BUILDING FAMILIES

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Families don’t grow by themselves; they need dedication, commitment and self-sacrifice. Mary Eberstadt is an American researcher and writer. In conversation with John Anderson, Mary said:

“Politicians should look at every possible experiment to make it easier to get married, easier to have families, and easier to have families of size… One of the most frustrating things in the United States, for which we have very good laws, is obscenity, and yet there are no prosecutions for the creators of pornography. We need to go after this, it’s a proven contributor to romantic trouble, to marital breakup, and it is often cited in divorce cases. American parents seem to be waking up to the problem of what is being taught in American public schools, this is all to the good. The privileging of motherhood would be a great thing to bring back. Hungary is experimenting with some very interesting ideas. For example, women with four or more children do not have to pay income tax for the rest of their lives.“

While We Were Sleeping, here in Australia, there has been near silence on the family; the cry has always been about the rights of the individual or a minority. (The Family First Party under Lyle Shelton being an invaluable exception). Society seems to have accepted that shattered families are simply our daily reality, one in three marriages ending in divorce, quoted Warwick Marsh.

However, there is encouragement. Stephen Turley, in his study of demography (the study of changes in the number of births, deaths, and marriages, etc, in a particular area over a specified period of time), quotes from Eric Kaufmann’s 2002 study of American demographic trends, which suggested ‘religious fundamentalists are on course to take over the world.’ (Self-identified non-religious women only had 1.5 children per couple, compared with conservative evangelical women who had 2.5 children, replacement fertility being defined as 2.1 children).

Consequently, the socialist left, supporters of homosexuality, gender transition, abortion, euthanasia and the fear of climate change are having fewer babies than replacement and will breed out, while conservative evangelicals who trust in God are going forth and multiplying! (Genesis 1:28)

The Rights of the Child

Katy Faust is the founder and president of the children’s rights organisation Them Before Us, a global non-profit. In 2021, together with Stacey Manning, they published Them Before Us: Why We Need a Global Children’s Rights Movement.

The same-sex marriage agenda got these ladies involved, as they were angry that the so-called rights of adults were being recognised, while immense harm was being inflicted on the children, who became pawns to be traded in the marketplace of feelings. It is ironic that one of the hallmarks of the progressives has been their stand for the rights of minorities, yet they have set back children’s rights by decades.

Dying to Self

For me, the biggest take-home from this chapter on family is the principle of dying to self for the flourishing of family.

Often, as followers of Jesus, we don’t ‘present your bodies a living sacrifice’ (Romans 12:1) as Jesus clearly did when He died for our sins. Only when we die can Jesus shine through us. The apostle Paul acknowledged, in the last days, ‘men will be lovers of themselves’ (2 Timothy 3:2), so true. Marriage is the ultimate death of two that one might live; the Scripture says that ‘the two shall become one flesh’ (Mark 10:8).

For half a century, I have treasured this anonymous depiction of dying to self — it always catches me out:

  1. When you are forgotten, or neglected, or purposely set at naught, and you don’t sting and hurt with the insult or the oversight, but your heart is happy, being counted worthy to suffer for Christ… That is dying to self.
  2. When your good is evil spoken of, when your wishes are crossed, your advice disregarded, your opinions ridiculed, and you refuse to let anger rise in your heart or even defend yourself, but take it all in patient loving silence… That is dying to self.
  3. When you lovingly and patiently bear any disorder, any irregularity, any unpunctuality, or any annoyance; when you can stand face to face with waste, folly, extravagance, spiritual insensibility…and endure it as Jesus endured it… That is dying to self.
  4. When you are content with any food, any offering, any raiment, any climate, any society, any solitude, and interruption by the will of God… That is dying to self.
  5. When you never care to refer to yourself in conversation, or to record your own good works, or itch after commendation, when you can truly love to be unknown… That is dying to self.
  6. When you can see your brother prosper and have his needs met and can honestly rejoice with him in spirit and feel no envy nor question God, while your own needs are far greater and in desperate circumstances… That is dying to self.
  7. When you can receive correction and reproof from one of less stature than yourself, and can humbly submit inwardly as well as outwardly, finding no rebellion or resentment rising up within your heart… That is dying to self.

