Sunday Weekly---Beware the god of Open Options

SOLID JOYS AUDIO:  Pastor John Piper on How to Repent
 

BY BARRY COOPER @ The Gospel Coalition

AS AN ENGLISHMAN, one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced in America is automated call centers. You miss a package delivery from FedEx, and you have to call them to arrange a new delivery time. The problem is that when you call, you aren’t connected to a human being. You’re connected to a talking robot programmed to recognize what you are saying in English.

Or should I say, it’s programmed to recognize what you’re saying in American English.

Every time I call FedEx, I end up conducting the entire conversation in an accent that can only be described as the unholy offspring of John Wayne and Judi Dench. The talking robot, surely trying hard not to laugh, keeps asking me to repeat myself. For a Brit, it’s absolutely humiliating. It’s as if someone has implemented the whole system as payback for nearly two centuries of colonial rule.

The last time it happened, it occurred to me that this nightmarish limbo is a familiar place for many of us. Making choices and moving on with our lives seems increasingly difficult. We feel paralyzed: unable to make choices about relationships, dating, marriage, money, family, and career. I want to suggest that if we feel unable to make these choices, it’s not because we have the wrong accent. It may be because we’re worshiping a false god.

God of Open Options

In 1 Kings 18:21, we encounter a crucial moment of decision. It’s the final showdown between the God of Israel and a false god called Baal. Elijah calls God’s people to choose once and for all between the living God who delivered them, and this false god who has captured their affections: “‘How long will you waver between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow him; but if Baal is God, follow him.’ But the people said nothing.”

They seem unable, or unwilling, to make a choice. They want to hedge their bets, sit on the fence, keep their options open.

How different are we in the 21st century? Would you prefer to make an ironclad, no-turning-back choice, or one you could back out of if need be? Do you ever find that you’re afraid to commit? Do you reply to party invitations with a “maybe” rather than a “yes” or “no”? Do you like to keep your smartphone switched on at all times, even in meetings, so that you’re never fully present at any given moment? Will you focus on the person you’re talking to after a church service, or will you look over her shoulder for a better conversation partner?

If so, you may be worshiping the god of open options.

Paradox of Open Options

People wait years before declaring a college major; others only go to stores with a guaranteed return policy; and it’s not unusual for a person to date someone for years before getting married—if they ever do get married. From sex to spirituality, we reserve the right to keep our options open in every department of our lives....

Read the whole article @ The Gospel Coalition

Good Read Worth Repeating: Windsors Blackmailed By Their Daughter-In-Law

UPDATE: SAMANTHA MARKLE WEIGHS IN

By Deborah C. Tyler
 

Over the last one hundred years, the British Royal Family has generously provided the world with a parade of scandals more colorful and louder than the socks they wear with their kilts.  But the Meghan and Harry rupture is fundamentally different from any previous crisis to befall the British monarchy.  Prior to now, royal scandals have been cut from the same petticoats as any other public ignominies — i.e., the chin-wagging that follows uncovering some form of immoral conduct.  All the throngs of poorly hidden mistresses, caddish boyfriends, toe-sucking on yachts, assignations in the deer park while the horses wait patiently, even consorting with extremes of evildoing, such as found in the company of the late J. Epstein, arose from ordinary human weakness set against an extraordinary backdrop.  They have constituted straightforward disgraces that can unfold only among people with a shared religious heritage and moral code.

Those days are gone.

The roadside bomb in the royal family named Meghan Markle exploded not because of immoral conduct in the conventional sense.  Markle is the first duchess who hails from the American left-wing, post-Christian, anti-moral belief system that worships the journey of self-directed personal actualization.  Her justification after only a few months of marriage for urging hubby away from his family?  "It is not enough to survive, you have to thrive." 

Apparently, Harry's fulfilling his role as prince prevents her thriving.  For Meghan, thriving entails doing what you want, no matter if it hurts others or depreciates the generosity that has been heaped upon you.

Meghan Markle's psychology is affected by well managed narcissistic rage.  Narcissists seek power in relationships as a substitute for the terrifying experience of offering self-sacrificing love.  Markle has two sources of power over the royal family and the millions of people who love them.  She has the ordinary power of a disgruntled daughter-in-law to hurt her in-laws by controlling access to their brother, son, and grandchildren.  She also has the extraordinary power to blackmail the royal family with the indictment of racism!  It is widely reported that Markle has been acceding to the idea that she has been mistreated due to racism and that the royals fear being called racist in a "tell-all" interview.

