Easter’s coming up, so you know what that means: another great opportunity to buy lots of chocolate in various shapes, sizes, and flavors.

Just kidding. I know it’s really about coloring eggs and going to brunch.

While we’re on the subject of Easter, here’s an opinion piece written in The Fenwick Review, which comes out of the College of the Holy Cross:

Professor [Tat-Siong Benny] Liew’s contribution to [They Were All Together in One Place?: Toward Minority Biblical Criticism], a chapter entitled  “Queering Closets and Perverting Desires: Cross-Examining John’s Engendering and Transgendering Word across Different Worlds,” demonstrates the centrality of sex and gender to his way of thinking about the New Testament.  In the chapter, Professor Liew explains that he believes Christ could be considered a “drag king” or cross-dresser. “If one follows the trajectory of the Wisdom/Word or Sophia/Jesus (con)figuration, what we have in John’s Jesus is not only a “king of Israel” (1:49; 12:13– 15) or “king of the Ioudaioi” (18:33, 39; 19:3, 14– 15, 19– 22), but also a drag king (6:15; 18:37; 19:12),” he claims.⁵ He later argues that “[Christ] ends up appearing as a drag-kingly bride in his passion.”⁶ 

Liew goes on to further describe Jesus Christ as a drag queen. In some circles, this is what passes for theological scholarship. This is serious academic study.

This is crap. This is why many of us are not going to push our children into a college system that produces this kind of bilge. Liew would never imply that Islam’s Mohammed was a cross-dressing person of indeterminate gender; Liew wouldn’t dare. Nor, I suspect, would Liew do the same with Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob in my faith: Judaism. So-called academics like this Liew character are cowards and reprobates, and the longer they stay within the college system, the more debased the entire enterprise of higher learning becomes. You’ve got to get the idea out of your head that this is normal. That this is what academia is meant to explore. It isn’t. This is deliberately inflammatory crap tarted up as serious study by people with axes to grind and/or significant emotional problems. It’s not ethical to ignore it in the name of tolerance. If you think college is the right choice for your child, it’s your duty to push back against this.

Unless you’re trying to raise a child whose major is Queer Dance Theory. Be honest: is that what you really want for your kid?

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Rather than repeat everything I’ve said about Facebook in the wake of everyone being mad at Facebook, I’ll just point you to these two pieces I wrote here and here. Social media is a bit like a handgun: a tool, neutral until it’s picked up and used. Until we can all learn to use it in a way that doesn’t let it use us, I think we’re all justified in treating it like a gun. A gun manufactured and maintained by people with undeniably sinister intent.

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We need to talk a little more about using children as human shields in the political process, which I touched on here. The latest and most disgustingly egregious example of this is the recent March for Our Lives rally, in which the children who attended Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School gave partisan political speeches on behalf of left-wing politicians under the false flag of saving lives. If we’re going to address these issues seriously, let’s keep some basic, undeniable truths in mind:

• Experiencing a terrible event does not magically confer wisdom, no matter how terrible the event may have been. Experiencing terrible grief also does not confer moral authority on any issue. As mature adults we must sympathize, lend an ear, and offer comfort. Helping to shoulder a fellow human being’s burden is a good thing. Altering public policy on the basis of individual trauma, no matter how keenly felt, is not a good thing, particularly when those policy changes are based on emotion rather than reason.
• The vast, vast, vast majority of children do not have anything incisive or original to say about public policy, including policy relating to firearms issues. They lack the experience, wisdom, and knowledge to promote a solution worth considering.
• As children, we all have expressed stupid, foolish, unwise, and poorly-considered ideas. However, most of us haven’t been bankrolled by wealthy political activists from Hollywood, professionally managed by politicians, and trotted out as sages (prophets) dispensing wisdom.
• Activists who use children as spokespeople do so because those children are considered unassailable: to disagree with a wounded child is to turn a blind eye to that child’s traumas. How dare you criticize a young, innocent child, no matter what that child says or does? This is a disgusting and deliberate attempt to use these children as human shields in America’s ongoing political struggles. It was racist to disagree with the previous president; now it’s monstrous to disagree with David Hogg.
• The adults behind these children are entirely without shame, ethics, or moral character. This includes these children’s parents. They are not good people. They’re not people you’d want to associate with.
• Thee children have been given free rein to say anything they like, no matter how inflammatory or sickening, because they’re “trying to participate in American democracy.” The conclusion we’re supposed to reach is that there’s something wrong with you if you push back against the notion that you’re a bloodthirsty wannabe child killer because of your membership in the NRA. If you do anything other than sit back, nod sagely, and accept your demonization, you’re a bad person. A snowflake.

Acknowledge these truths and we can talk. Have a great Easter.