(Texas) My heart breaks over their deception. On Christian conservative opposition to transgender

http://politics.blog.mystatesman.com/2017/03/08/my-heart-breaks-over-their-deception-on-the-christian-opposition-to-transgender-rights/

In his 2015 inaugural address as lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick famously proclaimed: “I stand here with a servant’s heart, respectful of all faiths, but as a Christian first, a conservative second and a Republican third.”

I think that for Patrick, Senate Bill 6, the bathroom bill, is about keeping faith with that order of allegiance and with Christian conservative Texans for whom transgender rights is a bridge – really a few bridges – too far.

On Monday, Patrick met with pastors to brief them on the bill. He told them:

Pray for all your legislators to be bold and courageous, do the right thing, pray for their protection and then go out and win this fight for America because America is watching Texas. The world depends on a strong America and America depends on a strong Texas and a strong Texas depends on a church and our synagogues. That’s what it stands for — Texas values. That’s who we are.
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Patrick and other supporters of SB 6 insist it is not so much about fear of transgender people, as it is fear of male perverts and molesters who would use the cover of a transgender identity – and rights bestowed on that identity – to enter women’s restrooms and prey on the girls and women therein.

Among the early, invited witnesses was Tony Perkins, a crusader for conservative Christian values as head of the Family Research Council. (It was Tony who wrote the line that Trump famously misdelivered as “Two Corinthians” instead of “Second Corinthians.)


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But, while proponents of SB 6 have certainly sounded the alarm about the peril to innocent girls and women, I think that ultimately what is at issue is the threat that people who identify as transgender – and their claims to legitimacy and to rights that need to be respected – poses to that particular Christian conservative sense of right and wrong, moral and immoral.

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One after another, transgender people – looking like the gender they identify with – and their families, offered dramatic often anguished testimony about their journey to assuming the gender that they believe they were born to be, regardless of their genitalia at birth, the peace they found when they were able to live that identity, and how SB 6 threatens to disrupt and undo all that.

It would seem hard for anyone watching to discard the genuineness of their pleas.

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Absolutely. We have a society full of people – we have certainly heard from the transgender people here tonight. They have been out in force.

But, when it comes to my faith and what I believe the Scripture says, Jesus said, in the beginning – he quoted the Old Testament – in the beginning they were created male and female. It’s always been that way.

We’ve changed the boundaries though in our country. It started with marriage itself. It’s always been between a man and a woman until recent years. And of course our government, in the last few years has codified that into law, I guess you’d say.

It’s just a mater of time before that changes. I think we’re all aware of that. How many wives can a person have? How many husbands can a person have? It (marriage between one man and one woman) has served us well for all these years and I know that our Lord loves all of us and not all of us are right. I’m aware of that.

I learned a long time ago, it’s not about me, it’s all about Jesus and how he looks at it , and I have to line up my viewpoint with his and it’s not about lining up his viewpoint with mine.

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Words cannot explain what we saw today at the Capitol. There were hundreds of protestors – many whom were men dressed as women and parents bringing young children they were helping to transition to another sex. Then listening to the complete confusion from SO MANY lost people who testified. My heart breaks over their deception. I physically felt sick at the awful spirit in the hearing room. This is complete deception in which these people need God’s delivering power.


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Greg Young Having just returned from D.C. and CPAC I too was in Austin the last two days for briefings and to watch how people behaved and to sense the spirit of darkness in Austin it was so thick with evil it was worse than D.C.

Cindy Asmussen Ugh, we’ve surpassed the evil in DC! Not good at all
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Michael Asmussen We will not allow them to destroy our country.

And then, from this morning, on Facebook.

Cindy Asmussen:

Praise God for a new day. Starting it with worship on my way back downtown. Trying to get out of my head the words transgender, cigender, “don’t call me a he or she pronoun”, agender, bigender, and the list goes on. … This was the actual vocabulary of the protestors that testified and they used them non-stop yesterday for HOURS. Please PRAY for our Texas Legislature. They need it more than ever before.
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I love that patented Christian Compassion