Rod Dreher's Blog, page 578

‘Justice-Involved Individuals’

If I said to you “What is a ‘justice-involved individual,” you might think, “a cop” or “a lawyer,” but you would probably think, “Uh oh, that sounds like a term meant to conceal something.”

And you would be right. “Justice-involved individuals” is the term that a new guide from the Department of Education uses to refer to “criminals. Here’s the introduction:

Beyond the Box

Increasing Access to Higher Education for Justice Involved

Individuals

Purpose of This Guide

Today, an estimated 70 million Americans have been involved with the

criminal justice system. Data show plainly that people of color are more likely to come in contact with the justice system due, in part, to punitive school disciplinary policies that disproportionately impact certain student groups and racial profiling.

There is also growing recognition that successful reintegration back into our society for justice-involved individuals benefits those individuals, their families, and our communities. Research also shows that education can be a powerful pathway for justice-involved individuals to transition out of prison back into the classroom or the workforce, and cuts the likelihood of returning to prison within three years by over 40 percent.

With this context, it is critical to ensure that gateways to higher education, such as admissions practices, do not disproportionately disadvantage justice-involved individuals who have already served their time. Criminal justice information (CJI), for instance, has been shown to deter potentially well qualified applicants from applying for, and enrolling in, the postsecondary education and training that economists predict is critical to meaningful reentry and labor market success.

In related news, did you know that transgenders are massively more likely to be justice-involved individuals?:

16%  of transgender and gender non‐conforming people had been sent to jail or prison “for any reason”  (for the general U.S. public, this figure is 2.7%)

Clearly, this is shocking bigotry. In no case can transgenders and gender non-conforming people be committing crimes at a higher rate than the general public. That would violate liberal ideology. There ought to be a federal program.

Along those lines, how are the new federal guidelines from the Department of Education ordering schools to institute racial quotas on suspensions going? The feds did this because black and Latino students are suspended at disproportionate rates. Here’s how the policy is working out in St. Paul, MN:

Under pressure from Obama educrats, public school districts are no longer suspending even violent students; but now, under pressure from Black Lives Matter, they are suspending teachers who complain about not suspending bad kids.

In St. Paul, Minn., a high school teacher was put on administrative leave last month after Black Lives Matter threatened to shut down the school because the teacher complained about lenient discipline policies that have led to a string of assaults on fellow teachers.

Last month, two students at Como Park Senior High School punched and body slammed a business teacher unconscious, opening a head wound that required staples. And earlier in the year, another student choked a science teacher into a partial coma that left him hospitalized for several days.

In both cases, the teachers were white and the students black.

Theo Olson, a teacher at the school complained on Facebook about new district policies that fail to punish kids for fighting and drug-dealing. Like dozens of cities across the country — including New York — St. Paul adopted the policies in compliance with new discipline guidelines issued by the Obama administration. The Education Department has threatened school districts with lawsuits and funding cuts wherever if finds racial “disparities” in suspensions and expulsions, arguing such disparities have created a “school-to-prison pipeline” for African-Americans children. The agency claims such disparities are the product of racism in schools.

St. Paul teacher Theo Olson is labeled a racist by Black Lives Matter for saying that a lack of discipline hurts education.

“Anyone care to explain to me the school-to-prison pipeline my colleagues and I have somehow created, or perpetuated, or not done enough to interrupt?” Olson wrote. “Because if you can’t prove it, the campaigns you’ve waged to deconstruct adult authority in my building by enabling student misconduct, you seriously owe us real teachers an apology.”

Complained Olson: “Since we now have no backup, no functional location to send kids who won’t quit gaming, setting up fights, selling drugs, whoring trains, or cyber bullying, we’re screwed, just designing our own classroom rules.”

For these mild opinions, Black Lives Matter called Olson “a white supremacist” even though he had once marched with the group. Two days after Black Lives Matter met with the St. Paul school superintendent — and agreed to call off its protest — the 10-year veteran teacher was put on leave.

The world has gone mad.

Read the whole thing.

Our federal government is micromanaging school policies to make schools safer for transgenders who want to pee where they like and play on the sports team of their choice, but through its other ideology-based micromanagement, the feds are also making it more likely that everybody is less safe.

Get used to it. We’re probably going to have four more years of federal rule by liberal government-involved individuals.

