Watchmen Ministry North Idaho

(Standing For Freedom Center) The basic goal of transgender activists, therefore, is gender deconstruction. Since they believe that traditional understandings of gender — wherein gender is biologically based — is a cultural construct, it can be replaced with a new gender paradigm.

Transgender ideology suffers from many philosophical problems (too many, in fact, to cover at length in this article). For example, transgenderism claims that gender is a cultural construct, but maintains that gender identity is innate; that is, natural or naturally belonging to a person. This is clearly inconsistent.

As Ryan T. Anderson points out in his book When Harry Became Sally, if gender as a social construct, then gender identity is too. Also, transgenderism’s mind-body dualism — where “real self” is psychologically based, not biologically based — can apply to other concepts besides gender identity. To be logically consistent, transgender activists must accept and affirm trans-species, trans-racial, trans-ability, and trans-age communities.  (Read More)

(The Federalist) Wyoming is technically one of the reddest states in the nation because the GOP holds the offices of governor, secretary of state, attorney general, and both chambers of the state legislature, but you wouldn’t know that by the actions of the politicians they elect.

Just this week, Republican Gov. Mark Gordon refused to sign a bill that prohibits males in costume from invading female sports. Gordon claimed the legislation, which “is overly draconian, is discriminatory without attention to individual circumstances or mitigating factors, and pays little attention to fundamental principles of equality.”

The bill eventually became law without Gordon’s signature and blessing, but the Republican’s hostility towards policies that most of his constituents and most of the nation support should immediately disqualify him from representing red voters.  (Read More)

(Breakpoint) About 15 years ago, sociologists coined the term “abusive boyfriend syndrome” to describe the increased risk to children who live in homes with an unrelated adult. According to numerous studies, these children were much more likely to be abused or even killed than children who live at home with two biological or married parents. Because of these findings, domestic violence prevention programs routinely teach parents, especially vulnerable women, that the single highest risk factor that they or their children will be abused is whether they’re living with an unrelated, unmarried adult.  

God designed family in a specific way. The biological reality, that one man and one woman are required to make a child, points to the social reality, which is that children do best with a mom and a dad. This neither makes abuse inevitable for children in other arrangements, nor does it suggest that biological parents never abuse. In fact, child abuse can become tragically epidemic within certain cultures and families.

Statistics reveal trends, and the statistics unanimously reveal that the safest and healthiest home situation for children is with their married mom and dad. In fact, in the case of stepfamilies or adoptive parents, in which one or more parent is not biologically related to the child, the risk of abuse lowers dramatically if mom and dad are married to each other. As it turns out, especially when it comes to the wellbeing of children, both biology and the institution of marriage matter.   (Read More)

(Faith & Freedom) National attention turned to Asbury University only weeks ago when students stayed after their regularly scheduled chapel service concluded—they stayed to pray. And worship.

As word spread, thousands traveled to Asbury to join the students as God poured out His Spirit.

The outpouring or revival resulted in the forgiveness of sin through repentance, restoration of broken relationships, and a renewed commitment to serving the Lord in various callings.

The media reported that some questioned if it was “real.”

It was real. In fact so real that the outpouring of the Spirit began happening in other schools.

Now the press has moved on, and so has the interest of some.

So what were the results following “Asbury?”

I’m glad you asked.  (Read More)

(RedState) The recent debacle at Stanford Law School involving a federal judge and an angry crowd of students sparked a brushfire of debate and commentary throughout the legal community. Sadly, the reaction from many is more evidence that the state of free speech at American law schools is only getting worse.

For those unaware, dozens of sign-waving protesters heckled and shouted down Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan while he was speaking on campus to the local student chapter of the Federalist Society. Protesters accused him of heinous acts like beating his wife, killing people, and expressing a “hope that [his] daughters get raped.” Yet, despite the vile nature of the insults lobbed at the judge, many liberal legal luminaries were quick to paint him as the villain of the story.

