Tag: transgender

17May

Former Transgender Man Embraces The Spirit

Jeffrey McCall was a transgender activist with the alternate name “Scarlet”. In 2016, McCall had hit bottom. He was looking into surgical measures to complete his transformation. He was also contemplating suicide. He had been secretly listening to sermons from an Evangelical pastor and felt a tug from the Holy Spirit:

I had one night where I had been out partying, and I came home and started crying on my bed in March of 2016. And that was the night I said “Lord, I know people really live for you. Not just go to church on Sunday, but they really live for you. They have a relationship with you.”

And I said, through tears: “God, will I ever have a relationship with you?”

And all of a sudden my thoughts in my mind and everything was just interrupted. And I heard the Lord say: “Yes, you will live for me.”
(Christian Post, online here).

We wish him well on his journey.

26May

Canada Plans Further Assault on Freedom of Speech

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his party have proposed new legislation to expand Canada’s blasphemy laws, er… hate speech laws… to cover transgender issues. Anyone who dares to speak wrongly on transgender issues could face penalties of up to two years in jail. You can read favorable mainstream media coverage, for example, at
NBC.

Canada is no stranger to using hate speech law to curb religious expression. The Christian Post has bundled with this story a mention of the following chilling example:

An identical ban on anti-gay “hate propaganda” has been in place for several years and has caused problems for Christians who oppose gay marriage. In 2013, the Canadian Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a Christian street preacher for distributing fliers denouncing homosexual behavior.

The court justified the preacher’s conviction on the grounds that he used “vilifying and derogatory representations to create a tone of hatred” against homosexuals. The court held that the pastor’s religious freedom did not excuse him from violating “hate propaganda laws”.

The case in question from 2013 was Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission v Whatcott, which ruled against a street preacher named Whatcott, an activist who had been convicted and fined in Saskatchewan Province, for hate speech. He had handed out fliers denouncing homosexual acts and the promotion of the same among public school students.

Justice Rothstein described hate speech as describing:
“…the targeted group as a menace that could threaten the safety and well-being of others, makes reference to respected sources (in this case the Bible) to lend credibility to negative generalizations, and uses vilifying and derogatory representations to create a tone of hatred.”
(Source: Atlantic Canada Legal Examiner)

Now, to be fair, the opinion did take pains elsewhere to clarify that religious texts aren’t to be regarded as hate speech. Furthermore I am not going to claim moral or spiritual solidarity with Mr. Whatcott, as I haven’t read his brochures. He appears to have had numerous prior run-ins with authorities, who have found his statements to be “polemical and impolite”–I will even presume that to be understatement.

Still, to those who hold to orthodox Christianity, the message is clear. The notion of freedom of religious expression will no longer afford anyone in Canada protection against hate speech censorship.

03Feb

Alberta Embraces Gender Identity Craziness

The new socialist government in Alberta, Canada has put forth new “guidelines” (really mandates) on gender identity that must be enforced in all schools. Rules include gender neutral speech codes, and insist that children have the right to decide their own gender identity, and which washroom to use. The mandates are binding upon all schools, including (apparently) church run parochial schools. Boards that don’t comply could be dissolved by the ruling government.
(The guidelines can be read in entirety here).

The bishop of Calgary did not mince words with his reaction to this, as posted below. Let’s hope and pray that our Canadian brethren can successfully fight back against this madness.

Calgary’s Roman Catholic bishop has denounced as “totalitarian” and “anti-Catholic” the province’s new guidelines for respecting students’ gender identity.

“This approach and directive smack of the madness of relativism and the forceful imposition of a particular narrow-minded anti-Catholic ideology,” Bishop Fred Henry wrote in a blog post on the website of the Catholic diocese of Calgary.

“Such a totalitarian approach is not in accordance with [Canadian law] and must be rejected,” he added, in a post titled “Totalitarianism in Alberta.”

(Read more at CBC News)