Author: Penna Dexter

Penna Dexter
Headlines about the fact that the fertility rate is falling worldwide have government leaders worried. As workforces shrink, economic growth slows, and companies and government entities fail to sufficiently fund pensions, demographers are scrambling to offer explanations – and solutions.
The fertility rate has to do with the number of babies a woman has over her lifetime. It is believed that, for the first time, fertility has dropped below global replacement.
There are many reasons: Longer lifespans with more children surviving into adulthood, women’s higher education levels, women’s greater participation in the workforce, economic uncertainty beginning with the 2008 financial crisis.
The Wall Street Journal points to another factor:  a “’second demographic transition,’ a society-wide reorientation toward individualism that puts less emphasis on marriage and parenthood, and makes fewer or no children more acceptable.”
Melissa Kearney, an economist at the University of Maryland, told The Wall Street Journal that raising children is no more expensive now than in the past. She says parents simply have different “perspectives” and “perceived constraints.” Professor Kearney, the author of a recent book, The Two-Parent Privilege, points out that highly educated parents spend more time with their children than in the past and therefore may want fewer of them. She says, “The intensity of parenting is a constraint.”
Another scholar with the same last name — spelled differently — is the American Enterprise Institute’s Timothy Carney. His book is Family Unfriendly: How Our Culture Made Raising Kids Much Harder Than It Needs to Be. He and his wife have five children.
Tim Carney’s recent Washington Post op-ed recommends families have at least four children. He writes: “There’s nothing high-quality about the intensive parenting that is typical in today’s middle and upper-middle classes.” He recommends letting kids “off the leash,” ditching the daily after-school “race,” in favor of “independent play” because it’s fun, less exhausting, and helps children learn to cope with stressors (like when little brother smashes your record-breaking Lego tower).

Penna Dexter
Radical transgender directives just keep coming from the executive branch of the federal government. The latest decree, official guidance for employers from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, concerns restroom and pronoun use.
The guidance states that “the denial of access to a bathroom or other sex-segregated facility consistent with the individual’s gender identity” could bring a workplace under harassment charges. So could misgendering: “repeated and intentional use of a name or pronoun inconsistent with the individual’s known gender identity.”
Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits employers with more than 15 employees from discriminating based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Now — without a vote in Congress — the EEOC is including sexual orientation and gender identity in the list of protected categories.
The EEOC’s mandate is to combat racism and sexism in the workplace. It is not to force employers to pretend a person can change his or her gender identity.
Last July, the United States Senate narrowly confirmed Kalpana Kotagal to serve on the EEOC. Leading up to the vote, Senator Ted Cruz voiced his concern about what he described as her “record of support for radical transgender ideology.” Ms. Kotagal was confirmed as the third Democrat on the 5-member commission. This guidance is the fruit.
When the EEOC proposed this update last fall, 20 state attorneys general expressed their opposition, arguing that the proposed guidance would threaten the First Amendment rights of employers, employees, and, in some cases, customers.
Reed Rubenstein, director of oversight at America First Legal, pointed out that “Most large corporations promote gender ideology and punish workers who dissent, but it is likely that the EEOC will focus on small and privately owned family businesses, many of which lack the resources to fight back effectively.” Christian employers: be warned.
The Heritage Foundation’s Jay Richards told The Daily Signal, “normal people” must understand. He warns, “We’re dealing with a totalitarian ideology that wants to destroy the present order.” 

