite ineluctably, either male or female.  
Thus, the whole meaning of "being" on which we depend, the very ground on which we stand— because it comes from God, even as it is mediated by and through the physical union of one man and one woman— is always a gift we receive. Indeed, it is a gift so precious and rare that we can never give it to ourselves.    
We are not self-generated... and our contingent status under God cannot be co-opted by gender theorists, whose hatred of what they call “essentialism” has so consumed them that they are determined to supplant God Himself and the entire order of the universe He inscribed in our bodies.
We cannot do as we please with our bodies, "trading in" one sex for another simply because we happen to prefer a "different model." That way lies madness... the arrangement put in place by God [will ultimately remain] upheld." 

"God is not dead, despite the attempt on the part of so many who wish that He were in order to justify the violence they have, until now, been allowed to visit upon the human person made in His image—like performing double mastectomies on adolescent girls to "enable them to become boys.""

"How necessary it is for us to know these things—indeed, to remind ourselves of their continuing relevance in our public and private lives. Hence the importance of Holy Writ in telling us in so many resonant and robust ways that it is God who remains the author of life... it is God, not chance circumstance or a machine, that fashions the human being, breathing life into the creature whom God knew even in the womb..."

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https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/recognizing-reality


"But, of course, some things are either true or not true: the middle is excluded. God exists, or He does not exist. Jesus rose from the dead, or He did not rise from the dead... A thing cannot be true and not true at the same time and in the same respect... Moral reality, too, is subject to the same analysis. We Catholics are supposed to be moral realists. We do not "determine" what shall be right or wrong. We RECOGNIZE what IS right or wrong, regardless of what anybody thinks about it. When we say, for example, that it is wrong to practice deceit, we imply that deceit harms both the deceiver and the deceived—the latter, by the deceit, but the former, both by the deceit and in the act of deceiving. You cannot escape the consequences of sin. It is like ingesting poison."

"The doctor did the best he knew. He was not malicious, only ignorant. But no one can plead ignorance of what we call the natural law, written upon the heart; and even if your mind and soul are befuddled or benighted, still the sin works its harm.

Cannibals do not grow more human by feeding upon human flesh... Granted, when everybody around you is doing something bad, your joining in will likely involve no special degree of malice... But who can deny that [society is] worse for it? It hardened their hearts, it gave them a taste for cruelty, and it cheapened their view of human life. It is one thing to get mixed up in a brawl. That is often the result of a quick temper, too much drink, an overflow of misdirected energy. It is another to make a practice of brawling; still another, to institutionalize bloodshed for sport.

"So, too, it was one thing for a boy and a girl, in my parents’ time, to "end up in a bad way" because place conspired with time and desire with desire. It was another to make a practice of it... It has been still another to institutionalize every sexual sin, barring rape, which is what you have when your laws are supposed to respect “bodily autonomy,” when sins contra naturam are not only condoned but celebrated... and, for the [deluded and effeminate members of the] Catholic Church, the supposed next thing the [false and lying new-agey] “Spirit,” ever "hip" and careless of self-contradiction and chaos, is going to say."

"There is, however, one thing that makes poison less harmful than sin. If you ingest arsenic, your stomach will let you know. But sin dulls the sense of sin; you get used to it; you ignore its effects; you become enmeshed in the lie, till you can no longer distinguish it from the truth. You begin by saying, “I know this is wrong, but I can’t help it.” You go on to say, “This is wrong, but it’s not as bad as other things are. At least I don’t _____!” and you add some other thing, something you don’t do, usually because you happen not to be tempted to do it anyway. But as long as you keep lying about the sin, there will be no end to it; it is a crater that keeps collapsing beneath you. For you then say, “This is not wrong for me,” and, “This is not wrong,” and “This is right,” and “This is wonderful,” and “This is wonderful and everybody must acknowledge it,” and “This is wonderful and everybody must not only acknowledge it but celebrate it and thus, to the extent they are capable, participate in it.”

