Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion

by Allie Beth Stuckey

It shouldn’t surprise us that those who advocate for the legal dismemberment of innocent children are also violent in general. Of course, not all abortion advocates are terrorists. But because murder is the foundation of the movement, it’s expected that its loudest, strongest activists will seek to inflict their enemies with pain and death.

Yes. And in truth, it doesn't even have to be about abortion. I've seen some advocates who get verbally violent about other political and social issues at the least provocation. They're frightening, they know it, and when challenged, they cry "bigot," acting the victim.

The movement that labels itself pro-choice actually only pushes one outcome: abortion. In fact, it actively suppresses alternatives to abortion, shielding mothers from the realities of the procedure. Anyone who seeks an abortion at Planned Parenthood will be lied to about fetal development and will likely be prevented from seeing her ultrasound image.

If nothing else, the active suppression sends chills down my spine.

The prohibition of murder is the fifth of the Ten Commandments given to Israel and is doubled down upon by Jesus (Ex. 20:13, Matt. 5:21–22). It is covered under the second greatest demand for Christians, which is to love our neighbor as ourselves (Rom. 13:9). Abortion is hateful, not loving.

Proverbs 6:16–17 lists “six things that the Lord hates,” including “hands that shed innocent blood.”

I've heard Christians throw the phrase "God hates X or Y" around. I don't like that, because often those Christians are being careless and don't have the Scripture or other theological knowledge to back themselves up. But on this? Yes. God will not stand for the shedding of innocent blood, period.

I won’t pretend to have perfectly packaged answers on every question that exists about the Bible or the nature of God. But my inability to understand the plans God carries out for his own glory doesn’t obscure his clear commands.

This is another "how they getcha." The setup is, "If a Christian doesn't have the perfect answer for every question every time, they are bigoted, backward, and unqualified to speak." Do *not* fall for it.

If we love God, we will love the things he loves and hate the things he hates. If we love God, we will seek every means possible to protect voiceless, vulnerable children from the horror of abortion.

Christians have no reason to waver on, belittle, or push the abortion crisis to the side. We can and should care about all different kinds of people, both in and outside the womb, and the struggles they face. But all of this is a distraction from th...

The truth is, even if there were no resources available to women in crisis, even if our government provided no welfare, even if we accepted

zero refugees each year, abortion would still be evil. Its legalization would still be wicked. And it would still be righteous and urgent for the Christian to fight against

Suffice to say, pro-life is about abortion—not every other factor that makes life easier to live. It’s supposed to be. Abortion is a unique, imminent, tangible threat to innocent human life.

Plus, we’re consistently warned that refusal to accept someone’s stated identity can contribute to the chances of them dying by suicide. Who wants to have any part in that kind of harm? Thus, the empathetic urge to affirm Laura and others like her in their decision to present as the opposite sex is understandable. We want to support any course of action that will ease an individual’s inner turmoil.

"Would you rather have an LGBTQ+ kid or a dead kid?" = emotional blackmail

But ultimately, such empathy-driven affirmation is not just shortsighted, but unloving.

Sex education in American public schools that teaches the existence of “gender identity” is pervasive. For example, California’s Newport-Mesa Unified School District employs a sex-ed curriculum that includes the use of the “Genderbread Identity,” a childlike depiction of a gingerbread man that attempts to draw a distinction between anatomy and gender.[6] In some school districts, these ideas are taught to students as young as pre-K.[7] According to journalist Christopher Rufo, over four thousand schools in the United States host gender and sexuality clubs. The stated mission of the national GSA organization is to abolish the American judicial system, as well as “cisgender heterosexual patriarchy.”[8] School and public libraries across the country offer books related to gender transition to children, including sexually explicit works like Lawn Boy and Gender Queer.[9] In 2023, an elementary school in Missouri allowed a classroom reading of I Am Jazz to second graders without parental consent.[10] The book illustrates the story of a boy, Jazz Jennings, whose parents helped him “become” a girl as a child.

In many schools, not only are students taught that it’s possible to reject biology in favor of one’s feelings about their gender but teachers and administrators are instructed to lie to parents of students who claim to identify as a gender unaligned with their sex.[11] The state of New Jersey even sued three school districts that chose to inform parents of their children’s newly stated identity in an attempt to force the schools to hide such information.[12]

If nothing else, it boggles my mind that more parents aren't concerned, schools are teaching this type of material without consent, attempting to hide crucial information about their kids, encouraging the kids to treat parents as the enemy (sometimes informing on them), and encouraging all kinds of "gender-affirming" steps, up to and including medical procedures, without parental knowledge.

California lawmakers proposed a bill in 2023 called AB-957 that could classify parents and entities like churches and schools that choose not to affirm a child’s “gender transition” as child abusers, presenting potential criminal penalties for those convicted and stripping parents of custody.[13]

And where does that leave solid parents, guardians, foster parents, and so on? Where does that leave the teachings of traditional Christianity? Because LGBTQ+ affirmation may not be a primary doctrine--believe me, I've had that mental fight. But if it starts here, I'm afraid Christians may find their entire faith villainized and outlawed.

