WASHINGTON, DC, Oct 29 — Here’s what one president had to say about the ethics of governance: “First and foremost, we should be governed by common sense. But common sense should be based on moral principles first. And it is not possible today to have morality separated from religious values.” If you guessed that it was Joe Biden who expressed that sentiment, you are excused; Mr. Biden, after all, is a self-declared “devout Catholic.”
Who then so eloquently summed up the role faith should play in government? A former KGB thug in the Soviet Union turned commander-in-chief of what is now the Republic of Russia, Vladimir Putin, himself. Putin’s remarks on morality in government don’t make up for the fact that he is far from being the poster child for democracy. Still, that one thought — whether he meant it or not — is, indeed, relevant at a time when the U.S. is threatened by the specter of socialism.
In his inaugural speech, the newly elected President Biden declared, “To all transgender Americans watching at home, especially the young people. You’re so brave. I want you to know your president has your back.” Did he really mean that, or was it just a way of pandering to a disenchanted segment of the voting public? Where were his “moral principles” when he made that remark?
As a devout, practicing Catholic, President Biden must certainly understand that the church condemns gender theory. In an interview published in 2015, Pope Francis described it this way:
“Let’s think of the nuclear arms, of the possibility to annihilate in a few instants a very high number of human beings … Let’s also think of genetic manipulation, of the manipulation of life, or of the gender theory, that does not recognize the order of creation … With this attitude, man commits a new sin, that against God the Creator … The true custody of creation does not have anything to do with the ideologies that consider man like an accident, like a problem to eliminate … God has placed man and woman and the summit of creation and has entrusted them with the earth. The design of the Creator is written in nature.”
It’s 2021, and Putin once again offers his take on current affairs, especially the gender theory that Biden defends and Pope Frances condemns.
Even a despot and bad actor such as Putin can make sense sometimes, and so in a speech he delivered last week, he declared that convincing children “that a boy can become a girl and vice versa” borders on committing a crime against humanity and the destruction of family life. He accused proponents of the gender theory of seeking to cancel the meaning of mother, father, family, and gender differences.
So, to hear that Putin, an atheist at best, is against a transgender-on-demand political attitude while Joe Biden, a self-proclaimed, dyed in the wool Catholic, is all for it is disturbing, at best. But it also shows that even an anti-social miscreant like Putin, whom the widely respected publication, The Economist, once called Vlad the Impaler, gets it right once in a while.
Indeed, have compassion for those individuals suffering from gender dysphoria, says the Pope. It is unlikely that Putin has the ability to be compassionate, but Biden goes beyond the need to be understanding; he wants to downplay the risks of sex-change surgery for political gain. And there are risks.
Our own government’s National Center for Biotechnology Information [NCBI] tells us that there are “serious risks for those who have transgender surgery. “They include the risk of depressive illness and suicide. Physicians and mental health professionals should know these risks and the regrets of those who have been through sex-change operations.”
Interestingly, the NCBI chose to quote Dr. Paul McHugh, the former chairperson of the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital, in its report of the risks of transgender surgery. McHugh says that: “The idea that one’s sex is fluid and a matter open to choice runs unquestioned through our culture and is reflected everywhere in the media, the theater, the classroom, and in many medical clinics. It has taken on cult-like features: its own special lingo, internet chat rooms providing slick answers to new recruits, and clubs for easy access to dresses and styles supporting the sex change. It is doing much damage to families, adolescents, and children and should be confronted as an opinion without biological foundation wherever it emerges.”
One has to wonder whether President Biden not only disregards the teachings of his own religion but also pays no attention to his own government’s risk assessment when it comes to sex-change operations. The question is: how far is he willing to go considering that the transgender movement is suggesting that pre-teens are likely candidates for transgender treatments.
A CBS News report a while back said that a “growing number of teens and even younger children who think they were born the wrong sex are getting support from parents and from doctors who give them sex-changing treatments.” CBS story went on to tell of a second-grade girl in Los Angeles whose parents claimed she declared that she was actually a boy when she was just 18 months old. The parents accepted the child’s declaration and began to treat her as if she was a boy rather than a girl. And it appears they were just waiting until she reached puberty to start her transgender treatments.