The melodramatic flight of Meghan and Harry is being compared to the shattering abdication of King Edward VIII in 1937.  The two cases bear no resemblance.  King Edward VIII faced a moral dilemma that arose from a conflict with a religiously based code of behavior.  He wanted to marry his mistress.  That was not acceptable to the royal family and the Church of England, so he chose to abdicate, and that was the end of it.  Meghan Markle moves in a world where "organized" religion (the kind that comes with a moral code at no extra charge) is disrespected.  Markle may spend a Christianish day at a baptism, but she is not guided by the teachings of any church, save perhaps the church of Oprah, whose liturgy is "What works for me?"

Meghan has followed the career of all power-seeking, disruptive daughters-in-law.  She could have begun her campaign of alienating her husband from his family with vague and irremediable complaints about her dissatisfactions as soon as she joined the Firm.  "They don't respect you.  They don't appreciate me."  Wobbly Prince Harry is only too happy to be led away from his family.

Meghan and Harry possess a potent psychobiological weapon: the cry of racism. Harry drops hints of the dread allegation.  Meghan, just as she has no loyalty to her own family, discreetly ignores that ludicrous speculation against the family she chose to join.  Markle is the kind of self-promoter who frames her stratospheric privilege and luxuries into a stand upon conscience, proclaiming she will not live in the U.S. while the current president is in office.  Much noise, no sacrifice.

Meghan carries narcissistic rage against the father she perceives abandoned her and against her family of origin, whom she seems to despise.  Harry carries the abiding trauma of helplessness to protect his mother.  Meghan married an enormously rich global celebrity who is a vulnerable, emotionally unstable man, who, despite the tragic history, lived a highly protected life and whom she could control.  Harry married the opposite of his mother: an older, divorced, hardened TV actress — How brave she is,  overcoming all she has suffered! — who he unconsciously senses can protect herself, thereby saving him from re-experiencing traumatic helplessness.

Thus, her weaponization against his family works psychologically for them both.  But not as well for Harry.
Meghan is an actress, part of a business that virtually requires self-serving narcissism.  Harry was not expected to develop a career independent of his royal duties.  Furthermore, he appears to be a "serve or suffer" person like his mother.  He draws energy from directly serving others.  It is sad to see a prince shilling for his wife to Disney.  It is said that when two people marry they become as one.  Harry may not know it, but that one is Meghan.
It has been said that Harry is "stepping away" from royal duties because he has PTSD and is protecting his family from the tragedy that befell his mother.  If so, there would have been no need for the couple to behave badly.

Harry may discover that a fear-driven life is a thwarted existence.  They ambushed and distressed a frail 97-year-old man and his 93-year-old wife as a power tactic.  They could have quietly created another home in Canada.  They could have skipped the public self-congratulatory remarks about financial independence, as if hustling recently bestowed royal titles constitutes independence.  Meghan did not need to complain that nobody cared about her, or that the duchess gig wasn't working for her.  Above all, they did not have to promote the unjustified slander against queen and country that Meghan has been mistreated due to racism.

Meghan Markle enjoys absolute melanin immunity from criticism.  Any challenge, however gentle, is racist!  The duchess of York was publicly pulverized for her appearance for years on end, but she's white so it was OK.  A critique of Meghan's nail polish is racism!

Racism! is a justification for the elite globalist kleptocracy to loot their nation state, because that is where the money is.  The E.U. didn't fix up Frogmore "Cottage" for Meghan and Harry; the British people did.  Such super-rich transnational lifestylers cling to a patina of virtue in their lack of loyalty to homeland, because the British, like all white people, are racist!

This hoax, the rebuff of royal duties, and alienation from his royal family are being baked into Archie's life narrative.  Concerned about carbon footprints, Meghan announced that Archie will be an only child.  (Enforcing this one-child-to-jet conviction means that she will have to buy another jet if she becomes pregnant again.)  It seems that everything is being done to diminish Archie's one-in-a-billion birthright.  But  he will not be able to escape it for an hour of his life once he is old enough to know who he is
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So let's plan a glorious adolescent rebellion for Archie.  He announces to Mom and Dad, "You people are not working for me.  I am not thriving."  He finally goes home to stay.  The king restores Archie's titles and then some.  He "Etons up," plays polo, and gets the funny socks to wear with his kilt.

Sunday, The Remedy for Pride

LISTEN, LISTEN AGAIN 

Devotional by John Piper

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit” — yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. (James 4:13–16)

James is talking about pride and arrogance and how they show up in subtle ways. “You boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.”

