We don’t hate them, LGBTQ people, Sage. If we hated Because we hate LGBTQ people, them we would let them go go hell unearned and unprayed for without the gospel! hope these sexual deviants burn in Hell. Dr. David Tee and I, and many others bring them the gospel! will not rest until LGBTQ people are rounded up and sent to internment camps.
Sadly, those caught in lgbtq trans demonic homos snare who attack and condemn LGBTQ people are going to realize too late that the “haters” those who shared the gospel with them were the ones that really LOVED THEM! it is they who will land in Hell someday for hating other people who have literally done nothing to them. And those who approved of, supported, and celebrated with them in their sin were the ones that HATED them LGBTQ people will be rewarded by God for loving their neighbors as themselves, while Revival Fires and Dr. David Tee will be And driven the through the gates of Hell on a Trump-driven, Musk-built rocket sled. 😭😭
“HE SHALL BAPTIZE YOU WITH THE HOKY GHOST AND WITH FIRE” MATTHEW 3:11. Put your left foot in, and put your left foot out, and shake it all about, do the Hoky Ghost, and turn yourself around, that’s what it’s all about.
MAY GOD BRING MANY TO JESUS!!! SPARKE A REVIVAL FIRE!!!! 🔥 May Revival Fires and Dr. David Tee repent of their wicked, hateful ways before it is too late and they land in Hell.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Why are so many Evangelical preachers obsessed with sex, gender, and genitalia? Every day, I peruse blog posts by preachers preoccupied with who fucks whom, when, where, and how. These preachers prattle incessantly about what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms. While these so-called men of God would say that “sin is sin,” based on what they dwell on in their sermons and blog posts, it’s evident that they consider sexual sins more serious than others. Never mind the fact that most sexual “sins” are between consenting adults; “sins” that hurt no one.
These keepers of everyone’s chastity but their own are especially focused on what LGBTQ people do sexually. Worse, they have gone after transgender people with hatred and vengeance. What have LGBTQ people done to these preachers of God’s sex code? Nothing. Their mere existence is enough to stir Evangelical preachers into fits of rage.
One Evangelical preacher, Dr. David Tee (whose real name is Derrick Thomas Theissen), recently wrote:
By now, everyone has heard of the UK Supreme Court’s decision. It is good news for real women who have suffered more than enough these past few years with fake women invading their spaces.
….
Of course, no Christian needed a Court’s decision on the issue. The Bible has been declaring the separation of the two genders for thousands of years, and Judaism did it long before that. The Supreme Court is merely saying what all Christians already knew, and what unbelievers have been hiding from.
What we hope will happen is that all fake women will be denied access to these spaces, and real women can feel safer. While this ruling only applies to the UK, we hope to see similar rulings take place around the globe.
The madness must stop as trans- women are not real women and suffer from mental and spiritual problems that deceive them into thinking they are something they are not. The objection that this decision may cause more fake women to kill themselves is erroneous.
The source of the problem with fake men and women is their blind acceptance of the feelings that they were born in the wrong body. They hold tightly to those feelings as if they were a lifeline. This is deception at work.
Until the fake men and women see this, they will always be confused and have problems. The feelings are not real, but a trap from evil to destroy them. They have to see that those feelings are false and take the right steps to get help.
Encouraging their ‘transition’ is not the answer and does not protect the lives of these fake people. In fact, it puts them more in harm’s way as the majority of society finds their delusions disgusting and wrong.
It is even more wrong to allow them to enter women’s spaces and activities and claim they are real women. As the Bible and science have pointed out continuously, no one can change their gender, and participating in this folly only makes fools out of the fake people and their supporters.
….
God does not change just because the NT came into existence. God made two distinct genders at creation, which do not change at any time. Science cannot overcome what God did at creation.
If you want to protect fake men and women, then get them the help they need instead of parading them around in public where they will be rejected, ridiculed, and worse. Trying to make them a part of normal society is not the right thing to do.
The trans ideology is perversion at its finest, desecrating what God called good. Let’s hope that more courts see the light and make the same correct decision as the UK Supreme Court did.
It is time to protect our children, sisters, brothers, cousins, and everyone who is falling to this sinful thinking that does more harm than good. Get them the help they need before it is too late.
Thiessen would have his handful of readers believe that transgender people are a threat to the human race. Previously, he has called for transgender people to be arrested and put in internment camps — thus protecting the public from these “evil” people.
Rarely does a week go by without Thiessen writing a post condemning transgender people. He is obsessed with these folks, even though they haven’t done anything to him. Most transgender people just want to be left alone. They want to have the same equal protection under the law as the rest of us.