"Every lie is a sin, and every sin is a lie... As for Satan, he was “a liar and a murderer from the beginning,” indeed, a “liar and the father of lies.” It is a lie to say or even to pretend that a man can become a woman or that a woman can become a man. Sexual being is not ours to make. It was made by the Creator, from the beginning, who made us “male and female,” as Jesus says. 
We recognize that reality; we should accept it as a gift. Nor is the reality something interior and mysterious and ever-flitting. Nowhere in Scripture are we urged to say, “I must be true to myself,” as if we were self-fashioned, self-creating, and as if there were some “self,” existing in a splendid realm of unchanging and eternal selves, a “self” I must discover, and, having discovered it, the “self” I must honor as "the lamp unto my feet, and a light to my paths".
No, the reality is humbler, and far more beautiful than any phantasm of an individualistic imagination. Adam is a boy. Eve is a girl. That is no more to be sneered at or looked on with disgruntlement than are their flesh and bones. It is high time we recovered a sense of that beauty. The mystery is not in what some poor soul, unfortunately muddled, dreams up about what he or she “really” is. The mystery is before our eyes: that there should ever be creatures so beautiful as boys and girls, men and women, in the first place."


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https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/progress

"Maybe life seemed to him to have ended before it had begun. The old homestead was a "prison," and traditions were its fetters."

"We may say that the grace of God dispelled his dreams, so that when the famine struck and he was starved for bread—and we should keep in mind that “not by bread alone does man live, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God”—he returned to a home he had never really known before. His development, then, was by way of that return.
Yet he could not simply resume his old place. Too much had happened in the meantime. And to "insist upon his share of his father’s estate" was to wish that the old man were dead already. That was to cut himself off from his trunk and expect to live on his own. But when he came back... renewed in the conversion of his mind, he was alive again... alive in a new way. He was not resuscitated. He was born anew.

Now, let us suppose that God had not blessed the boy with famine. Suppose, instead, that he had plenty to eat and that he had made a go of it with his money... We need not suppose he was happy. Hedonism requires a lot of rouge and eyeshadow to mask the disillusionment. Nor was he wise. Yet he prided himself on his "progress". He looked back with contempt on his father and his elder brother, imagining them yoked to the same old plow, penning up the same stupid sheep, "never thinking a new thought" (and by “new thoughts” we must understand the "fashionable things" that everybody around him said, without considering what they meant)... I can see him writing back to the "poor slobs", inviting them into his "new world", pretending to a happiness he did not feel, boasting a sophistication he did not possess; secretly envying them, and wishing to destroy what was old, lest it show up the flash and glare of what pretended to be new."

"Sex is resolved into the vague notion of “sexuality,” precisely so that the specifics of what the bodies male and female are for may be eluded. All actions that promote “creative growth through integration” of human faculties are to be considered licit. This was progress, they thought."

"I use the word “errors” advisedly, for its inner sense of straying, wandering, as opposed to the bold pioneering the authors implicitly claimed in their title.
When you err, you may be always on the move, but you get nowhere. You are, at best, like somebody unwittingly traversing a circular path in the wilderness. At worst, you are descending a more and more precipitous path, until, exhausted and unable to take another step, you find yourself at the brink of the pit."

“The authors... nearly always find a way to allow for "integrative growth" through the neglect or destruction of some intrinsic element of sexual morality.” The language of "progress," we see, is called up to justify [immoral] sexual inclinations and actions that are as old as the hills.
The individual, who alone is supposed capable of judging how far he has come toward "integration [of his many internal parts]", "grows" not by pursuing what is objectively good; rather, things [and actions] are defined as "good" or "licit" by what is taken to be their tendency, [only] for the individual in question, TO "integrate the various facets of his personality"."
(This completely eradicates the truth of morality by making the SELF the end goal, not considering social norms, spiritual consequences, OR even natural laws!! Man "BECOMES GOD" when he tries to justify his actions based SOLELY on his own ego-driven opinions & self-gratifying desires.)

