Early in 2016, President Obama appointed a transgender individual to serve on the Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships (ACFBNP). The Council traces its origin to an executive order issued in 2001 by President George W. Bush. The annual recipient of millions of taxpayer dollars, the group’s stated purpose is to combat discrimination and intolerance based on religious and cultural views.
This relatively new federal agency serves as an attack on both religion and virtuous living. If you happen to hold traditional religious views or express yourself in favor of the cultural values that have always shaped our nation’s foundation, be prepared for an attack. Several of the ACFBNP appointees (each appointed for a year) are open homosexuals, promoters of abortion and same-sex marriage, and activists promoting the transgender subculture. The overall effect of such a group as ACFBNP is to force acceptance of what has always rightly been considered abnormal. In the name of tolerance, virtue is being made over into a forbidden, even reprehensible, oddity.
One organization decidedly opposed to all this is Project 21, a conservative policy group that identifies itself as “The National Leadership Network of Black Conservatives.” Critical of our nation’s “civil rights establishment,” group spokesman Emery McClendon insists that so-called “LGBT rights” are a misnomer and should never be included in the category of civil rights. Project 21 backs “entrepreneurial spirit, dedication to family, and commitment to individual responsibility.” McClendon properly counters President Obama’s pro-LGBT agenda, especially the president’s contention that children have a so-called “right” to choose which gender they prefer. McClendon claims that such an unnatural choice won’t “elevate them … it will degrade them.”
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In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office released a directive from the city’s Commission on Human Rights announcing that it will henceforth be illegal to discriminate against anyone whose gender is male, female, “or something else entirely.” The document listed 31 genders that henceforth must be recognized. In our nation where everyone has been known as either male or female, this Human Rights outfit lists new genders including “drag queen,” “drag king,” “butch,” “gender fluid,” “gender blender,” “gender gifted,” and “femme person of transgender experience.”
The New York directive cautions business owners against making “assumptions about a transgender person’s sexual orientation.” It adds: “If you don’t know what pronouns to use, ask. Be polite and respectful; if you use the wrong pronoun, apologize and move on.” Should someone in business refuse to address a transgender individual with a preferred pronoun, fines as high as $250,000 can be assessed.
This craziness should not be ignored. Unless sanity continues to prevail outside of New York, directives such as the one sent throughout New York City — completely consistent with policies promoted by the federal ACFBNP — will soon impact private organizations, public places, schools, churches, and more.
A few months ago, President Obama used the occasion of his annual White House gathering of Muslim-Americans to single out “LGBT Muslims” here in America. He ignored the fact that half of the nations where LGBT behavior is completely illegal are Islamic states. One can only conclude that our nation’s current leader favors what has always been rightly considered an abomination that should never be encouraged.
Acceptance of the transgender lifestyle amounts to challenging the fact that a person’s gender exists from the moment of conception in the womb. There is no choice involved, either at conception or at any other point in one’s life. Dignifying those who claim otherwise is a gross absurdity even if Barack Obama claims otherwise.
John F. McManus is president emeritus of The John Birch Society. This column appeared originally at the insideJBS blog and is reprinted here with permission.