While Thiessen is free to twist the Bible to fit his perverse hatred of people who violate his Puritan code of human sexuality, it doesn’t follow that the United States government should give his beliefs the force of law. We live in a secular state, not a theocracy. Until the David Thiessens of the world clearly show that transgender people harm others, their protestations carry no weight.
I find it interesting that Thiessen and his merry band of genital inspectors show little to no interest in a real threat to people, especially children. Transgender people rarely make the news for committing sex crimes, yet rarely does a day go by when one or more preachers are arrested, indicted, or convicted for sexual abuse, rape, and other sex crimes. Thiessen, in particular, ignores these stories, and even goes so far as to defend these Jesus-loving perverts. What are we to make of his behavior?
The message to Evangelical preachers is this: Mind your own fucking business. Clean up your own backyard first. Do something about predatory preachers and clerics who take sexual advantage of vulnerable people. Focus your attention on church members, and not on people who don’t attend your churches — people whose beliefs and practices are different from yours.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
This series, titled Trump Dump, features outlandish, untrue quotes from Donald Trump, MAGA supporters, and Right Wing media. If you come across a quote for this series, please send it to me with a link to the news story that contains the relevant quote.
Well, it’s the priority of the Democrats, the letter salad of LGBTQ groups, you can’t let one of them down. And the Democrats know that transgender boys and women’s sports is wrong, but they can’t abandon them because the rest of their group would probably say, if you’re not going to stand with us, we’re out of here for you, Democrats.
We have entire men’s teams across this country now that are turning trans. Women’s teams, they’re turning trans.
And that’s going to be a, uh, a situation where it’s going to pick up speed because these woke globalists are pushing these kids to say, if you can’t compete in men’s sports, let’s just transition and say, you’re a woman and, and, uh, participate in women’s sports.
–Senator Tommy Tuberville, as reported by Crooks & Liars
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
In fact, this piece should not appear on your screen or any form of paper. It should not exist at all. If you believe that the words you are reading—and the person who wrote them—are real, you are suffering a delusion or actively denying reality. Perhaps you are drunk or high. Or, maybe, those illicit, uh, transformative, substances you took in your youth produce flashbacks for even longer than you ever imagined possible.
Whatever the case may be, you must disabuse yourself of the notion that what you are reading is real. It isn’t because its author isn’t.
That’s right. I do not exist.
Who made such a determination? Not the folks who investigate paranormal phenomena. Nor did the American Psychiatric Association or American Medical Association. Members of both august bodies, in fact, have confirmed my existence share your delusion.
Understandably, they would. After all, they don’t know what the highest authority in this land knows. He’s had more hands-on experience than all of them put together. So, who is more qualified to say whether or not I exist?
According to the FuhrerTan Fuhrer President of the United States, I—and people like me—don’t exist. Whatever a doctor decided I was on the day I was born, that’s what I am. Now, to be fair, that OB-GYN on a military base where my father was stationed late in the Eisenhower Administration had no other means but my external anatomical features for determining my sex. He would have had no way of knowing about the hormonal imbalances and other “problems” that would manifest themselves later, sometimes much later, on.
Of course, our Dear Leader, with his Bachelor of Science in Economics, and such respected advisers as Dr. Oz, knows more than that army doctor could have. (Oh, and he has more military training.) Moreover, he has seen more of those “immutable biological realities” of female anatomy being a woman than, well, most people.
So who better than a self-proclaimed king a duly elected leader to tell you what’s real and what isn’t.
That means, not only this article, but everything else I’ve ever written, is an illusion. So are all of the knowledge and skills my students acquired in my classrooms, or later when they applied them in the “real world.” Oh, and I never worked the other jobs I had before I became a college instructor: artist-in-residence, high school teacher, journalist, copywriter, publicist, tour leader, bicycle messenger (in New York City), bicycle mechanic, and sales clerk. And my service in the Army Reserves never happened. No, all of the work that got done and all of my interactions with students, colleagues, co-workers, editors, clients, and customers is as illusory as I am.
Of course, that means I never earned the degrees and diplomas or won the citations and awards that have my name on them. And that child my parents thought they were raising—well, I was as much an illusion then as I am now. That means they must have been just as delusional in believing that I was their child as you are for thinking that you are reading something that, because I don’t exist, can’t exist.
So, remember: You didn’t read this. Even if the previous sentence is self-contradictory.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
This cartoon correctly shows how many Evangelicals perceive the transgender/bathroom issue. Their perceptions, however, are categorically wrong.