"But such perceptions... are inherently subjective, dependent upon feelings and customs, so that “it would be next to impossible to single out definite criteria of what exactly "integrates" a particular person, or contributes to his or her "creative growth", in any specific sexual activity.”... the authors have nothing other than their own feelings, their taste as it were, to go by."
(The fact that these people are using sexual experimentation as an alleged means of "self-realization" and "growth as a person" is APPALLING, DISGUSTING, and GODLESS.)

"...people are so DIS-integrated that they have often no love for the bodies God gave them but, instead, must have them mutilated, just as their families so often have been... the misery-making about them in the surge of divorce and unwed motherhood and the sewage backwash of pornography."

"If some forms of sexual conduct are disapproved, it is only because of the supposed absence, generally expressed in the form of a doubt, of “human integration” (as in swinging, mate-swapping, bestiality), and not because these actions are "opposed to the nature of" human sexuality. When some action is considered completely immoral, it is never for intrinsic reasons, on the basis of objective finality, but only because the authors happen not to see, for their part, any way of making it so for some human integration."

"The authors were registering the common [profane] talk of people around them and [blasphemously] dressing it up in theological garb. The whole culture—if it can be called a culture—was going down that road, and [instead of fighting back with truth,] the authors went along."

"To justify the sexual “liberation”... is to stagnate indeed, but always with the impression of "boldness, newness, courage," and so forth. Meanwhile, the very failures of those aims and the immense social wreckage have caused some theologians to say, “What fools we are! There is bread enough and to spare in our Father’s house.” And these have done the work of true progress, which is to turn back from error, to hold fast to the truth, and to delve into that truth more and more deeply, appreciating more fully the great gift of sexual being, male and female, each beautiful in its own right but incomplete without the other, for which each was made."

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https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/june-28-and-the-original-gender-defender

There are concurrent moments in history that the Catholic scholar Dr. David Allen White likes to call “God’s thumbprint,” where what the world would call “coincidence” seems to hold a particular Divine design... The Stonewall Riots of 1969 began in New York City on June 28... June 28 is also the feast day of St. Irenaeus, the Greek Church Father who guided the faithful through the Gnostic heresy. The connection? The Stonewall Riots marked the beginning of the so-called “gay rights movement,” a sexual and societal epidemic that has been the catalyst for the political and moral restructuring of the notion of the sexes and even human nature in general. This forced reconstruction of the natural order has plummeted to new depths with the transgender movement, all of which is exemplary of the toxic, freewheeling attitude of Gnosticism. That a giant of the Church, who is remembered primarily for his mighty resistance to the nature-denying Gnostics– whose persistent heresies infect culture to this day– is commemorated on the same day this neo-Gnostic movement dawned is remarkable, but not necessarily in a reassuring way. It feels more like a warning than anything else; but it also carries a strong impulse to hope... Irenaeus famously said, “the glory of God is man alive,” and never was there an age where man was so afraid to live, and God so faintly glorified.

"The arguments and prayers of Irenaeus are still needed, for the gender-bending heresies of today are nothing less than the new face of the Gnosticism he devoted his life to resisting. That fight goes on and on... The old Gnosticism, in a nutshell, began as a religious belief that held that all the physical world was wicked and irredeemable, the grotesque work of an evil demiurge. Their rejection of material conditions engendered a hatred for things and especially for the human body. They saw people as bodily prisons where the soul was caged. They believed that it was only through ascending into the secrets of the universe, through gnosis, or gnostic knowledge, that the soul could be "freed" and absorbed into an ethereal peace. Though many early Christians bought into aspects of this pseudo-theology, its trajectory was quick to reject any creed involving the Word becoming Flesh, and a kind of spiritual atheism dominated the dreamy Gnostic doctrines of the "cosmic mind" and the "conscious universe". All was turned to the individual quest for fulfillment and enlightenment and breaking free of the "shackles of nature" to "discover one’s true self" in the light of knowledge. Atheistic secularism wasn’t the only resultant cultural feature of the Gnostic movement; it also birthed the reliance on science to "unlock the secrets" that would offer gradual release of the spirit— a spirit undefined by biological gender that found "perfection$ in relinquishing natural designations and entering into the “self.”"

