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Leo Hohmann
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Leo Hohmann is a news editor for WND. He has been a reporter and
editor at several suburban newspapers in the Atlanta and Charlotte,
North Carolina, areas and also served as managing editor of Triangle
Business Journal in Raleigh, North Carolina.
The establishment media has suddenly gone ga-ga over transgenders.
Whether it’s Bruce Jenner’s prime-time interview with Diane Sawyer to
discuss his “journey” from a 1976 Olympic decathlon stud to surgery-
and drug-induced womanhood, or teary-eyed parents waxing softly about
their child’s difficult but rewarding transformation from one sex to
another, the American public is about to be inundated with journalistic
stories, TV shows, books, movies and ads promoting transgenderism.
Sound off in today’s WND Poll: What’s your take on Bruce Jenner?
Like all good propaganda campaigns, it starts in the schools.
Parents of children at a middle school in Maine
were outraged when they found out a guidance counselor read “I Am Jazz”
to a class of 7-year-olds. The autobiographical picture book is based
on the life of Jazz Jennings, a transgender teenager who talks of having
a “girl’s brain in a boy’s body.”
“From the time she was 2 years old, Jazz knew that she had a girl’s
brain in a boy’s body. She loved pink and dressing up as a mermaid and
didn’t feel like herself in boys’ clothing,” reads the description on
Amazon. But her family was confused because they always thought of Jazz
as a boy.
The book describes how Jazz “flourished once she was allowed to be herself,” said one reviewer, E.M. Kokie, in a review for ThePirateTree.com, a site that focuses on “social justice and children’s literature.”
The children’s book has won myriad awards.
NBC reported this week a story about how California Congressman Mike Honda’s “transgender daughter makes him proud.”
The boy (now girl)’s father says he just wants his child to “be happy,” as a tear forms in his eye.
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The NBC Today Show presented the stories of several sets of parents
last week who have “struggled” with their young children’s gender
confusion. Most decided to support their boys’ desire to be girls, and
vise versa.
Not to be outdone, CBS did a story on a family celebrating their “5-year-old son’s transgender journey.”
This is the way CBS Boston reporter Ken McCleod began his story:
“A Massachusetts couple knew their child wasn’t happy. So
they made the courageous and difficult decision to raise their daughter
as a boy at his own request.”
The rest is predictable.
Then there is the new TV series “Transparent,” a comedy-drama
television series produced for Amazon Studios Video that debuted last
year. The series, created and directed by Jill Soloway, presents the
story of a Los Angeles family and their lives following the discovery
that the person they knew as their father Mort (Jeffrey Tambor) is
transgender.
At the Golden Globe Awards on Jan. 11, the show won the award for best television series.
Former model Tyra Banks has also produced a transgender TV series for
VH1 called TransAmerica, starring transgender model/activist Carmen
Carrera.
According to Hollywood Reporter,
“the eight-episode docuseries will chronicle a group of Chicago women
united by the shared experience of being transgender. The series is
described as an earnest look at a group of millennial women — who happen
to be transgender — living, loving and building their careers. The
series will explore how their sexuality impacts their lives.”
Susan Levison, executive vice president of programming for VH1, told
Hollywood Reporter: “This is a show about a group of compelling,
gorgeous young friends who are on a unique journey while staying true to
their authentic selves. We believe that message resonates.”
Summer camps for the gender confused
And the movement isn’t limited to a media blitz.
The transgender movement now offers transgender-friendly summer camps for children of all ages.
Camp Aranu’tiq is one such venture. Launched in 2010, the program
seeks to offer an overnight camp experience designed specifically for
“transgender and gender variant youth.”
Aranu’tiq is a chugach (Indigenous people of Alaska) word for “a
person who was thought to embody both the male and female spirit,”
according to the camp’s website. “Aranu’tiq people were often revered and thought to be very lucky because their existence transcended traditional boundaries.”
Camps are held for pre-teens and teens at undisclosed sites.
The camp was founded by Boston native Nick Teich, a PhD candidate at
Brandeis University and author of the book “Transgendered 101: A Simple
Guide to a Complex Issue. He has a “deep personal interest in helping
transgender youth to be themselves,” according to the camp’s website.
The assistant camp director is Morgan Darby, a former teacher and
girls’ basketball coach who relocated from Oakland, California, to
Boston. She is an active member of MassEquality, an LGBT statewide
grassroots advocacy organization and holds and master of arts degree in
gender and cultural studies from Simmons College.
The camp also has psychologists and therapists who collaborate with
parents and support groups, “supporting families through transition.”
One such professional is Bob Ditter, a family therapist in Boston
who, according to his bio, “is a nationally recognized trainer and
consultant for organizations that work with young people. He has visited
over 600 summer camps in the United States.”
Under a section “Who can attend Camp Aranutiq’s programs,” the camp’s website states:
“Camp Aranu’tiq is for those who feel that they do not
fit into the norms our society has prescribed for gender. This includes
those who have “transitioned,” those who happen to express their gender
differently than others, and those who may experience teasing or
bullying because of their gender.”
The camp says of its staff:
“About half to two-thirds of our counselors at each
program are trans-identified. We feel it is important to have role
models who are of all gender identities and expressions. We seek a
diverse group of staff and volunteers.”
Camp Aranu’tiq was winner of the Eleanor Eells Award
in 2012. This award recognizes program excellence as well as research
in practice at camps, according the Eleanor Eells website.
Camp Aranu’tiq is just one example. There are dozens of similar camps easily found online.
‘Christian’ camps for transgenders?