What should we make of Evangelical Christians who are obsessed with human biological sex, gender, genitals, and what people do with them? I peruse scores of Evangelical blogs and websites every day. Without fail, one or more of these defenders of the one true penis will write an article disparaging LGBTQ people. Rare is an article about the peccadilloes of heterosexual people, even though their sexual sins and crimes are far more common than those found among LGBTQ people.
Some Evangelicals are, in particular, obsessed with transgender people. Take Dr. David Tee, whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen. Week after week, Thiessen churns out articles attacking, disparaging, and demeaning transgender people. Between Thiessen’s defense of preachers who commit sex crimes and his obsession with hating LGBTQ people, it makes me wonder what lies buried deeply in his proverbial closet. Regardless, Thiessen’s unhealthy obsession with transgender people is disturbing, to say the least. If a transgender woman was beaten and killed near where Thiessen lives and law enforcement found his hate-filled writing about transgender people, he would quickly become a person of interest.
Today, Thiessen wrote another article about transgender people titled, If You Still Think It is Fair. Thiessen said things like:
How humiliating was it when a fake [transgender] woman was sent to the Miss Universe pageant in 2018? Of all the women in Spain, a fake one was deemed to be the most attractive? and qualified for a female beauty pageant??
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It is not normal behavior to reject one’s actual gender and pretend to be a gender one is not. There is nothing fair about this inclusion in any women’s event or activity. What makes it worse is the fact that a female [U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe] is opposing Trump’s Executive Order banning fake women in women’s sports and activities.
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There is nothing right or fair about including transgender in women’s activities. You will find that there is no historical foundation for these inclusions. It may have taken place in Sodom and Gomorrah but God destroyed those cities so we will never know.
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When female athletes do not stick up for their real female counterparts, then you know there is something really wrong with many people. Maybe the problem is that many men and women think that since they are not involved in those activities, it is not their problem.
However, many problems are solved by those who are not involved. They have the advantage of not having emotional conflicts, should see the situation clearly, and can suggest proper solutions. Those outsiders can still champion right over wrong as eventually, the sinful behavior will reach their activities soon enough.
As Christians, we need to continually speak out and hold our ground.
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It is not normal, it is not right, and it is not moral. Christians can do something with God’s help. When they address this problem, they just need to remember that Transgenders are God’s creation also, and are under severe attacks from evil.
They need to be rescued from this sin and the people who are locking them inside this sin. This is a spiritual warfare battle and Christians need to go into it armed with sincere prayer, the right attitudes, and the right knowledge. Wisdom will help apply that knowledge correctly so that God wins the day.
This is not something we can do on our own. We need Go’d help in this and other spiritual warfare issues. We are just not equipped with the right tools to handle spiritual problems on our own.
As Christians pray and get prepared for this battle, they can still speak out telling the world that has lost sight of the difference between right and wrong, what is right and what is wrong. Without the Christian testimony and witness, those godly standards are lost as no one else has them.
Stop the unfairness and humiliation of women and show Christian love to the real women of the world.
In what way do transgender people materially affect the lives of Theissen and others like him? None that I can think of. No, Thiessen is transphobic, and he rails against transgender people because he finds them disgusting. Or perhaps he is sexually attracted to transgender people, and God, Jesus, the Holy Ghost, and the Bible can’t stop Thiessen from thinking lustful thoughts about what people have in their pants or under their skirts.
Less than one percent of Americans are transgender, yet according to Thiessen and other Evangelical zealots, they are an existential threat to the human race. In the past, Thiessen has said transgender people should be arrested and put in internment camps, much like the United States did with Japanese and German people during World War II. Bigotry is bigotry regardless of the clothing it wears.
Transgender people were disgustingly used as a political prop for Donald Trump and other MAGA politicians during the last election. Based on the ads, you would think transgender people are lurking in the shadows on every corner, hoping to find a defenseless child to rape or assault. Some ads focused on transgender women playing women’s high school and college sports. Keep in mind that few transgender people play organized sports. According to one news report, ten transgender women played college sports last year. Ten. A whopping ten transgender women out of thousands of female athletes. At the high school level, last year in the state of Ohio, only two transgender girls played sports, Yet, we are to believe that a total of twelve transgender women are destroying high school and college athletics. Child, please. This doesn’t mean that there are not issues to resolve when transgender people play sports. There are, and it is up to league administrators to determine what constitutes fair play. However, this is not a simple issue to solve. If it is just a matter of testing for testosterone levels, what will happen to heterosexual women who have high testosterone levels? As a former player of high school and college basketball, we used to joke about the jumping capabilities of White people; you know, “white people can’t jump.” Generally speaking, Black athletes run faster and jump higher than Whites. Should Black athletes be penalized for having genetic superiority? So it is with transgender women. If being trans gives them an unfair competitive advantage, then it may be necessary to adjust the rules — based on science and not because of bigotry. So few transgender students play sports that it is impossible to know whether they have a physical advantage, and, if they do, how much advantage they have. This is an issue that must be addressed by science, and not the shrill, hysterical rants of Evangelical preachers. (I should note that many transgender people want this issue addressed too.)
