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Several adult children of same sex households are starting to speak up about the wounds children have when deliberately deprived of one of their parents, and why they oppose same sex marriage. One such person is Katy Faust. She’s an engaging, compassionate, brave, and loving voice for the rights of children to know their origins. Listen to her speak in the clip below: Katy’s open letter to Justice Anthony Kennedy which was published at The Public Discourse last month got nearly 300,000 shares on social media so far. You can follow Katy’s amazing blog, which goes by the tongue-in-cheek name www.askthebigot.com In this clip Katy talks about how important it is — especially as Christians — to straddle a fence. We should not cocoon ourselves, but must reach out in love to the other side while holding fast to the Truth. This may be very difficult, but it is our calling. After listening to Katy, I feel the need to strike a more conciliary tone in my writing. I want to always hold fast to the truth, but I do need to delve more into understanding and conveying the pain people feel. And the loneliness. Our human condition so often motivates us to stray and get lost and end up feeling that only hate is coming from “the other side.” Nevertheless, the mechanics of the same sex marriage campaign has been essentially political in nature. It will reach a political apex in April’s Supreme Court hearings, which will determine if it is the law of the land. In the past couple of years a few blue state legislatures legalized same sex marriage after hearing testimonies about how hurt people felt by the definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Still, it was a close call. In New York in 2011 Gov. Cuomo had to resort to late night back room deals and extend the session after official adjournment. There was obviously a lot of arm twisting until he managed to get the three votes he wanted. A very similar thing happened in Maryland with Gov. O’Malley in 2012. He also worked overtime to get the three votes he wanted. Then, after just a few legislatures passed the measures by the thinnest of margins, activist judges sprang into action to strike down laws in every state whose legislatures hadn’t passed same sex marriage. And that’s where we are today. Emotions have basically been the fuel of what looks to be window-of-opportunity politics. Real societal change naturally occurs over time, as people absorb and think through the consequences of policies. But when it moves at lightning speed like this, from the top down — along with speech codes that punish any dissent as “bigotry” — that’s a clear indicator that you’re dealing with manufactured consent that has an expiration date. It can be obtained only under extreme pressure. Basically “marriage equality” has been a hard core propaganda campaign and a very hard and fast sell. An excellent article that reflects on it all is “Gay Marriage: A Case Study in Conformism” by Brendan O’Neill in the British publication Spiked. This goes way beyond gay marriage. It seems that what we’re really dealing with here is the building of a closed society in which dissent will not be tolerated. But, no matter what happens, I think Katy has the answer.

Today in The Federalist you’ll find my article President Obama’s Trans National Strategy in which I investigate why the Administration is going into hyper drive to push transgenderism. We can see this especially in the context of the 2015 National Security Strategy, released last month. It leaves little doubt that the Administration is hellbent on making sure transgender individuals serve openly in the U. S. Military. Transgender military personnel would then have the green light to target and harass any officer or other personnel who may not seem on board — all on the pretext of anti-discrimination protection, of course. It’s an agenda of seismic proportions that seems likely to sow chaos and confusion into the military, endangering its mission of defending the US Constitution. At the end of the day, the LGBT agenda enforces on America a military less able to maintain order and discipline, as well as a society that does away with sex distinctions. It’s a global agenda too. Here are some excerpts: In the broader context of Obama’s sex and gender politics, transgender issues seem to be taking a position of critical importance in the White House efforts to reinvent us all. This follows naturally enough from our president’s evolution from paying lip service to traditional marriage to open advocacy of same-sex marriage. State endorsement of the reinvention of sexual relationships in marriage blends almost seamlessly into state endorsement of the reinvention of sex and gender distinctions. And—voila!—in December, Attorney General Eric Holder announced in a memo that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination “on the basis of sex,” shall henceforth be read to include gender identity. This year’s State of the Union address was the first to mention the word “transgender.” All of this seems to be on its own inevitable trajectory to push transgenderism hard from above. Holder’s new and expansive interpretation of the word “sex” greatly magnifies the power and reach of the Justice Department to prosecute businesses and individuals, or any entity that appears out of line with gender identity non-discrimination. Expect to see it used to put down any corner of resistance to transgenderism in  the military .