Au Revoir, Madeleine Lebeau

Madeleine Lebeau has died. She was the last surviving cast member of Casablanca, and she had an iconic role in what for me is the greatest scene of all cinema. See above. She’s the character you see crying while singing “La Marseillaise”. From the story:

It was for her third American film however that she is most remembered. Signed to a Warner Bros contract in 1942, she was quickly cast in Casablanca as Yvonne. Introduced as yet another spurned conquest by main character Rick Blaine, she is next seen as a collaborator on the arm of a German soldier. However, during the iconic cast performance of “La Marseillaise,” Yvonne tears up as she sings along and then shouts “Viva la France!”. Like many of the film’s cast who were also refugees from Nazi terror, Lebeau’s tears, and her shout, were absolutely genuine.

Madeleine Lebeau was a Jewish refugee. May her memory be eternal, and may her memory be a blessing.

And: Vive la France!

The Nihilism Of Some Scientists

From The New York Times:

Scientists are now contemplating the fabrication of a human genome, meaning they would use chemicals to manufacture all the DNA contained in human chromosomes.

The prospect is spurring both intrigue and concern in the life sciences community because it might be possible, such as through cloning, to use a synthetic genome to create human beings without biological parents.

While the project is still in the idea phase, and also involves efforts to improve DNA synthesis in general, it was discussed at a closed-door meeting on Tuesday at Harvard Medical School in Boston. The nearly 150 attendees were told not to contact the news media or to post on Twitter during the meeting.

Organizers said the project could have a big scientific payoff and would be a follow-up to the original Human Genome Project, which was aimed at reading the sequence of the three billion chemical letters in the DNA blueprint of human life. The new project, by contrast, would involve not reading, but rather writing the human genome — synthesizing all three billion units from chemicals.

But such an attempt would raise numerous ethical issues. Could scientists create humans with certain kinds of traits, perhaps people born and bred to be soldiers? Or might it be possible to make copies of specific people?

Don’t worry, says the scientist in charge. Nothing to see here:

George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and an organizer of the proposed project, said there had been a misunderstanding. The project was not aimed at creating people, just cells, and would not be restricted to human genomes, he said. Rather it would aim to improve the ability to synthesize DNA in general, which could be applied to various animals, plants and microbes.

“They’re painting a picture which I don’t think represents the project,” Dr. Church said in an interview.

Right. And you know, Dr. Church might even believe that.

A year ago, a senior US medical researcher, a Christian, told me that the things scientists are contemplating in the bioethical field would utterly unnerve the public. These aren’t things coming far into the future, he said; these are things coming in the next 10 to 20 years. He said most of his colleagues are not religious believers, and see no particular moral or ethical problem with any of it. Science should be in service of human will, they think. Even the few Christians he knows in the field don’t see what the big fuss is. After all, we might be able to help people!

Watch. The post-human future is emerging. And, as Walker Percy warned:

It is the widespread and ongoing devaluation of human life in the Western world — under various sentimental disguises: “quality of life,” “pointless suffering,” “termination of life without meaning,” etc. I trace it to a certain mindset in the biological and social sciences which is extraordinarily influential among educated folk — so much that it has achieved the status of a quasi-religious orthodoxy…. Although it drapes itself in the mantle of the scientific method and free scientific inquiry, it is neither free nor scientific. Indeed, it relies on certain hidden dogma where dogma has no place. … The first: In your investigations and theories, [thou] shalt not find anything unique about the human animal even if the evidence points to such uniqueness. … Another dogma: Thou shalt not suggest that there is a unique and fatal flaw in Homo sapiens sapiens or indeed any perverse trait that cannot be laid to the influence of Western civilization. … Conclusion: It is easy to criticize the absurdities of fundamentalist beliefs like “scientific creationism” — that the world and its creatures were created six thousand years ago. But it is also necessary to criticize other dogmas parading as science and the bad faith of some scientists who have their own dogmatic agendas to promote under the guise of “free scientific inquiry.” Scientific inquiry should, in fact, be free. The warning: If it is not, if it is subject to this or that ideology, then do not be surprised if the history of the Weimar doctors is repeated. Weimar leads to Auschwitz. The nihilism of some scientists in the name of ideology or sentimentality and the consequent devaluation of individual human life lead straight to the gas chamber.

What will be the duties of good men and women in this world? What would Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Sophie Scholl do? We had better start thinking about it.

There’s a quickening. Can’t you feel it?

The Power Of Conformity

A reader writes:

Watching my Facebook feed over the past several years, I’ve come to understand what bin Laden meant when he said people naturally back “the strong horse.” Now that it appears that LGBT+ is the Winning Team, a lot of folks are suddenly super-duper in favor of pretty much the entire LGBT+ agenda, despite whatever they might have said in the past.