Students can be penalized for refusing to affirm new identities as well. In Wisconsin, a public middle school opened a sexual harassment investigation into three eighth-grade students who failed to call a fellow student “they” or “them.”[14] One of the boys’ parents explained the new pronouns co...

And that's disgusting. If I were a teacher or administrator at that school my response would've been, "Look, if you want to come after me about refusing to use pronouns, I get that. I'm an adult. I don't have to work here. But as Pink Floyd put it, you leave those kids alone."

I have no doubt that many who support the idea of gender fluidity and of presenting it to children do seek to alleviate harm and to protect kids and adults questioning their identity from bullying and discrimination. They want to foster acceptance and love, teaching children from a young age that it’s okay not to fit into any box and to live authentically. So, in that sense, it is a movement powered by empathy. But it’s a toxic empathy that pushes us not only to have compassion for someone’s

difficulties but to unquestioningly affirm their feelings, because, if we were in their shoes, we’d want our feelings to be affirmed.

And *that* is what makes this issue so tricky for me, because it is soooo easy for me to say to myself, or others to say to me, "It's not so different from people calling you and your disability abnormal or deviant." Again, I've had that fight. But actually...it is different. And while I won't pretend it's easy to swallow...the end of that road is just too risky.

Testosterone enlarges the larynx, lowering the voice significantly. Facial hair grows, and head hair often thins. The body’s fat composition changes, with more weight collecting in the torso rather than the hips. It also allows for greater muscle growth. For many, these changes are mostly irreversible. For most women, large doses of testosterone also stop ovulation and menstruation. The consequences of artificially pausing the natural female cycle can include permanent infertility, though the data analyzing the long-term effects is extremely limited. Dr. Maddie Deutsch, the medical director of the Gender Affirming Health Program at the University of California, San Francisco, says that on testosterone “some people may experience mood swings or a worsening of anxiety, depression, or other mental health conditions as a result of the shifts associated with starting a second puberty.”[15]

Physically, women on testosterone can expect to experience extreme acne,[16] hair loss, headaches, high blood pressure,[17] and high cholesterol,[18] and are more at risk to develop type 2 diabetes,[19] liver dysfunction, and breast and uterine cancer.[20] Women on testosterone are also more than four times as likely to have a heart attack compared to other women.[21]

Men on cross-sex hormones can face a similar fate: lower muscle mass, erectile dysfunction,[22] infertility, and higher risk of stroke,[23] blood clots, and a host of other potential issues.[24] The dangers of so-called sex-change surgery are often even more terrifying. “Bottom surgery” for men means vaginoplasty, where surgeons use penile tissue to create a man-made...

construct the vaginal lining. In some cases, there is not enough skin to achieve the necessary vaginal depth, so surgeons will take a skin graft from the upper hip, lower abdomen, or inner thigh. During the surgery, the surgeon installs a mold inside the new vaginal canal for a few days to make sure it doesn’t collapse. After it’s removed, patients need to shove a plastic rod called a dilator up their vagina regularly in the years following surgery to make sure it stays open. If it closes or swells—a common complication since the body interprets the cavity as a wound—patients risk infection and incontinence. Recovery from a vaginoplasty is brutal: symptoms can include swelling and soreness, phantom pains at the top of the now mangled penis, urethras too swollen to allow urination, and perhaps a lifetime of incontinence and sexual dysfunction requiring even more surgeries to fix. Phalloplasty is even more...

According to recent research, up to half of patients will have urethral stricture, which means that the body cannot expel urine fully or at all. In addition to causing intense pain and discomfort, the inability to empty the bladder can lead t...

endure complications requiring a catheter to urinate and must have future surgeries. But after multiple failed reconstructive surgeries, patients can require “lifelong perineal urethrostomy,” or an additional opening...

The history of transgender treatment isn’t built on solid science and empathy. It’s built on the eccentric ideas of perverse, powerful men who all had the goal of deconstructing traditional morals to achieve their sexualized vision of how the world should be. Instead of helping kids, these “experts” hurt children by subjecting them to cruel experiments to justify their theories and play out their sick sexual fantasies.

The Kids Are Not All Right

!!!!!

Today, the number of gender-confused youth is exploding. There is no central source for data on transgenderism in America, but the numbers we do see are astounding. In a survey of 137 college students in 2021, nearly 4 percent of undergraduates said they did not fit into a traditional male or female framework,[33] somewhere between 2 percent[34] to nearly 10 percent[35] of high school students said in 2018 that they were gender-diverse, and 42,000 young people were diagnosed with gender dysphoria, nearly twice as many as had that identity two years before.[36] The number of children and teenagers on puberty blockers more than doubled in the five years from 2017 to 2021—and that number is certainly much higher today. Likewise, over 4,200 young people received hormone therapy in 2021, up from less than 2,000 in 2017.[37]

One big reason adults go along with the madness is moral blackmail. When their child comes out as trans, they’re immediately asked: “Would you rather have a living son or a dead daughter?” This is one of the main empathy-driven pressure tactics the transgender movement uses. It’s based upon studies purportedly showing that kids who don’t medically transition are significantly more likely to commit suicide. If you don’t accept the transition, you’re complicit in your own child’s death, the argument goes.