Calling these opinions absurd is perhaps a bit too charitable. Videos of the event show a packed room of student protesters holding signs with crude messages on them, relentlessly hurling invectives at Duncan throughout his remarks. The protesters’ objections touched on things like preferred pronouns for transgender inmates and voting rights for minorities. The insults lacked both accuracy and nuance and many of the protesters didn’t seem to care what the judge had to say in his defense.  (Read More)

(PJ Media) If you’re unfamiliar with the Red Guard instituted by Chairman Mao in China, get ready to understand it better than you ever wanted to. Critics of the sweeping transgender ideology infecting the school and medical systems have likened the ideology’s proponents to China’s Red Guard, a group of students trained to turn against their parents and other adults to usher in a brutal dictatorship. The Red Guard famously tortured its own teachers and parents in the name of the Communist cultural revolution. It was a dark and dangerous time in China for anyone who would not bow to the demands of tyrants.

A school system in Maine has instituted its own burgeoning Red Guard called the “Civil Rights Team.” This benign-sounding organization of kids is supposed to ensure that student rights are upheld. What has happened instead led to parents sounding off at the latest school board meeting to complain that the Civil Rights Team is just a bullying organization with an agenda. The Maine Wire covered the story:

Kristen Day said students affiliated with one of RSU 14’s Civil Rights Teams harassed her daughter. When her daughter refused to speak about her sexuality, two students affiliated with the club began to bully her and call her homophobic.  (Read More)

(Washington Stand) The Kentucky legislature passed a bill (SB 150) on Thursday advancing parental rights in education and prohibiting gender transition procedures on minors, largely along party lines. The bill first passed the Senate 29-6 on February 16; exactly one month later, the House passed it 75-22, and the Senate concurred 30-7 in House amendments the same day. The bill now heads to the desk of Governor Andy Beshear, the first Democratic governor to be presented with a bill to protect minors from gender transition procedures.

The final version of SB 150 contains four sections: 1) recognizing a parent’s right to know about their student’s gender transition; 2) regulating age-inappropriate sex education curriculum; 3) prohibiting student locker rooms and bathrooms from members of the opposite sex; and 4) prohibiting gender transition procedures on minors with penalties.

First, SB 150 requires school districts to notify parents “upon a student’s enrollment and at the beginning of each school year” about “the health services and mental health services related to human sexuality, contraception, or family planning available at the student’s school and of the parents’ right to withhold consent or decline any of those specific services.” The school must “notify a student’s parents” of any change in the services it provides or if “School personnel make a referral: 1. For the student to receive a school’s health services or mental health services; or 2. To an external health care provider, for which parental consent shall be obtained prior to the referral being made.” This provision would prevent schools from hiding a student’s gender transition from his or her parents.  (Read More)

(The Federalist) Our government is preparing to monitor every word Americans say on the internet—the speech of journalists, politicians, religious organizations, advocacy groups, and even private citizens. Should those conversations conflict with the government’s viewpoint about what is in the best interests of our country and her citizens, that speech will be silenced.

While the “Twitter Files” offer a glimpse into the government’s efforts to censor disfavored viewpoints, what we have seen is nothing compared to what is planned, as the details of hundreds of federal awards lay bare. Research by The Federalist reveals our tax dollars are funding the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning (ML) technology that will allow the government to easily discover “problematic” speech and track Americans reading or partaking in such conversations.

Then, in partnership with Big Tech, Big Business, and media outlets, the government will ensure the speech is censored, under the guise of combatting “misinformation” and “disinformation.”  (Read More)

(Breitbart) It only takes ten minutes after creating an account on China’s TikTok app for the platform’s algorithm to begin pushing suicide videos to 13-year-old children.

The Chinese app’s recommendation algorithm is so advanced that within ten minutes, it will start pushing suicide videos if the young TikTok user suggests he is sexually frustrated, according to research published Tuesday by corporate accountability group Ekō and shared with VICE News.

The researchers set up nine different new TikTok accounts, and listed their age as 13 — the youngest age users can join the platform — then they mimicked who they referred to as “incels” or “involuntary celibates,” which is an online community of “young men who formed a bond around their lack of sexual success with women,” according to VICE News.  (Read More)

(PJ Media) Regarding what I called “the great self-sorting,” I wrote, “While hotheads on the internet like to talk big about civil wars and revolutions, most people understand that would be hell on earth. But as politics and culture become more aggressive and divisive every day, cooler heads nonetheless fantasize about a great national divorce. If enough Americans keep voting with their feet, many intractably interwoven systems could conceivably sort themselves into distinct geographic entities over time.” Now, a major announcement from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis indicates this may be starting to happen.

