The Gender Identity Executive Order of President Obama is a Trojan Horse

When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being - Benedict XVI

To equate how one engages in sexual activities with a member of the same sex - or whether one has sexual attraction to a member of the same sex - with a properly protected status such as race, creed, gender or national origin, in the enforcement of federal anti-discrimination and civil rights laws, is wrong. It does not serve the common good. This effort is a contemporary Trojan Horse. It threatens the moral foundations of a free society and  discriminates against Christians by preventing them from participating in commerce with any federal agency.

WASHINGTON, DC (Catholic Online) - Most of us are familiar with the story of the Trojan Horse used by Greek soldiers to take the City of Troy. After a multi-year, unsuccessful effort to take the City, the Greeks pretended to retreat. However, Greek soldiers had left behind a large wooden horse.

The Trojans found what they thought were spoils of battle, a large wooden horse. They decided to pull it into the City as a trophy of their victory. Hidden inside were an elite group of soldiers. As soon as the crowds gathered to celebrate the victory, they came out of the horse and destroyed the City from the inside.

The story has given rise to many analogies throughout the centuries. The expression has become a part of our metaphorical language, used to describe any undertaking which purports to be benign - or even worthy of commendation - but hides an evil scheme or plan of destruction.

That is what has happened with the final rule promulgated to implement a July 21, 2014 Executive order issued by President Obama. The Executive Order prohibits any contractors dealing with the federal government from allegedly "discriminating" against "sexual orientation" or what is now routinely called "gender identity."

This Executive Order is a part of a strategy aimed at Cultural Revolution. I know some will accuse me of being an alarmist. Others will hurl disparaging terms against me - the kind now routinely hurled at classical Christians these days such as "fundamentalist", "narrow minded" or even worse.

However, it is time for bluntness.

To equate how one engages in sexual activities with a member of the same sex - or whether one has sexual attraction to a member of the same sex - with a properly protected status such as race, creed, gender or national origin, in the enforcement of federal anti-discrimination and civil rights laws, is wrong. It does not serve the common good.

This effort is a contemporary Trojan Horse. It threatens the moral foundations of a free society and  discriminates against Christians by preventing them from participating in commerce with any federal agency. Lest some of my readers dismiss my assertion. I am not alone in raising a serious concern. 

The four chairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski of Miami, Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco, Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, and Bishop Richard J. Malone of Buffalo, New York, issued this Statement:  

"The regulations published on December 3 by the U.S. Department of Labor implement the objectionable Executive Order that President Obama issued in July to address what the Administration has described as "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" discrimination in employment by federal contractors. We will study the regulations carefully, but we note the following initially.

"Our Church teaches that "[e]very sign of unjust discrimination" against those who experience same-sex attraction "should be avoided" (Catechism of the Catholic Church #2358_-but it appears on an initial reading that these regulations would prohibit far more than that "unjust discrimination."
 
"In particular, they appear also to prohibit employers' religious and moral disapproval of same-sex sexual conduct, which creates a serious threat to freedom of conscience and religious liberty, because "[u]nder no circumstances" may Catholics approve of such conduct (CCC 2357).

"Very many other people over a broad spectrum of different religious faiths hold this same conviction. Additionally, the regulations advance the false ideology of "gender identity," which ignores biological reality and harms the privacy and associational rights of both contractors and their employees.

"In justice, the Administration should not exclude contractors from federal contracting simply because they have religious or moral convictions about human sexuality and sexual conduct that differ from the views of the current governmental authorities."

The Gender Identity Movement insists upon recognition in the civil law of the State a newly manufactured right to choose one's gender, and to change one's mind, at any time. The proponents insist upon civil and criminal laws which accommodate, fund, and enforce this new right.

Those involved in the activist wing of the movement have long sought to compel the rest of society to recognize their vision of a brave new world or face the Police Power of the State. The regulation implementing this Executive Order reflects this approach.

As Christians celebrated the Feast of the Holy Family in Poland after Christmas last year, their parish priests read a letter signed by all of the Catholic Bishops of the Nation entitled The Dangers Stemming From Gender Ideology. The letter has been translated into English and can be read here.

Here are some excerpts:

"The gender ideology (movement) is the product of many decades of ideological and cultural changes that are deeply rooted in Marxism and neo-Marxism endorsed by some feminist movements and the sexual revolution. This ideology promotes principles that are totally contrary to reality and an integral understanding of human nature.

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"It maintains that biological sex is not socially significant and that cultural sex which humans can freely develop and determine irrespective of biological conditions is most important. According to this ideology, humans can freely determine whether they want to be men or women and freely choose their sexual orientation. This voluntary self-determination, not necessarily life-long, is to make the society accept the right to set up new types of families, for instance, families built on homosexual relations.

"The danger of gender ideology lies in its very destructive character both for men, people contacts and social life as a whole. Humans unsure of their sexual identity are not capable of discovering and fulfilling tasks that they face in their marital, family social and professional lives. Attempts to form different types of relations de facto seriously weaken marriage as a community created by a man and a woman and the family built on marriage".

Some in the European media who champion the effort to restructure culture to fit the ideology of this movement excoriated the Polish Bishops.  I think the time is soon upon us when Bishops in the United States will face some very serious circumstances which may call for similarly bold action.

