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In these last couple weeks of our fast, I’ve had the privilege of making two trips to the Northeast where I witnessed the irresistible splendor of Jesus in His Church, both evangelical and Catholic. The Spirit is stirring up His saints, girding them in truth and welling up like living water to grant the gender broken a better Word. One can have any number of freedoms and still be a slave! Jesus alone frees the sin-shackled and makes us true sons and daughters of the one Fathe

Sexuality has something to do with directing us out of our aloneness and into creative communion with others. God made it that way. However challenging that ‘gift-giving’ is today, it remains the way that we honor our parents, grow in appreciation of our gender and that of the other, and become parents ourselves. The Scripture says it best: how wondrous that God did not create us to be alone (Gen. 2:18)! (Special thanks to Theologian Dr. Mary McCarthy for this insight.) How c

Words fail to express the suffering endured by persons who resist identification with their biological gender. Left-leaning analysts would attribute that suffering to external sources–the rejection a tough girl or soft boy incurs from peers. The problem runs deeper still. To refuse acceptance of oneself as male or female conveys a wound and a deception at the most basic level of being. Researchers who chart the uniformly poor adjustment these persons make in the whole of life

How do you make sense of a breezily written Time magazine cover entitled ‘Beyond He or She,’ in which the author Katy Steinmetz champions kids from around the country who refuse any gender identification (March 27th)? Or seventy congresspersons who are seeking a nationwide ban on an individual’s right to seek therapeutic help to make peace with the gender of one’s birth, on the basis that ‘LGBTQ people were born perfect; there is nothing to treat them for’(Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Ca

The other night I beheld a demonic power in a dream; the blob-like entity had little form and was obscured by darkness. It made a variety of sounds as if it were feeding off something. Though I could not see its target, I realized the ‘thing’ was intent on foraging off a person, any person. In the dream, I recalled a line from a movie in which the actor said wryly: ‘I sleep with all my friends.’ This entity was open to either gender, any person who would partner with it by in

When Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles opened our Truth and Love Conference last week, his words about how we participate in Jesus’ baptism brought this to mind. C.S. Lewis describes a diver breaking the water’s surface then descending into the depths to retrieve treasure from the ocean floor. He breaks the water once more in ascent, joyfully holding out his ‘catch’ for the world to see. So Jesus reclaims our true natures as the Father’s beloved sons and daughters from the

Today’s freedom to be whatever one thinks (s)he is, gender-wise, sheds new light on the question of homosexuality and change. If Kevin can wear a dress, use a woman’s restroom, and legally damage another for not referring to him as Karen, then a Christian’s commitment to leave behind an identity based on his or her same-sex attraction while aspiring to love a member of the opposite gender seems positively sane. Or at least possible, and at best worthy of the respect we accord

The Obama administration has just insisted that all US public schools allow students to use whichever bathroom matches their gender identity, that is, whichever identity one is experimenting with at the moment. Overlooking the facts of one’s biological birth, and the torturous mental health consequences for persons who deny their gender birthright, Obama now leads the world in obliterating the most basic distinction of our humanity. Your daughter attends school where a boy wh

First, thank you for your commitment to your friend. Sometimes devout, energized persons like you can help prevent an already vulnerable soul from doing further injury. I realize your friend is on the verge of doing just that by pursuing gender reassignment surgery. Gender is not a product of the mind; it is a fact of our birth. To be sure, your friend has a deep conflict with his or her true gender self, for which one must only be compassionate. Such compassion flows from th

‘Everyone will be salted with fire.’ (MK 9:49) I met Ross a couple of years ago and could tell by his puzzled yet open face that he knew little about religion, for better or worse. He did seem attentive to my offering that God—a Father—cared for him and wanted the best for him. It made sense to Ross that if God had set him on course in the first place then He probably did care how his life turned out. Over the next couple of years, I prayed often for Ross and encouraged him w