"Though Irenaeus did incredible work fortifying the bulwarks of the Faith against the psychedelic experiences of Gnosticism, making clear and even aggressive arguments to enshrine Apostolic succession, the Magisterium of the Church, and the role of divinity and grace perfecting nature, the fumes of Gnosticism are also strong and pervade and pollute the minds of men still. Focusing on the assertion of self and the desire to repurpose nature for the sake of pleasure is all too familiar, and the concept of a new Gnosticism is commonly held. Thus, the freak flag flies for a new normal and a new Gnosticism: a new codex of esoteric “politically correct” knowledge that no one can explain or expound; and it is one being rammed down the throat of common sense as though to choke it into submission or channel it by seduction. After all, "love is love," "hate has no home here", and "all should be free to live their truth"— even if that means transcending gender, eliminating gender language, and confusing traditional gender roles."

"But the attitude of "freedom" Gnosticism promotes is simply the removal of restriction and granting some sort of ascendence or superiority beyond the material world and the natural assignments of being, no matter how irrational. But one thing is clear: Stonewall began a new avalanche toward the extermination of the divisions of gender as restrictive boundaries. Again, the "pure spirit" the Gnostics avowed was trapped in the body and required escape into the universe by knowledge and for the sake of knowledge; and that spirit was neither male nor female, like the angels. But without God, the material world and its problems remain just a mess of evolutionary randomness that is ready and ripe to be manipulated and "corrected." And with this mindset comes that amorphous androgyny of pure, unmitigated potential with the message that "everyone can be who, and what, they want to be"—and to assert that they are because it is “corrective,” because it is “affirming.”"

"“Gender-affirming” technologies, procedures, and “medications” are all facets of the new Gnosticism. The golden calf of equality has been the Gnostic idol for centuries, and the gender wars of today are part and parcel with this spiritual disease— the relativism of society, the subjectivity of morals, and now our ever-changing bodies provide the “you-do-you” release that knows no bounds until someone gets hurt and the culprits get canceled. And then it’s back to the madness of doing the same thing and expecting different results. Nevertheless, rinse and repeat. "There is no God." The world is a conglomeration of random relations, so anything goes— reconstruct, redefine, innovate, make it whatever you want it or need it to be; conform reality to your mind instead of conforming your mind to reality. Deny the margins, remove all obstacles, look to technology and psychology to "allow" people to "be who they want" in a celebration of individualism—never mind manhood or womanhood, or their natural or traditional roles in supporting one another and their reproductive obligations—and force acknowledgment [of the satanic claim] that "all have the supreme power of defining their own beings. Contraception, fornication, abortion, pornography, homosexuality, and transgenderism— all of these are wiping the duties, distinctions, and roles of sex and gender off the face of the earth so that no one need be bound or hindered by anything essential anymore."

"...the cultural chameleons that throw the world that God made good to the dogs as though they were the masters of the universe."

"Pride Month, the Pride Movement, and the catalogue of insanity they preach, is all about serving the self by eliminating the traditions of society, recasting the norms of nature, and harnessing the intellect and scientific means of manipulation to ostensibly seek a utopia where no one will be barred from being what they choose to be, unhindered, unlimited, and unshackled. It is Gnosticism all over again—but with glittering drag queens this time instead of nail-biting ascetics. A large part of what may be called heresy here is that the utopia which is the purported end is not an end that concurs with the physical and spiritual purpose of mankind. Though we do not live for this world, but rather for the next, what we do in this physical world with our physical selves makes all the spiritual difference. And it must involve suffering, and so we gladly suffer. Yes, happiness is achievable as well, but happiness [only] in the condition of fallen beings who have hope in the reality of redemption, and whose toils and travails are an indispensable part of that picture... the Cross is not compatible with the libertine slant of Gnosticism; and so the Cross is rejected in the gender-fluid age..."