Several events last week show just how fast certain cultural forces are working to separate us from one another, always, of course, in the name of “equality.” Fashion designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana spoke about how important it is for children to have both a mother and a father, and also criticized the use of artificial reproductive technologies in order to deliberately deprive a child of a mother or a father. Rock star Elton John who with his same sex partner has two such children, immediately called for a boycott of Dolce and Gabbana. Patricia Jannuzzi, a Catholic who has taught for over 30 years in a Catholic school expressed her support for traditional marriage — in line with Catholic teaching — on her personal Facebook page. She is now the target of an LGBT-supported petition campaign to have her fired, as well as for the school to promote “anti hate speech.” The Catholic Church itself has not defended her, to put it mildly. Another adult child raised by lesbians has come out in opposition to same sex marriage. Heather Barwick’s article in The Federalist, “Dear Gay Community: Your Kids are Hurting” has so far garnered over 42,000 social media shares and thousands of comments. She has become an object of vitriol and scorn by the militant LGBT lobby for voicing her opinion. She and other adult children from same sex households – including Katy Faust, Robert Oscar Lopez, Dawn Stefanowicz, Denise Shick, and Rivka Edelman – will be earning more wrath from LGBT shock brigades as they file amicus curiae briefs to the Supreme Court voicing their opposition to same sex marriage. What do all these cases have in common? Well, I could state the obvious, which is that the critical issue for kids is not so much having a gay parent, but yearning for a missing mother or father. And whether or not a parent is missing because of divorce, adoption, or other conditions is not the point. The inherent issue with same sex parenting is that it absolutely requires that one parent be missing from the family. It also requires that the law implicitly deny all children this right. But there is another common thread that runs through all of these stories. It’s the brutal silencing of any voice of dissent. Political correctness is just too cute a term for the sort of fascism that’s running rampant through society today, particularly on the marriage issue. I commend you to again read “Gay Marriage: A Case Study in Conformism,” by Brendan O’Neill. PC has become the sort of extremism that ramps itself up to a level that invites savagery. Which brings us to the topic of tongue cutting. TC for short. If we had a spectrum of free speech with civil society on one end and tongue cutting on the other, I would say we have definitely crossed the halfway point and are proceeding in the direction of tongue cutting. Saddam Hussein used to literally have critics’ tongues cut out. Tongue cutting is also standard operating procedure in the world of Islamic fascism and sharia law. That’s because whenever you are dealing with totalitarians, the very idea of freedom of expression cramps their style. Of course we’re not at the literal reality of TC, but I think it’s fair to say that TC is now a virtual reality.