Rarely does Thiessen write a post for his site without mentioning BG and MM, also known as Bruce Gerencser and Ben Berwick (Meerkat Musings). His latest post disparaging transgender people mentions both of us. Here’s what “Hetero D” had to say:
We know that there will be those who disagree with us, for example, MM and BG, but their minds are confused and deceived so their opinions do not matter. This issue is a product of deception and confusion as the people allowing this humiliating act are just as deceived and confused about life and gender.
According to Theissen, our opinions on this issue don’t matter. Why? Our minds are confused and deceived by a mythical being, Satan himself. What, exactly, are we confused about? It is Thiessen who refuses to accept what consensus science tells about biological sex and gender. The Line, owned by Jimmy Snow, features a weekly call-in show hosted primarily by transgender people. If you want to understand the plethora of issues surrounding transgender people and the challenges they face living in a world increasingly hostile to them, I encourage you to tune in to their program.
Matt Dillahunty, whose significant other is transgender, also has several programs on The Line. Matt is a good source for those who want to understand transgender people. I will give you fair warning, Matt has zero tolerance for bigots like Thiessen. Honest, thoughtful discussions are welcome, but disparaging and attacking transgender people will bring upon you the wrath of Almighty Matt, and rightfully so. I should note, it is almost always Evangelicals who call into these programs to attack transgender people. They are not interested in learning about biological sex and gender or making good-faith efforts to understand transgender people. In their minds, as with Derrick Thomas Thiessen, transgender people are e-v-i-l. For you who regularly comment on this blog, you have read the comments of several transgender people. Do they seem “evil” to you? Of course not. If anyone seems evil, it is Theissen, but even with him, I don’t think he is actually evil. He has been conditioned and indoctrinated his whole life to hate LGBTQ people. In recent years, Thiessen’s hatred has focused on transgender people, though it is unlikely that he personally knows anyone who is transgender
I remember thinking just like Thiessen about LGBTQ people. My hatred and bigotry were driven by not only my Christian Fundamentalism but also the fact that I didn’t know any LGBTQ people. Oh, there were people I suspected were “gay,” but I wasn’t friends with any of them. It took actually meeting and befriending LGBTQ people for my views to change. Today, I have friends all across the sexual and gender spectrum. My life has been enriched in every way by knowing them.
For you who are former Evangelicals, how did you view and treat LGBTQ people? Were you a bigot like Thiessen? What caused you to change your mind about LGBTQ people? Do you know or are you friends with transgender people? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comment section.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde spoke truth to power during a sermon delivered at a prayer service attended by President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and the Trump family.
Let me make one final plea. Mr. President, millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives. And the people, the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants, and work the night shifts in hospitals, they — they may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurdwara, and temples.
I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away, and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love, and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people, the good of all people in this nation, and the world.
The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard-line Trump hater. She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart.
She failed to mention the large number of illegal migrants that came into our Country and killed people. Many were deposited from jails and mental institutions. It is a giant crime wave that is taking place in the USA. Apart from her inappropriate statements, the service was a very boring and uninspiring one. She is not very good at her job! She and her church owe the public an apology!