Some even claim to be “faith-based.”
“The Naming Project” touts itself as a “faith-based organization that aims to provide a haven for LGBTQ and allies alike.”
It is holding a camp session from July 26-31 at Bay Lake Camp in
Deerwood, Minnesota. “Youth ages 14-18 of all sexual and gender
identities who are interested in talking and learning about sexuality
and gender in the context of their own spiritual understanding are
encouraged to attend,” according to the website glaad.org.
The Naming Project promotes a documentary called “Camping Out.”
The Naming Project says it is “a Christian ministry that walks with
youth wherever they are on their own faith journey. Youth from around
the country attend our summer camp, and we communicate with youth,
parents, pastors, youth workers, and others who care for LGBTQ youth.”
The Naming Project is just one example of how the LGBT movement is spilling over into the Christian church.
The LGBT Humanist Council promotes a program called “Sharing Our Stories,” which celebrates the lives of LGBTQ people.
A group in Gastonia, N.C., called Gaston Has Heart is one of many to
pick up on the theme, offering a “Sharing Our Stories” program at a
local church, All Saints Episcopal, last month.
“The day will consist of three wonderful keynote speakers, Joshua
Burford; The Dr. Rev. Gary Butterworth; and Matthew Morrell Comer. Also,
we will offer ten educational workshops, on a wide-variety of topics
related to the LGBTQ Community, over the span of three concurrent
sessions,” the group’s Facebook site says. “Finally, we will hold a ’round table’ discussion on collaboration in the Community.”
The site further explains that, “‘Sharing Our Stories’ is appropriate
for anyone in the LGBTQ Community, its allies and advocates, educators,
those in the human services field, parents, families, friends, members
of the faith community and many more.”
But not all scientists are on board with the transgender movement’s
basic hypothesis, that gender confusion is a genetic, permanent
condition.
Top psychologist throws water on LGBT ‘science’
There is a solid body of research that indicates gender confusion is
best understood as a mental disorder, often temporary in nature.
Former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Paul R.
McHugh, M.D., concluded it is “biologically impossible” for a person to
change the sex they were born with, and those who advocate “sexual
reassignment surgery” are thus promoting mental illness.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal,
McHugh, who is Hopkins’ Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry,
cites a long-term Swedish study that followed transgendered persons for
up to 30 years, and revealed that “beginning about 10 years after having
the surgery, the transgendered began to experience increasing mental
difficulties. Most shockingly, their suicide mortality rose almost
20-fold above the comparable non-transgender population.”
McHugh’s research further concluded: “When children who reported
transgender feelings were tracked without medical or surgical treatment
at both Vanderbilt University and London’s Portman Clinic, 70%-80% of
them spontaneously lost those feelings.”
Yet, the push to normalize transgenderism rushes forward.
It’s no coincidence that the transgender movement should follow on
the heels of a very successful same-sex marriage movement, says David
Usher, president of the Center for Marriage Policy.
It comes in the wake of a late 2014 ABC News poll
showing 58 percent of American adults now approve of same-sex marriage,
up from just 32 percent nine years ago. So the media machine is moving
on to the next stop on its family-destroying agenda, says Usher.
He believes the movement will result in tragedy for hundreds of young people who are being sold a lie.
“I’m just wondering what planet I’m living on now, but this is all
basically straight out of (Alfred) Kinsey (the famous sexologist). The
whole concept is that one’s biological sex is completely immaterial,” he
said. “That’s just the next phase of the sexual liberation movement, to
make it so physical sex means absolutely nothing.”
Inherent in this “junk science” is the idea that the mind is all powerful and the mind prevails over reality.
“And basically we live in an age when reality just doesn’t matter
anymore. What is, isn’t. This is basically liberals trying to bring in
the last stage of cultural destruction laid out by Herbert Marcuse,”
Usher said.
Building a new social order
Marcuse was a German-American philosopher, sociologist and political
theorist associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. This
school taught that it was necessary to advance the theories of Karl Marx
beyond economics into the realm of sociology and culture. It was the
crossing of Marx with Freud.
“Just as classical economic Marxism argued that under capitalism the
working class was oppressed, so the Frankfurt school used Freud to argue
that under Western culture everyone lived in a constant state of
psychological repression,” said William Lind in a documentary produced by the Free Congress Foundation.
The idea was to end sexual alienation, which cultural Marxists argued was just as significant as economic alienation.
Just as economic Marxism had to destroy capitalism before it could
rebuild a society under socialist principles, cultural Marxists work to
destroy the family and religious institutions so they can usher in a new
order based on secularism and brute materialism.
Some have called it “cultural terrorism.”
“This is the socialist mindset. If you can destroy the meaning of
what it means to be a woman or a man, then the whole country is up for
grabs,” Usher said.
The American Psychological Association decided in 1974 that
homosexuality was no longer a mental health issue. Transgengerism is the
next phase of that metamorphosis.
School counselors in some school districts are already being directed
to “new research” that suggests they must “advocate” for
gender-confused students in elementary and middle schools.
“So what the APA has done is create a lot of people who are very
malleable and they get sick, get depressed, and they need resources,
which of course is always presented in another government program,
because you create people with mental problems who need constant
counseling,” Usher said.
These kind of strange approaches to mental health issues, and the
blurring of the lines between men and women were common in the Soviet
Union, Usher said. But even the Soviets and the Nazis were not as
extreme in embracing transgenderism as those who make the rounds in
America’s left-of-center political circles.
“If only a few people believed it, it wouldn’t be so frightening,” he said.