When you take three categories of temptation to self-reliance — wisdom, power, and riches — they form a powerful inducement toward the ultimate form of pride; namely, atheism. The safest way for us to stay supreme in our own estimation is to deny anything above us.

This is why the proud preoccupy themselves with looking down on others. C.S. Lewis said, “A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you” (Mere Christianity).

But to preserve pride, it may be simpler to just proclaim that there is nothing above to look at. “In the pride of his face the wicked does not seek him; all his thoughts are, ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 10:4). Ultimately, the proud must persuade themselves that there is no God. One reason for this is that God’s reality is overwhelmingly intrusive in all the details of life. Pride cannot tolerate the intimate involvement of God in running the universe, let alone the detailed, ordinary affairs of life.

Pride does not like the sovereignty of God. Therefore, pride does not like the existence of God, because God is sovereign. It might express this by saying, “There is no God.” Or it might express it by saying, “I am driving to Atlanta for Christmas.” James says, “Don’t be so sure.” Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live, and we will get to Atlanta for Christmas.”

James’s point is that God rules over whether you get to Atlanta, and whether you live to the end of this devotional. This is extremely offensive to the self-sufficiency of pride — not even to have control over whether you get to the end of the devotional without having a stroke! The way to battle this arrogance is to yield to the sovereignty of God in all the details of life, and rest in his infallible promises to show himself mighty on our behalf (2 Chronicles 16:9), to pursue us with goodness and mercy every day (Psalm 23:6), to work for those who wait for him (Isaiah 64:4), and to equip us with all we need to live for his glory (Hebrews 13:21).

 In other words, the remedy for pride is unwavering faith in God’s sovereign future grace.

Amen and amen.

The Bible Never Goes Out of Style or Veers from Truth

SINCE THE BRITISH ROYAL FAMILY HAS BEEN IN THE NEWS WITH ITS LATEST DRAMATIC CRISIS and 24-hour news coverage,  a poignant Scripture verse comes to mind which is true for them, and for all of us.

Numbers 14:18

The Lord is long suffering and of abundant mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgressions; but he by no means clears the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation.

Pastor John Piper explains how God is accomplishing this truth.

A Favorite Psalm For the New Year

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH'S FRUITS OF HERESY

PSALM 1

Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.
² But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.
³ And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.
⁴ The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.
⁵ Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.
⁶ For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.

THE NOURISHING WORD (Commentary and prayer below by Tim Keller)

PSALM 1 is the gateway to the rest of the psalms.  The 'law' is all scripture, to 'meditate' on is to think out its implications for all life, and to 'delight' in it means not merely to comply, but to love what God commands.  Christian have their attitude towards God changed from one to duty to free loving self-giving because of what Jesus did for us on the cross.  So to know how to meditate on and delight in the Bible is the secret to a relationship with God and to life itself. Views contrary to God's Word are no anchor in time of need. God's Word gives us the resilience of a tree with a source of living water that will never dry up.

Prayer:  Lord of the Word, don't let me be seduced by the world---either naively going with the crowd or becoming a hardened cynic.  Help me meditate on your Word to the point of delight.  Give me stability and contentment regardless of the circumstances.  How I need that!  Amen

Matt Drudge, Drama Queen of Online News

I've followed Drudge for over a decade and a half.  But in the last year,  I find him a giant bore who wants to hook me.  Yawn. 

World War 3?  The beginning of the end? Oh please.  It's all for hits and popularity.

Simply getting to be a predictable bore.  He may not even still be in the building,   but whatever,  Drudge is going downhill for me.

Stuart Schneiderman Puts the Iranian Crisis Into Historical Perspective and More

STARTING OUT WITH A WALK DOWN MEMORY LANE,  SS tells it like it's been, it now is and how it's going to be with Trump, the new sheriff in town.

 Schneiderman writes

In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s a new sheriff in town. Gone are the days when American presidents would cower under their desks. Gone are the days when American presidents would react to attacks against our soldiers and citizens with empty threats. Gone are the days when attacks on American embassies and consulates would produce more rhetoric and less action.

When Hezbollah attacked a marine barracks in Beirut, killing nearly 300 troops, Ronald Reagan pulled our troops out of Lebanon. He threatened harsh reprisals and did nothing.

When the Iranian regime invaded the American embassy in Tehran and took our citizens hostage, Jimmy Carter sent a helicopter to rescue them, only to see it crash and burn in the Iranian desert.

