Satan's thumbprints on the nation's throat

I try, I really do.

It's obviously no fun to truly believe that post-America's cultural rot is nearly complete and that the Devil's grip on the nation's throat is having its full effect.

I'd so much like to set store by upticks in the GDP or manufacturing output or consumer confidence.

But it's whistling past the graveyard.

Here's the real story in post-America:

Starting in kindergarten and in some cases pre-K, public school kids across the country are increasingly being taught about gender identities and gender fluidity. As they advance through middle school, they learn about gay and transgender intellectuals, entertainers and other social nonconformists who were often forced to live underground or in the closet.

In addition to learning about gay rights pioneers like Harvey Milk and literary giants such as James Baldwin, they are taught about the cross-dressing women who fought in the Civil War disguised as men; about socially accepted “Boston marriages” of suffragettes and early reformers; about “Two Spirit” Native Americans who embodied masculine and feminine characteristics; and about the Lavender Scare of the 1950s, in which federal agencies engaged in mass firings of an estimated 5,000 government employees suspected of homosexuality.

During “Equity Week”  last month in schools serving the Chicago suburbs of  Evanston and Skokie, pre-K and kindergarten kids read “I Am Jazz,” a picture book about a transgender girl, and “My Princess Boy,” a picture book about a gender-nonconforming boy who likes to dress in girls’ clothing. First-graders made “pride” flags and transgender flags, and practiced using gender-neutral pronouns, while second-graders were introduced to concepts like “gay,” “lesbian” and “non-binary.”

This year alone, four states – New Jersey, Illinois, Colorado and Oregon – enacted statewide policies requiring public schools to include the societal contributions of LGBTQ people, a subject that often touches on questions of sex and gender. The acronym stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and those who describe themselves as “queer” or are “questioning” their sexuality or gender identity.

The drive to include LGBTQ-related teaching material has gained tremendous momentum during the last few years but it has been percolating for decades, although not without pushback. On one level it reflects the nation’s recent embrace of gay marriage and transgender rights, which has emboldened corporations and local governments to publicly display pride flags, and straight people to express solidarity by announcing their preferred pronouns. The embrace of inclusive history mirrors a trend to revoke so-called “no promo homo” laws that forbid mentioning homosexuality in sex-ed classes. Arizona repealed its law this year and Utah did so in 2017, leaving a half-dozen states with such laws on the books. South Carolina’s statute, for example, says sex ed “may not include a discussion of alternative sexual lifestyles” and prohibits mentioning “homosexual relationships except in the context of instruction concerning sexually transmitted diseases."

The latest statewide teaching mandates start going into effect next year. Curricula and textbooks are yet to be worked out, but some school districts are adopting the policies on their own. The Maryland State Department of Education is revising its history standards for high schools to include LGBTQ-related topics. And Massachusetts recommends K-12 reading material, such as “I Am Jazz” for elementary school students, and introduced an optional high school history unit last year. 

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s history unit, designed for 11th and 12th grade, includes: “Policing ‘Normal’: Gender, Sexuality, and Foucault’s Panopticon,” “Queering Willa Cather: Tommy the Unsentimental and Paul’s Case,” “Is Nick Carraway Gay? A Hidden Gay Voice in the American Classic,” and “The Experience of LGBTQ People in the Holocaust,” among other topics. 

Consider the context. Since the crowd pushing this wants to put its agenda in a broad historical context, I think we have to ask if it's coincidence that the momentum has gathered for this since the 1962 Engle v. Vitale SCOTUS decision came down.

How in the hell did this nation survive its first 186 years, and its years as a collection of colonies prior to that, without its citizens being "protected" from an acknowledgement of its foundational gratitude to God?

This agenda has been able to insinuate itself because we have abandoned all sense of a divine architecture to this universe. The very idea of a God-created order is openly repudiated everywhere.

The only hope for parents who are horrified by this is to find an alternative to the entire educational system. It would have to be nothing short of a revolutionary upheaval. Even higher education, which has its roots in the great universities of the Middle Ages that preserved accumulated human knowledge even as ignorance shrouded the West, has been given over to the enemy.

I see more clearly every day why I was pushed by circumstances to a faith walk. You can't count on any earthly institutions to rescue you from the harm that human folly inevitably does.

But acknowledgement of a kingdom where rust and moths do not spoil is increasingly going to have to be done clandestinely. The public square is now where we get stomped into the dust.

The magnitude of what's going on must not be understated.

It is so very late in the day.