Not your typical after-school program. One day every week, for nine weeks this spring, a group of Vermont high school students shuffled into a youth center to participate in a partially taxpayer-funded program with a specific purpose. And it wasn’t basketball, or tutoring, or practicing musical instruments.
Bob WeathersIt was gender education.
The program, called “Gendertopia,” was held at Vermont’s Queer Youth Center and reportedly offered gay, lesbian and straight students a chance to discuss a broad range of topics, from characters in the movie “Twilight” to scenes in the city that depict gender.
“Gendertopia” is run by Outright Vermont, which describes itself as a social service organization that seeks to alleviate gender-motivated bullying among Vermont’s young people by helping youth consider multiple “genders” as normal. It seems to be working. David Kingsbury, a 16-year-old student who signed up for the program, commented that, “People assume it’s [just] boy and girl, but it’s so much more than that. There’s a whole world out there full of different genders.” School Superintendent Jeanne Collins bubbled, “We are very sensitive to celebrating the differences in people and accepting people for who they are and what they bring to the table.”
Sounds nice. So what is the problem?
Shall we make a list? Sorry. Not enough room. So let’s park on one thing: Truth. This effort to convince students of the reality of multiple genders is the equivalent of sandpapering the moral conscience, smoothing away the hard edges of truth until they will accept nearly anything under the guise of sensitivity and love. Ironically, under the pretext of an anti-bullying, social services program, Outright Vermont is bullying young minds into accepting their definition of love as tolerance.
Their worldview is not loving. It is cruel. It withholds from students the truth, denies them unconditional love, confiscates their hope, and ignores their need for real and lasting change by teaching a twisted concept of humanity. That is not love. That is deception.
Paul wrote, “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth” (1 Corinthians 13:6). Truth is the backbone of love. It is the moral conscience that points its finger and says, “I love you too much to permit your destructive behavior.”
True love always loves the truth.