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https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/materialists-against-the-material-world

"What is at stake in our current controversies regarding male and female? Nothing less than creation itself."

One of the most peculiar features of a materialistic age is its failure to appreciate material reality.


"...the chief scientist—sharp-eyed, bespectacled, a believer in nothing: that is, a champion of what is now called eliminative materialism. There are no persons because there are not even any things: all is particulate matter and empty space... hating God and the world..."

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐"The Christian vision of the world..  penetrates deep into the actual existence AND goodness of material things, refusing to reduce them to their constituent parts, and refusing to wave them away as "insufficiently spiritual" to warrant our care."
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐"To say that [material things] are created by God is to do more than to affirm their origin. It is to affirm that they are endowed with meaning in their own right, a meaning which we do not attribute to them, but discover within them, as they reveal themselves by their being as they are."

"I suppose that most Christians in our time would not deny what I have just said, though they might be taken off guard by it, since the default for their imaginations is some form of the materialism surrounding them— if “imagination” is a fit term for what you are left with after the severely reductive has done its work to dull your mind, cool your love, and dispel the last breath of natural wonder."

"I wager that I could persuade them to... not “murder to dissect,” at least when it comes to [plants and animals]. To get them to do so when it comes to human beings and their bodies— that’s another thing entirely. For we need to establish several premises that are implied in the doctrine of creation. The first is that all we have and all we are, by nature and not as corrupted by sin, comes from GOD. It is a GIFT. We do not confer it upon ourselves. We do not assume that we may do what we please with it. We do not determine its inherent significance."

"...Satan, as portrayed by Dante at the bottom of the Inferno, is the anti-Word who does not speak but who flaps his wings with a terrible regularity, like an automaton; and every flap of the wings is a lie, as it declares, “I rise by my power.” Wings are made to fly, and angels are meant to enact the will of God, in joyful and energetic obedience: that obedience IS their soaring, their virtue, and their power. But in his self-absorption and attempt at self-definition, Satan seeks to rise, to fly, [without any regard for the created nature and function of his wings or his own being,] and the flapping of his wings in opposition to God destroys their power as wings and turns them into the bonds that hold him locked in ice forever. Freedom on our own terms is bondage, the "freedom" of the road gone wrong, of failure to attain the end we seek by our supposed liberty."

"...the significance is publicly apprehensible... each angel is his own species, as the angels are not individuated by matter. However that may be, human beings DO belong to a species: “It is not good for the man to be alone,” said God, and He created woman for man; and the first word we hear from any man or woman in Scripture is the joyous and wonder-filled exclamation of Adam, who says, “This at last is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for from ‘her man’ she was taken.”  Adam does not confer a meaning on Eve. He discovers what is already there. It is apparent to him not because of some "interior feeling" he has but because of what he sees and understands with his eyes and his mind. Adam may have a particular cause to appreciate the woman whom God has given to him, but anyone else looking upon the scene with clear eyes and a sound mind would see the same thing... [even if we] may have no immediate cause to share Adam’s powerful emotion."

"...the proper or permissible use of these gifts— whose meanings are inherent and available to minds sufficiently mature to apprehend them, though never to comprehend them because anything God has made, even a grain of sand, is of inexhaustible richness— depends upon their God-given nature and NOT on our arbitrary determination."

"...I look at the pine tree, a beautiful thing. I see the places where I have cut off dead limbs, so that nourishment might not be diverted to no useful end. That was a good thing to do, in accord with what the pine tree is. But now imagine somebody with a diseased mind carving a hole in the tree’s base, precisely to watch it wither slowly and die— not for the sake of scientific investigation but just to enjoy the decay. We sense right away that that is a bad thing to do. More than that, the desire to do it is evil: regardless of whether you actually do it, you should not entertain any sick delight in imagining it. That is not what the pine tree is for.