I grew up in a conservative, Bible-belt environment. When I was in high school about two and a half decades ago, open hatred of gays was viewed as perfectly acceptable. I vividly remember one of my classmates, a perfectly lovely and sweet-natured girl, telling me she thought all “faggots” should get the death penalty — this was around 1991, I believe. When I was brave enough to speak up with a qualified defense of gay rights, people called me a “fag-lover” and a pervert.

Today, I see some of these exact same people on my Facebook feed, and suddenly they’re far to the left of me on everything involving LGBT+ issues. It’s really amazing. In about 25 years, I went from being a “fag loving” perv to a hateful right-wing bigot without ever changing my views on the subject.

To be fair, the switch seems to have been most pronounced with the people who never had any strong principles to begin with; the most devoutly religious folks I know are still not on board with any of this, although they’ve obviously toned down their rhetoric by a few orders of magnitude. But the rest? It’s like night and day. I’m getting lectured on “tolerance” by people who would have been happy to pack gays into ovens back in the day. I know people can evolve and change, but this is just incredible. I mean, a lot of these people just show zero awareness of how much they’ve shifted.

Heck, the dad of one my high school friends said today he doesn’t care one way or another about all this transgender stuff, and everyone should be allowed to go potty where they want. This was a guy who told his son when he was a teenager that he’d disown him if he “came out” as gay and said if his son ever came home wearing an earring he’d rip it out and take a chunk of his ear with it.

In theory, of course, I always knew that most people don’t engage much with the big questions; they just go through life following the herd. Still, it’s been quite unnerving to see this play out so drastically in real life. What OTHER policies would the majority heartily endorse if the culture commanded them to do so?

It used to confuse me how the Bolsheviks were able to take over Russia when, by all accounts, they were such a tiny minority at the time. Now I understand how, and it’s starting to frighten me. If you’re on the other side of this LGBT+ debate, it should frighten you, too: You should know that a lot of those folks posting LOVE WINS memes on Facebook would be happy to abandon you and join the rabid fundamentalist side if they suddenly felt it was in their interest to do so; furthermore, a distressing number of them would do it without any awareness of what they were doing. In view of that, do you REALLY think it’s that wise to import millions of Muslim fundamentalists into the west?

Incidentally, this is why I think Trump’s chances in the general are better than most people think. Political “majorities” are, in some sense, an illusion. The vast, vast bulk of the population, it seems, will happily switch sides if it suddenly appears that the side they’re nominally allied with is headed for a crushing defeat. Trump could win a lot of voters just by creating an aura of invincibility; he wouldn’t have to change people’s minds — if he appeared strong enough, they’d change their minds FOR him.

Transgender Dorm Daze

From the Justice Department’s advisory to public schools:

Housing and Overnight Accommodations. Title IX allows a school to provide separate housing on the basis of sex. But a school must allow transgender students to access housing consistent with their gender identity and may not require transgender students to stay in single-occupancy accommodations or to disclose personal information when not required of other students. Nothing in Title IX prohibits a school from honoring a student’s voluntary request for single occupancy accommodations if it so chooses.

My alma mater is a public boarding school for gifted and talented high school students. There are several self-declared transgenders studying there now, including a female-to-male genderfluid girl (meaning she is a male or female, depending on her whim). According to the new federal directive, not only is the school prohibited from telling these students’ parents about their children’s behavior without the children’s permission, but if one of these minors decides that he or she wants to live in the opposite sex’s dorm, the school has no choice but to permit it.

A biological female living in a dorm full of underage teenage boys. What could possibly go wrong?

The school houses students two to a room. As we know from recent courtroom experience, if the school tries to accommodate her by housing her in a private room in the boys’ dorm, she could sue on the grounds that she’s being treated separate-but-equal, and would likely win.

 

This is a terrible position to put a school like that in. I can’t imagine that there are too many public schools that will face this kind of dilemma. This school, by the way, is here in Louisiana, a culturally conservative state. You can be certain that after this, fair or not, many Louisiana parents will be reluctant to send their minor children to school there. If a male student decides that he wants to live in the girls’ dorm, all he has to do is to declare himself female, and thanks to the Obama administration, the school’s hands are tied.

After this, that school is likely to have a hell of a time recruiting students in this state. Thanks, Obama.

