President Joe Biden signed an overreaching executive order for “pride month” on Wednesday that Alliance Defending freedom is warning targets and removes “fundamental rights with a stroke of his pen.”
Like many other pro-LGBT policies and legislation, the executive order signed this week acts like a trojan horse cloaked in “equality” and combatting hateful discrimination while carrying measures aiming to attack religious liberty and parental rights.
Although the order contains a dozen sections, three particular points of concern should be examined.
1 — Targeting Conservative Laws That Protect Children from Abuse
While announcing the order in the White House East Room, Biden condemned “hateful attacks” from conservative states against LGBT individuals, referencing bills and laws that seek to protect children, fairness in sports, and parental rights over children’s education.
“I don’t have to tell you about the ultra MAGA agenda attacking families and our freedoms. Three hundred discriminatory bills [have been] introduced in the states across this country,” he accused. “In Texas, knocking on front doors to harass and investigate parents who are raising transgender children. In Florida, going after Mickey Mouse, for God’s sake—that’s striking close to home. All you in this room know better than anyone that these attacks are real and consequential for real families.”
Wednesday’s executive order claims “LGBTQI+ children and families in particular” are being “threatened” by “unrelenting political and legislative attacks at the State level.”
“These attacks defy our American values of liberty and dignity, corrode our democracy, and threaten basic personal safety,” the order reads. “They echo the criminalization that LGBTQI+ people continue to face in some 70 countries around the world. The Federal Government must defend the rights and safety of LGBTQI+ individuals.”
Following that statement, under Section two, “Addressing Harmful and Discriminatory Legislative Attacks on LGBTQI+ Children, Youth, and Families,” the order instructs the Secretary of the HHS and its authorities “to protect LGBTQI+ individuals’ access to medically necessary care from harmful State and local laws and practices…”
The order further tells the Secretary of Education to use authorities from the Dept. of Education “to support LGBTQI+ students, their families, educators, and other school personnel targeted by harmful State and local laws and practices, and shall promote the adoption of promising policies and practices to support the safety, well-being, and rights of LGBTQI+ students.”
Several states have stepped into the crosshair of the current administration by passing laws and introducing legislation to combat sexual/gender manipulation and perversion of minors.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott responded to previous criticism from the White House in February, underscoring the responsibility of laws to “protect Texas children from abuse,” specifically life-altering and “abusive [gender reassignment] procedures.”
Science also concurs with the findings of conservative states on gender confusion. The American College of Pediatricians recently released a statement concluding that “adolescents with gender dysphoria should not be making decisions that lead to permanent, unnecessary surgeries, mutilation, and infertility,” according to board member Jane Anderson.
The “research show[ed] that adolescents’ brains are not developed enough to make sound decisions, and this should inform potential medical and surgical interventions on minors with gender dysphoria because of their lifelong consequences,” she stressed. “Neuroscientists studying decision-making have found adolescents are much more likely to rely upon emotions and peer pressure and less likely to consider future consequences.”
In an interview with Tony Perkins, evangelist Franklin Graham underscored that children who want to become “transgender” could not comprehend the path they’re starting down.
“God made us male and female; two men can’t make a child, two women can’t make a child; it takes a male and a female. That’s the way God made us and created us,” Rev. Graham asserted. “For someone to come along and say you can change that if you want… Well, you better talk to God about that because we’re on very thin ice when we start messing with the way God made us and created us.”
“What’s happening, we see, is just wicked. To take a child and try to convince them that they can change and be a girl, they can change and be a boy, and we can give you drugs, and you can have surgery and all of these things… a child can’t comprehend that, and once you start down this path you can’t reverse it. It’s just a wicked thing…” he asserted. “We need to stand for truth, we need to stand for God’s Word, and we need to stand behind these legislators and the governors, and others that are willing to sign bills.”
2 — Wheeling In A Trojan Horse ‘Conversion Therapy’ Ban
In section three of this week’s executive order, Biden directs the Secretary of the HHS to “establish an initiative to reduce the risk of youth exposure to so-called conversion therapy.”
The order asks the HHS to clarify that agencies that counsel individuals with unwanted same-sex attraction will not “meet criteria for use in federally funded health and human services programs.”
It further calls on the HHS to increase “public awareness” and provide training “to health care and social service providers” regarding the “dangers of so-called conversion therapy” and fund “trauma-informed services to better support survivors…”
“The Federal Trade Commission is encouraged to consider whether so-called conversion therapy constitutes an unfair or deceptive act or practice, and to issue such consumer warnings or notices as may be appropriate,” the order states.