"Your body is not your “self.” Nor does any “self” exist, floating in a world of fantasy, apart from your body. You are a body-soul UNITY, body and soul both made by God and endowed by God with all your physical, emotional, and intellectual powers. If there is such a thing as self-discovery, it must be one that reveals to us the particular ways in which God has embodied within us the publicly apprehensible meaning inherent to our human nature; and this nature is general, not individual. 
In this discovery, we enter more deeply into the objective reality of that nature, not as pretended empiricists keeping aloof from what they study, but as participants in what we behold, and as lovers of what we find— what is there to be found because God has created it."

"Imagine, for the sake of the example, a man who “discovers” that his meaning is to be a machine; he projects back upon his boyhood an underlying hope that someday he might grow up to be an automaton... do we not recognize the desire itself as perverse? Even if it can be done, it should not be done, regardless of the individual’s aspiration or his desire, which are themselves bad feelings to have, bad imaginations to indulge. To do it would be an offense against the dignity of man, transforming him into a tool of a tool, a warping of the ultimate aim that God has implanted in his very being, which is to know God and to love Him.
If someone says that, in a "free" land, such a person should be granted the civil liberty to make this bizarre pseudo-transition from man to man-machine, I reply that since man is a social being to the core, any evil thing you do, especially one that penetrates to the heart of what it means TO be a created being and a man, is an offense against others also. Your evil example lays a snare in the path of a weaker brother. Your evil and false premise helps to efface the sense we should all have, that man is not a machine and must never be treated as such. Your decision to set yourself up as your own determiner, essentially a self-fashioner and self-interpreter, is an attack against what we OWE, corporately and individually, to GOD, and it is a denial of His providential goodness.
It is the tired old lie, in a new and grotesque form: “You shall be as gods.” And it repudiates the fount of all revelation: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” And that, as I said, is at stake— everything."


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https://crisismagazine.com/opinion/with-the-sexual-revolution-there-is-no-slippery-slope


"Conservatives, and especially religious conservatives, understand the connection between treating human beings as interchangeable slabs of talking meat and, say, abortion"


"The idea behind the push for "gay marriage", as I understood it, was that it "harmed" gays not to redefine the definition of marriage to include their relationships. The "reason" for this is [the complete LIE] that marriage... is "not based on mere biology but only upon love". Families aren’t biological units; children don’t need mothers and fathers to raise them, since their biological differences are irrelevant. [The fact] that your DNA comes from a mother and father is "irrelevant", so you can have two fathers, or vice versa (or several “mothers” or “fathers,” for that matter). "No damage is done" to a child by depriving them of the intimate relationship with someone of the opposite sex that mothers and fathers represent, because "human sex is completely fungible," like stocks and bonds. Once you have embraced this "logic"— that "men and women are interchangeable"— it is no big leap to believe their body parts are as well."

"The exact same logic underlies the idea of “transgender rights.” Transgender individuals are "harmed" by not legally redefining gender to include their self-identification, even if it contradicts their biological sex. Giving puberty blockers to children and operating on them is a "moral imperative", as they, too, are "harmed" by not being allowed to rearrange their bodies to fit their self-conception..."

"Not only do they see nature as something meaningless—or even positively harmful—because it imposes limits on one’s desires, they see all human relationships as socially constructed. Things like “maturity” and “age of consent” are merely arbitrary constructs. Only those constructs that "liberate" are "good"; those that restrict are "bad". But then so are things like “marriage” for gay marriage activists, and “human person” for abortion rights activists."