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde is the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. She’s the first woman to hold the position. She was given a great honor today, a chance to unify America around a Christian message at the dawn of a new administration. Instead, she disgraced herself with a lecture you’d hear on CNN or an episode of The View. What an embarrassment. (Charlie Kirk)
Liberal Protestant Pastor Mariann Edgar Budde blindsides Trump and Vance, weaponizing her sermon to attack them in front of their families by saying they should ‘have mercy’ on gay, lesbian, and transgender children. Unbelievable. (Catholic Voice)
[Budde’s sermon] is just the beginning of Democrats’ desperate attempts to race bait America back into the pernicious grips of DEI. The fact that President Trump demanded that God remain as the foundation of America should have received non-partisan praise from all of our nation’s clergy. We are addressing DEI and wokeness in our government and businesses and it’s time to address wokeness in churches as well. (Evangelical pastor Jack Brewer)
Ironically, the bishop used the pulpit and the service to not only lecture the president but to promote a secular worldview and her woke ideology. Unity can only be achieved through a commitment to biblical truth, not cultural assimilation. Her sermon was indicative of the heresy being taught by mainline denominations. Our nation was founded upon the truth that there is God, and he alone defines good and evil. (Evangelical pastor Rob Pacienza)
This Bishop asked Trump and his administration to have mercy on trans kids and immigrants. What I would like to know is why she didn’t ask for the previous administration to have mercy on these trans kids and immigrants? Where was she when it counted? We have children who are so young that they do not know the ways of this world and yet we are doing irreversible damage to their bodies — damage that many have since regretted. Where was she when Biden opened the borders and allowed millions of people who knew they were breaking the law to cross over. We knew a day of reckoning was coming. Yet where was her request for compassion back then. What the previous administration did was not compassion but ideological malpractice. They operated on children out of ideology. They allowed in people from other countries out of ideology. This was not compassion. Our compassion must be for our citizens first and foremost (Evangelical Corey Brooks)
This is what a religious pretender looks like. Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde attacked Trump and told him to “have mercy” on gay, lesbian, and transgender children and illegal immigrants. President Trump rolled his eyes… (Evangelical Graham Allen)
NEW: Trump appears to roll his eyes as Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde begs him to “have mercy” on gay, lesbian and transgender children and illegal immigrants. These people are absolutely nuts. (Collin Rugg)
Woke pastor attacks Trump and Vance to their faces for scaring “LGBTQ kids” and illegals. (End Wokeness)
Are you kidding me? It’s people like this woman “pastor” who put this irrational fear into the heads of LGBT people. (Gays for Trump)
Who thought it was a good idea for this woman, Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, to give such an outrageous sermon in front of President Trump at the National Prayer Service? First “protect the trans” and now this? This is NOT a church I would want to attend. (Gays for Trump)
When compassion divorces itself from truth, it becomes a counterfeit virtue—easily manipulated, shallow, and destructive. As Christ warned in John 8:44, the father of lies thrives where truth is discarded, twisting kind intentions into tools of hell. True compassion bows to the authority of law and justice-for his throne is established on Justice; without these, it is not compassion at all, but indulgence in sophistry that serves the enemy of God. (Evangelical pastor David Englehardt)
Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. (Evangelical country music star John Rich)
I am an atheist, but let me shout out a hearty AMEN! to Bishop Budde for speaking truth to power. Her words will have no effect on Trump, Vance, or the president’s family, but maybe, just maybe, thoughtful, compassionate followers of Jesus will pause for a moment and weigh whether they want to continue to blindly support policies that are contrary to the teachings of not only the Bible, but Jesus himself. Evangelicals and other conservative Christians do not have a high moral ground on these issues. I suspect if Jesus were alive today, he would have plenty to say to President Trump about his treatment of “the least of these.” Trump’s response? He would have Jesus arrested and deported.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Throughout the history of the United States, federal, state, and local governments have singled out specific groups of people for persecution. Indigenous people. People of Asian descent. People of German descent. Blacks. Muslims. European immigrants. Gay people. And now transgender people. Over our nation’s almost 250-year history, political leaders have used the power of the state to condemn, marginalize, and persecute people deemed a threat to the United States. We have locked up such people in internment camps, reservations, and prisons, and when the persecuted pushed back against their persecutors, they faced state-sanctioned violence, including beatings, rapes, and murders.
Thanks to Donald Trump and his MAGA mob, along with millions of Evangelical, Mormon, and Roman Catholic Christians, transgender people — who make up less than one percent (3 million) of our population — are targeted for persecution. Some Christians think transgender people should be arrested and incarcerated in internment camps, reminiscent of the days when Japanese and German Americans were torn from their homes and incarcerated during World War II. The goal, of course, is to drive transgender people back into the closet — out of sight, out of mind, never to be seen again.
It is easy for people with privilege such as heterosexual whites to say to transgender people, “Stand up for your rights!” However, demographically, transgender people are such a small part of our population that it is unlikely that they have the political and cultural power to stand their ground (without risking physical harm or death). Transgender readers of this blog have repeatedly told me that all they want is to be left alone. They want to live without being singled out for who and what they are. They want the same rights and protections as their non-transgender neighbors.
