Category Archives: News

Are schools right to “treat” depression in children by facilitating gender transitions?

I’ve been posting a lot about people in the public schools who expose children to danger, then attack parents who question what they are doing. I found a story about this for this post. I also have a new study that shows that respectfully disagreeing with children about transgenderism does not cause them to harm themselves. Then I want to talk about the root cause of these problems.

Let’s start with the UK Daily Mail:

A California mother says the government wrongfully took away her daughter, pushed the girl into transitioning to male, and is to blame for his suicide age 19.

Andrew Martinez, born Yaeli, stepped in front of a train on September 4, 2019.

[…][The] bereaved mother Abigail Martinez accused her Los Angeles County school of encouraging Yaeli to take hormones and undergo gender reassignment surgery as a child, while failing to properly treat her severe depression.

Martinez, 53, a mother of four, claimed school staff told Yaeli not to speak to her mother about transgender issues, but secretly had her join an LGBTQ group that persuaded the girl that the only way to be happy was to transition.

Read this:

The El Salvador-born mother said an older trans student ‘coached’ Yaeli on what to tell social workers to put her into foster care, so that the state would pay for her gender reassignment.

[…]Martinez said one trans friend and their parents ‘coached’ Yaeli, persuading her to run away from home in July 2016 and tell the Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS) that her mother had slapped her in the face.

As in most of these cases, the child was depressed by her same-age peers. Children tend to focus on appearances, not achievements, because they have no achievements. They attack people who are weird or look different. This doesn’t happen in the workplace. That’s why parents should not place their children in schools where the opinions of peers are seen as very important. Bullying causes some children who would do fine in a workplace to get depressed. And then the schools and hospitals suggest transitioning as a “cure” for the depression they caused, by not reining in the bullies.

Look:

…the mother claimed it was Yaeli’s depression that was the problem, not gender dysphoria.

[…]Instead of proper treatment for mental illness, Martinez said her daughter was encouraged by the school and her LGBT support group to take hormones and pursue gender reassignment surgery, and cut Martinez out of the process.

There’s no father in the photo in the article. Mothers who want to protect their children from the state and the schools need to prioritize commitment-ability in men, not appearance and fun. The men with uncomfortably strong theological and moral beliefs are exactly the ones who tend to stick around.

Mothers often don’t want to make moral judgments the way that fathers do:

I didn’t want to be the mean mom to say ‘no no no.’ I wanted to give her the help she needed at that time.

Mothers want to be liked. Fathers want to lead.

The secular left authorities told the mother not to talk to her child about God:

‘On the visit days, when she came to my house, I was told not to talk about God,’ Martinez said. ‘They told me if you do that, you’ll never see your daughter.

Her taxes pay their salaries. She can work for money to pay them with her God-beliefs, but they tell her what she can and can’t say to her children with their atheist-beliefs. Atheists think they know better than parents.

Everyone thinks that Obama was such a great president, but actually, he is the one who put in these policies that turn government and schools against parents:

A former civil rights director for the federal Department of Health and Human Services Roger Severino… told DailyMail.com that he believes district officials were afraid of losing funding and desperate to show their pro-trans credentials after being sued by the Obama administration in 2013 for discriminating against a trans boy, and inappropriately pushed gender reassignment on children as a result.

People like to say that disagreeing with transgenderism will cause children to self-harm, but research shows that is false.

What do the studies show?

Here’s a recent post about Sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE) from the Christian Medical & Dental Associations by Andrè Van Mol, MD. SOCE refers to therapies that help people to change from same-sex orientation to opposite-sex orientation in sexual attraction, identity and/or behavior.

He writes:

To recap, using a strongly representative sample of a United States sexual minority population in data from the Generations study of the Williams Institute, Sullins used several validated measures to assess behavioral harm from having experienced sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE, now preferably called SAFE-T).

The findings “demonstrated positive evidence of the absence of harm from SOCE therapy.” Specifically, “Those who had undergone [failed] SOCE were no more likely to experience psychological distress or poor mental health, to engage in substance or alcohol abuse, to intentionally harm themselves, or to think about, plan, intend or attempt suicide, than were those who had not undergone SOCE.”

Unfortunately, any time conservative Christian men like me try to bring some rational argument and scientific evidence to bear on these problems, we get attacked by the feelings-oriented people in government and schools.

Our society has no place for male leadership

Men have a vision for children – to know God, to be independent, to be responsible, and to enter into respectful, productive relationships with worthy people of the opposite sex. We try to point children in a good direction, but many people see our leading as wrong, because children don’t get their way.

I was once interested in marriage to a “conservative” Christian woman. She was very concerned by my plans to raise children who would be financially independent and effective at serving God. She wanted them to do what they liked. I explained that people who do what they like are unstable, and unable to help people around them. The funny thing was that she was deeply in debt after doing a degree in BALLET, and unstable in her own life. She didn’t see my stability and wealth as anything to respect. Children need to rule fathers, she said. Feelings are more important than facts.

I really think we need to be more respectful of male leadership, so that children will not become victims of “compassion”.