Penna Dexter
When the U.S. Department of Education released its rewrite of Title IX a couple of weeks ago, it took a landmark guarantee of equality in education on the basis of sex and turned it upside down.
Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 was designed to protect women’s rights in education. These protections were hard won. They were a pillar of the feminist agenda. After they were enacted, women and girls gained important protections and opportunities.  Female participation in sports — from grammar school through college and beyond — exploded.
Title IX was passed in recognition of the inherent distinction between men and women. But this new rule imposes a radical redefinition of sex to include gender identity. In fact, according to The Washington Stand’s Ben Johnson, “The term ‘gender identity’ appears 289 times in the 1,577-page document.”
Sarah Parshall Perry, Senior Legal Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, has been warning for months that the administration was set to both “undermine constitutional freedoms  — like the freedom of speech — and erase the very  women that Title IX was enacted to protect.”
She explains in The Daily Signal that under the new rule, ”any K-12 school or institution of higher education that receives any federal funding would have to open girls’ bathrooms, locker rooms, housing accommodations, sports teams, and any other sex-separated educational program to biological boys who claim to ‘identify’ as girls.”
Ignoring or even questioning these guidelines will result in charges of harassment.
Certain state leaders have taken action against the new rule.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Florida Governor Ron De Santis directed their school districts to ignore the rewrite. Many state attorneys general are suing the administration over the changes.
How do we describe the gutting of such an entrenched law protecting women, such a brazen denial of biological reality?  Gary Bauer uses the term “assault on normalcy.” He’s right. What a radical move six months before an election.

Penna Dexter
Five years ago, in a one-hour radio interview, Jeff Younger told me the story of his battle to save his then-six-year-old son, James. When he was 3, his mother, Jeff’s ex-wife Anne Georgulas, began dressing and treating James as a girl. She began taking him to a transgender-affirming therapist. She obtained a court order enjoining Jeff from dressing James as a boy for school, from teaching him that he is a boy, and from providing religious teachings about sexuality and gender.
James’ mother instructed school authorities that he be treated as a girl. He goes to school, dressed as a girl and obediently answers to his girl name, “Luna.” But, with his dad and twin brother Jude, James is all boy. And, with family friends, he would always play with the boys, as a boy.
As James’s mom, a pediatrician, orchestrated his social transition, his father spent time and money fighting her in Texas courts. In 2019 Jeff lost custody of James and Jude. He did eventually manage to win a court order prohibiting Anne from subjecting James to gender mutilation surgery or hormone treatments.
In late 2022, Anne and the twins moved to California. Jeff maintains that, despite the Texas Supreme Court’s prohibition, Anne initiated the move to take advantage of California’s “trans refuge” laws.
These laws were strengthened in January 2023 when California Senate bill 107 took effect. One provision prohibits the state from enforcing court orders from other states that seek to remove custody from a parent who has moved to California to transition their child.
The question is: will Anne Georgulas now procure puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, and surgical castration for James?
Jeff Younger is convinced that California laws now allow her to do exactly that—and she will.
He’s still protesting, but will not even be allowed to testify at a May 30 court hearing in Los Angeles although several pro-trans “experts” will take the stand.
Stay tuned.

Penna Dexter
A rule has been added to the federal register that will make it  nearly impossible for an incoming president to fire certain federal employees.
The Office of Personnel Management issued the new rule which will shield employees appointed by the executive branch from being terminated for opposing the policies and agenda of a president.
The rule is to go into effect next month. It concerns employment protections in place for career civil servants that do not apply to political appointees.
The rule is based upon the idea that career bureaucrats — often lifelong federal employees — should not be subject to termination because they are not classified as policy-making executive branch employees.
But, as past presidents have learned, career civil servants often fill “policy-making and policy-influencing roles.”  They can form part of the deep state that plagues incoming presidents when they try to implement conservative policies.
National Review’s James Lynch explains that, toward the end of his administration, former President Donald Trump issued an executive order creating a new category, “Schedule F,” for policy-making employees. These employees would not be shielded from termination for “perceived disloyalty to the president and his agenda.” The rule states: “Faithful execution of the law requires that the President have appropriate management oversight regarding this select cadre of professionals.”
President Joe Biden repealed the Trump executive order upon entering office.”
According to Family Research Council’s Washington Stand, the new rule protects “those that the Biden administration has entrenched in the federal government from a possible Trump presidency.” FRC’s Senior Director of Government Affairs Quena Gonzalez, says this new rule “undermines the authority of the American people by tying the hands of an elected president.” He says it “undermines presidential elections.”
This issue goes beyond dueling executive orders.
Though employees with experience and expertise are valuable to a federal workforce, their role is not to undermine a president or impede his effectiveness. Any rule that perpetuates a permanent ruling class should be jettisoned.