"This sort of [insane, self-exalting] "logic"... that not only society but pretty much all of reality is "arbitrary" and "determined by will and desire"... underlies all of the Sexual Revolution, since our technological developments now enable us to alter our bodies (and the natural world more generally) as never before. These changes have radically altered our immediate moral incentives, and what we call the “Sexual Revolution” is predicated upon giving free rein to this newfound power. This is why the movement for “sexual freedom” was never going to stop at some “reasonable” middle ground... It cannot. To put into question even one of these practices, no matter how extreme, is to call into question the principle that unites them ALL. That is why today even pedophilia is being countenanced among the most "advanced" of the cultural Left. [If you] admit that the more "extreme" sexual ideas are, in principle, morally corrosive of the common good, [then] every one [of the other "deviant" sexual ideas] that has gained public acceptance since the 1960s becomes suspect [and rightly so]. To talk of a “slippery slope” with regard to moral questions, at least in this instance, is inaccurate. There is no “slope” down which you can slide more or less quickly, or somehow stop the slide on the way down. Once you [take that first step, as you] embrace its totalizing moral logic, it inevitably undermines many of the beliefs we hold dear in Western life, since [as an inextricable whole] it contradicts those beliefs so thoroughly."

"One might object that the transgender phenomenon is so recent in time that it is unfair to link it with the earlier, more “respectable” version of, say, gay rights or abortion advocacy. But this rests on a distorted notion of how the earlier changes came about in the first place. This didn’t happen because arguments for mainstreaming homosexual behavior won out in a “marketplace of ideas.” They won as the result of activist manipulation, as when gay rights activists bullied the American Psychological Association to remove its classification of homosexuality as a “mental disorder” from its diagnostic manual. They used the same activist playbook as their woke successors and leveraged its cultural power in the “consciousness making” centers of society to reshape elite opinions on sexuality. This, in turn, influenced the courts, culminating in the Obergefell case that enshrined gay “marriage” into law. This was pivotal, because it gave sexual revolutionaries legal power over their cultural opponents. Obergefell in particular acted as a signal for the cultural Left to shake off its moderation and openly declare war on their enemies. Following the decision, liberal law professor Mark Tushnet declared, “the culture wars are over, we won” in 2016—meaning the losers didn’t merit any mercy legally speaking. In 2017, one wealthy gay rights activist said in an interview that he wanted to “punish the wicked,” presumably those who would not accept same-sex marriage. 
But the significance of Obergefell goes beyond this because it enshrined the main idea of the Sexual Revolution—that nature has nothing to do with our humanity—into our Civil Rights regime. It put behind it what in effect is a second constitution, one whose strictures can be used to override formerly sacrosanct rights such as speech, assembly, and religion... I say this because I believe the cultural Left is more invested in sexual revolution than anti-racist wokeness, which I think is more a matter of opportunism. The former is tied to a much more powerful tendency in modern society, the drive to control nature. This is the Left’s positive goal; its strictures on race are more about undermining its opponents. 
This logic can be seen at work in the Left’s policy on immigration. Far from seeing immigrants as coming from unique ethnic or cultural backgrounds that are incompatible and which might alter the nature of American society in significant ways, the Left sees immigrants as interchangeable with the current population of the country. 
As with so much else, the Left’s cultural agenda fits perfectly with that of the modern administrative state, whose directors see in immigrants little more than interchangeable quanta of laboring meat. They both see human beings primarily as resources to be exploited, tax cattle to be milked for their Utopian projects, whether it be remaking one’s body according to their self-image or remaking other countries in the self-image of our elites.

"...convincing the newcomers to the coalition of the sane that they must oppose the Sexual Revolution in ALL its aspects is imperative because the challenges it poses are far more extensive than any specific issue. Its revolutionary logic cannot be undone by pulling out one thread and leaving the rest in place. This is why merely stopping Drag Queen Story Hour at your local library or getting a few more victories at the Supreme Court, though necessary starting points, will not solve the problem. Without understanding the nature and extent of the challenge, any coalition against it is doomed to fail.