When children are separated from their biological parents, they are gravely wounded. Sure, they can develop coping mechanisms. But they suffer a primal wound that cannot and should not be ignored. I think the more we disregard the bond of child to mother and father, the more we devolve as a society into grave injustice towards children. And it doesn’t matter if a woman agrees to donate her egg or if a man happily donates his sperm or if a surrogate contracts to give up a child in exchange for money or for any other reason. The child will experience any such act as a loss. We need to stop looking at children as commodities to satisfy adult desires. If we keep hurtling down this path of human separation — separation that has roots in no fault divorce, the sexual revolution and abortion on demand — we will all end up enslaved by a bureaucratic state. So today I recommend you read some recent documents that have historic significance. They are amicus curiae briefs to the Supreme Court written by adult children from same sex households, in opposition to same sex marriage. They are writers and scholars who understand – from their unique perspective of being severed from a birth parent and deliberately deprived of an opposite sex parent– that children have an inherent right to know their origins wherever possible. When deprived of the love and knowledge of a birth parent, it’s a loss and a scar that doesn’t go away. Here’s the reality: same sex marriage absolutely requires that the state accept and encourage the separation of children from their biological parents. This is the trajectory it puts us on, even if we don’t quite feel its effects on society just yet. Three amicus briefs were filed by six defenders of marriage. Dawn Stefanowicz and Denise Shick filed jointly here: http://www.supremecourt.gov/ObergefellHodges/AmicusBriefs/14-556_Dawn_Stefanowicz_and_Denise_Shick.pdf Heather Barwick and Katy Faust filed jointly here: http://www.supremecourt.gov/ObergefellHodges/AmicusBriefs/14-556_Heather_Barwick_and_Katy_Faust.pdf Robert Oscar Lopez and BN Klein filed jointly here: http://www.supremecourt.gov/ObergefellHodges/AmicusBriefs/14-556_Robert_Oscar_Lopez_and_BN_Klein.pdf This is the primary question before the Court: Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex? Professor Lopez argues persuasively that same sex marriage is on a collision course with the natural rights of children.  The Fourteenth Amendment should more appropriately be applied to children in this case.  Otherwise, it severs them from the right to know their origins, and does so without due process.  Here’s an excerpt from Lopez’s brief: The Court should refer to the Fourteenth Amendment clause about equal protection of the laws, in order to uphold laws that define marriage as only male-female. In upholding such laws the Court would ensure that citizens with gay parents have equal protection both as minors and as adults, and that such citizens will not be estranged from their father or mother without due process. In truth it is gay marriage that will create a suspect class of children targeted for the denial of essential civil and human rights. Gay marriage will allow adults to acquire custody of other people’s children and deny those children connections to their original mother and father. Other problems flow from this initial denial of the basic human right to be connected to one’s origins. What the Court must weigh now is the competing application of the Fourteenth Amendment to two distinct classes: gay and lesbian couples who want children, and on the other hand, COGs. It really looks like we are all being set up to cede our rights to know our parents and our origins.

In my latest Federalist article I reflect on how I watched a manhunt break out during a morning walk. It led me to consider things both practical and spiritual: “It was a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood — For a Manhunt” FYI, the clip above gives a bit of “ambiance,” though that segment was not filmed on my street. The action shifted all morning. But I didn’t even know they were entering houses until I found this clip! It’s interesting that this was put up by Russia Today news. (This makes me chuckle a little because it reminds me a bit about the way Soviets liked to do propaganda, and how they would have loved to zero in on something like this to show “very bad Amerika.”) It was a wild morning for me. In the aftermath I considered two questions, one practical and one spiritual. The practical side had me thinking about personal security (as in firearms.) The spiritual side had me reflecting on the question put to Christ just before his parable of the Good Samaritan: “Who is my neighbor?” And how do people get to be the way they are?

As the granddaughter of Armenian genocide survivors, I’ve been paying close attention to this year’s one hundredth anniversary of the slaughter of 1.5 million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire. Lately, I’ve been immersing myself in reading and writing about it. It’s depressing to say the least. And draining. But as the philosopher George Santayana warned, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” And I see a reflection of the Armenian Genocide in the mass slaughter of Christians in today’s Middle East. So we absolutely must not forget history. We must respect the historical record and resist all corruption of the language in speaking about that record. While studying the genocide, I strived to connect all of the dots – the conditions of World War I when it all took place, the actions of the Ottoman government of Turkey to exterminate the Armenian Christians, the political differences among the Armenians themselves, the role of the Armenian Apostolic Church, and so much more. I am so grateful to my grandfather for giving all of his descendants an extraordinary gift by chronicling his experiences in writing. I can feel the fear and confusion as he describes how the police arrived in his village in the summer of 1915 with orders for all Armenians to leave their homes before sunrise. A chaotic caravan formed. And it was “Bedlam all around! The whining of the dogs, the lowing of the oxen, the bleating of the cows and sheep! The wailing cries of the women. . .” The wife of one villager was in active labor during the chaos, and was placed on a cart where she gave birth to a stillborn baby. On another cart a villager placed his disabled adult daughter who could neither speak nor walk. Her wailing was loud and pitiful and ended when “a police guard split her skull with the butt of his rifle.” There are plenty more horrors to add to that one. But there are also stories of great kindness and miracles along the way. And I am amazed to be able to map out my grandfather’s deportation route from his village in the Kayseri region in central Turkey. The many places he passed through included a strenuous journey through the Taurus Mountains, the ancient Armenian city of Sis, down to Hama in Syria, and then Aleppo where huge numbers of Armenians were concentrated in filthy camp conditions. He would later go to Adana and then board a ship from Mersin to get to Smyrna. There he and my grandmother survived the Great Fire of Smyrna in 1922. They managed to get to Greece, and then, finally America. Through a great miracle my grandfather and his caravan avoided being deported to Der Zor, which was deep in the Syrian desert where much of the killing took place. I will have a few pieces published soon on the genocide. And I’ll post them on this blog. In the meantime, a great resource to read up on it all is at http://www.armenian-genocide.org/online_exhibits.html

