BY CHUCK BALDWIN
SEE: http://www.newswithviews.com/baldwin/baldwin909.htm;
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
The Barack Obama Justice and Education departments have declared that all public schools be required to institute gender-neutral bathrooms where boys can freely enter girls’ bathrooms and vice versa. Failure to comply threatens federal funding. But putting boys in girls’ bathrooms is NOT where the proclamation stops.
Writing for National Review, David French reports, “You may not have realized it yet, but the Obama administration just destroyed the traditional American public school. Without an act of Congress, without a ruling from the Supreme Court, and without even going through the motions of the regulatory rule-making process, the administration issued a letter drafting every single public educational institution in the country to implement the extreme edge of the sexual revolution.
“The Department of Justice and the Department of Education have declared that they now ‘interpret’ federal law to not only support the fantastical notion that boys can become girls but also to impose new legal requirements that impact every aspect of school life. The administration’s letter sweeps far beyond bathrooms--imposing a new speech code on school employees and even students, opening girls’ showers to boys, requiring schools to allow boys to sleep in girls’ rooms on overnight field trips, requiring boys to room with girls even in single-sex dorms, and putting boys on girls’ sports teams.”
See the report here.
Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant called the directive “outrageous” and directed his State’s education department to disregard the order. Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick called the order “blackmail” and also said, “This will be the end of public education. People will pull their kids out, homeschooling will explode, private schools will increase.” Both he and Texas Governor Greg Abbott have denounced the proclamation and have promised to fight it. Also saying they would fight the order are governors Asa Hutchinson (Arkansas) and Gary Herbert (Utah).
But for the most part, Republicans have been totally silent. In typical fashion, the GOP is too busy trying to not offend the media. And are we to take it that Democrats really want their sons and daughters going to the bathroom and taking showers with the opposite sex? Of course, Obama’s two daughters attend private schools that will not be affected by this perverse proclamation.
But even more disgusting is the fact that the vast majority of pastors and churches have said absolutely nothing. They are too busy trying to not offend the IRS and trying to figure out how to out-Hollywood Hollywood in order to draw bigger and bigger crowds.
The big question is: are the moms and dads of America's public school children going to stand for this perversity that is going to directly affect their children? Are they really going to sit back and give their sons and daughters over to the government-mandated corruption of the innocence and moral purity of our nation's schoolchildren? Lt. Gov. Patrick predicts the implementation of this order will be the “end of public education.” But will it? Will the parents of America actually resist this blatant attempt to invade not only the bathrooms and showers but also the moral conscience of their children? Or will they passively allow their children to be subjected to this grotesque and overt attempt to destroy their moral conscience?
If this order is allowed to be fully implemented, this nation is toast. In the entire history of the world, no nation has ever survived once it has given itself--and especially its children--over to universal moral corruption. Ever. And giving our children over to moral corruption is exactly what Obama’s proclamation does.
David French also correctly wrote, “First, the very act of teaching biology and human physiology will be hate speech unless it’s modified to conform to the new transgender ‘facts.’ Teachers will have to take great pains to note that chromosomes, reproductive organs, hormonal systems, and any other physical marker of sex is irrelevant to this thing called ‘gender,’ which, ‘factually,’ is a mere state of mind.
“Second, any statements of dissent--from teachers or students--will be treated as both ‘anti-science’ and ‘discriminatory,’ contributing to a ‘hostile environment’ that schools are legally bound to prohibit. This prohibition will go well beyond the use of pronouns and into discussions of what it means to be male and female. The argument that a ‘girl’ with a penis remains a boy will be treated exactly the same as an argument that blacks are inferior to whites or Arabs inferior to Jews.
“Third, public schools will now be even further opposed, doctrinally and legally, to orthodox Christianity. Christian parents who send their children to public schools need to be aware of the new ‘facts.’ They will be taught not only that their churches are factually wrong in their assessments of sex and gender but that they are actually bigoted and hateful--comparable to white supremacists.
“Fourth, the administration’s actions set a key political precedent. Federal funding--long seen as a boon to local schools--is now clearly and unmistakably an instrument of national control. The federal education bureaucracy is stocked with energetic and creative progressives, and last week’s letter represents just one more step in an ongoing effort to turn money into mandates.”
See the report here.
