Paul Tuns:
Just 11 days after Charlie Kirk was killed, his widow Erika Kirk addressed the nationally broadcast memorial service with words of grace: “My husband, Charlie, he wanted to save young men just like the one who took his life … On the cross, our Savior said: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ That young man—that young man—I forgive him. I forgive him because it’s what Christ did. And it’s what Charlie would do.” She continued, “The answer to hate is not hate. The answer—we know from the Gospel—is love. Always love. Love for our enemies. Love for those who persecute us.”
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Following the mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which killed two students and injured nearly two dozen others, several politicians and commentators belittled “thoughts and prayers” as ineffective responses to the senseless slaughter. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said “Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying,” when they were killed. CNN’s Dana Bash said, “forget about thoughts and prayers.” Former Joe Biden spokesman Jen Psaki posted on X (formerly Twitter) “Prayers does (sic) not end school shootings … enough with the thoughts and prayers.” I might agree that thoughts are not particularly helpful, but prayer certainly is. The criticism against it at times of national tragedy is wrong on at least three counts. First, the notion that prayer is not action, that it is nothing more than a passive response. For sincere Christians, it is not; it is active and it bears fruit. Secondly, and partly related to the first problem, is that those who say prayer is “useless” ultimately do not believe that God answers prayer by providing mercy and grace. Perhaps these people do not believe that there is a God to answer prayers. But sometimes you see politicians who profess to be believers mock those who offer their prayers in response to tragedy. Lastly, there is the suggestion that prayer is useless because it is the only response to tragedy. Of course it is not. There are, as events unfold, the response by police, firemen, and medics. There are investigations afterward, and when appropriate, the process of bringing alleged criminals to justice. There is healing (medical, psychiatric, pastoral) work to be done for those who survived a tragedy and those who lost loved ones. Sometimes a policy response is necessary, or a debate about whether or not there should be a policy response. It is not that prayer is an alternative to action. Rather, prayer is itself action and indeed, prayer should also buttress these other efforts. And considering that most people are not going to be first responders or policymakers, the only thing most people can do is pray.
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Christopher Rufo writing in City Journal following the school shooting in Minneapolis by a man who identified as a woman said: “We should grieve those beautiful children who lost their lives at Annunciation Catholic Church. We should also grieve the innocent young people scattered across America who have lost their health, dignity, and sanity to transgenderism, an ideology predicated on dishonesty and nihilism.”
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When Irish comedian Graham Linehan returned from the United States to England he was arrested on accusations of “inciting violence.” His crime? A social media post saying, “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, offensive act. Make a scene, call the cops, and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.” Not my cup of comedy, but surely a hypothetical scenario doesn’t rise to criminal incitement. Helen Lewis, writing in The Atlantic, says, in Britain, “laws on ‘malicious communication’ and ‘public order’ mean the police regularly get dragged into soul-sapping online scrums between obsessives who each accuse the other of hate speech and harassment.” Surely there are better uses for police resources than monitoring social media spats?
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Malcolm Gladwell has always been a liberal in good standing, writing best-selling books, writing for top magazines, and earning six-figure sums for speaking engagements. He should be as safe as safe can be when it comes to speaking his mind, but he recently told The Real Science of Sport podcast that when he chaired a session at the Sloan conference at M.I.T. in 2022, he self-censored himself when chairing a panel on “trans women” (read: actual biological men) competing in women’s sports. He said, “The reason I’m ashamed of my performance of that panel (is) because I share your position 100 per cent, and I was cowed.” That position Gladwell was referring to is against men competing against women. Gladwell said that most people in the audience probably shared his view, but many gave polite applause to the opposing view and were silent when speakers were against men competing against women. Gladwell said the tide is shifting, but if people – especially people in positions of influence like Gladwell – did not self-censor, the tide would not have ended up where it had with mass acceptance of the transgenderism ideology.
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Pop music sensation Taylor Swift and Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce have been dating for two years and in August he popped “the question” which was followed by the obligatory social media announcement that they were getting married. Congratulations to the happy couple. This engagement is not being treated as a yet another piece of celebrity gossip, but a possible tipping point. Not only was there excitement from Swift’s legion of adoring fans but from some quarters of social conservatism who sense a cultural recovery of the importance of marriage. An Institute for Family and Marriage headline: “When Taylor Swift said yes: A cultural moment that signals a new respect for marriage.” Maybe. It is certainly a positive signal that the world’s biggest pop star, whose lyrics often celebrate defiant singledom (and heartbreak from previous relationships) is very publicly tying the knot. But as Patrick T. Brown of the Ethics in Public Policy Centre wrote in Compact, the Tyler and Travis marriage fits all too comfortably within the current cultural context for marriage. Both are well-established in their professions. (Kelce is, in fact, closer to retirement than to his peak performance as an athlete.) He is a sure-fire Hall of Famer. She just completed the largest grossing concert tour ever ($2 billion). They are following the all-too-familiar path for young couples to get married as a capstone in their lives after they had achieved stability in their careers. Ideally, for both individuals and society (as Andrea Mrozek and Peter Mitchell note in their book I do?), couples look at marriage as a cornerstone of their lives, a foundation about which to build their lives not the concluding icing on the cake.