Penna Dexter
Here’s the story of a young woman who became acutely aware of the relationship between social media and teen mental illness and is doing something important about it.
The Wall Street Journal and other media outlets describe her as a digital-wellness advocate. 
Larissa May, age 29, is Founder and Executive Director of a nonprofit called Half the Story. The organization’s founding concept is: “Social media is only half the story. We only share one part of ourselves on the internet.” This can be destabilizing, and worse.
Social scientist Jonathan Haidt has the data to prove the connection between social media and the rise in teen anxiety and depression.
In his new book, “The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing An Epidemic of Mental Illness,” he highlights the teen mental health epidemic’s sudden onset. It occurred in 2012, the year Facebook bought Instagram. Instagram was founded in 2010, the same year Apple released the I-phone 4, the first smartphone with a front-facing camera.
Teens worldwide were drawn in, with girls spending hours “trying to perfect their Instagram profiles while scrolling through even-more-perfect profiles of other teens.”
Larissa says, “When I was a sophomore in college, I hit the darkest period of my life.” She says she was spending 10-12 hours per day on social media, ”which is not as uncommon as you might think.” She became depressed, anxious, and even considered suicide. Instead, in her senior year, as a class project, she started Half the Story.
She now educates middle through high schoolers “about the emotional skills that you need to thrive in the digital media.” She tells them, “If you aren’t in touch with your emotions, you’re not going to be able to control your digital habits.”
Larissa has developed a curriculum for educators called Social Media U plus an 8-week course for students. She also advocates for policy changes to limit online dangers.
She’s not waiting for tech companies but is actively shaping the future of the internet.

Penna Dexter
Back in 2017, Ed Stetzer, then a professor, dean and executive director of Wheaton College’s Billy Graham Center, published an essay on the website, In All Things, titled “How Can the Christian Church Thrive In a Non-Christian World?” He wrote, “Our society no longer assumes the gospel, which means the Church often stands at odds with the rest of society.”
Seven years later, a U.S president proclaimed that Transgender Day of Visibility will be recognized on March 31, Easter Sunday. Was the president trying to spite Christians? Though Trans Day of Visibility has been around for 10 years, the president’s words in affirmation of “transgender Americans” stand in direct opposition to Christianity. He stated that transgenders “deserve, and are entitled to, the same rights and freedoms as every other American, including the most fundamental freedom to be their true selves.” He then blasted Americans working to protect society and its children from the fruits of the transgender movement: pornography in schools, mutilating surgeries, violations of basic female privacy, and fairness in athletics.
If this is not hostility to Christianity, it is blindness. Cultural commentator Rod Dreher writes, “The more troubling thing is that Biden’s kind of Christian sees no contradiction between linking Easter with Trans Day.”
He wrote, “In the 1970’s, the gay rights movement adopted the Greek letter lambda as its symbol. This is why the premiere gay rights advocacy organization is called Lambda Legal. What we are living through now is a cosmological struggle within our culture, a fight to the death between the Lamb and the Lambda. The ruling Class — our political leaders, but not only them — is on the side of the Lambda.”
Dr. Stetzer wrote, “the gospel is always clearer in an age when it is not culturally assumed.” We can proclaim a “radically distinct” gospel message. But Rod Dreher wonders: “Can Christian faith be sustained for long without the support of a nurturing Christian culture?”
Lord help us.