“Turn[ing] money into mandates” seems to be the crux of the issue. In the same way that the federal government threatens to withhold funding from schools that refuse to implement this act of corrupting the morals of our nation's schoolchildren, it threatens (through the IRS-created 501c3 tax-exempt status for churches) to withhold tax exemption from churches that dare to speak out on this or any other “political” issue.
Truly, for the sake of waking our pastors and churches out of their coma and getting them involved again in the fight to preserve the liberties and way of life of our nation, it would be better if churches were NOT tax-exempt at all. Let them start paying taxes and see how quickly and aggressively they would again engage the salient issues of our day. Again, in the same way that the federal government threatens to withhold funding for schools that will not comply, it threatens to withhold tax exemption from churches that speak out against compliance. Which is worse? School leaders and church leaders alike are groveling before the federal government for the scraps from the king’s table.
In addition to the immorality of Obama’s proclamation, constitutional attorneys Bill Olson and Herb Titus filed an amicus brief on May 10 in a Gloucester, Virginia, case that now falls under the Obama proclamation dated three days later. Here is a summary written by Olson and Titus:
“The Obama Administration has done it again. In an effort to strip school children of their modesty and morals, Obama has issued new instructions governing use of rest rooms, locker rooms, and showers in every government-funded school in the country. And, in predictably lawless fashion, Obama has violated not one, but two federal laws. First, he took a 1972 law, Title IX, which was designed to prevent sex discrimination in education, and says that as of today, the word ‘sex’ in the statute does not mean the ‘sex’ you were born with. It means whatever ‘gender’ you feel like on a given day. And, if that was not bad enough, the manner in which the Obama Administration acted was to legislate by letter, not just usurping legislative power, but Obama violating another federal law--the Administrative Procedures Act.
“Purporting to act according to what are known as official ‘good guidance’ practices, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education issued a transgender ‘good guidance’ letter, dated May 13, 2016. Such a ‘good guidance’ letter can only be issued if it does not add requirements to applicable law, but provides information and examples to inform recipients about how the Departments evaluate whether covered agencies are complying with their legal obligations.
“However, like a newly enacted statute or promulgation of a new regulation, the May 13 good guidance letter includes list of new terms, never previously adopted by Congress or the Administration. Not only that, but the letter contains rules governing the interpretation of those new legal terms. For example, the letter defines ‘gender identity’ to be ‘an individual’s internal sense of gender,’ but then forbids the use of any objective standard--such as ‘medical diagnosis or treatment’--to verify any individual claim. One’s gender identity is, thus, established solely by a person’s subjective claim. And that claim can change from day to day.
“Additionally, the good guidance letter indicates that the rules governing ‘sex segregated activities and facilities’ are not the same. As for restroom and locker use, ‘transgender students must have access to such facilities consistent with their gender identity,’ but with respect to ‘athletics,’ gender identity is not the sole determinant of access. That is, for athletics, a boy who feels he should be a ‘transgender girl’ could be excluded from the girls’ basketball team, but not put out of the girls’ locker room.
“None of these examples merely ‘provides information and examples’ of existing regulations--which is all that guidance letters may do lawfully. This letter presents brand new interpretations of the word ‘sex’ and new applications of new terms. And, they are binding.”
See the report here.
I repeat what I said earlier: if this order is allowed to be fully implemented, this nation is toast. In the entire history of the world, no nation has ever survived once it has given itself--and especially its children--over to universal moral corruption. And giving our children over to moral corruption is exactly what Obama’s proclamation does.
William Wilberforce, the famed British statesman who was primarily responsible for ending the slave trade in Great Britain, astutely observed, “It is a truth attested by the history of all ages and countries, and established on the authority of the ablest writers, both ancient and modern . . . that the religion and morality of a country, especially of every free community, are inseparably connected with its preservation and welfare; that their flourishing or declining state is the sure indication of its tending to prosperity or decay. It has even been expressly laid down, that a people grossly corrupt are incapable of liberty.”
Sam Adams, The Father of The American Revolution, rightly said, “Public liberty will not long survive the total extinction of morals.”
This is not a conservative or liberal issue. And at its core, it is not even a religious issue. This is an issue about the most fundamental duty that responsible adults have in a civilized society: the responsibility to safeguard their posterity. Failure at this level would mean that this country no longer has the will or reason to survive.