The Upside-Down World pt. 2

The Upside-Down World
From the August 2010 Trumpet Print Edition »
Excerpt from The Trumpet by Joel Hilliker

A New Orthodoxy

The first words uttered when a baby is born are either “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” That is because sex is biological reality—and none too difficult to detect.

None too difficult, that is, except for intellectuals. In their Upside-Down thinking, nothing is either/or, black-or-white—not even male or female! Gender is a choice, a state of mind, a construct, and always open for reinterpretation. Using this warped logic, they exalt homosexuality, bisexuality and varying degrees of transsexuality including surgical “sex change.”

How brazen are intellectuals at rewriting reality? British law now mandates that transsexuals be allowed to receive a new birth certificate saying they were born the opposite sex. If this person believes he was born female, then he was born female! And anyone who says differently is a bigot! is the message.

Proponents of such policies think they are creating a world free from oppression and hate, a world of tolerance and understanding, where everyone is accepted, where no one is condemned and no one’s feelings are ever hurt. In truth they are intolerantly imposing their Upside-Down reality, creating a nightmare world where discomfort with moral deviancy is punishable by law.

In this world, morality has been flipped on its head. Freedom of religion is being beaten to death by the “freedom” to practice aggressive homosexual activism. State and local laws criminalizing behavior deemed discriminatory against cross-dressers, bisexuals and homosexuals are forcing businesses, schools and publicly funded organizations to embrace perversion. Last December, a British registrar was forced to resign for refusing to conduct same-sex “weddings.” A pediatrician had to leave an adoption panel because he wouldn’t approve homosexual couples for adoption. In February 2009, a Scottish couple were denied their request to adopt their two grandchildren—so that the children, ages 4 and 5, could be adopted by a gay male couple; when the grandparents objected, the judge told them to hush up if they ever wanted to see the children again.

Such bullying is perpetrated in the name of “tolerance”—when in actuality it bears the hallmarks of history’s despotic regimes. Phillips argues that the religious tyrannies of the Middle Ages and the political tyrannies of the 20th century have been replaced by something just as pernicious: cultural totalitarianism. “Medieval Christianity—like contemporary Islamism—stamped out dissent by killing or conversion; Western liberals do it by social and professional ostracism and legal discrimination,” she writes.

“It is a kind of secular Inquisition. And the grand inquisitors are to be found within the intelligentsia—in the universities, the media, the law, the political and professional classes—who not only have systematically undermined the foundations of Western society but are heavily engaged in attempting to suppress any challenge or protest.”

In this world, “reason” supposedly reigns. The reality, however, is that false and empty values have become the new dogma—at the expense of reason. The most intellectual—those who purportedly believe in the unassailable omnipotence of rationality—have become shockingly irrational. Facts that don’t fit the party line, they discard or ridicule. Biblical orthodoxy has simply been replaced by a rabidly secularist orthodoxy.

Power to the Little People

Mountains of evidence show the benefits of traditional marriage to both husband and wife, as well as society at large—and the high costs associated with its dissolution. It proves the enormous advantages to children—in personal safety, academic performance, financial well-being, emotional stability, self-respect, and assimilation into law-abiding adult life, among other things—of growing up under the same roof with both biological parents, a living arrangement built upon a strong, stable relationship between a sperm-producing adult male and an egg-producing adult female.

But because this evidence contradicts the secularist agenda, it is routinely overlooked, ignored, dismissed and scorned. The Upside-Down World keeps cranking up the pressure to popularize deviant sexuality—while removing pressure on singles to marry, pressure on married people to remain together, pressure on parents to make sacrifices for their children, and pressure on children to view their parents as authorities. All history proves that strong societies begin with strong marriages and families, yet intellectuals continue heedlessly striking blows at the pillars of family life.

In the Upside-Down World, families are bottom-up: Children rule, and parents take orders. Legitimate efforts to safeguard children from abuses have been overwhelmed by hostile efforts to undermine parental authority and dismantle the family structure. All physical discipline—an indispensable tool that the Bible commands parents to use to correct bad behavior—is considered cruel and abusive.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of a Child requires signatory countries to enact legislation to stamp out “all forms of physical or mental violence”—including spanking. But even beyond that, the convention emasculates parents by guaranteeing children the right of privacy, even within their own home, as well as “freedom of thought, conscience and religion.” Yes, Upside-Down leaders in the world’s foremost international body are convinced that children thrive best when parents abdicate their duty to educate their children spiritually.

Like-minded authorities have stripped authority from professional educators as well. With teachers unable to discipline students, classrooms increasingly become hatcheries of churlishness and rebellion. Apparently the students’ right to misbehave in school is more important than their right to actually learn.

The ominous vision of the Prophet Isaiah is now reality: “I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them. … [T]he child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable” (Isaiah 3:4-5).

Yet, consider the irony. While Upside-Down legal minds work to empower children at their parents’ expense in many areas, there is one issue on which they stand firmly, even belligerently, with parents over their children: They passionately defend parents’ right to kill their own children before they are born.