Apr 19, 2023 | News, Wisconsin Family Voice
As radical gender ideology continues to spread throughout health care in the U.S., the left is taking aim at practices that stand in its way while disregarding First Amendment freedoms and the needs of people.
Currently, 20 states have banned the intentionally misnamed “conversion therapy,” which is actually just the practice of providing counseling to help individuals with same-sex attraction or gender confusion reorient in synch with their God-given sexuality. However, the name “conversion therapy” – a misnomer much like “reproductive health care” in relation to abortion – is intentionally used by the left to conjure up images of patients being effectively tortured, badgered, or bullied into renouncing homosexual interests or abandoning transgenderism.
Banning counseling efforts to guide a patient through struggles with their sexual orientation is a direct violation of free speech, freedom of religion, and patients’ freedom to seek the treatment they want. It also threatens parents’ rights to direct the mental health care and education of their children.
Some on the left are even attempting to expand the definition of “conversion therapy” to include any form of opposition to homosexuality and transgenderism. Doing so could criminalize even private conversations in which individuals advocate for abstinence from homosexuality or Biblical sermons on God’s design for human sexuality.
Those struggling with any mental health problem need guidance rooted in Truth and reality, not in lies rooted in the baseless religion of progressivism.
Despite the lack of data regarding the psychological ramifications of the “gender-affirming” approach, and the growing body of evidence that this method doesn’t remedy mental health problems, the left wants “affirmation” to be the only therapy available to struggling minors.
Thankfully, a U.S. district court has ordered the city of Boca Raton, Florida, to pay a combined $75,000 in damages to two therapists, while also ordering Palm Beach County to pay a fine of $100,000 for passing so-called “conversion therapy” bans for minors seeking help with unwanted homosexual attraction.
Boca Raton and Palm Beach County passed laws prohibiting conversion therapy for minors in 2017. The two plaintiffs, marriage and family therapists Robert Otto and Julie Hamilton, filed lawsuits arguing that their therapy was voluntary and focused on reducing unwanted homosexual attraction rather than changing the client.
Liberty Counsel, which represented the plaintiffs, said in a statement that the judge’s order sets a “precedent that minors who are struggling with gender confusion can get the help they need from counselors who are free from political censorship” and it should “be a warning to any government that has not repealed similar counseling bans.”
Several municipalities in Wisconsin have audaciously enacted these bans that blatantly violate counselors’ First Amendment freedoms and rob confused minors of the real help and hope they need. Hopefully, these local governments in our state pay attention to this case and reverse course.
As Christians, obeying God and loving our neighbor require us to call out sin and point one another to God’s Word. The left has no right to stand in the way of our allegiance to God with laws enforcing anti-Christian beliefs about gender and sexuality. Please pray that this case is the first of many victories when it comes to restoring religious liberty and free speech in mental health care and the Wisconsin communities where these bans have been enacted will indeed do the right thing and revoke such policies.
Apr 1, 2022 | News, Wisconsin Family Voice
It seems Disney is no longer wholesome family entertainment. A video was leaked Tuesday in which Disney President Karey Burke stated that she wants a “minimum of 50 percent of its characters to be LGBTQIA” or of another minority group.
“I’m here as the mother of two queer children,” Burke said during the Zoom call, “one transgender child and one pansexual child.” She claimed that “going forward,” Disney should be telling their stories.
To make matters worse, Disney’s Animation Executive Producer bragged about her attempt to groom young children. “Our leadership over there has been so welcoming to my not-so-secret gay agenda,” she said. “Wherever I could I was adding queerness. No one would stop me and no one was trying to stop me.”
Further, Production Coordinator Allen March boasted about a “tracker” he uses to meet quotas for LGBT characters in a new Disney TV series called “Moon Girl.” Not only is he working to ensure that LGBT characters make an appearance, he also aims to center stories around these characters.
This gives us further insight into Disney’s recent string of ultra-liberal and woke decisions. The company also ultimately opposed Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill (now law after Gov. DeSantis signed the bill this week), which prohibits schools from teaching kindergarten through third grade students gender identity and sexual orientation. Employees staged a walkout during which they wore rainbow colors, held pro-LGBTQ+ signs, and shouted “say gay” in protest of the bill. Evidently, these employees have joined an astonishing number of other leftists who didn’t read the bill, because nowhere does the text say, “don’t say gay.”
It seems Disney wants schools to indoctrinate children who are too young to be learning about sexuality, with lies about gender and sexual orientation. And now Disney will aggressively join the indoctrination.
In response to Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill, Disney issued a corporate statement, which reads, “Our goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the Legislature or struck down in the courts, and we remain committed to supporting the national and state organizations working to achieve that.”
Christopher Rufo, the journalist who leaked the video, said he’s received numerous messages from parents who are cutting all ties with Disney over its attempt to indoctrinate their children.
It’s no wonder that the number of children reporting symptoms of gender dysphoria is on the rise. Gender ideology is being intentionally made part of their seemingly harmless entertainment. They are constantly inundated with dangerous leftist propaganda that threatens to corrupt their developing minds. In a recent study from Brown University, parents reported “that their children exhibited an increase in social media/internet use prior to disclosure of a transgender identity.” It is reasonable to expect that the rates of gender dysphoria among youths will only increase as their consumption of LGBTQ+ propaganda increases in entertainment.
Florida State Rep. Joe Harding (R) warned that the left is using Disney to further its agenda and believes parents need to fight back. “[The Left has made] Disney, which is in every home in America…part of their arm of influence. If we do not make this the last stand — [if we] do not make this a turning point, I believe it could be too late to recover from it.”
Harding is right. Parents must be vigilant when it comes to the media and entertainment their children consume. Every parent needs to be aware of Disney’s concerted effort to groom their children and make decisions for their family going forward.
If parents don’t take action, they are risking that their children will end up pledging allegiance to radical gender ideology and placing their faith in the secular whims of the day instead of in God.