When American pilots caught sight of a convoy of Taliban officials escaping the American invasion in the early days of the Afghanistan War, American commanders consulted with lawyers-- who told them not to attack the convoy, because someone might get hurt. 

And, when terrorists attacked the American ambassador in Benghazi, Libya the Obama administration refused to send help, but denounced and jailed a man who had made a video.

When Iranians captured and humiliated American sailors in the Persian Gulf, Secretary of State John Kerry eventually thanked them for releasing the sailors unharmed.

As for the last, the Obama policy in the Middle East involved cozying up with Iran and betraying Sunni Arabs and Israel. Now, with President Trump’s swift and decisive retaliation for the Iran-instigated attack on the American embassy in Baghdad, Democratic chickenshits are cowering in the corner, fearful of the righteous might of Iran.

If you want to know why the nation is divided against itself, look at the Democratic presidential candidates, trembling in fear, having long since abandoned even the pretense of patriotism. Nothing can stop their will to surrender to terrorism.

Qasem Soleimani had the blood of hundreds, if not thousands of Americans on his hands. The Democrats are horrified that President Trump just reduced him to ashes. I probably don't need to mention it, but if Obama had done exactly the same thing, these same Democrats would have praised him as the most courageous military leader since Alexander the Great.

Eric Nagourney got it right in the New York Times:

In July 2018, after President Trump warned Iran’s president not to threaten the United States, a rejoinder came not from the Iranian leader but from a military figure perhaps even more powerful.

“It is beneath the dignity of our president to respond to you,” Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani declared in a speech in western Iran. “I, as a soldier, respond to you.”

On Friday, General Suleimani was reported killed in an airstrike in Baghdad.

As for who he was, this man whose death strikes such fear in the hearts of cowardly Democrats, the Daily Mail summarizes:

Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani, who was killed Friday in a US strike, was one of Iran's most prominent figures and a deadly adversary to America and its allies.

As the head of the Quds - or Jersualem - Force of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, Soleimani was officially charged with protecting the Islamic revolution, and in practice was used to enforce the regime's will across the Middle East. 

Commonly known as the second most powerful man in Iran, wielding more influence than the president, he was seen by many as a future leader.

His CV included helping Shia militias to kill hundreds of American troops during the US invasion of Iraq,  backing Assad as he slaughtered civilians by the thousands during the Syrian civil war, and most recently overseeing the slaughter of hundreds of anti-Iran protesters in Iraq. 

READ THE WHOLE PIECE AND GET A GRIP.

Was A Legal Fiction: In A Major Blow To Sexual Dilly Dallying/ Hocus Pocus, James Shupe Goes Back to Being the Man He Was Meant to Be In the First Place

READ THE WHOLE REMARKABLE PIECE BY TYLER O'NEIL ON JAMES SHUPE'S COURAGEOUS RETURN TO HIMSELF AND  SEXUAL REALITY.  A WHOLE LOT OF SUFFERING WENT INTO HIS SAGA

First Trans Person to Obtain Legal 'Non-Binary' Sex Status Changes Back to Birth Sex in Blow to LGBT Movement

By Tyler O'Neil December 31, 2019

 

ABOVE: James Shupe in front of the Gainesville, Fla. Department of Veterans Affairs.

THIS MONTH,  the first person to obtain a legal "non-binary" sex designation has successfully petitioned the court originally responsible for his "non-binary" status to order that the sex on his birth certificate be restored to "male." In documents exclusively provided to PJ Media, James Shupe's petition described his "non-binary" designation as a "psychologically harmful legal fiction." He told PJ Media he hopes this decision will prevent a woman currently seeking "non-binary" recognition from following the same lies.

"The charade of not being male, the legal fiction, it's over," James Shupe told PJ Media on Tuesday. "The lies behind my fictitious sex changes, something I shamefully participated in, first to female, and then to non-binary, have been forever exposed. A truthful accounting of events has replaced the deceit that allowed me to become America's first legally non-binary person."

"The legal record has now been corrected and LGBT advocates are no longer able to use my historic non-binary court order to advance their toxic agenda," he added. "I am and have always been male. That is my biological truth, the only thing capable of grounding me to reality."

While he became a hero for the transgender movement, Shupe now aims to dispel the lies of gender identity and reverse the harm caused by the precedent of his "non-binary" legal designation.

He referenced the case of Jones David Hollister, a woman who identifies as non-binary and is currently fighting to change her legal designation to non-binary. Hollister's brief to the Oregon Court of Appeals cites Shupe's case.