Additionally concerning, the order establishes an “action plan to promote an end to [conversion therapy’s] use around the world.”
“In developing the action plan—to take appropriate steps to prevent the use of so-called conversion therapy, as well as to help ensure that United States foreign assistance programs do not use foreign assistance funds for so-called conversion therapy,” the order continued. “To further critical data collection, the Secretary of State shall instruct all United States Embassies and Missions worldwide to submit additional information on the practice and incidence of so-called conversion therapy as part of the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.”
Many Christian leaders, including Ken Ham, have been sounding the alarm for years against the very thing President Biden’s executive order addresses: restricting “Conversion Therapy.”
Such bans “pave the way for the bridling of free speech and the criminalization of those who believe and act on biblical principles,” Ham explained. “You see, LGBT activists claim that if you don’t fully embrace, support, and celebrate an LGBT lifestyle or identity, then that’s hate speech and harming someone because that person is more likely to commit suicide since you did not affirm them.”
“In their minds and by their flawed logic, those who hold to the biblical belief that an LGBT identity and lifestyle are sinful are hurting other people and driving them to suicide; therefore such people (Christians specifically) don’t deserve to be able to speak their views,” he described. “Many politicians are viewing this matter now as a civil rights issue—but it’s not. It’s a moral issue.”
“It’s an outright assault on freedom of religion and speech and, above all, on biblical truth and the gospel of Jesus Christ (the only message that truly delivers someone from their slavery to a sinful identity, if they will repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ),” he underscored.
In January, thousands of Pastors across North America stood up and preached a message on Biblical sexuality in defiance of a new Canadian “Conversion Therapy” ban that made such sermons illegal. The stated purpose of this defiance was to “put the Canadian and the U.S. governments on notice that they have attacked the Word of God.”
It is also worth noting that as Biden’s order seeks to suppress Biblical truth from reaching gender-confused children and individuals, it instructs the HHS to “promote expanded access” to “gender-affirming care.”
3 — Stamping Out The Religious Freedom Of Faith-Based Foster Care & Adoption Agencies
Faith-based foster and adoption agencies have come under fire for refusing to violate their conscience by placing children in the homes of individuals who are not Christians (including unmarried and same-sex couples).
Section five of the executive order establishes an initiative to “address and eliminate disparities in the child welfare system experienced by LGBTQI+ children, parents, and caregivers.”
The Biden administration’s initiative will also “prevent the placement of LGBTQI+ youth in foster and congregate care environments that will be hostile to their gender identity or sexual orientation.” In other words, children will be prevented from being placed with families, including Christian ones, that do not affirm their confusion.
Alliance Defending Freedom Responds to Biden’s ‘Gross Overreach’
Julie Marie Blake, who serves as senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, responded to the executive order in a Press Release arguing that it “villainizes and grossly misrepresents religious Americans and others holding to commonsense American values and violates their constitutionally and legally protected freedoms.”
“Every American is protected under the Constitution to freely live and work according to their religious beliefs, and President Biden can’t remove those fundamental rights with a stroke of his pen,” she asserted.
“It is a gross overreach of his authority, for example, to mandate what Christian counselors can say, or not say, in private conversations with their clients, as is the case with our client Brian Tingley in Washington state, or demand faith-based foster care and adoption homes, like our client Holston United Methodist Home for Children in Tennessee, violate their religious beliefs or lose needed funding to help children find a forever home,” she said in the Press Release. The government can’t “stop American citizens from living according to their conscience and faith.”
“We will continue defending individuals and organizations from this unlawful government violation of their First Amendment and other legal protections,” she concluded.
Speaking The Truth No Matter The Hostility
Isaiah 5:20 warns, “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”
As Answers In Genesis Founder and CEO Ken Ham further explained, Christians must stand firm in speaking the truth no matter the increased hostility we face in our morally upside-down Isaiah 5:20 society.
“As believers, we must be prepared to continue sharing biblical truth regardless of what the culture around us says or threatens. Teaching God’s Word is not abusive or dangerous—the gospel is the power of God unto salvation (Romans 1:16),” he urged. “It is the gospel and the truth of God’s Word, with the power of the Holy Spirit, that free us from our slavery to sin (Romans 6:6) and makes us a new creation in Christ Jesus (2 Corinthians 5:17).”
“The time is coming when speaking biblical truth regarding sexuality will be illegal,” he cautioned. “But we must love people enough to continue to contend for the faith (Jude 1:3), making disciples (Matthew 28:19), as we do the King’s business until he returns (Luke 19:13). Are we courageous enough to boldly state as Peter and the apostles did: ‘We must obey God rather than men’ (Acts 5:29)?”
