Rex M Rogers - Discerning What Is Best

Discerning What Is Best
with Dr. Rex M. Rogers

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 07 July 2021

“When did sexual orientation become a fixed truth but sexual difference merely a psychological choice, changeable at the beckon of the surgeon’s knife?”

It’s a good question, logical, objective, rational, common sense, and therefore in what passes for public discourse today, rejected as ipso facto discriminatory and hateful.

Meanwhile, American culture is caught up in battles over what constitutes an appropriate “inclusive” or “non-offensive” gender identity vocabulary.

This list evolves almost daily, but if you don’t keep up and misuse a term, you could find yourself in trouble at your job or bullied online.

One LGBTQ website states:

“Never refer to a person as “it” or “he-she”. These are offensive slurs used against trans and gender non-conforming individuals.”

“You can’t always know what someone’s pronouns are by looking at them. Asking and correctly using someone’s pronouns is one of the most basic ways to show your respect for their gender identity.

When someone is referred to with the wrong pronoun, it can make them feel disrespected, invalidated, dismissed, alienated, or dysphoric (often all of the above).

It is a privilege to not have to worry about which pronoun someone is going to use for you based on how they perceive your gender. If you have this privilege, yet fail to respect someone else’s gender identity, it is not only disrespectful and hurtful, but also oppressive.”

Examples of gender identity vocabulary include, they/them/theirs instead of he or she, ze/hir/hir/hirself or zie or xe or zir/zirself, transgender kids, endless genders, homosuperiority, gender assigned at birth, Birthing person, chest-feeding, nursing fathers, gender-expansive youth, gender-confirmation surgery rather than sex change surgery, person with a cervix, people with a penis, male-appearing genitalia, people who menstruate, transphobe, anti-trans, cisheteropatriarchy, anti-indigeneity, just to name a few.

So, it is offensive to refer to someone in a manner that reflects biological reality.

In New York City people can be fined up to quarter million dollars for “misgendering” someone by using pronouns other than the ones they prefer. In Oct 2017, the Governor of California signed law that would send healthcare workers to jail for failing to use a person’s chosen pronouns.

Gender identity activists know that to win the battle for vocabulary is to win the war. If they can claim “inclusiveness,” victimhood, discrimination, or some other perceived oppression, they can leverage their views to accomplish their goals.

“The Left wins because it seizes language...I have noticed, news anchors now talk about ‘gender assigned at birth,’ as if that’s something different from one’s biological sex. There may be 57 genders, but there are only two biological sexes.

Don’t surrender the language. Reclaim the language. It’s the first step to recovering our civilization.”

“The war on pronouns, an assault upon the language by which we recognize a world in common, follows of necessity. What we are dealing with is nothing less than a war on reality itself. And everyone has just been pressed into service.”

If media, politicians, celebrities, academia, and corporations buy-in, and begin using the words gender identity activists invent, the battle is more than half-over. Indeed, it may already be lost.

The persons who define the words determine the outcome of the debate.

Consider for example, the fact that states reviewing or that have enacted laws preserving fair competition and protecting girls and women in sports are now regularly called “anti-trans” in media reports. Not “pro-girls” or “pro-women” but “anti-trans.” Similar battles are occurring on university campuses and in public education at all levels where school personnel are being forced to use the pronouns selected by students who self-proclaim as any number of sexual identities.

“In actuality, it is disrespectful to both you and the transgender person to use the anti-science pronoun. It demeans your knowledge of reality and perpetuates lies harmful to you and the transgender person, as well as to the rest of society…

One should not have to abandon one’s morals and sanity to appease gender activists, those who have been brainwashed by such ideology, and those struggling with gender dysphoria. Being manipulated into telling what you know to be a lie is not good for anyone…

It is harmful to perpetuate false gender theories. The person using a false pronoun violates the truth and obfuscates our culture’s understanding of biology. Since truth and goodness are intertwined, bowing to transgender ideology threatens both…

Manipulating words erodes our language and therefore thinking. Graham Hillard, an English professor at Trevecca Nazarene University, made this argument in National Review a few years ago. ‘What is at stake, however, is the irreplaceable right to say of one thing, ‘true,’ and of another, ‘false’ — to define the basic realities from which our politics proceed,’ Hillard wrote. ‘A man is a man. A woman is a woman. Let us not pretend otherwise.’”

Capitulating on common sense, rational, science-based vocabulary only yields confusion, chaos, anxiety, and personal and social emptiness.

“Inclusive pronouns” do not show God’s love; they betray the God of Truth and Love.

Christians must always love their neighbors as themselves. We must always speak the truth only in love, but we must speak the truth.

To use gender identity vocabulary may seem like a conciliatory act, a matter of respect for the other individual, but this is a false positive. Actually, we are only perpetuating lies and division, the very tools Satan wants us to use to destroy our witness.