"I hope that Hollister and all the others are denied the right to change their sex to non-binary because it's fraud and legal fiction based on pseudoscience," Shupe said. "I was indoctrinated to believe that I had this thing called a gender identity and that suppressing it was causing my mental health problems. It was all a lie."

He said he had embraced the lie of transgender identity as a crutch while struggling with deep psychological issues that would have been better addressed by therapy.

"I ended up in the psych ward three times because of hormones. I had blood clots in my eyes because my estrogen levels were 2,585 instead of 200, low bone density, problems controlling my bladder, and emotional instability," Shupe said. "Blood tests indicated I was dropping into kidney disease territory (EFGR below 60) for about 18 months, I had chronic dermatology issues and skin reactions to estrogen patches, I passed out on the kitchen floor from Spironolactone."

High-strength marijuana prescribed to him as he was passing through Colorado gave him hallucinations.

A Transgender Hero Breaks Ranks

"The gender transitions were supposed to fix my mental health problems, but I kept getting worse instead. The high-powered marijuana made me psychotic. I started hearing booming noises and having visions of being some Indian woman," he recalled. "I started believing I was some kind of chosen one who was picked to restore the third gender to North America, that's what I thought the visions were telling me."

Shupe went public about his detransition in an interview with PJ Media's Bruce Bawer earlier this year after he asked for his official Florida documents to restore his legal sex to male.

Born in 1963 in Washington, D.C., Shupe spent eighteen years (1982-2000) in the U.S. Army. He has been married to his wife, Sandy, for three decades, and had a daughter with her. In 2013 he began identifying as a transgender woman, claiming that he had struggled for years and that he had been harassed in the military because he was perceived as gay. He lived in Pittsburgh for a year, took experimental hormones, and changed his name — but he stopped short of a surgical sex change. In November 2014, he moved to Portland, Oregon, which he found more hospitable for a transgender woman. He lived there until September 2017

.

The New York Times published a profile on him in 2015, but only a year later, he rejected his female identity for a new one. In June 2016, Multnomah County Judge Amy Holmes Hehn issued a court order to change his sex from female to non-binary.

He wanted his Washington, D.C., birth certificate to reflect this gender identity, and that required a court order. With the stroke of a pen, Shupe became the first person in the U.S. to be legally recognized as "non-binary." The sex on his birth certificate was changed to "X," meaning indeterminate. This made him a hero in the LGBT community.

USA Today reported that Shupe's "three years of living like a woman were nearly as painful as those spent as a man." Presenting himself as a transgender woman, he had felt pressured "to maintain a hyper-feminine appearance 24-7," or he would find himself "getting called sir."

Shupe began to struggle with the concept of gender identity as something other than biological sex. Explaining the non-binary identity, he told Oregon Live, "I was assigned male at birth due to biology. I'm stuck with that for life. My gender identity is definitely feminine. My gender identity has never been male, but I feel like I have to own up to my male biology. Being non-binary allows me to do that. I'm a mixture of both. I consider myself as a third sex."

Real-Life Victims of the Transgender 'Cult'

Yet he began to question the damage the transgender movement has caused in society. In July 2017, he worried about "the future of transgender children," arguing that they need "societal change," not "surgical procedures," "cross-sex hormones," or sterilization. He supported a bathroom-privacy ballot initiative, and Lambda Legal dropped him as a client.

In just a manner of months, Shupe went from supporting transgender military service to defending Trump's requirement that servicemembers live according to their biological sex.

Suddenly, the media was no longer interested in his opinions. "Not a single Oregon media outlet has been willing to talk to me, let alone report that I've reclaimed my birth sex and have denounced gender ideology," he told PJ Media on Monday. "They dropped me after I supported Trump's ban on gender dysphoria in the military. That got me canceled.

This year, he took the final step. "In January 2019, I walked into the DMV and confronted a clerk with my U.S. passport, telling her 'look, I'm a male, I'm reclaiming my male birth sex, and I want a driver's license with 'male' instead of 'female,'' " he recalled.

This change would only work in Florida, where Shupe still has an ongoing case to change his name back to "James Clifford Shupe," rather than "Jamie Shupe." After this change, Lambda Legal dropped all mentions of Shupe from their briefs in the case Zzyym v. Pompeo, which involves an intersex client who was denied a U.S. passport.

In the spring of 2019, he asked the Social Security Administration to restore his male birth sex. "Social Security refused to accept a doctor's letter stating I was biologically male. They forced me to use their template, claiming I had undergone a gender transition to male," he recalled.