The problem is, those studies are bunk. Many are paid for by pro-trans groups[41] and have sample sizes that are too small to be statistically significant. Some studies cited by the trans movement actually show the opposite, such as that those on puberty blockers can be more likely to commit suicide than those not on blockers.[42]

We

went from having almost no gender dysphoria to creating a rising cohort of confused, sterilized, breastless teenage girls with geriatric skeletons—and the craziness isn’t going away.

These are vulnerable kids, and they are the perfect target for an ideology and identity that promises them a new identity, one in which they will finally be happy.

On social media, being a normal, heterosexual, and, heaven forbid, white girl often means you are automatically an enemy, an oppressor, and privileged.

Yes. As a white, straight, Christian woman who's also disabled and neurodivergent, I'm on both sides, and it drives me up a wall.

The trans lobby is trying its best to discredit ROGD and Dr. Littman’s findings, but there’s no other viable explanation for why adolescents with no history of gender confusion are coming out together in social groups. What’s worse, those in power—proclaiming their empathy for these kids—celebrate

To the medical establishment, child transitioners are the best customers of all—they will pay for medical services from puberty to their graves. And if a kid has regret and wants to detranstition? Well, then the medical system can make even more money on more treatments.

As was said in Hamilton, "Follow the money and see where it goes."

Tamikka was knocked out by a male-to-“female” fighter in an MMA match, left on the ground with a concussion, broken orbital bone, and injuries requiring several staples to her head.[54]

A bearded man named Darren Merager entered the women’s-only section of Wi Spa in Los Angeles and exposed himself to several women, including a six-year-old girl. The women reported that Merager was aroused, and they were mortified by this violation of their privacy and safety. They reported the incident to the spa, but afterward the media claimed their complaint was based on transphobia, while Merager said he was the real victim of sexual harassment because he’s trans.[56]

Sex is not a spectrum, and gender is not fluid. While the manifestations of femininity and masculinity vary somewhat from culture to culture, or even between individuals, this variation does not create new identities or sexes. No amount of empathy for confused people can change that.

Which, BTW, is another reason why this gender debate is not the same as disability or autism/neurodivergence-based debates around inclusion, in case anyone else wondered.

Further, God created us as male and female so that we could be fruitful and multiply, subdue the earth, and have dominion over it (Gen. 1:28). Here, Scripture provides a teleological view of human nature, which means it shows us the purpose of our biology. We were not given our bodies arbitrarily, but by a God who does everything with intention and purpose.

And no, this does not mean "barefoot and pregnant." It's actually the most beautiful celebration of male and female there could be.

The prophet Isaiah urges us explicitly to accept the body God gave us: “Woe to him who strives with him who formed him, a pot among earthen pots! Does clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’ or ‘Your work has no handles’?” (Isa. 45:9).

Take it from somebody who *has* questioned the Potter. It's okay to question. It's okay to ask "Why" or "How?" It's not okay to blaspheme God, mutilate yourself, and so on.

using preferred pronouns signifies we think we know better than God.

Ouch, Allie Beth! Go for the jugular, why don't you? But she's right.

Are we more loving than God, who is love? (1 John 4:8). Have we a better idea of mercy than its Giver? (Ps. 55:1). Have we fooled ourselves into thinking we can outcompassion compassion’s Source? (Ps. 103:13). Have we so deluded ourselves that we think we care more about lost sheep than the Good Shepherd? (John 10:10–11).

Every Christian would deny these accusations of blasphemy, but every time we use preferred pronouns we are implicitly saying that God, who created the heavens and the earth (Gen. 1:1), does not have authority to define all things—and that he is not good to do so. We’...

Every Christian testimony has one key commonality: someone in their life was brave enough to tell them the uncomfortable truth.

There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death. —PROVERBS 14:12

But we don’t need studies to tell us what we already intuitively know: The same people needed to make a baby are needed to raise her. Only men can be dads, and only women can be moms. Each has their own irreplaceable role to play.

Oh, Mr. Rogers, how we miss you!

lives. Are there exceptions to these observations? Sure. None of this is to say that all kids who aren’t raised by their mom and dad are destined for failure, that there aren’t stellar single parents,

that same-sex parents don’t love their children, or that parenting dynamics can’t differ depending on the couple. There are children raised by their mom and dad who face the same challenges as children who aren’t. But we shouldn’t ignore the data or dismiss our own instincts and experiences when it comes to the need for mothers and fathers.

The sperm and eggs are considered donated (hence, “sperm/egg donor”) in order to abide by America’s legal prohibition against selling human tissue. Technically, they’re getting paid for their time and effort rather than for their sperm and eggs, but it’s obvious what’s really being bought: the DNA necessary to make a child.

In the video explaining the process, they joked about which ones will be born and which will be discarded. They laughed at the absurdity of how their children are being conceived: The pair “purchased” the child’s mother, fertilized her eggs with their sperm, and created twelve embryos who all have their own bar code.