The Bishops of Poland should be commended for their heroism in warning the flock, exposing the dangers of this growing threat to the culture, standing up for the truth about who we are as human persons, and defending the moral foundations of a free society. 

In a separate letter, Bishop Kazimierz Ryczan of Kielce addressed the Catholics of Slovakia and  was even more direct in his language and analysis. He referred to gender ideology as a "contemporary Herod" which seeks to destroy the family.

Some reading this article will raise the now popular cry that under Pope Francis, such concerns are being discouraged in favor of some perceived softening of the Moral teaching of the Catholic Church. Not so.

In an article published in March of 2014 on Kath.net entitled  Pope Francis: The gender ideology is demonic  (which I only have a google translation of) Bishop Andreas Laun of Salzburg expressed similarly strong opposition.

He noted that Pope Francis had actually called the gender identity movement demonic. Take the time to read the comments made by Pope Francis to this Bishop concerning the gender identity movement.

Facebook now offers 51 genders  from which one can choose in self identifying online. This is societal lunacy. The supporters of the Gender Identity Movement claim we have the ability - and the right - to choose our own gender, or, for that matter, to change our mind after allegedly having made such a choice.

The words of creation recorded in Genesis, "God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." (Gen 1:27) are being rejected. The truth revealed by the Natural Law is being rejected.

One's identity as a man or a woman is no longer received as a gift, a given. The rebellion of Eden is being revealed anew in the growing number of some who have determined that they are the Creator and reject objective truth and reality.

This alleged right to change gender by choice is another of the bevy of new found rights in a society which is moving from liberty to license. Following the pattern of other past revolutionary agendas, the proponents of the gender identity movement have used verbal engineering to prepare the way for social and legal engineering.

These days, to even raise a question concerning the prudence of such a social experiment results in being verbally pilloried. It may soon also bring sanctions by the State.  The regulation which I address in this article is a sign of things to come in the United States of America without opposition. 

In an address to the Roman Curia on Thursday, December 21, 2012, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI exposed the social danger of gender theory in this insightful observation: 

"The Chief Rabbi of France, Gilles Bernheim, has shown in a very detailed and profoundly moving study that the attack we are currently experiencing on the true structure of the family, made up of father, mother, and child, goes much deeper.

"While up to now we regarded a false understanding of the nature of human freedom as one cause of the crisis of the family, it is now becoming clear that the very notion of being - of what being human really means - is being called into question."

"He quotes the famous saying of Simone de Beauvoir: "one is not born a woman, one becomes so" (on ne naît pas femme, on le devient). These words lay the foundation for what is put forward today under the term "gender" as a new philosophy of sexuality.
 
"According to this philosophy, sex is no longer a given element of nature, that man has to accept and personally make sense of: it is a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the past it was chosen for us by society.

"The profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious. People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given by their bodily identity, which serves as a defining element of the human being.

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"They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves. According to the biblical creation account, being created by God as male and female pertains to the essence of the human creature. This duality is an essential aspect of what being human is all about, as ordained by God."

"This very duality as something previously given is what is now disputed. The words of the creation account: "male and female he created them" (Gen 1:27) no longer apply. No, what applies now is this: it was not God who created them male and female - hitherto society did this, now we decide for ourselves.

"Man and woman as created realities, as the nature of the human being, no longer exist. Man calls his nature into question. From now on he is merely spirit and will."

"The manipulation of nature, which we deplore today where our environment is concerned, now becomes man's fundamental choice where he himself is concerned. From now on there is only the abstract human being, who chooses for himself what his nature is to be.

"Man and woman in their created state as complementary versions of what it means to be human are disputed. But if there is no pre-ordained duality of man and woman in creation, then neither is the family any longer a reality established by creation. Likewise, the child has lost the place he had occupied hitherto and the dignity pertaining to him."

"Bernheim shows that now, perforce, from being a subject of rights, the child has become an object to which people have a right and which they have a right to obtain. When the freedom to be creative becomes the freedom to create oneself, then necessarily the Maker himself is denied and ultimately man too is stripped of his dignity as a creature of God, as the image of God at the core of his being. The defense of the family is about man himself. And it becomes clear that when God is denied, human dignity also disappears. Whoever defends God is defending man."

We live in an age rushing into darkness while it professes to be enlightened. Benedict XVI was correct and his insights provide clarity in a cloud of confusion. In a world with no givens we lose the nature of the gift of our identity as male or female. As a result we are impoverished and enslaved -  not liberated.

In a Promethean act of rebellion against God and the Natural Law we are losing our national sanity. The regulations which were promulgated on December 3, 2014, should be exposed, opposed and rejected. They are a contemporary Trojan Horse.

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Deacon Keith A. Fournier is Founder and Chairman of Common Good Foundation and Common Good Alliance. A married Roman Catholic Deacon of the Diocese of Richmond, Virginia, he and his wife Laurine have five grown children and six grandchildren, He serves as the Director of Adult Faith Formation at St. Stephen, Martyr Parish in Chesapeake, VA. He is also a human rights lawyer and public policy advocate who served as the first and founding Executive Director of the American Center for Law and Justice in the nineteen nineties. He has long been active at the intersection of faith, values and culture and was recently appointed Special Counsel to Liberty Counsel. He is also the Editor in Chief of Catholic Online.

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