I pray that our families might be filled with joy as their dominant characteristic. Fathers, what about Proverbs 5:18 (MSG): “Your spring water is for you and you only, not to be passed around among strangers. Bless your fresh-flowing fountain! Enjoy the wife you married as a young man! Lovely as an angel, beautiful as a rose — don’t ever quit taking delight in her body. Never take her love for granted! Why would you trade enduring intimacies for cheap thrills with a prostitute? for dalliance with a promiscuous stranger?“

From this committed bedrock to our marriages, let’s build strong families, giving our children a secure, lasting and firm foundation for the adventure of their lifetime.

LATEST ON GENDER TRANSITION PROCEDURES

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President Trump has issued an executive order to take the various state laws on Gender Transition for Minors up to the national level.

“This executive order is beautiful. The language in it is wonderful,” Family Research Council Senior Fellow Meg Kilgannon gushed. “It’s very well written. It’s very clear. And it protects parents. It protects children. It ends the reliance on junk science and will stop the promotion of using the WPATH guidelines. That’s huge. And it directs the federal government to review: what is the state of the science on this? What is the research into the effects of these treatments, so-called treatments on children?”

“This is quite extensive,” Family Research Council President, Tony Perkins agreed. “Not only does it address the issue of transgender sexual mutilation that is taking place, but it shows how much the federal government is involved in everything.” The executive order affects “institutions that get [federal] grants,” he continued, “and that’s almost every institution of higher learning that may have a hospital associated with it.” It also affects the military health care system, and it instructs the Department of Justice to treat some gender transition surgeries as female genital mutilation.

Future

Trump’s executive order also places his administration on the side of those fighting to protect children. “Now we will have the wind at our backs, instead of fighting the headwinds of the Biden administration, which was enforcing all of the opposite of this,” Kilgannon said.

“I love these executive orders — most of them,” said Perkins. “But they’re executive orders. They can be undone four years from now.” He called on Congress and state legislatures “to start seeing policy adopted into law that is anchored to truth, common sense. … Now, with the wind at our backs, this needs to be translated into public policy at the state and even the federal level.”

In fact, Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) “has already introduced a bill to protect children against child abuse of these procedures,” noted Kilgannon. “It’s really a wonderful time to think about the possibilities.”

For all the labor expended in fighting to protect children from gender transition procedures, it’s encouraging to see that translate into federal policy under the Trump administration. However, the possibility that some future administration will reverse this policy is a reminder that the fight is not over until there is legislation to back up this order.

END TIMES SIGN: US STUDY SHOWS 14,000 CHILDREN HAVE UNDERGONE TRANS PROCEDURES

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The transgender industry has exploded from a trickle of young males seeking transition procedures to thousands upon thousands of minors who have filled the industry’s bank account with more than $100 million, according to a groundbreaking new report. This is a significant end-times sign. God will not countenance this happening to children.

The group Do No Harm has found nearly 14,000 minors have undergone transgender surgeries, puberty blockers, or cross-sex hormone injections between 2019 and 2023, generating almost $120 million in revenue. This is now big business and nothing but God stepping in will stop it. The report documents that during those years:

  • 13,994 children received transgender-related treatments 
  • 5,747 transgender “sex change” operations were carried out on children
  • “62,682 hormone and puberty blockers prescriptions [were] written for 8,579 pediatric patients”
  • “At least $119,791,202 made from sex change treatments performed on minors”

“This data release is really a nuclear bomb,” Dr. Miriam Grossman told guest host Jody Hice on “Washington Watch” Wednesday. “We are led to believe by politicians and many groups that these interventions are rare and hardly happening in this country. And that is simply not true.”

These experimental procedures have proliferated, partly because of money, but also because “the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychiatric Association for many years have been taken over by a small group of activists who simply push their agendas forward and stifle debate,” Grossman noted. “And too many of my colleagues are simply spineless and unwilling to speak up against it.”

The study’s numbers, which tracked insurance data, “also are not counting any of the treatments that were paid for privately,” noted Grossman, a practicing psychiatrist. “While this data represents the tip of the iceberg, this is the first step in holding the medical establishment accountable for participating in, and often times promoting, predatory and unscientific medical interventions for vulnerable children,” said the chairman of Do No Harm, Dr. Stanley Goldfarb.