We end our 40 days on the Feast of Christ the King, the final Sunday of the Church calendar. Crowned with thorns and pierced with sword and nails, our Crucified King loosed a royal flood. We can begin to understand that river only if we consider its Source, Jesus Christ, Lord of the Universe. He is Creator—‘through Him all things were made’ and ‘in Him all things hold together’; He is Redeemer—the One through whose blood ‘the Father reconciled to Himself all things’ so that J

Bruce Jenner a woman? America’s fractured take on gender and sexuality took a turn for the worse as this US Olympic Gold Decathlon winner becomes the new and pathetic face of artificial womanhood. Father of 6 and 65-years-old, he has ignited a media blitzkrieg, including a new reality series, in which we are to sympathize with his need to butcher and drug himself into another gender. The truth: Jenner will always be a man, and his delusional efforts to change that will not re

‘Go forth from the quiet of contemplation and courageously bear witness to My truth.’ (Jesus to St. Catherine of Siena) Christ’s coming at Christmas can only be received, treasured, contemplated; manifesting the Divine Child throughout the New Year requires all the courage and fortitude we possess. Never before has His epiphany, or manifestation, been more urgent. The battle between Christ and anti-Christ in the form of gender reconstruction has broken out into the open. (I r

Gleaming like an Amazon woman, he posed full-breasted in a tight dress–more woman than woman herself. In truth, this man on the cover of Time Magazine is a cartoon of a woman. Yet tragedy trumps comedy here; his artificial extremities emerge from the wound of a masculine soul that no amount of surgeries or hormones can restore. Time featured him as an icon of ‘America’s Transition’ (get it?), the brave new world of gender anarchy in which ‘men in deep V-necks and necklaces wa

‘I could strengthen you with talk, or shake my head with silent lips.’ (Jb 16:5) I spoke to him plainly of the dangers of ‘gay marriage,’ and the power of Jesus and His church to raise the ‘homosexual’ to wholeness. The earnest bishop implored me: ‘But we don’t want to be on the wrong side of history!’ I understand his dilemma. Last night while channel surfing for 15 minutes, I witnessed two same-gendered couples smooching to celebrate ‘gay marriage’ victories in PA and OR, a

I marvel at the choice of the Gospel reading for the Feast of Christ the King. To finalize the Year of Faith, the Church spotlights not the triumphant Jesus but the One sneered as ‘King of the Jews’, punctured by spears and jeers (LK 23: 35-43). Jesus the criminal King, turning man’s justice on its ear. The blows He took broke the barrier between us; the blood shed rescues us from death, the shattered body makes us whole. The vehicle for our empowerment is His utter weakness.

‘Do not be conformed to this age but be transformed by the renewing of your mind…’ (Romans 12: 2a) ‘That was the first time I had ever heard anything hopeful about homosexuality’: a not unfamiliar response from Christians who hear us share our journeys out of homosexuality and into wholeness in Christ. My take? The body of Christ has bought the lie that Jesus cannot touch homosexuality! He may well have destroyed death, stormed the gates of hell to get us out of there, and ro

‘These matters are in my hands and I will bring them to fruition according to My Mercy, for nothing can oppose My will.’ Jesus to St. Faustina Growing acceptance of gender brokenness seems founded on the belief that people are born incurably ‘gay,’ ‘transgender’ etc. Why not be and act according to who one intrinsically is? Rarely discussed is the fracturing impact such acceptance has upon vulnerable boys and girls. Identity formation involves far more than genetics. Who we b

‘The Church must know the difference between order and disorder, and be wise enough to contextualize disorder with grace and truth.’ Dr. Ray Anderson ‘Not a chance’, responded Check. Praise God. To uphold the dignity of sexual love within one context–one man committed to one woman—is a merciful mandate. It means that the Church calls all humanity to something higher, truer, and more honorable in human relationships than what comes ‘naturally’ in our lusts. I recall a host of

‘Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert…and a highway will be there; it will be called the Way of Holiness.’ (IS 35:6, 8) She believes that the host of sexual inclinations native to fallen humanity require validation of a variety of paths on which to urge our fellows to become the best GLBTQ….person (s)he can be. (The morphing of the acronym speaks for itself.) I am only grateful for the mercy of God revealed in Jesus Christ, who showed me the one p