Please visit these links to read three articles I wrote, all published today on the commemoration of 100 Years since the Armenian Genocide. http://www.firstthings.com/ web-exclusives/2015/04/ confession-and-the-armenian- genocide http://www.weeklystandard.com/ blogs/genocide-begins- groupthink_928078.html http://thefederalist.com/2015/ 04/24/what-you-should-know- about-the-armenian-genocide/ The more I read history, especially of such tragedies, the more convinced I am that it is our one-on-one relationships based in trust that is key to our survival and to freedom. My article in First Things focuses on that. My article in The Weekly Standard identifies groupthink as the fuel that allows such things to happen. And in the Federalist I give an overview of the genocide. I’ll be writing more about this soon. Thank you again for following my blog.

Tyrants and bullies always meddle in happy and healthy relationships in order to destroy them. Power mongers have always abhored happiness and goodwill. You’ll find this on every level — from totalitarian dictators right on down to the petty mean girls in a middle school cafeteria. Relationships are the primary source of power. And wherever true friendship flourishes, human beings are not so easily exploited by outside influences. This is exactly why totalitarian programs and regimes have always had a keen interest in the extermination of one-on-one friendship – or any personal relationships they cannot regulate and control. I thought about this the other day when I listened to Melkite Archbishop Jeanbart of Aleppo talk about the devastation of Aleppo and the dire situation for Christians there and throughout Syria. Christians of Aleppo have been leaving in droves since ISIS started fighting government forces there in 2012. (Just to give you a taste of what’s going on, read the travel advisory from wikitravel. In part it states: “If in Syria, the best advice is to GET OUT.”) The brutality and bloodshed have been merciless. And Aleppo — once a magnificent city — is now thoroughly scarred by the fighting. The accompanying photos give a small idea of the contrast before and after. The archbishop spoke about relations between the Christians and Muslims of Aleppo before the Civil War. Life was good, relations were friendly and people lived in peace. Then, ISIS injected into the culture a certain “mentality” as it practiced its senseless murder and destruction. It is a mentality of separation, division, hatred, and violence that has destroyed the co-existence of different religious groups. ISIS is in the business of sowing ill will and poisoning any chance of trust among peoples because no one in their right mind would ever choose to live voluntarily under such a regime. Its power can only come about through brute force. Christians in Aleppo — and all civilians — report feeling safest when in government-controlled areas, not ISIS controlled areas. So even though President Assad is considered a brutal tyrant among many in the West, many who are personally living through the hell in today’s Syria, including Christians, tend to feel that Assad is at least the best of a sorry lot. In any case, what we are seeing now in Syria and throughout the Middle East is the recurrence of conditions that promote genocide. And it’s probably fair to say the recurrence of genocide itself. As we ponder this, we should remember that the conditions that promote genocide always involve propaganda that sows ill will and the demonization of a people. We see it in the rise of anti-Semitism. And we see it as the Western press promotes a strong anti-Christian bias which also fuels these conditions. And when the mass media goes along with such things, you get a death spiral. Worse, leaders in the West who say little and do less about it all fan the flames through their indifference. This toleration and lack of condemnation of the violence sends a clear signal to the perpetrators that they can get away with as much murder and mayhem as they like. Indeed, ISIS is doing to Christians just as the Ottomans did to Armenians as they embarked on that genocide that murdered 1.5 million a hundred years ago. I wrote about this in my April 24 Weekly Standard article “Genocide begins with Groupthink.” So it fascinated me to hear the Archbishop opine that what we are seeing now with the rise of ISIS looks very much like a re-establishment of the Ottoman Empire. It’s especially sad to reflect on the fact that there has been very little social progress over the past 50 years. Actually, it’s been an era of great social regression. Our best hope is for people of goodwill to remember the link between freedom and friendship, and to persist in planting the seeds of both.