Sadly, bad times lie ahead for transgender people. Donald Trump and his merry band of bigots fully intend to erase transgender people not only from the government, but society in general. They will not rest until we return to the days when people didn’t understand the difference between biological sex and gender; back to a day when LGBTQ people were labeled deviants and child molesters.
So what are transgender people to do? They have little to no political power. I fear many of them will withdraw from our society out of fear of what could happen to them if they publicly lived openly and authentically as transgender people (no different from what heterosexual people do). Their small numbers are no match for angry mobs of transphobes who want to destroy their lives. It is up to non-transgender Americans to join with them if there is any hope for transgender people to ever have the peaceable lives they desperately wish to have.
Transgender people aren’t asking for special rights or to be treated differently from others. All they want is to be left alone so they can live lives free of persecution, harassment, and violence. Is that not all any of us wants?
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
This series, titled Trump Dump, features outlandish, untrue quotes from Donald Trump, MAGA supporters, and Right Wing media. If you come across a quote for this series, please send it to me with a link to the news story that contains the relevant quote.
This groomer is lying to children. God created us in HIS image, male and female, he created us. No doctor, body mutilation, or lifetime of pharmaceutical drugs will ever change your sex/gender. Congressman Timothy McBride is a child predator and LIAR.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
Luke Taylor is the pastor of Veneration Church, a Southern Baptist congregation in Kalispell, Montana. Taylor, a culture warrior, recently preached a sermon series titled Culture Clash: A Biblical Look at Culture’s Hottest Topics. Spanning five sermons so far, Taylor preached oh-so-important sermons such as: A Battle for the Heart, Sexual Purity, Transgenderism, Homosexuality, and Abortion. The sermon videos had subtitles such as:
There has been a major clash between culture and biblical truth. Paul warns the church not to be deceived as the unrighteous will not inherit the Kingdom of God. A battle has been waged for the heart, and the only remedy is Jesus and a complete surrender to Him.
If sex is like a consuming fire, why has God commanded us to control the burn? We know His command for purity is all over the Bible, but what is the reason for this command? How is it for our best? How has the devil hijacked God’s plan for sex, and kept us from enjoying the most satisfying and fulfilling sex you can imagine? As we will see, God invented sex for our good and His glory, and His plan is the best and most satisfying by design. Nothing else can compare.
At the core of the LGBTQ community rests two common traits: a rebellion against God and a personal brokenness that leads to a search for identity. Transgenderism is the fruit of rebellion and brokenness. How does the Bible speak to these issues and how is the church to respond?
At the core of the LGBTQ+ community rests two common traits: a rebellion against God and His design and a personal brokenness that is in search of healing. What does the Bible say about homosexuality and same-sex marriage? Why are these against God’s design and how do we know? How do you wrestle with these issues in light of the Gospel and salvation? How is the church to respond?
Statistics would show that over 40% of women, both inside and outside the church, have been touched by the pain of abortion. For every woman that has walked this road, there is also a man. While the Bible has much to say about the sanctity of life, it also has much to say about the forgiveness the cross of Christ offers for any who have walked down this painful road. To think that any sin cannot be forgiven by the blood of Jesus is to cheapen the cross of Christ. God not only forgives, but He also restores and redeems.
Taylor didn’t announce his sermon titles in advance, fearing congregants would skip church if they knew he was preaching about their particular sin. The Sunday he planned to preach on abortion, this is what happened:
Taylor did not announce the sermon schedule because he didn’t want people to choose which sermons they might avoid. However, he accidentally mentioned when he would preach on abortion. “Driving home after church, I felt the Spirit of God telling me to switch the weekends for this topic because there might be women who would skip that sermon due to the grips of guilt and shame.”
Sure enough, Taylor heard that some women planned to miss that sermon. “If God was going to set them free, they needed to be there,” he said. So Taylor changed plans. The result was that “many women showed up the following weekend and were set free. God did God things in God ways,” Taylor said.
Taylor was recently interviewed by The Baptist Paper about his sermon series. Taylor assured readers that his sermons were not political; that if someone took issue with his sermons, their problem was with God, not him.
[The series was] “not about what we are standing against but about who we are standing for. [Drawing from biblical teachings, Taylor prayed for the sermons to be] presented in a way that if anyone had a problem with what I said it would be because they rebelled against God’s Word and not my opinion.
Nothing like a cocksure Baptist preacher, right? Certain that his personal interpretations of the Bible are straight from the mouth of God, Taylor viewed any objections to his sermons as rebellion against the inerrant, infallible Word of God.