Penna Dexter
Last month, more than two decades after the Clinton FDA approved the abortion pill, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case that challenges the agency’s progressive easing of restrictions on chemical abortion.
The case is Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine vs. Food and Drug Administration. 
Alliance Defending Freedom filed suit in federal court on behalf of four medical organizations and four doctors seeking to have the drug, mifepristone, removed from the marketplace. Mifepristone is the first in a 2-drug regimen that constitutes a medical, or chemical abortion. Chemical abortion accounts for over 60 percent of abortions done in the U.S.  
A federal judge in Amarillo, Texas ruled that the drug’s initial approval was unlawful.
But the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals left intact the FDA’s initial approval of mifepristone. Its ruling would reverse changes regulators made in 2016 and 2021 that eased some conditions for administering the drug.
In 2000, the FDA approved the 2-drug regimen to be used during the first seven weeks of pregnancy and then, in 2016, extended it to be used up to 10 weeks’ gestation.
Over time, the FDA has also removed the requirement that a woman be examined in person when receiving a prescription for chemical abortion drugs.
According to Mary Szoch, Director of the Family Research Council’s Center for Human Dignity, “the use of the abortion drug is especially egregious, because we know that the abortion drug is four times as dangerous as surgical abortion for the mother.”
Increasingly, medication abortions are prescribed via telemedicine — that means there’s no physical exam, no ultrasound study. Prompt ultrasound evaluation is key in diagnosing ectopic pregnancy, which can prove deadly to the mother if not caught early enough.
The justices seemed to doubt the doctors’ standing. Nonetheless a competent FDA would do its job and reinstate the requirement that existed as recently as 2021, that to get a medication abortion, a woman must first see a medical provider.

Penna Dexter
This true story has a positive ending. But it never should have happened. Dr. Johnson Varkey is a biology teacher, adjunct professor at St. Philip’s College in San Antonio, Texas.   
He was fired for stating a fact of human biology: that sex is determined by X and Y chromosomes.  
I learned in 9th grade that females have two X chromosomes in their cells, while males have one X and one Y. For 18 years, Dr. Varkey taught this in his Human Anatomy and Physiology classes at St. Philip’s. But in November 2022, 4 students walked out of Dr. Varkey’s class for presenting this basic scientific concept.
Two months later, St. Philip’s College fired Dr. Varkey, citing “numerous complaints” about his “offensive” speech in the classroom and accusing him of “unacceptable religious preaching.”  First Liberty Institute was asked to help. The firm’s attorneys wrote a letter to the school outlining the illegality of its action in firing Dr. Varkey. First Liberty states it also “filed a charge of discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.”
Several members of Congress weighed in. Last month, a full year after Dr. Varkey was fired, St. Philips College and the Alamo Community College District — of which the college is a part — reinstated Dr. Varkey. According to the settlement, Dr. Varkey will be back in the classroom this fall.
In today’s academy, an admired professor gets fired for teaching biology because someone steps up and defines sex differently. Dr. Varkey is a quiet, serious academic. Since he’s known to be a Christian, he’s a target.
Christian professors in these environments are being told to lie. So are Christians in other workplace settings — think pronoun requirements. But people do not have to capitulate to woke policies and regimes contrary to their faith.
Last year, a Supreme Court decision affirmed postal worker Gerald Groff’s right to his reasonable practice of faith. That was First Liberty’s case. Its powerful protections are a game-changer. 

Penna Dexter
Last week Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Minneapolis to visit an abortion clinic. The Washington Post reports that this is ”believed to be the first time an American president or vice president has toured such a facility while in office.” Even pro-abortion administrations have never considered it good campaign strategy to showcase an abortion mill.
Until now.
The trip to Minnesota was the sixth stop on Vice President Harris’s “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms” tour. It took place a week after President Biden’s State of the Union address in which he highlighted his administration’s emphasis on abortion access. It’s interesting — though — that the president never used the word. CNN reports that his written speech “included the word: abortion, but he did not say it when he delivered the speech.” Mr. Biden once held to the Catholic position on the sanctity of human life. Perhaps he retains some lingering cognitive dissonance on the subject.
This White House has made broad abortion access a core campaign strategy aimed at attracting and galvanizing moderate voters. Are we really a country that has devalued motherhood to such a degree that a major party’s campaign would run on making it easier to abort children?
The Washington Stand reports that voters in Ireland recently honored motherhood. They voted down two proposed constitutional amendments: One, the Care Amendment, removed existing references to motherhood and statements regarding the contributions mothers in the home provide. Seventy-four percent of Irish voters rejected this change. And sixty-seven percent of Irish voters turned down an amendment that altered the Constitution’s declaration that the family “is founded” upon marriage, instead stating that the family may be “founded on marriage or on other durable relationships.”
Celebrating these votes, the pro-life, pro-family Irish Freedom Party stated, “The referendum results reveal a huge disconnect between the people of Ireland and the political establishment. They seem to live on a different planet to normal people.”
Hopefully, American voters will also honor motherhood.