Donald The Sock Puppet

From the Washington Post:

The voice is instantly familiar; the tone, confident, even cocky; the cadence, distinctly Trumpian. The man on the phone vigorously defending Donald Trump says he’s a media spokesman named John Miller, but then he says, “I’m sort of new here,” and “I’m somebody that he knows and I think somebody that he trusts and likes” and even “I’m going to do this a little, part time, and then, yeah, go on with my life.”

A recording obtained by The Washington Post captures what New York reporters and editors who covered Trump’s early career experienced in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s: calls from Trump’s Manhattan office that resulted in conversations with “John Miller” or “John Barron” — public-relations men who sound precisely like Trump himself — who indeed are Trump, masquerading as an unusually helpful and boastful advocate for himself, according to the journalists and several of Trump’s top aides.

More:

Then, Friday afternoon, Washington Post reporters who were 44 minutes into a phone interview with Trump about his finances asked him a question about Miller: “Did you ever employ someone named John Miller as a spokesperson?”

The phone went silent, then dead. When the reporters called back and reached Trump’s secretary, she said, “I heard you got disconnected. He can’t take the call now. I don’t know what happened.”

Your presumptive Republican nominee, ladies and gentlemen. The guy who would have access to the launch codes. Imagine those short fingers on the nuclear button. Sad!

As terrible as Hillary Clinton is, one thing she isn’t is crazy.

 

‘Let Them Eat Oxycontin’

Connor Kilpatrick at the socialist Jacobin magazine says that mainstream American liberals despise the white working class. Excerpts:

But it isn’t just the Sanders campaign zombie that liberal pundits are desperately trying to stamp out. It’s the white working class itself.

With Clinton’s nomination a lock, liberals have become even more furious and dismissive of white workers. Commenting on Sanders’s West Virginia victory, they were quick to point out that a felon running against Obama in the same state in 2012 got nearly half as many votes. They crowed about how some of both Bernie and Clinton’s voters said Trump was their real number one choice, and much was made of how Sanders overwhelmingly won voters who want “less liberal” policies than Obama’s.

Conveniently lost in the noise is the fact that Sanders won an even bigger share of voters who want “more liberal” ones.

The media takeaway was clear: somehow, someway, West Virginia’s vote for a Jewish socialist Brooklyn native was a vote for racism. “I don’t want to say it,” said Chris Matthews on election night “but West Virginian voters are, you know — conservative on social issues — but there’s another word for that. . .”

More:

Somehow liberal pundits have gotten it into their heads that white workers — perhaps thanks to Fox News’s racist dispatches — are just an aggrieved, pissed off, outnumbered minority. But their particular disgust is just a stand-in for a more generalized anti-working-class politics. No matter how you slice it, the working class — while not quite Wes-Anderson-movie-white — is really damn white.

While the Economic Policy Institute projects that the US working class will be 49.6 percent “non-hispanic white” by 2032, 77 percent of all minimum wage (or below) workers today are white. Half are white women, who it should be noted joined young working-class women of color as an enthusiastic core of Sanders’s base. And as Tamara Draut shows in her new book Sleeping Giant — which stresses the diversity of the new working class — 63 percent of all workers without a bachelor’s degree are still non-Latino white.

Instead of acknowledging the size and importance of this part of the electorate, Democratic Party elites have simply constructed a new narrative to suit their interests — a narrative that was on display after West Virginia. Following Sanders’s win a significant chunk of the punditocracy came to the conclusion, mostly by abusing the hell out of exit polls, that a vote for the Jewish socialist was actually a vote for white supremacy.

Read the whole thing.

Here’s the astonishing thing about what Obama did today, federalizing school bathroom, locker room, and sports policy: the people who depend the most on public schools, who are the least likely to have alternatives, and who are most alienated from progressive cultural politics, are working class people.

Have any of the policymakers in this administration or in the Clinton campaign talked to anyone who doesn’t already agree with them on this issue? Andrew T. Walker explains the broader meaning of the administration’s guidance today. Excerpt:

For example, while there is debate at the public school level about abstinence education versus comprehensive sex education, there is no policy that requires students to fornicate. There is no policy telling students that they’re wrong to believe that fornication is wrong. While the law allows for a false belief about how to channel sexuality, it doesn’t mandate that every student accept it.

The transgender decree by the Obama administration is altogether different. It is designed to stifle debate. If I may briefly summarize how this ruling is different than other controversial policies, this policy is going to require active suppression of the view that men and women are intrinsically different and complementary. In other words, active obedience on the part of your child is going to be the government’s expectation.

Official government policy is now denying that there’s anything unique or objective about our biological sex because it is superseded by the authority of psychology and self-description. This is a comprehensive claim made about human nature. It is the nature of claims like this that will lead the government to correct any dissenting opinion.