There are innumerable ways to demonstrate love and compassion. Lying is not one of them.

*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact me or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com/, or connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/rexmrogers.

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 06 July 2021

During my time as a university president, a group called Soulforce began showing up uninvited on Christian college and university campuses. Bankrolled by wealthy advocates, Soulforce was comprised of gay and lesbian young people along with others who supported their cause.

Responses to Soulforce varied, but on our campus where they forced their way into classrooms and chapel, we simply said, “No thank you.” We did not verbally malign them to their face or in press coverage and did not criticize other institutions that engaged the group.

The university experienced overwhelming support for its response, but of course I also received letters from people who disagreed, which almost every time tracked not to theology but love for a friend or family member who had declared themselves gay or lesbian. People changed their views about the morality of homosexuality in part because a friend or family member came out.

I felt for the students, who I thought were being used by big donor gay and lesbian advocates, and I felt for the family members who loved their youth, did not understand their LGB choice, and who often changed their moral views based on that love. Sadly, this approach is a moral, intellectual, social, practical and personal dead-end.

Today people are changing their understanding of their gender, which is to say they believe gender is fluid, malleable, mutable, that they can change their identity to a new gender category that does not align with their biological birth sex. They now believe they become a gender of their own choosing, notwithstanding the witness of their eyes and their heart.

Gender Fluidity and Divine Design is my recent attempt to make sense of the gender confusion flooding our airwaves and online feeds, and more importantly, to do so based upon a Christian worldview.

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 01 July 2021

Well, another university succumbs. It was nice knowing you UNC-Chapel Hill.

American higher education today is in dire straits.

Once a bastion of free inquiry, reason, debate, the pursuit of knowledge, the preferred destination for bright ambitious Next Gen from around the world, much of academia is now afraid of its own students, captive to irrational ideology, political correctness, restrictions on free speech, cancel culture, racist ideas parading as anti-racism, sexual progressivism, irreligion, and jingoistic anti-Americanism.

UC Boulder is making holding the values of BLM a non-negotiable condition for enrollment. Another step in the death march of Western universities from places exalting academic freedom to places suppressing thought and speech in the name of inclusive ideology. This university, by the way, received millions in state funds.

Central Michigan University is forcing a good professor to retire because he spoke the “N-word” while reading from a court document in class. The university would rather be “woke” than defend academic freedom, common sense, and academic excellence.

Penn State is replacing binary words and pronouns in course descriptions. This will increase both quality teaching and student learning? Many other universities are wasting time and intellectual capital on the same pursuit of purist vocabulary, eliminating use of “offensive” words like “picnic” or phrases like “rule of thumb.”

Victor David Hanson says, “Today's universities and colleges bear little if any resemblance to postwar higher education. Even during the tumultuous 1960s, when campuses were plagued by radical protests and periodic violence, there was still institutionalized free speech. An empirical college curriculum mostly survived the chaos of the '60s. But it is gone now.”

“Imagine, Hanson notes, “a place where ‘diversity’ is the professed institutional ethos, while studies reveal that liberal faculty outnumber their conservative counterparts by over 10 to 1. Imagine a liberal place where in 2021 race can still be used as a criterion in selecting and rejecting applicants, choosing prospective dorm roommates, organizing segregated dorms and restricting access to special places on campus.”

Political activism now triumphs over empirical problem-solving.

The recently late, and great, professor Walter E. Williams said, “The bottom line is that more Americans need to pay attention to the miseducation of our youth and that miseducation is not limited to higher education.” He argued equity had replaced equality of opportunity and much of higher education today is little more than leftist brain washing.

Education and critical thinking are out. Indoctrination and victimhood are in.

It’s all-the-more disheartening because it was so preventable.

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 28 June 2021

June is Pride month. It dates officially to 1999 but has roots back to 1969.

Pride month is about presenting LGBTQ people in a way that counters social stigma, which at one time characterized much of society’s response to these lifestyles and the people who adopt them.

I have no problem affirming that LGBTQ individuals are made in the image of God just like everyone else, that they are unique and eternally significant, worthy of respect, and someone for whom Christ sacrificed his life on the cross to provide a way of redemption. I think LGBTQ individuals should always enjoy and be afforded their basic civil rights as Americans.

This does not mean I endorse or believe their lifestyle choices are anything but choices—I do not believe one is born gay—or that I believe a choice to pursue LGBTQ lifestyles is a moral activity, any more than I believe heterosexual individuals choosing to engage in adultery are acting morally.

I do not believe homosexual, or LGBTQ, sexual behavior that rejects God’s moral teachings in Scripture are “worse” or somehow a different kind of sin than heterosexuals participating in immoral activity enjoined by Scripture. Sin is sin in God’s eyes.