Penna Dexter
The nation’s two largest pharmacy chains, CVS and Walgreens, are about to start filling prescriptions for the abortion pill, mifepristone, in states where it is legally allowed. Since restrictions on prescribing the drug through telemedicine have been lifted, the reckless practice of providing abortion drugs through the mail has exploded. The availability of mifepristone at drug stores will increase the ease of getting an abortion with no doctor or nurse present. In excruciating pain, the mother will expel her baby, or pieces of it, into a toilet, or her hand.
Mifepristone cuts off progesterone, which is required to sustain a pregnancy.
The FDA approved the abortion pill in 2000 with strong requirements to mitigate its risk to women receiving it. The stipulation that abortion pills be dispensed by a qualified prescriber at a clinic or hospital or similar health care setting was once deemed crucial. Since non-surgical, or chemical, abortions must be done within the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, the gestational age of the unborn baby must be accurate. If a woman misdates her pregnancy, she risks infection from fetal tissue left in the uterus. And not seeing a medical professional often rules out a timely diagnosis of ectopic pregnancy, which can be life-threatening.
Board certified OB-GYN Ingrid Skop, vice president for the Charlette Lozier Institute, says, “This is not health care. This is an ideology that prioritizes destruction of unborn human life and does not care that the women injured by these abortions, whom I see in the ER on a regular basis, are collateral damage.”
In just a few weeks the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on whether mifepristone should remain available for abortions. At issue is whether the FDA approval of mifepristone, and the agency’s removal of health safeguards in 2016 and 2021, adequately protected women.
Nonetheless, CVS and Walgreens are moving ahead. Depending upon where you live, your corner pharmacy may be about to become an abortion business. 

Penna Dexter
A Christian high school girls’ basketball team forfeited a playoff game last year because a transgender student, a biological boy, was playing on the opposing team. Now the Vermont Principals’ Association says the team will not be allowed to participate in future tournaments.
FOX NEWS reports that “Chris Goodwin, who coaches at Mid-Vermont Christian School, said he was notified of the transgender player on the other team, but it wasn’t until the playoffs last year that his team ended up facing them on the court.” The school is taking legal action against the state to regain the right to participate.
Coach Goodwin told FOX NEWS that “boys just play at a different speed, a different force.” He explained that he and school administrators held discussions with players and parents. He said, “we decided that instead of going against our religious beliefs” regarding the fact that males and females are created differently, just to forfeit that particular game and withdraw from the tournament.
“And at that point,” says the coach, “the state of Vermont Governing body kicked us out of all athletic competitions in the state.”
The coach’s decision was validated by viral footage from another recent girls’ basketball game, this one between Massachusetts Collegiate Charter School of Lowell and KIPP Academy. As two players vied for a rebound, one of them — a large, biological male from the KIPP team — threw a female player from the Charter team to the ground, grabbing the ball from her and causing her to grip her back in pain. The trans-identifying player took out two more Charter players before halftime. Not wanting to lose more players, the Charter team forfeited the game.
It’s unfair that women across America have been losing all sorts of athletic competitions, titles, and scholarships to men identifying as women. And when males play on girls’ teams, it’s downright dangerous. These coaches were right to forfeit. Let’s pray Coach Goodwin and Mid-Vermont School win their lawsuit.