How will (white) working class families react when somebody tells them that thanks to the Democrats, their kids are going to be propagandized in this way at school? Maybe they won’t care. But this is an emotionally powerful issue, dealing with people’s children. It shows the priorities of Democrats. They would rather spend capital on appeasing urban cosmopolitans than on fighting for the working class.

Look, I’m not saying the Republicans are any better on working-class issues. But I am saying, from the right, that the socialists of Jacobin magazine are correct about the Democrats.

Captain Higgins America?

Y’all have read me blogging about the rock-solid Captain Clay Higgins, the St. Landry Parish sheriff’s deputy who became a regional folk hero for his awesome Crimestoppers videos on local TV. In this one, he goes after a criminal suspect named Bullethead, with an existential starkness that ought to be scored by Ennio Morricone. In this one, he lays into the Gremlins street gang, while surrounded by black pastors and leaders — but was more or less forced to resign after the ACLU complained that he spoke inhumanly about the crooks.

Well, according to the Baton Rouge Advocate, Captain Higgins is considering a run for Congress — either the House or the Senate. He posted the above video to YouTube the other day. It is not explicitly a campaign commercial (if it were, I wouldn’t post it here), and he has not filed for either of the two seats for which he is eligible in the November election. It’s not clear if he is a Republican or a Democrat. It is rather a patriotic-themed clip proclaiming fidelity to America and its people, and calling on us to unite to, um, make America great again. The video, he says, is to see if there is any public interest in a Higgins campaign.

Hey, this year, anything could happen.

What Are Schools For?

Here’s the text of the Obama administration’s ukase “guidance.”:

Dear Colleagues,

The U.S. Departments of Education and Justice released joint guidance today to help provide educators the information they need to ensure that all students, including transgender students, can attend school in an environment free from discrimination based on sex.

Recently, questions have arisen from school districts, colleges and universities, and others about transgender students and how to best ensure these students, and non-transgender students, can all enjoy a safe and discrimination-free environment.

Under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, schools receiving federal money may not discriminate based on a student’s sex, including a student’s transgender status. The guidance makes clear that both federal agencies treat a student’s gender identity as the student’s sex for purposes of enforcing Title IX.

The guidance explains that when students or their parents, as appropriate, notify a school that a student is transgender, the school must treat the student consistent with the student’s gender identity. A school may not require transgender students to have a medical diagnosis, undergo any medical treatment, or produce a birth certificate or other identification document before treating them consistent with their gender identity.

The guidance also explains schools’ obligations to:

Respond promptly and effectively to sex-based harassment of all students, including harassment based on a student’s actual or perceived gender identity, transgender status, or gender transition;

Treat students consistent with their gender identity even if their school records or identification documents indicate a different sex;

Allow students to participate in sex-segregated activities and access sex-segregated facilities consistent with their gender identity; and

Protect students’ privacy related to their transgender status under Title IX and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

At the same time, the guidance makes clear that schools can provide additional privacy options to any student for any reason. The guidance does not require any student to use shared bathrooms or changing spaces, when, for example, there are other appropriate options available; and schools can also take steps to increase privacy within shared facilities.

In addition to the Departments’ joint Title IX guidance, the Department of Education’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education also released Examples of Policies and Emerging Practices for Supporting Transgender Students, a compilation of policies and practices that schools across the country are already using to support transgender students. The document shares some common questions on topics such as school records, privacy, and terminology, and then explains how some state and school district policies have answered these questions, which may be useful for other states and school districts that are considering these issues. In this document, the Education Department does not endorse any particular policy, but offers examples from actual policies to help educators develop policies and practices for their own schools.

Many parents, schools, and districts have raised questions about this area of civil rights law. Together, these documents will help navigate what may be a new terrain for some. Government resources for transgender and gender-nonconforming students are available here.

Thank you,

U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights

Chris Stirewalt makes a sane, commonsense point:

Pity the public school teacher and administrator who today is trying to deal with the federal decree that children should be allowed to use the washroom or locker room that correlates to their gender identity even if it is at odds with their physicality.

However you feel about public accommodations for those who experience gender dysphoria or at what point you believe a child reaches an age of decision about a matter so fraught, the practical issues here are potentially overwhelming.

Imagine yourself a teacher or principal at an overcrowded, understaffed school already groaning under federally mandated tests and the ever-lengthening demands of local and state officials.