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Rob Henderson in his Substack Newsletter: “Adolescents in modern societies spend most of their time with peers of the same age, unlike in traditional cultures where they interact with younger children and provide care for them. Evidence suggests that the lack of mixed-age interaction increases aggression, defiance, attention seeking, and risk-taking behaviors. Anecdotally, as a kid, whenever I was responsible for looking after my adoptive younger sister, I behaved better than when I was off on my own or with my friends. You see this with little kids. A 6-year-old will behave like a menace on his own, but ask him to care for his 3-year-old sibling and watch him transform.” Part of this is because a growing number of families have but a single child.
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In August, Hungarian President Viktor Orban went on Kossuth Radio and, in the words reported by the Hungarian Conservative, “presented the government’s vision: a society where desired children are born, families are financially supported, and young people can realistically afford to purchase their own property.” The Orban government’s pro-natal policies include initiatives to make home ownership more affordable, and provide generous tax benefits for growing families that have to move to larger homes or renovate their existing ones. Home ownership almost certainly influences marriage rates and fertility rates. A culture that makes owning a home easier is much more likely to thrive than one in which home ownership is but a dream for the large majority of young adults. Meanwhile in Canada, the Parliamentary Budget Office issued a report in August that estimates there will be 2.5 million new homes built over the next decade. However, that is 700,000 fewer new homes than the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation estimates will need to be built to meet growing demand for housing. The result could be the continuation of increasing house prices which has deleterious effects on young people getting married and having children.
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On page two we report on a man, a widower, who wanted to be euthanized because he had tremors that made socializing awkward; effectively, he was too embarrassed by his physical malady that he didn’t want to meet new people. Medical Assistance in Dying has led to a person literally dying of embarrassment.
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The British papers The Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph reported on the story of Neil Hopper, a surgeon who voluntarily had both his legs amputated for his own sexual satisfaction. Hopper, 49, was sentenced to 32 months in jail after it was discovered that he froze his legs in order to have them removed and then filing a false insurance claim that the injury was the result of sepsis. Putting aside the fact that this vascular surgeon performed hundreds of amputations through the Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust, this story should be a forewarning about the potential of the recognized mental illness Body Identity Integrity Disorder (BIID) becoming the next trans: transableism. Reporting on this story, Wesley Smith, writing in National Review, notes that he has long predicted that transableism would be the next transgenderism, which until recently was a recognized mental illness called gender dysphoria. Just as some disturbed individuals do not feel that their body conforms to their gender identity, in BIID, individuals obsess that they were born with body parts or capabilities that they believe they do or should not have. Smith describes the similarities between the two trans illnesses: Both involve self-definition, “which is becoming a fundamental right in which all must acquiesce,” both are subjective desires that implicate “the medical arts (that) must be applied as legitimate ‘treatment’” to be realized, and both raise questions about the ethical implications of medical interventions that actively harm the person they ostensibly treat. If this all sounds far-fetched, there is a simple question: by what limiting principle does society say that lopping off a man’s penis or a woman’s breasts is permissible but surgically removing other healthy body parts is somehow verboten? Smith asks, “Why should transgendered people be allowed to have their bodies fundamentally altered, while transabled people — who believe similarly that their “true identity” is as a disabled person — can’t receive similar relief?” Already doctors have purposefully blinded a patient who believe he did not have sight and snipped the spinal cord of person who believe they were paralyzed. God help these troubled souls.
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A new U.S. report finds that one per cent of the population over the age of 13 identifies as transgender. That is 2.8 million people confused about their gender, who resist their own biological truth. Not surprisingly, more young people identify as trans, with 3.3 per cent of youth ages 13-17; and, 2.7 per cent of those 18-24. On the other end of the spectrum, just 0.3 per cent of seniors 65 and over self-identify as transgender. Put another way, half of all people who identify as transgender are under the age of 25. Theresa Parnan, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said “gender ideology is not going away” with “2.8 million people acting on this false anthropology, who have internalized it so much they don’t think their body tells them anything about who they are.” The data was collected from three sources (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Behavioral Risk Surveillance System and the Youth Risk Behavior Survey) and released by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. Mainstream media news articles highlighted the number of trans youth, but it must be stressed, as Lauren Smith does in The European Conservative in commenting about this story, “it’s important to reiterate there is really no such thing as a trans child.”
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The Daily Telegraph reports that the Home Office of the United Kingdom has awarded special five-year “Global Talent” visas for drag queens from Turkey. That paper’s columnist, Michael Deacon, wrote: “Unlike health and social care, drag is surely not a field in which Britain is suffering from an acute shortage. Homegrown drag queens are in abundant supply.” That’s true if the reporting of the BBC News is any indication. Recent stories from its website include “Meet the deaf drag queens keeping gay sign language alive” and, “As a female drag queen, I had to fight for work.” Which leads me to another question, not about whether the UK needs to import drag queens, but what precisely is gay sign language? I assume it is slightly limp-wristed.
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On August 3, Dominican Republic President Luis Abinador, signed into law a reformed penal code. The previous penal code had been in place since 1884 and it outlawed abortion. Feminist groups campaigned for both the elimination of criminal sanctions against abortion or, if that failed, adding exceptions to the law. The new penal code, which takes effect in August 2026, maintains the total ban on abortion. Feminist groups vow to continue fighting to get exceptions to the abortion ban added to the reformed law before it is implemented next year. Dominican pop singer Issade, a face of the campaign for the legalization of abortion, said of the new penal law: “What kind of society are we constructing?” It sounds like a society that continues to protect unborn babies, and for that the Dominican Republic should be lauded.
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