Penna Dexter
Last week thousands of Christians gathered in Nashville for the National Religious Broadcasters Convention. The NRB was formed in the early years of radio broadcasting, when evangelical broadcasters, who were faithfully proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ, built radio audiences in the millions. This threatened liberal mainline denominations who wanted a ban on religious broadcasting that was not done by “responsible” religious broadcasters — like themselves.
On Thursday night of the conference, Donald Trump was the speaker. He hit every issue Christians and conservatives care about. He identified himself as a believer. But he focused on his audience — people involved in communicating the gospel and spreading God’s truth. He spent a lot of time on religious liberty, the freedom of Christians to practice our faith. He addressed the growing threats to religious liberty and promised to “protect God in the public square” if he is elected.
But, as I sat in that audience, what impacted me most was President Trump’s words about the good Christians do for the country and the world by using pulpits and the media to tell people about Christ and His principles and by loving people and caring for their needs. It was as if he was speaking, not so much to get our votes, as to encourage us to keep doing what we are doing and step it up.
This was encouraging. But I couldn’t help wondering if the church is doing enough. Is our message clear, or watered down?  Are we worthy of the compliments this former president was articulating.
In his four years in the White House, Donald Trump got a taste of how difficult it is to govern people hostile to faith and biblical principles.
On Friday morning at NRB, Bott Radio Network hosted a breakfast. Leesburg, Virginia pastor, Gary Hamrick told attendees, “The marriage between woke ideology and liberal theology has produced passive pastors.” Faithful pastors — and broadcasters — need their freedom protected. They also need courage.  

Penna Dexter
President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu are speaking by phone lately. A major topic of the calls is the clearing out of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, a military necessity in order to dismantle Hamas. President Biden is making demands about hostages and civilian protections.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has publicly criticized “recent talk about forcing a Palestinian state on Israel.” He says this “would be a huge prize for terror, the likes of which we have never seen.”
Hamas must be removed. The Heritage Foundation’s David Harsanyi points out that “no Israeli Prime Minister would act any differently in Gaza. Israeli voters rightly demand it.”
Our dealings with Israel should always occur in light of the existential threat Hamas represents. These threats were fulfilled in the carnage that began October 7th, an event which should not have surprised us.
Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has been meticulously cataloguing Hamas’s threats of ‘total war’ for years. The organization publicized Hamas’s articles and videos advertising its drills preparing for an invasion of Israel.
The threats are incessant. But we must pay attention. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, MEMRI’s president and co-founder Yigal Carmon said “If they publish it many times, it suggests they mean it and you cannot ignore it. You must take it seriously.”
MEMRI documents the terrorists’ competing messages. Hamas politbureau chief Ismail Haniyeh tells the West he wants to end the war and signals that Israel and Hamas can live side by side, But, in a January 9th speech aired on Al Jazeera, he said: “We should hold onto the victory that took place on Oct. 7 and build upon it.” He says “the time has come for the jihad of the swords.”
MEMRI’s Executive Director, Steve Stalinski told the Journal, “We’ve monitored it since the beginning of the jihadis going online, and there have never been so many open threats to the U.S.—explicit threats.”
We must pay attention.

Penna Dexter
Washington state has some of the nation’s most progressive laws regarding teen gender transitions.
This became a problem for Puget Sound therapist Tamara Pietzke. She was employed for six years by MultiCare, one of Washington’s largest hospital systems. In a piece for The Free Press, she expresses her growing concern at being required to “approve all teen gender transitions.”

“I was getting the message from my supervisors that when a young person I was seeing expressed discomfort with their gender—the diagnostic term is gender dysphoria—I should throw out all my training. No matter the patient’s history or other mental health conditions that could be complicating the situation, I was simply to affirm that the patient was transgender, and even approve the start of a medical transition.”

This, she writes, “challenges the very fundamentals of what therapy is supposed to provide.”
Ms. Pietzke goes on to describe three cases that heightened her alarm at this protocol and ultimately resulted in her resignation—a risky move for a single mom of three children under six. Each case involved prior mental health diagnoses, often autism, family dysfunction, and even abuse. One teenaged female patient began identifying as a “wounded male dog.”
In each case, Ms. Pietzke was told she must refer the patient to a gender health clinic to begin hormone treatment which normally continues for life.
When she questioned this, she was accused of “spreading disinformation. She was removed from cases and eventually left her job so she could speak freely. She writes, “Nothing will change unless people like me—who know the risks of medicalizing troubled young people—blow the whistle.”
Last week the American College of Pediatricians released a statement based on its review of over 60 studies of adolescents with gender dysphoria. The authors conclude that these so-called “affirming” interventions destroy healthy bodies but provide no long-term benefit to psychological well-being.
A timely vindication.