There has been plenty of academic literature over the years that views the intact family as the main culprit in promoting “inequality.” Marxists have long called for the abolition of the family. Clearly that’s because families — and the strong personal relationships that families spawn and broadcast across societies — turn out to be a thorn in the side of State power. So it should be no surprise that as government grows, attacks on the family become more and more direct. We saw this when MSNBC anchor Melissa Harris-Perry flat out declared that children “belong to their communities,” not to their families. (I wrote about this a while back in an American Thinker piece, “The War on the Family Enters a New Stage.“) "I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, but I think they should have that thought occasionally." By stating this, Swift suggests the following to us:  Think of bedtime stories as a source of "inequality."  Feel guilty for loving and attending to your child. There are so many distortions in Swift's picture that we can't even begin to count the ways.  First off, it assumes that love is something we should all quantify and ration as a society.  It assumes that children are cogs in a machine. Worst of all, it assumes that children who are not getting attention and love from their parents don't really deserve it.  Leveling down in the name of equality always leads to more leveling down and impoverishment.  And yet Swift's proposal means leveling down not just the tangibles of money and material resources, but of the intangibles of love and attention. He suggests we provide less of it in a world starving for it. Whether they know it or not (though I suspect they know it), Swift and company are conducting a war on personal relationships -- starting with children and families.  That's because I suspect they know, as I have noted in the theme of this blog, that most power comes from personal relationships. Strong relationships -- especially from the start of life with one-on-one family bonds -- are the primary source of knowledge, and therefore of power and of freedom.  They give children the stability and security to gain confidence and freedom.  They give children an accurate moral and emotional compass by which to navigate the world.  To suggest more children should be deprived of such things is essentially an act of violence.

Today I write in the Federalist about the next phase of the LGBT agenda: “LGBT Activists Arm for Further War on Free Speech.” Assuming the Supreme Court signs on to the notion of “marriage equality” in June, we can expect an all-out war against free expression that will come to us in the guise of anti-discrimination law. There’s nothing new about the urge to accumulate and centralize power. It’s an ancient urge with its source in the sin of pride and it requires the old divide-and-conquer routine that involves restricting communication between people. People have been dealing with it – and accommodating it – for millennia. So it shouldn’t surprise us that those pushing hardest for the right to gag Americans are well-heeled hedge fund managers such as billionaire Paul Singer. Such things are always about more power for the powerful. In this case, LGBT rights serves as sheep’s clothing. The new PAC intended to get us herded together is called the American Unity Fund. And its intended campaign goes by the Orwellian name “Freedom for All Americans.” The laws they propose would neutralize any voice of opposition to the LGBT agenda, which means the cultivation of groupthink, particularly within conservative and evangelical circles. The net effect of the forced marginalization of dissent will be much more aggressive policing of speech in the workplace, schools, businesses, and public squares across America. But it’s much bigger than the notion of gay rights. In the end, we get coercive thought reform and collectivism across the board in America. Much of this has already taken place in Canada, which legalized same sex marriage ten years ago. I also commend to you two other related articles in today’s Federalist. Luma Simms writes brilliantly about the meaning of religious freedom and whether or not it can exist in a nation that has lost its moral moorings: “Can We Have Religious Liberty in Modern America?” And Robert Tracinski offers a warning to Ireland which is about to have a plebiscite on same sex marriage: “Ireland: Look to America’s Cautionary Tale on Gay Marriage.”