DeSantis has already worked with the Florida state legislature to cure the Walt Disney Co. of its infatuation with wokeness, ending the long-standing Reedy Creek Improvement District special deal Disney World had enjoyed since 1967. And last month, Florida passed legislation to “Protect Floridians from the Woke ESG Financial Scam” that will wring the ESG-DEI nonsense out of the state’s financial sector.

DeSantis has now taken the initiative to his counterparts outside Florida. Last week, he announced the formation of a 19-state coalition that will fight and ban ESG-based financial policies. “Today, Governor Ron DeSantis and the governors of Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming formed an alliance to push back against President Biden’s environmental, social, corporate governance (ESG) agenda that is destabilizing the American economy and the global financial system,” said DeSantis’s office in a statement released Thursday.  (Read More)

(The Federalist) Activists disguise “social and emotional learning” (SEL) programs as mental health initiatives designed to grow children’s social skills. In reality, these programs are introduced in classrooms by leftist government school administrators for the purpose of indoctrinating children.

[…]CASEL does this by partnering with school districts ranging from Alaska all the way to Texas’ Austin Independent School District, which brags on its website that SEL is “at the heart of equity-centered systems and structures.”

“Elevating student voice and vision is an SEL lever for equity,” Eric Gordon, the superintendent and CEO of Cleveland Metropolitan School District, proudly states in another clip.

The video also showcases SEL slides that demand participants “critically examine root causes of inequity,” “recognize, acknowledge, and address practices and policies that perpetuate inequities,” and “cultivate anti-racist mindsets.” Another clip features a woman reciting CASEL’s revamped version of the Pledge of Allegiance which calls for students to stand for “one world, many beliefs, indivisible, with liberty, health, safety, and justice for all.”  (Read More)

(Idaho Tribune) The Coeur d’Alene School District Board of Trustees meeting was packed on Monday night, with a line stretching out the door and down the parking lot, where parents waited outside in the cold and rain to speak out against the liberal policies and fiscal mis-management of the school district.

(Standing For Freedom Center) One of the most fundamental and oft-forgotten truths about education in the modern era is this: God gives children to parents, not the government.

In his recent entry on the biblical worldview of school choice, Freedom Center scholar Dr. Tim Yonts explained why this is so important. He writes:

“The basic biblical position is that children, ultimately, belong to the Lord who has given parents the right and responsibility to raise them and teach them.

The biblical view, however, is at odds with modern secularism, which typically adopts a collectivist approach — ‘It takes a village to raise a child’ or ‘Children belong to all of society.’ This view contains a seriously flawed understanding of human nature and the nuclear family, and it has made the battle over education a spiritual one for the minds and hearts of the next generation.”  (Read More)

(Daily Caller) Children with autism make up an outsized proportion of the transgender-identified population, and autism spectrum traits make them particularly vulnerable to thought patterns that can lead youth to pursue gender transitions, according to research and medical professionals.

Transgender individuals are about three to six times more likely to be autistic than non-transgender people, research shows; the connection between transgenderism and autism has been a subject of interest for researchers since at least 2010, and the Gender Development Identity Service at Tavistock, the world’s largest pediatric gender clinic, came under fire in recent years over allegations that as many as 97.5% of its gender patients had autism. Dr. Susan Bradley, a Canadian psychiatrist and pioneer in treating gender dysphoria, told the DCNF that she now believes most pediatric gender patients are actually on the autism spectrum and are being exploited by medical professionals.  (Read More)

(Washington Stand) If there’s anything more inappropriately disrespectful than future lawyers shouting down a federal judge, it’s not-yet-credentialed (or supposedly educated) law students creating a “hostile environment” for their own professor and dean. Yet that’s exactly what happened Monday at Stanford Law School.

The drama began Thursday, March 9, when hecklers shouted down Kyle Duncan, a judge on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, at an event on “COVID, Guns, and Twitter” hosted by the campus’ chapter of the Federalist Society. When Duncan asked school administrators to restore order, associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) Tirien Steinbach commandeered the microphone and echoed student’s false attacks on the judge.

Law school dean Jenny Martinez wrote in a Friday email to the school, “It is a violation of the disruption policy to ‘prevent the effective carrying out’ of a ‘public event.’”