Penna Dexter
Members of the medical and psychological communities who advocate gender transition as a treatment for disturbed young people start them on puberty blockers as the first medical step. This sounds drastic — and permanent. But the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) publicly claims the effects of these drugs are “fully reversible.” Some of those folks know better.
In a recent Breakpoint commentary, John Stonestreet and Jared Hayden point out that puberty blocking drugs are often presented as a way “for gender-confused teens to ‘push pause’ on puberty and buy more time to find out who they are.”
It’s naive to believe that taking drugs that stop the development of a young person’s sexual organs is “fully reversible.” Stopping the drugs after a few months or years will not bring back the time that God ordained for that child to grow physically and emotionally.
Heading up the list of physical consequences of puberty blockers is osteoporosis. The Breakpoint hosts point to a recently-leaked video from a 2022 WPATH certification seminar. Dr. Daniel Metzger, a WPATH-certified pediatric endocrinologist told his audience: “Normally puberty is the time of putting the calcium into your piggy bank.” Those bones won’t catch up.
As is often the case when one searches Google about anything medical, the Mayo Clinic shows up near the top. This happened when I searched for “Harms from Puberty Blockers.” But “possible side effects” don’t show up until page 4 and 5 of Mayo’s 6-page document, where it states: the drugs “also might have long-term effects on growth spurts, bone growth, [and] bone density.”
The Mayo document advises: “Yearly bone density and bone-age tests may be advised.” It suggests “calcium and vitamin D supplements.”
The Mayo piece lists one more long-term effect: “Fertility, depending on when the medicine is started.”
A heartbroken grandmother at my church told me she’s praying her grandson will decide not to take this step. These are serious drugs. We must start saying so.

Penna Dexter
There are better ways to encourage literacy among children than exposing them to male transvestites at Drag Queen Story Hours.
Drag Queen Story Hours feature flamboyant drag queens reading stories to children mostly in libraries, schools, bookstores, and sometimes bars.
One parent says these performances expose kids to “beautiful people.” Gender queer academic Harris Kornstein said, “Drag queens can teach kids how to live queerly.” He said Drag Queen Story Hours foster “a queer rationality between adult and child.”
Christopher Rufo dug into what he describes as “the real story behind this bizarre modern ritual” and has produced a short film. Find it at christopherrufo.com.
The film takes us back to the 1969 Stonewall riots, when drag suddenly became political. Two drag queens who participated in the riots formed the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. They created a list of demands, including:

“the right to self-determination over the use of their bodies”
“the right to be gay any time, any place”
“the right to physiological change and modification of sex on demand”

Chris Rufo explains that, after the 60’s, cross-dressers were no longer just engaging in entertainment, but were “revolutionaries who wanted to overthrow the system through sex.”  Drag became a political weapon underpinned by queer theory, a discipline created to deconstruct and disorder human sexuality, liberating the fetishes of transsexuals, sadomasochists, prostitutes, and even pedophiles.
The film introduces lesbian theorist Gayle Ruben who advocated normalizing “the eroticism of those who transgress generational boundaries — in her words ‘boy lovers’.”
Gender studies scholar Judith Butler posited the postmodern idea that man/woman sexuality is a social construct that could be reshaped via performance. Drag queens were the “perfect vehicle.”
 So, in 2015 the Drag Queen Story Hour was created. A Los Angeles-based queer activist organized the formation of chapters across the country.
Chris Rufo warns that these activists have been “remarkably successful.”
Governments and philanthropies who sponsor and promote this should stop: Now. 