As schools have struggled and failed to meet basic educational goals, they have been freighted with even more duties: to teach “life skills,” nutrition and a school-board approved simulacrum of morality while simultaneously functioning as essentially medium-security prisons for fear of threats both internal and external.

Think about it: we already expect so much of our public schools, and now … this? Is it really so important to force schools to let boys play on girl teams, and vice versa, and so forth? Progress, I guess.

And you know who the people are who will most be opposed to this, and most unable to do anything about it, because they have no options? Working-class people. Your Democratic Party, ladies and gentlemen.

Whenever liberals accuse conservatives of waging culture war, I think of things like this and wonder what kind of world they live in inside their heads. Was this a pressing need right now? Did the federal government have to nationalize bathroom, locker room, and athletic team policy, to enforce a highly controversial point of view onto a diverse nation that was never consulted?

Decadence As Default Culture

A reader sends in this excerpt from Peter Block’s management book The Answer To How Is Yes. The reader adds that it is pertinent to what we are going through now in the culture:

These patterns – personal, institutional, and societal – partially gain their power through their subtlety. As powerful as the culture is, we hardly notice its effects on us. It is the sea we swim in. The culture works on us and through us and even expresses us. In a literal sense, though, the culture does not really determine our actions or even explain why we do what we do. We are responsible for this. The culture is more like a presence in the shadows, ready to step in when we are not paying attention.

One useful way to think about it is as the default culture. In computer software, a whole host of default settings comes with every new program you buy. If you choose, you can change these settings to suit your preferences but if you don’t, the defaults create the rules.

Each time we turn our attention away from our own intentions, we operate, in a sense, by default. In the absence of our clear intention, our willingness to consciously change the settings of the world we are creating, the default culture is decisive. This is hard to see clearly because the culture is able to absorb the rhetoric of our individuality and freedom. It (we) allows space for our own desires, it just does not encourage acting on them. While no one argues against values and desires, we fear they might lead to anarchy and chaos. The result is that although every institution lists its human values on its mission statement, these are often operationally set aside, only to be resurrected during retreats or when public declarations are required.

Here is a real-world example about what popular culture-makers’ changing the default setting of society on sex and gender has done. The British women’s magazine Grazia commissioned a survey of British women, conducted by the firm Onepoll. Here’s what Onepoll found:

We were commissioned by Grazia to explore young women’s views on gender and sexuality. The research follows a rise in celebrities challenging gender norms and advocating gender fluidity. [Emphasis mine — RD]

The survey of 2,000 women aged 18+ found that a quarter of the respondents, despite describing themselves as ‘straight’, admitted to having had a same-sex fling. A third also admit to having been attracted to other women.

The respondents were split into 3 categories based on age:

The Pioneers: ages 18 – 24
The Teachers: ages 25 – 34
The Explorers: ages 35 – 44

1/3 of the Pioneers thought that marriage was irrelevant and 45% claimed that they would consider having a baby without a partner.

Whereas the majority of the Teachers were married or living with a partner. They were, however, determined that their children will be raised in a different world with aspects of gender neutrality. In fact, more than 1 in 10 of this age group would avoid choosing pink for their daughters. The mum’s of that age group also stated that they would give their child both ‘male’ and ‘female’ toys and read them non-stereotypical stories.

The explorers, meanwhile, felt that attitudes had changed towards gender in the past decade with society becoming more accepting. Two-thirds believe they are more open minded on gender issues than their parents with more. For example 1 in 5 admit to being sexuality experimental with a quarter claiming they’d like to be more so. A quarter of the elder age group also admits to buying an item of menswear for themselves.

How much human wreckage will result from these new norms? We are going to find out. See, this is what the bathroom wars are really about: changing the default settings of our culture. You have to keep that front to mind at all times.

And, if you are a social or religious conservative who is raising kids, or hopes to one day, you cannot avoid the hard truth that if you are not consciously countercultural in everything you do, your kids will absorb this default culture. 

Spare me the “we just want our kids to be salt and light” excuse for why you resist making hard choices. At least be honest with yourself about what you’re doing, and why. We see now what is happening. We see where it will lead. How clear does it have to be? If by intention or neglect you let your kids shore up the Empire, the Empire will own their hearts and minds.

For religious conservatives, we have been in a time of testing for some time, and the trial is intensifying. It will never get better, not in our lifetimes. Get that straight in your minds now. I expect that most conservative Christians will capitulate, and not take the Benedict Option, because it’s hard now to resist, and it’s going to get much harder. Don’t let your family be one of them.