On Saturday, university president Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Martinez wrote Judge Duncan a letter of apology, admitting that “what happened was inconsistent with our policies on free speech,” and that “staff members who should have enforced university policies failed to do so, and instead intervened in appropriate ways that are not aligned with the university’s commitment to free speech.”  (Read More)

(Parents Defending Education) Below is a list of school districts by state that have Transgender/Gender Nonconforming Policies that openly state that district personnel can or should keep a student’s transgender status hidden from parents.  (Read More)

(Washington Stand) In Christian circles, a reference to the “men of Issachar” is generally understood to be an allusion to 1 Chronicles 12:32, which, in context, lists the men who aligned with David at the onset of his reign. According to the writer of 1 Chronicles, the men of Issachar were those “who understood the times and knew what Israel ought to do.” Evidently, the men of Issachar possessed a level of wisdom, savvy, and ability that served David at a crucial moment in his kingship. Thus, over the years, the descriptor “men of Issachar” has been used to describe leaders with situational awareness and moral courage.

It is difficult to find the “men of Issachar” in our own day. Many Christian commitments seem outdated — and even subversive to many in our culture — and faithfulness to God and His Word is becoming increasingly rare. This is true even for those who desire to honor the Lord, and especially true for navigating controversial issues such as marriage, gender, and sexuality. Bombarded with so many competing messages, it is not always clear what faithfulness requires for addressing morally contentious topics.

Complicating matters is the accelerating velocity of this moral change. Questions related to gender, sexuality, and marriage are now debated on an almost daily basis. These conversations take place in churches, families, and within the broader culture.  (Read More)

(Idaho Freedom Foundation) IFF’s recent article about public school libraries circulating radical, obscene books has naturally prompted outrage. People want questions answered.

Why, for example, would any school official think it’s appropriate to teach kids how to masturbate or normalize polyamory? How could a school district that’s supposedly accountable to taxpayers be so willing to distribute material harmful to kids?

For Idaho, Centennial High School provides answers to these questions. The Centennial High School library has many books containing explicit or concerning content about gender and sexuality. Public records requests yielded a long list of explicit and left-wing books circulating in five of Idaho’s public school districts (Idaho Falls, Nampa, Pocatello, West Ada, and Twin Falls). Two high schools stand out for the presence of such material: Centennial in West Ada and Magic Valley High School in Twin Falls.

We sought to discover how a book like “Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human” could make it into an Idaho public school.  (Read More)

(The Blaze) Parents of students exposed to a mandatory drag show performed by peers are demanding transparency and accountability, multiple outlets reported.

“They knew there would be parents who would not support this, and this is why they let it in under the guise of ‘culture,'” parent Amy said during an Elk Grove Unified School District board meeting March 7.

Amy and other parents reportedly asked KOVR not to use their last names to help protect their minor students from being identified. TheBlaze is also not using parents’ last names for the same reason.

Amy and other parents took issue with a mandatory “multicultural expo assembly” that took place at Pleasant Grove High School on March 3. During the assembly, students from the school’s LGBTQ group performed a four-minute dance routine in drag.  (Read More)

(Townhall) Last week, Tucker Carlson focused the nation’s attention on the notable silence of American Christian leaders on the Biden administration’s persecution of Christians by asking:

“Where are all the professional Christians? You have to wonder …. Where’s …. all these people who are [should be] defending Christianity … as actual Christians are being arrested for being Christians?” (emphasis added)

Of course, professional Christian leaders might offer a host of excuses to explain or justify their silence. But for the most part, most of these excuses have already been completely debunked by people like Eric Metaxas in his latest book, Letter to the American Church. In it, he points out that because American church leaders today have before them the example of the dire consequences that resulted from the silence of the German church when it was confronted by the evils of Nazi tyranny, the American church has no excuse for remaining silent in the face of the similar evils presently metastasizing in this country on an ever-growing number of fronts.  (Read More)

(Life News) A Virginia judge dehumanized human embryos in a recent opinion when he quoted a 19^th century law about owning slaves to argue that humans at their earliest stage of life can be considered property.

The Associated Press reports Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Richard Gardiner published the preliminary opinion in February in response to a divorced couple who are fighting about the fate of their two frozen embryos.