While Florida granted his request to return to "male" on his driver's license, this change "wouldn't override the Oregon court order that made my sex non-binary and was getting used by the LGBT advocates to advance other cases, so we had to go back to Oregon."

On December 11, Shupe petitioned the Multnomah County Court for the order to restore his male designation.

"The purpose of my request is to restore the original male sex designation that I was correctly observed to be at birth and to restore the precious name given to me at birth by my parents. I was not born in Oregon, and I have a Florida case pending to restore my name to JAMES CLIFFORD SHUPE," he wrote in the petition. "I am no longer pursuing surgical, hormonal or other treatment to affirm a non-binary identity, and I wish to reclaim my male birth sex."

'Frankenstein Hack Job': 19-Year-Old Regrets His Transgender Surgery

"Despite six years of hormonal treatments, my sex was immutable, and I remained the same biological male I was at the time of my birth. In hindsight, my sex change to non-binary was a psychologically harmful legal fiction, and I desire to reclaim my male birth sex," he added. "Despite my documented history of severe mental illness, my birth certificate has been changed twice previously. ... Since receiving the 2016 non-binary court judgment in this case, I have been correctly diagnosed with a 'sexual paraphilia' by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the root cause of previous confusion about my sexual identity."

Even getting that diagnosis proved to be a battle for Shupe.

"I then began confronting the VA about rubber-stamping me with gender dysphoria when in fact I had sexual paraphilias, a transvestic disorder with autogynephilia and masochism. The psychologist at the VA who had diagnosed me with gender dysphoria then dumped me as a patient when I asked for the diagnosis to be changed. The VA finally gave me the paraphilia diagnosis in April 2019, the endocrinologist did it," he recalled. "The VA then outsourced me to the civilian sector to a therapist unqualified to treat me, the only one willing to take me as a patient."

VA doctors were all too happy to diagnose gender dysphoria, but they mostly refused to consider sexual paraphilias, which Ph.D. psychologist Ray Blanchard says is the real cause.

Shupe told PJ Media he later realized the judge who granted his "non-binary" court order had harmed him.

"The Oregon judge physically and mentally harmed me by silently rubber-stamping the non-binary court order to advance a transgender agenda, to which she has ties," he said. Before the proceeding, Shupe’s lawyer told him not to worry because the judge herself had a transgender kid.

Although Shupe brought doctors' letters testifying to his identity, the judge did not even ask to look at them.

 "She was negligent in her duties as a judge to not explore my mental health and motivations as to why I was seeking the sex change. If she had of done so, she would have uncovered my severe mental health issues, the sexual paraphilias, and the fact that the doctors' letters were written after a discussion with the two of them that my sex change to female was a failure and becoming non-binary was bailing all of us out," he recalled.

The judge even got scared afterward, according to Shupe.

He also claimed the doctors who approved his change from female to non-binary abused him. "Why didn't they force me to go to mental health for an evaluation about why I felt the sex change was a failure instead of giving me yet another one?" he asked. One doctor even gave him psychotropic drugs. "I stayed doped up to cope with my life as a fake woman."

It has taken tremendous courage for Shupe to come forward with his story. His non-binary status made him a hero in the LGBT community, and he could have remained quiet about his detransition.

"It's an incredibly painful thing to walk back a landmark court decision that made you internationally famous and admit the whole thing was based on lies and deceit," he told PJ Media. Yet he felt compelled to speak out and warn against these destructive lies.

Follow Tyler O'Neil, the author of this article, on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.

Tennessee's New Gun Carry Permits Show 20-20 Vision For 2nd Amendment Freedoms Here

WE NEED THESE NEW, EASIER TO OBTAIN CARRY PERMITS NOW MORE THAN EVER!  The latest church shooting in Texas continues to prove the importance of these permit.   I have the old, harder to get kind that required I go to classes two Saturdays in a row with target practice and instructors.  That was fine, but next time I'll explore renewing it with this new law.

Congratulations, Tennessee.  We just got safer, saner, like Texas.

To wit:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — TENNESSEE IS NOW OFFERING,  as of January 1, 2020 a new concealed carry-only handgun permit that doesn't require an applicant to demonstrate the ability to fire a weapon. The law takes effect Jan. 1.

Under the new handgun law, a permit to carry a concealed handgun could be obtained after online training of at least 90 minutes. The current handgun carry permits would still remain an option
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Those permits require eight hours of training with live firing required, which critics say is time-consuming and burdensome. The National Rifle Association's legislative arm backed the new measure.