Penna Dexter
Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei delivered a warning to business and political leaders gathered last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Through a translator, he told an audience of global elites: “the Western world is in danger,” and he didn’t mean from climate change. He explained that those whose responsibility it is “to defend the values of the West are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism, and thereby to poverty. “
He said free markets and entrepreneurs, not the state, are the “benefactors” of societies.
This was a courageous message delivered at an annual meeting where global planners favor top-down variants of socialism. But President Milei insists that socialism, wherever it’s tried, is impoverishing.
He pointed to the path his country has taken. Argentina’s economy fell from among the world’s largest at the beginning of the 20th century to one of the world’s worst, largely due to its embrace of socialism.  “We’re here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world — rather they are the root cause.”
President Milei accepted his 11-point victory as a mandate to overhaul Argentina’s economy, including its 211-percent inflation that has devastated citizens’ purchasing power.
This was Javier Milei’s first trip overseas since taking office last month. He said he “came to invite the rest of the countries of the Western world to get back on the path of prosperity.”
He blasted radical feminism, which he says is “ridiculous and anti-natural” and stated that, once communism failed, climate alarmism became the tool global socialists use for control.  He decried their advocacy of “population control mechanisms and the bloody abortion agenda.” Though he lives a libertine lifestyle and calls himself a “radical libertarian,” he insists life begins at conception and abortion is murder.
President Milei must administer “shock therapy” in Argentina. It will hurt. Let’s watch it work.

Penna Dexter
There’s no satisfactory explanation for the recent actions of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in keeping his cancer surgery — and his subsequent, extended hospitalization — secret from his staff and the White House.  The Administration insists this was simply a lapse in judgment, but it’s an unforgivable breach of protocol.
Even more disturbing are the growing recruitment problems in the US military, the institution from which Secretary Austin retired as a 4-star general.
Political and military leaders are alarmed at severe declines in recruitment in all branches except the Marines.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Owen West, Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Trump administration, and Kevin Wallsten, Professor of Political Science at California State University, Long Beach, offer an explanation backed by research. They sum up the  “essential problem,” by stating that, “Young white Democrats have lost faith in their country and are rejecting military service.” They lament that “American patriotism is dissolving.”
Their op-ed cites “one of the oldest and most reliable youth polls, Monitoring the Future,” which, “has for decades shown only small differences in the propensity to serve.”  In 2015, the percentage of white Democrats who wanted to serve stood at 19%, with blacks, Latinos, and white Republicans at 20%.
But, by 2021, the Monitoring the Future poll shows only 3% of young white male Democrats were interested in serving in the military, about one-fourth as many as among black and Latino men, and one-eighth the level of white Republicans. The poll revealed a drop of 45,000 men who wanted to serve.
Young white Republican men are more inclined to join the military, but lately more of their parents don’t want them to. Roughly 80 percent of recruits come from extended military families. With widespread implementation of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion policies which disfavor white, heterosexual males — especially conservative, religious ones — many families are actively discouraging their young people from joining up.
A woke military discourages patriotism and recruitment.

Penna Dexter
In an election year, the economy takes on heightened importance in voters’ thinking. A good question to ask is: are my elected officials wasting my money? Are they using taxpayer dollars responsibly?
David Ditch at The Daily Signal, tries to answer that question at least as it pertains to the current administration’s “4 worst wastes of 2023.”
Waste #1:How can we forget the $1.9-trillion-dollar spending package passed — without a Republican vote – in 2021? It was the third massive stimulus done as “COVID response.” David Ditch writes that $350 billion of it went to state and local governments who spent “much of it on golf courses, tourism, food stamps for the rich, bonuses for government workers, a pickleball complex,” — in other words they didn’t really need it. The unspent funds, tens of billions of dollars, were supposed to expire this year. But the administration quietly issued a rule to give states more time to figure out how to spend this “hoarded” money that was slated to go back into the federal treasury.
Waste #2In June, the administration lost its attempt at the US Supreme Court to cancel $430 billion in student loan debt, which, of course, means taxpayers would have funded it. Mr. Ditch reports that the administration still found ways to “force taxpayers to cover the cost of other people’s degrees” to the tune of $132 billion, “more than $1000 for every household in the country.”
Waste #3This past September, the US Centers for Disease Control ordered 20 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine for kids. David Ditch emphasizes the waste: This is “several times larger than the number of pediatric COVID-19 vaccines administered to date.”
Waste #4After Congress nixed a plan for an environmental jobs program called Climate Corps, the administration unilaterally revived 20,000 of those positions.
Thanks to The Daily Signal for alerting us to this waste. Americans should tell their leaders they’re sick of it.