The 3 - March 5, 2023

This week's edition of The 3, highlighting three stories of relevance to the Christian community, includes developments on the gender identity front, with two states recently approving laws to protect children from damaging treatments and surgeries that falsely claim to help a child change his or her biological sex.  Also, a pro-life reality TV star's miscarriage has been mischaracterized by those who want to make her look as if she is being hypocritical.  And, a California teacher has lost her job because she would not be dishonest regarding disclosing information about a child's declaration of "gender identity" and the use of pronouns that do not represent a child's biological sex. 

MS, TN governors sign laws to protect children from gender treatments and surgeries

Liberty Counsel began a piece on its website in this way:

As the gender ideology assault on America’s children continues, state legislators are pushing back with legislation to protect minors from harmful puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and mutilating surgeries.

Approximately 100 bills have been proposed in 27 states aimed at protecting children from accessing hormone blocking drugs, surgeries and other types of “gender-affirming care.” Other draft laws being debated in state legislatures entail pronoun use in schools and biological boys in girls’ sports teams and bathrooms.

It noted that...

...Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves signed into law HB 1125, known as the “Regulate Experimental Adolescent Procedures Act,” which prohibits puberty blockers and any “gender transition” medical procedures on minors.

The Clarion-Ledger quoted the governor:

"There is a dangerous movement that's spreading across America today. It's advancing under the guise of a false ideology, and pseudoscience is being pushed onto our children through radical activists, social media and online influencers, and it's trying to convince our children that they are in the wrong body," Reeves said. "This dangerous movement attempts to convince these children that they're just a surgery away from happiness. It threatens our children's innocence, and it threatens their health."

Meanwhile, just a few days afterward, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed a bill that would ban these types of treatments and surgeries for minors and protected children in another way.

Regarding the first bill, The Tennessean says that House Majority Leader William Lamberth, who sponsored the legislation, "said minors lack the maturity to make 'life-altering' medical decisions before they become adults." He added, "These treatments and procedures have a lifetime of negative consequences that are irreversible..." The article also reported that the governor signed a bill that would prevent drag shows from being performed in the presence of children:

Lee also signed off on a new law to prohibit "adult-oriented" entertainment, including "male and female impersonators," from public property and limit it to age-restricted venues.

Pro-life organizations respond to distortion of Christian reality star's miscarriage

Since the Dobbs decision returning abortion laws to the states, there has been a significant amount of misrepresentation from the pro-abortion side about the effects of overturning Roe v. Wade. 

Live Action reported on a recent instance, in which reality star Jessa Duggar Seewald's miscarriage was characterized in an irresponsible way. The article stated:

Seewald shared a video about her miscarriage on YouTube, expressing her heartbreak after the loss of her fifth child. After she began bleeding, she visited the doctor, who told her the outcome didn’t look good. “Nothing could have prepared me for the weight of those words in that moment,” she said in the video. “At that moment I was just in complete shock. I didn’t have words. I just immediately started crying.”

Because she had health risks preventing her from passing the body of her preborn child at home, she had to have a post-miscarriage dilation and curettage, or D&C. “I was able to thank God in that moment for giving us this life, even if we wouldn’t be able to hold this baby in our arms,” she said, adding, “Those 10 to 15 minutes before I was taken back to the room where Ben and my mom were waiting were probably some of the hardest in my life, just laying there feeling so alone.”

But some with a pro-abortion bent claimed she had had an abortion. Lila Rose of Live Action did not mince words; she tweeted out, “This is at best ignorance, at worst a cruel lie. Jessa miscarried. Her baby passed away & she needed a surgery to remove her little one’s body. An abortion intentionally kills a living baby. Abortion is an intentional act of homicide, a miscarriage is a tragic natural death.”

Charlotte Lozier Institute issued a statement regarding the coverage of the incident by Parade Magazine; saying: "Lozier Institute today called on Parade Magazine to apologize to Jessa Duggar Seewald and the millions of women who have walked through the valley of miscarriage, which the magazine chose to conflate with the intentional killing of an unborn child."

Dr. Ingrid Skop of the Institute, a practicing OB/GYN doctor, stated:

Parade chose to misrepresent Jessa Duggar Seewald’s tragic pregnancy loss and in doing so rekindled the hurt, sadness and grief experienced by thousands of women, their partners, and their families every year. Parade’s decision places the online media outlet’s pro-abortion ideology over basic human empathy. There is nothing pro-woman about their coverage.

California teacher loses job for not using gender pronouns

When students demand that teacher call them by pronouns corresponding to their so-called "gender identity," essentially, the teacher is being asked not to tell the truth about their biological sex. It is also unethical and unbiblical for a teacher to hide students' declaration of their gender identity from their parents. A California teacher is no longer employed by her school district because of her refusal to comply with the district's LGBTQ-friendly policies.

An article at The Washington Stand stated:

Jurupa Unified School District served physical education teacher Jessica Tapia, mother of three, with a Notice of Unprofessional Conduct for not embracing the district’s new polices promoting transgender identities and, on January 31, fired her after determining it could not accommodate her religious beliefs.

District administrators directed Tapia “to refrain from disclosing the gender identity of a student who is transgender to a parent who does not know the student’s gender identity” and “to address students by their preferred name and preferred gender pronouns.” But she told them that her religious beliefs made her “unable to comply” with the two directives.

Article writer Joshua Arnold said that in a meeting with school district officials last fall, according to Tapia, "I made sure to clarify..., too, with [the] district personnel that were sitting across from me. I looked them in the eye, and I said, ‘Are you asking me to lie to parents?’ and they said, ‘Yes. It’s the law.’”  

Arnold notes: 

This is false, of course. California law stipulates that “parents … have an absolute right to access to any and all pupil records related to their children.” In fact, accessing student records requires parental consent most cases. But if a school district is simply following the direction of the California Department of Education (CDE), they wouldn’t know that.

The article concludes by saying:

Tapia said she doesn’t believe God is “calling us to love by affirming those lies and confusion. I believe firmly that God created man and woman, and you are who he made you to be. And when someone has confusion about that, I believe that’s lies and confusion from the devil.”