Today I just want to offer some links for reading about the Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner hype. I have not yet weighed in on this with a published article of my own, but I hope to soon. So, the other day we had a much-ballyhooed Vanity Fair cover story in which the gold medal winner of the men’s decathlon in the 1976 Olympics “came out” as a woman. Whether or not Jenner looks convincing or glamourous on the cover is neither here nor there as far as the endgame of the Transgender Project is concerned. The endgame is to erase all sex distinctions in law. The Jenner publicity stunt is basically a tool to affect and direct public opinion as a means of moving forward on that goal. The agenda is far more expansive and invasive than normalizing the desire to “present” as male or female in public. I commend to you the following articles, if you have not already read them. These four all appeared in the Federalist: Bruce Jenner is Not Brave, by Nicole Russell How the Hypersexual Trans Movement hurts Feminism, by Libby Evans and David Marcus Bruce Jenner’s Transformation is a Lose-Lose for Leftists, by Daniel Davis Bruce Jenner: Selfie Culture Hero, by Amy Otto And Matt Walsh wrote an excellent article in which he calls the transgender movement what it is: basically, a war on reality. Read it here: Calling Bruce Jenner a Woman is an Insult to Women Many prefer just to turn their heads away from all of this, and I understand that. But it is crucial that we pay attention and weigh in – and push back – because it affects all of us: through the corruption of our language, through modification of our behavior, and through coercion and anti-speech laws. We have already seen how the forces behind this movement have been conducting a war on language in which any “misgendering” of pronouns is considered an act of discrimination, or even hate. None of this bodes well for liberty in society. A good way to push back is to question the pronoun protocols and to resist them. Why resist? Because it’s not really about “gendering” the transgender person. It’s about de-sexing you, by default. It does this through the enforced language, which pulls you into accepting the fiction that everybody’s sex — including yours — does not exist in physical reality, but only in the mind. I’d like to add, incidentally, that I don’t object in everyday life to calling someone by their preferred name, transgender or not. But there is a difference between that and being lured into a trap of language corruption through pronouns usage that basically redefines humanity for everyone. I hope to write about that soon. This corruption of language also has the effect of short-circuiting our ability to communicate freely with one another. It sows distrust and that is a force that aims to separate us all. As George Orwell noted, the corruption of language puts us at the mercy of tyrants. In short, we really are dealing with a war on reality itself. Sadly, it’s a train wreck that’s been a long time coming.

How to Escape the Age of Mass Delusion."   In it I quote at length from Joost Meerloo's book "The Rape of the Mind," which I discussed in a previous post, and which I would love to see widely read today. No doubt you've noticed that we are deeply into a phase of "transformation" in which we are being told to step off of the solid ground of reality and take ourselves for a little walk through a large pool of quicksand.  The Bruce-Jenner-as-a-woman stunt is the latest signpost in our journey into the Twilight Zone. And not because Jenner says he wishes to be called "Caitlyn" or because he tells us he is a woman.  We generally all agree that he can say whatever he wishes however he wishes and dress as he wishes. The fact is that this has far less to do Bruce Jenner than it has to do with all the rest of us.  What's going on here is a very hard sell of Anti-Reality by a few power elites who seem to control the media, Hollywood, and what passes for universities these days. The problem is that Americans let their guard down and weren't paying enough attention while the groundwork was being laid for this insanity. And once we are persuaded en masse -- through threat of social punishment -- to buy into the notion that Jenner is a woman, we have agreed as a society to descend into that rabbit hole.  This is a perfect trial balloon that shows how easily we can be manipulated to go along with just about anything. Not good. Such stunts amount to attempts at mind rape.  And we must resist.   In the article I note that love and laughter are the best antidotes to delusion.  Resistance involves outreach.  It means cultivating strong and healthy relationships and speaking truth in love. I hope you get a chance to read my essay and share it.  Here's an excerpt: The whole image of such mass delusion in America is surrealistic, especially to comfortably insulated Americans who believe our first freedoms could never really be thrown away in the face of such a full-frontal, PC-induced attack. Most cannot grasp that such mobs are mentally detached from reality. And participants in the mob action cannot comprehend that they are actually cutting off their own freedom of expression, as well as everybody else’s. Why would anyone want to build such a culture of coercion? In a word, power. “Equality” is not the reason for what is happening with such mobs. It is the pretext for what they are doing. Like all such deceptions, its sole purpose is as a vehicle to transfer power from individuals to an increasingly centralized state. The fuel, as usual, is the emotional blackmail of people of goodwill, the uses of mass mobilization to exploit that goodwill, then, finally, to render all such goodwill meaningless.