The mother, Honeyhline Heidemann, wants to implant the embryos and give them a chance at life, but the father and ex-husband, Jason Heidemann, does not, according to the Daily Wire. He argued that doing so would “force” him “to procreate against his wishes and therefore violate his constitutional right to procreational autonomy.”

The judge has not made a final decision about their case yet, but, in his preliminary opinion in February, Gardiner argued that the embryos should be considered property, not children. In part, he based his decision on a Virginia law from the 1800s that treated human slaves as “goods and chattel,” according to the report.  (Read More)

(Faith & Freedom) Headlines suggest that American education is in freefall—a death march of sorts—preparing America’s children for what?

Abraham Lincoln said, “The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.”

John Dewey, who hijacked Noah Webster’s model for public education in America and remade it to be a tool of leftist activists to push the culture toward a godless, so-called “progressive” culture, disagreed with both Lincoln and Webster.

Dewey said, “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.”

So in Dewey’s mind “education” is the “noble end” to secular humanism—a bridge to nowhere.

Therefore, it should not surprise us when students attack anyone and everyone, physically and otherwise with whom they disagree.

They have been schooled for such a time as this.  (Read More)

(The Federalist) Schools have assumed an outsized role in sex education in the past 50 years. Today, schools propagandize on behalf of transing kids, kinky sex, and coming out as gay. But this isn’t a problem just in leftist enclaves — schools in red states are promoting the same propaganda as schools in blue states. How can this be happening, even in supposedly conservative jurisdictions?

Planned Parenthood, as we show in our new report from the Claremont Institute, carefully controls and coordinates the entire policymaking process to promote its goal of sexual revolution. In Congress, it seeks riders and findings to make the funding of abstinence-only sex education more difficult; it has spearheaded the effort to favor programs that reduce sexual risk as opposed to avoiding sexual risk.

This process results from concerted action at the highest levels of government, led by an iron triangle of activist pressure groups, legislative allies, and aligned administrative activists. Planned Parenthood is grooming children to be the vanguard of sexual perversity and degeneracy in a new, sexually liberated America.  (Read More)

(Standing For Freedom Center) Unless you’re a radical anarchist, or you lived in Portland circa the summer of “fiery but mostly peaceful protests” — rest in pieces, CHOP…or was it CHAZ? — you know that as an American citizen, you are accountable to the government. We are a nation of laws, we respect the rule of laws, we got rid of monarchs hundreds of years ago, and don’t you forget it. The highest rule in our land isn’t a king, but the Constitution.

Of course, that Constitution provides a framework for our government, both for how it functions and who fills it — elected representatives of the people. We have a system by which our legislative body, in cooperation with the executive, that is, the President, passes legislation into law (cue Schoolhouse Rock’s “I’m just a bill…and I’m sitting here on Capitol Hill”). But once “duly enacted” and presumed constitutional bills become law, they are binding on all American citizens. Then the government enforces them. We obey — or we face the consequences.

So, we are accountable to the government. But who is the government accountable to?

In Romans 13:1-7, Paul, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, makes this very clear: Government is accountable to God. Why? Because governmental authorities, be they an emperor, king, or duly elected representatives in a constitutional republic, are God’s servants.  (Read More)

(Washington Stand) Worship services in first century Corinth must have been a raucous affair. After lengthy instructions about the way the church should conduct its services, Paul charges those early believers, “Let all things be done decently and in order” (I Cor. 14:40). You can almost imagine Paul writing this with a sigh of exasperation.

You wonder, then, what Paul would have thought about the state of American politics today.

Civility in our public life is at a low point. I’m not talking about tea-time manners or cowardice masquerading as courtesy. We are at risk of coming to blows on a much larger scale than has been seen since the days prior to the Civil War. This is not true of everyone all the time, of course. Instead, it’s the trends we’re beginning to see that are so disturbing.

I first volunteered for the Reagan campaign in 1984. I was involved in local, state, and national politics for three decades. Politics is a tough game. For followers of Jesus, our loyalty to our Lord must always surmount the many temptations inherent in politics to abandon Christian ethics. Within that context, I’m very mindful of how linebacker tactics are part of the push-and-pull of elective politics and public service.  (Read More)