The 3 - October 28, 2018

On this week's edition of The 3, highlighting three stories of relevance to the Christian community, there's a story out of Virginia, where a middle school chorus will not be allowed to sing "sacred" Christmas songs; perhaps this is one of the first of such instances that we seem to see annually.  Also, in an age where we need prayer to address violence in our cities, police in a Louisiana city will not be allowed to promote prayer vigils now.  And, there are reports that the Trump Administration will soon reverse special treatment granted by the previous Administration for transgender individuals; some response, ahead.

3 - Middle school will not use Christmas songs containing the name of Jesus

It has become of regular occurrence of the Christmas season, where you see schools or governmental organizations place restrictions on the expression or celebration of the holiday.
ChristianHeadlines.com reported on a decision by a middle school in Virginia not to allow songs that mention Jesus - yes, the One whose birthday is being celebrated - as part of its Christmas-related presentations.

The story says that:

David Allen, the father of a student at Robious Middle School in Midlothian, Va., told WWBT-TV that the chorus teacher told him that songs of a “sacred” nature won’t be in the winter program. Allen gave the television station a copy of an email exchange he had with the teacher.

“They were unable to [sing this song] because the word ‘Jesus’ was in there and apparently someone assumed it was of a sacred nature,” Allen said.

The father said that the teacher had told him that some students were "uncomfortable" with the inclusion of "sacred" material. Allen is quoted as saying, "I’m trying to rationalize how you can encourage diversity and yet be exclusionary in one specific area,” according to WWBT.

2 - Shreveport police to discontinue prayer gathering after threats

We recognize that prayer can be a powerful tool to change the atmosphere of a community.  And, since 2017, the Police Department in Shreveport, LA, has encouraged people to take part in prayer vigils.  ChristianNews.net has reported that practice has now ended, thanks to a complaint from the so-called Freedom From Religion Foundation.  The article states that FFRF...

...sent a letter to Shreveport Police Chief Alan Crump in August to assert that the prayer vigils are unconstitutional because they prefer “religion over non-religion” and run afoul of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

FFRF also demanded that the department end its chaplaincy program.  The article continues:

While the City does not plan to end its chaplaincy program, it did agree to discontinue holding the prayer vigils.

“We have to be inclusive of all of our citizens and representative of all of them. We want to make sure we’re implementing practices that do not alienate certain groups of people,” City attorney William Bradford told the Shreveport Times.

ChristianNews.net stated, "The City of Shreveport will now depend on local citizens to organize their own prayer gatherings."

1 - Response to reports that Trump Administration will rescind changes in Title IX allowing for gender redefinition

When news surfaced that the current Administration was considering reversing the previous Administration's position on gender discrimination under Title IX, it certainly set off a wave of protest.  But, as David French of National Review wrote, this was just going back to a change made in 2014; a change that had reversed, as he puts it, "millennia" of social science.

He writes that a document from the Obama Administration...

...stated that “Title IX’s sex discrimination prohibition extends to claims of discrimination based on gender identity or failure to conform to stereotypical notions of masculinity or femininity.”

Empowered by this new definition, the Obama administration issued extraordinarily aggressive mandates to schools across the nation, requiring that schools use a transgender student’s chosen pronouns and that they open bathrooms, locker rooms, overnight accommodations, and even some sports teams to students based not on their biological sex but their chosen gender identity.

Again, this was done without an act of Congress and without even a regulatory rulemaking process.

He made reference to a New York Times article, with the headline, “Transgender Could Be Defined Out of Existence Under Trump Administration," which, according to French, indicated "The administration may issue formal guidance establishing a biological definition of sex. Specifically, the administration may define sex to mean 'a person’s status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth.'"

Family Research Council expressed its alarm at the alarmism, stating:

In Sunday's piece, a trio of reporters argues that the Trump administration is disenfranchising people by defining gender as it always has been: a "biological, immutable condition determined by genitalia at birth." No one is quite sure how that's radical, since it's how the law has been understood both before and since 1964. Not a single president questioned it until Obama, who decided that he didn't care what the Civil Rights Act said. He was going to "reinterpret" the 54-year-old law on "sex" discrimination to mean "sexual orientation" and gender identity too.

The FRC piece also says:

This "new" definition of sex, the Times insists, "would essentially eradicate federal recognition of the estimated 1.4 million Americans who have opted to recognize themselves -- surgically or otherwise -- as a gender other than the one they were born into." First of all, this "new" definition of "sex" is 54 years old. Secondly, who are these 1.4 million Americans? The Times didn't bother citing the statistic, and it certainly seems higher than most credible national surveys. Lastly -- and perhaps most instructively -- people who identify as transgender don't enjoy special federal recognition under the law, because the American people have never passed any legislation granting it.

French notes:

In reality, the claim that you “dehumanize” a person if you hold contrary beliefs about sex and gender is a common, inflammatory rhetorical tactic that creates a false choice. Either you recognize a transgender person on their own terms, or you “deny their humanity.” You “deny their existence.”

Wrong. I believe that each and every single human being is created in the image of God. We are of equal worth and value in His eyes. I also recognize that some percentage of those human beings have gender dysphoria, but that condition does not transform a man into a woman or a woman into a man...

He also states, "The Trump administration’s proposed regulatory change conforms the law to the truth. Defending that truth isn’t dehumanizing. It’s not denying anyone’s existence. It’s standing athwart a lawless redefinition of biological reality and quite appropriately yelling stop."