I was an Evangelical preacher for twenty-five years. According to church members and colleagues in the ministry, my sermons were well crafted and used by God to bring conviction of sin and salvation. When asked about my sermons, my partner of forty-six years, Polly — who heard virtually every one of my 4,000+ sermons — always voiced approbation for my messages. Even when I missed the mark with a sermon, Polly always praised me for a good job. Awesome wife, right? 🙂 I learned not to trust her judgments of my sermons, knowing her love for me was greater than the quality of a particular sermon. Some church members did the same as they shook my hand after church, saying, “Preacher, that was a wonderful sermon.” The subject matter didn’t matter, my sermons were always supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. The judgments of my sermons that did matter to me were the ones from my fellow preachers. By all accounts, my sermons were well received by them.
I took the craft of preaching seriously. I learned early on that sermons could be used to “motivate” people to behave in certain ways. Choose the right text, use timely heart-tugging illustrations, and deliver the sermon with passion and conviction, it was not hard to get people to make decisions for Christ. While I had sincere intentions, desiring, as Taylor does, to save sinners and bring conviction of sin to church members, I eventually recognized that what I was really doing was psychologically manipulating people. Eventually, I stopped giving altar calls and dialed back aspects of my preaching I felt were manipulative. Preaching expositional sermons instead of topical/textual sermons helped limit the kind of manipulation found in Taylor’s Culture Clash sermon series. My goal was to teach the Bible and let congregants do with it what they will.
I am not suggesting that Taylor is evil or a cult leader. Many preachers are unaware of how their sermons can be used to psychologically manipulate people, thinking that when people positively respond to their sermons by getting saved or confessing secret, long-held sin, it is the Holy Spirit moving instead of manipulation. For those of us raised in Baptist churches, we were indoctrinated and conditioned to respond to sermons in general, and certain content in particular, to make decisions for Christ. Sermon-induced guilt is labeled Holy Ghost conviction instead of what it is, psychological manipulation. I listened to several of Taylor’s sermons, particularly his sermon on Transgenderism. Taylor is well-spoken and knows how to use a well-turned phrase to elicit the desired response. His sermons conclude with a prayer, complete with background music. Then the church band starts playing. I assume this is Veneration Church’s version of an altar call. I have written previously about how Evangelical preachers use music to tug at the heartstrings (minds) of congregants, making it easier for them to get right with God. Whether it is the singing of Just As I Am or modern contemporary songs, the goal is to stir the passions of those in attendance.
Taylor’s certainly had the desired effect. Scores of church members confessed long-buried sins, including sexual sins. To give readers a good idea of what happened at Veneration Church, what follows is a video Taylor played for the congregation featuring his fellow pastor Tyler Wilschetz and his wife Alicia.
Guilt is common among Evangelicals. When the focus is on sin — as defined by the pastor’s personal interpretations of the Bible — and brokenness, it is not surprising that church members feel so guilty. Guilt, then, becomes the fertile ground preachers use to encourage people to repent of secret sins and get right with God. Taylor told congregants that “guilt and shame” were from the Devil, but I suggest that they are the fruit of Evangelical dogma and psychological manipulation.
The Baptist Paper story gave several examples of how Taylor’s sermons affected church members:
One of Taylor’s sermons focused on sexual purity especially within the context of biblical marriage, citing premarital cohabitation, premarital sex, extramarital sex, and viewing porn as among numerous biblical prohibitions regarding sensuality.
“But why does the Bible speak so much about sexual purity?” he asked. Because only within God’s design is found “our full satisfaction, our complete enjoyment, and our greatest pleasure.”
For those who sorrow over previous sexual sins, Taylor said, “Guilt and shame are from the devil. But conviction comes from the Holy Spirit.” The power of the gospel redeems and frees us from the prison of past failures regardless of what they were, he said.
Following the sermon, Taylor’s invitation calling all who wanted to repent of sin and to commit to a life of purity garnered about 90 men who walked the aisle and stood up front in public testimony of their commitment.
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One woman found freedom from decades of abortion guilt. She believed that her daughter — who was born without a right hand and died in her early thirties — was God’s judgment. She assessed the untimely death of her husband similarly.
In a subsequent discipleship group the walls fell.
The group leader reported to Taylor: “The woman let go of 40 years of guilt and pain. We had an incredible time of prayer over her, where she was able to grieve her baby, give up to God the falsehoods Satan had over her, and start her restoration of moving forward without guilt.”