Because I disagree with LGBTQ lifestyle choices or sexual expression does not mean ipso facto that I hate them or that I am a bigot, as LGBTQ activists and often now the media like to contend. No, it simply means I disagree with their beliefs and/or activities. I believe in freedom of speech, for me and them, so I do not support and indeed react strongly to cancel culture attempts to silence viewpoints that do not affirm LGBTQ lifestyles.

Pride month has become much more than a statement about destigmatizing a people group. It is about promoting a whole range of lifestyle choices the Bible calls immoral.

Consequently, I cannot support Pride month and I am weary of the corporate virtue signaling that assaults me in media, wherein innumerable businesses now rush to proclaim their active support for “inclusion” and “accepting” everyone, e.g., the NFL’s “Football is gay.” Big corporations are coloring their logos rainbow.

There was a time when corporate America stayed out of politics, at least publicly and otherwise during business transactions. The business of America was business, and no business wanted to take sides on issues in a way that might divide its customer base. Now, corporations are falling over themselves pell-mell to embrace the latest political correctness, whether Pride or BLM.

Why corporate rush to display LGBTQ bona-fides?

1-Virtue signaling

2-Fear of litigation or online generated bullying

3-Fear loss of customers

4-Belief they are groundbreakers

Mostly, though, corporations are virtue signaling on Pride because they believe it’s what the public wants so they want to claim they are “with it,” trustworthy enterprises where America should shop. It’s still about the bottom line.

As I write, Pride month is nearly over. I don’t think it helped LGBTQ people. It’s just more marketing noise.

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 07 June 2021

Christian organizations, including churches, have long worked with doctrinal statements clarifying their theological positions. Some also developed lifestyle statements or covenants for employees.

More recently, Christian organizations, especially churches or denominations, have felt the need to develop position papers or policy statements about specific issues, both to make public how they believe their biblical understanding applies to the issue and also, depending upon the concern, to put their perspectives in print regarding controversial issues to try to protect the Christian organization legally.

Examples of the former might be topics like use of alcoholic beverages during Christian organization activities or policies regarding green environmental stewardship.

Examples of the latter include child protection policies or whether a church will conduct marriages for same-sex couples.

Issues like abortion, LGBTQ, “woke” ideas about race, for example, existed in the past but not many people engaged in these behaviors or not many in the general public advanced them. Consequently, in a sense, these issues did not rise to a level requiring a Christian organization to address them in some formal statement.

This is what has changed. Now it seems a host of controversial “new” issues—several of them involving sexuality or the politics of race—are being embraced not simply by the public but by Christian organization personnel or church or denomination members. The more these issues are promoted, the more the Christian organization feels pressure to speak, to put some kind of position paper or policy statement in print.

A Christian organization’s doctrinal statement is still its most important expression of belief, and a Christian organization need not necessarily publish a statement or assume some “side” on every issue. But the politicization trend in American culture is increasing pressure upon Christian organizations to speak up in order to delineate their beliefs and to attempt to protect themselves.

In "Christian Organization Statements--Doctrinal, Lifestyle, Position--Then and Now," I address two of the most significant new concerns: SOGI, sexual orientation and gender identity, and CRT, critical race theory.

These issues divide--families and friends, churches, Christian organizations, country and culture. It behooves anyone who cares about living out a Christian worldview to become informed and to help the Christian organizations in which they are involved to prepare to speak the truth in love into contemporary culture.

Details: Written by: Rex M. Rogers; Published: 31 May 2021

I am blessed with freedom.

1–Political freedom because I was born in this country. I did nothing to earn it. Thousands sacrificed their lives so I could experience this freedom.

2–Spiritual freedom because I was born again. I did nothing to earn it. One Savior sacrificed his life so I could come to know him and experience temporal and eternal freedom.

Freedom is a profound gift, for which I am more grateful each year on earth. In this fallen world, freedom is not free but paid in blood. This is not morbid philosophy. It is truth...that can set you free.

Celebrating this Memorial Day is perhaps more important than any in recent memory.

Reason is we’re coming off months of centripetal forces, trends that push away from the center and tear us apart. We don’t just disagree. We’re questioning our national identity, history, and fundamental values.

We lived these centripetal forces: lockdowns, government overreach, racial and civil unrest, unemployment, Big Tech elitism, uncertainty regarding election integrity, nasty politicians, politicization of sports, medicine, and about everything else. The division has been brutal.

So pausing to celebrate e Pluribus Unum, to be grateful for our timeless ideals, to express patriotic appreciation for the great gift of opportunity all Americans have been given is a balm our nation needs.

What Lincoln said at Gettysburg applies today:

“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

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