The procedures sometimes generated millions of dollars for the facility. according to the database, Boston Children’s Hospital raked in over $5 million. The group released its list of the “Dirty Dozen” hospitals that most profited off pediatric transgender procedures, which includes:

  • The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
  • Connecticut Children’s Medical Center
  • Children’s Minnesota
  • Seattle Children’s
  • Children’s Hospital Los Angeles
  • Boston Children’s Hospital
  • Rady Children’s Hospital
  • Children’s National Medical Center
  • UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland
  • Children’s Hospital Colorado
  • UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh
  • Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center

“Some of these hospitals are actually activists; they are reaching out into the community and promoting their services,” Grossman told Hice.iws9

Yet not everyone has bowed “the knee” to the industry’s consensus. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) has refused to endorse “any organization’s practice recommendations for the treatment of adolescents with gender dysphoria” and acknowledged that “there is considerable uncertainty as to the long-term efficacy for the use of chest and genital surgical interventions, and the existing evidence base is viewed as low quality/low certainty.”

Still, the damage has been profound, experts say. Thanks to transgender activists, children are being permanently “physically disfigured. They’re losing the capacity to have biological children in the future. Many of them will have impaired sexual functioning, inability to have sexual pleasure, and many, many other medical and psychiatric problems,” said Grossman. “There’s so many mental health issues for many reasons. And, one big reason is that we are misrepresenting reality to these children, and we are leading them to think that they can just keep [allowing] each person [to] create their own reality. That is extremely destructive from a mental health perspective.”

The procedures often trigger lifelong regret. “We’ve had over 4,000 or 5,000 people that we’ve helped through our website, working with them one-on-one, who have come back and restored their life,” Walt Heyer, who lived for years as a woman before embracing his God-given sex, told a panel at the 2024 Pray Vote Stand Summit (PVSS) in Washington, D.C. last weekend.

Like many transgender-identifying young people, Heyer was psychologically, physically, and sexually abused as a child. Today, he says, he hears aspects of his own story in thousands of young people who speak with him.

“When people approach me and they say, ‘I’m a transgender. I transitioned and I have gender dysphoria,’ I always say, ‘Well, you’re not a transgender. You never transitioned, and you probably don’t have gender dysphoria,’” Heyer said. “That’s not gender dysphoria. That’s trauma.”

“It is categorically impossible to change your gender with hormones and surgery,” Heyer pointed out. “No one has ever changed genders. They’ve changed their persona.”

Once led down the transgender medical pipeline of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and unnecessary surgery, these minor patients have no formal financial — and all-too-often, psychological — support. “We see a population that is vulnerable, that has been taken advantage of, that has no means of intervention, because once they go through ‘gender-affirming care,’ there’s no insurance to go through a detransitioning process. There is no insurance to cover the trauma that happens to someone who’s been told by the medical community, ‘This is the way you’re going to get better,” Dr. Jennifer Bauwens, director of the Center for Family Studies at Family Research Council, told PVSS.

She continued, “If we know that trauma is high in a population, what we should be doing is including that variable in every piece of research that we produce, because it’s significant and we need to understand the population well, but not when it comes to the transgender research literature. They don’t include it. They’re not curious [about] why self-harm is so high in this population. And in fact, the very act of ‘gender-affirming care’ is self-harm, which is an expression of trauma.’”

Less than one-third of Americans say they support any kind of transgender procedures for minors in a Rasmussen poll. A strong majority (58%) of Americans oppose all transgender procedures — including supposedly reversible puberty blockers and hormone injections — for children under 18; 47% “strongly oppose” such procedures. 

“The stats in this database represent thousands of kids who are being treated like Guinea pigs for unproven, and sometimes dangerous, medical experiments. I hope politicians and parents alike use this database to see where these treatments are happening and protect their children from being rushed into irreversible, life-altering treatments,” said Do No Harm Senior Fellow and Patient Advocate Chloe Cole.

Thus far, the 2024 Republican presidential campaign has said little about the procedures. Instead, since August, the Trump campaign has focused on a $65 million ad campaign opposing transgender-identifying athletes taking part in women’s sports and taxpayer-funded transgender procedures for inmates in prison.

“If I had it my way, we would close every gender clinic in the United States and stop this nonsense. We need to get a backbone, and we need to stand up and say we are destroying lives. We are not helping people,” Heyer told PVSS.

Bauwens also noted that, according to federal election data, “92% to 96% of research psychologists and social workers” have “given to a liberal Democrat candidate” for office.

The most profound damage of the transgender industry comes in the mind- and soul-altering message of gender fluidity, which wars with the biblical view that God created us male and female, Heyer contended. “When we introduce a child or an individual to the idea that they can change genders, we devalue who they are in Christ,” he said.

The report’s full findings can be found at StopTheHarmDatabase.com.

Topics:Gender Identity, Gender Ideology, Children, Public Health, Health Care