Related posts

Knight and Rose Show – Episode 21: Quick Answers to Common Atheist Objections, Part 1

Welcome to episode 21 of the Knight and Rose podcast! In this episode, Wintery Knight and Desert Rose discuss how to respond quickly to common atheist objections to Christianity. If you like this episode, please subscribe to the podcast, and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We would appreciate it if you left us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Podcast description:

Christian apologists Wintery Knight and Desert Rose discuss apologetics, policy, culture, relationships, and more. Each episode equips you with evidence you can use to boldly engage anyone, anywhere. We train our listeners to become Christian secret agents. Action and adventure guaranteed. 30-45 minutes per episode. New episode every week.

Episode 21:

Episode  Summary:

Wintery Knight and Desert Rose discuss how to respond to common atheist objections to Christianity, in a minute or two. We cover these topics: insufficient evidence, evolution, women’s rights, days of Genesis, copying from ancient myths, and slavery. This is the first of a three-part series.

Speaker biographies

Wintery Knight is a black legal immigrant. He is a senior software engineer by day, and an amateur Christian apologist by night. He has been blogging at winteryknight.com since January of 2009, covering news, policy and Christian worldview issues.

Desert Rose did her undergraduate degree in public policy, and then worked for a conservative Washington lobbyist organization. She also has a graduate degree from a prestigious evangelical seminary. She is active in Christian apologetics as a speaker, author, and teacher.

Podcast RSS feed:

https://feed.podbean.com/knightandrose/feed.xml

You can use this to subscribe to the podcast from your phone or tablet. I use the open-source AntennaPod app on my Android phone.

Podcast channel pages:

Video channel pages:

Music attribution:

Strength Of The Titans by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5744-strength-of-the-titans
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

California demands blocking of natural gas pipeline, as blackouts loom

I collected together 3 news stories and I think they show a very interesting portrait of how Democrats think. Although they would like to present themselves as practical problem-solvers, the truth is that they always do what makes them look virtuous to others. And then, when they get terrible results, they throw blame onto others. Let’s take a look at the stories.

First one is from the Daily Caller:

Attorney generals (AGs) from California, Oregon and Washington are calling for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to stop the expansion of a crucial gas transmission project, arguing that it will violate climate laws; despite the states facing some of the highest gas prices in the country as well as the prospect of blackouts.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson and Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum filed a motion on Monday asking the FERC to deny the proposed capacity expansion of TC PipeLines’ Gas Transmission Northwest (GTN) XPress pipeline project (GTN), according to a press release. The three western states currently hold some of the highest gas prices in the nation and may be at risk of suffering blackouts.

California possesses the highest national average of $5.3 per gallon, meanwhile, Oregon’s and Washington’s gas price averages sit at $4.80 and $4.70 per gallon, according to AAA data. California may also be at risk of experiencing blackouts as its grid which is undergoing a green transition struggles to cope with statewide energy demand as it phases out fossil fuels.

Those three states are very secular and very leftist. And they certainly have embraced “green energy” policies. But green energy has a lot of problems. First, it’s intermittent, not stable. Second, it’s expensive, requiring subsidies from taxpayers. And third, it’s incredibly harmful to the environment – not just in killing birds and bats, but also in damaging the environment with huge solar panel farms and wind turbine farms.

What’s interesting though is that the green energy states are the ones who are most threatened by green energy.

Here is something from far-left Newsweek:

Much of Southern California remains under an excessive heat warning, with the state’s grid operator warning that the high temperatures could lead to blackouts.

The state is facing a prolonged late-summer heat wave, with temperatures expected to reach as high as 115 degrees Fahrenheit in some parts, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.

“An impactful, long duration heat wave is expected from the beaches to the desert through Labor Day,” the San Diego office of the NWS wrote on Twitter on Tuesday. “High to very high heat risk will impact the coast and valleys by Sun & Mon. Plan ahead now so you can stay cool and hydrated, especially if you have outdoor plans.”

An excessive heat warning is in effect from 11 a.m. on Wednesday until 8 p.m. Monday across a vast swath of Southern California, including Los Angeles County.

“Dangerously hot” conditions are expected, according to the NWS, with peak temperatures of 95 to 112 degrees expected through Saturday, and 100 to 115 degrees on Sunday and Monday.

I thought this was interesting – they are telling people how much use electricity – even to charge their electric cars:

During a Flex alert, consumers will be urged to reduce energy usage between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. when the system is most stressed.

“The top three conservation actions are to set thermostats to 78 degrees or higher, avoid using large appliances and charging electric vehicles, and turn off unnecessary lights,” the grid operator said. “Lowering electricity use during that time will ease strain on the system, and prevent more drastic measures, including rotating power outages.”

You might have heard that California wants to ban gas vehicles by 2035. That’s interesting, but what’s more interesting is that they don’t want people charging their electrical vehicles either. And the people in California voted for this.

They’re addicted to virtue signaling. It’s almost as though when they themselves off from the moral law and from forgiveness, it suddenly became a huge problem for them to tell everyone how good they are. Being good used to be between a man and God. Now, people have to signal their virtue in order to keep guilt, shame and meaninglessness at bay.