Sadly, many of the “sins” Evangelicals feel guilty about are normal human behaviors. Notice Taylor’s obsession over sexual “sin.” Want to elicit guilt from church members? Preach on sexual behaviors deemed sinful by the churches/pastors. Sex is a basic human need, right up there with eating and drinking. I came of age in the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church movement. I heard countless sermons about heinous sins such as premarital sex, fornication, lust, masturbation, and pornography. Instead of being taught to own my sexuality and learning how to act responsibly around the opposite sex, I learned that normal, healthy sexual desire was sin; that God would harshly judge me if I didn’t keep my pants zipped up and my mind focused on the precious Word of God. Try as I might, and no matter how many prayers I prayed, sermons I listened to, and Bible verses I read, I still had raging hormones. While both Polly and I were virgins on our wedding day, this was not because we conquered our sexual desires. No, we feared God would get us if we rounded third and slid into home. Many of our fellow youth group members and college friends were not as holy as we were. When the Devil rang the proverbial doorbell they answered the door, and the result was years of guilt over not adhering to the church’s Puritannical moral code. Some of my fellow dorm dwellers who succumbed to “lust” went on to pastor Baptist churches. A funny thing happened on their way to the pulpit. They forgot that they had hit home runs while at Midwestern Baptist College. Sexual “sins” long since confessed and buried were forgotten as they stood in their pulpits and arranged another generation of young people about the evils of handholding, kissing, petting, mutual sexual stimulation, fornication, and masturbation.
Teenagers and young adults are going to engage in sexual activity regardless of what they hear from the pulpit. Instead of preaching guilt-inducing sermons and telling young people to “just say no,” it would be better if pastors taught their young charges personal accountability and responsibility. Perhaps it is time to chuck the Bible and encourage young and old alike healthy attitudes about sex and desire. If Taylor’s sermon series should have taught him anything, it is that sermons such as his don’t bring lasting change. The Bible is no match for sexual want, need, and desire — as adult church members would affirm if they ever shared their sexual secrets. Imagine a church testimony time where one adult after another shared stories about hot summer nights and youthful desires. 🙂
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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Dr. David Tee, an Evangelical preacher whose real name is Derrick Thomas Thiessen, despises LGBTQ people — especially transgender folks. He is the epitome of a transphobe. His bigotry is common among Evangelicals who, lacking imagination, can’t fathom anything other than a cisgender, heterosexual, no-sex-before-marriage world. Thiessen not only disparages transgender people at every turn, but he also believes that justice and equal protection under the law doesn’t apply to them. He thinks transgender people are mentally ill and are under the influence of Satan. I suspect if Thiessen had his way, LGBTQ people would be rounded up and sent to sex/gender education camps.
Today, Thiessen wrote an ugly, vicious article titled, Why Should Anyone Support Transgender Rights? Without further response, I give you the words of sex/gender expert Dr. David Tee (all spelling, grammar, and punctuation in the original):
So far, there has not been one valid, legitimate, or even halfway good argument that presents any type of solid case for anyone to support transgender rights. There really isn’t one because if supporters were honest, they would realize that the concept of transgenderism is a mental and spiritual deception meant to harm unwary people.
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How can anyone seriously get behind the [transgender] movement when their supporters go to such extremes to bully others into silence or drop their opposition?
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Why should a minute minority be given such leeway when their American population is roughly under 1,000,000 people out of a population of 300,00,00+ people. On the world stage, the figures are just as bad.
Why should 8,000,000,000 +/- people have to give in to the demands of a people group barely making it to 5 million if that? We are not even talking about the issue of right and wrong here. We are just discussing how the rights of the vast majority are undermined and trampled in favor of those who are in desperate need of mental and spiritual counseling and therapy.
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The truth has to be told that transgender identification is wrong and cannot be given special rights. The people also need to be told that they need to go get mental and spiritual help if they want to be part of normal and real society.
There is nothing wrong with telling them the truth. What is wrong is supporting these delusions and allowing them to permeate society to the point that those who do what is right are punished. There was a time when this did not take place and almost all parts of society did tell the confused they needed help and offered to get them the help.
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People need to be rebuked about their sinful ways and corrected from them and transgenderism is sinful and all of its members and supporters need to be rebuked and corrected. Not the Christian.
There is no such thing as discrimination against what is wrong.
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When people cross moral boundaries, nothing immoral or sinful is out of line for them . . . They have no morals stopping them from harming those who disagree with them.
That condition tells you that there is nothing of God in transgenderism. it cannot be supported, given special rights, or normalized. It is a sin which needs to be repented of completely.
Fake men and women need to be treated, not the normal majority.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and sixteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Your comments are welcome and appreciated. All first-time comments are moderated. Please read the commenting rules before commenting.
