In sex, gender, and sexuality, what is normal?
What is normal marriage?
Normal family?
Western civilization once knew.
But no longer.
Academics, philosophers, and politicians are waging
a passionate ideological war to establish a world
in which nothing is considered normal--where
even suggesting that one thing is normal and
another is abnormal is considered an act of
hatred and violence.
That conflict is eating away at the foundations of
civilization itself.
Join us for this episode of Tomorrow's World, where
we expose the War Against Normal.
♪
A warm welcome to you from all of us here at
Tomorrow's World, where we help you make sense of
your world through the pages of the Bible.
In Jeremiah 10:23, we see a statement made of
profound importance:
"O LORD, I know the way of man is not in himself;
it is not in man who walks to direct his own steps."
Our topic today illustrates the truth of
that statement and the civilization-wide tragedy
that unfolds when we ignore it.
We asked at the beginning--in gender,
sexuality, marriage, and family, what is normal?
Many can no longer answer this question, thanks to a
long-running war against all things "normal."
In fact, we're in the final stages of that war in
the West, which we will demonstrate today.
Now we used to know what "normal" was.
At least we thought we did, right?
Marriage was a lifetime commitment between a man
and a woman, defining family and creating the
healthiest environment for childrearing.
Mankind was organized into males and females,
and sex was to take place between a male and
a female, and that was an obvious matter of biology,
That was our world as recently as 20 years ago.
But today, simply asking what is normal is
offensive to many--and may offend some of you.
That's because we're living in the final stages
of a war against normality.
Social engineers have mounted an aggressive
campaign over multiple decades, seeking to
eradicate any idea that some things are normal
and some abnormal.
And as normality is losing this war, an abnormal
world is quickly filling the space left behind.
It is this new world that our children will
inherit--in which there is no such thing as "normal"
and it's the highest offense to suggest that there should be.
How did we get here?
How bad is it?
And can it get worse?
Finally, what does God think of a culture in
which anything normal is the enemy?
While the combatants attacking normality are
not as coordinated and conspiratorial as many
think, there are common doctrines and goals that
drive and unite them.
Originating in the infamous Frankfurt School in the 1920s,
so-called "Critical Theory" in various forms
has become all the rage.
The 1970s saw the rise of Critical Legal Theory,
and more recently, Critical Race Theory became the hot
topic of discussion,
No less pervasive in its influence on modern
culture is Queer Theory.
Queer Theory seeks to "deconstruct" common ways
of thinking, to overturn widely held norms, and to
define all of society as a power play between the
"oppressed" and their "oppressors." Developed in
LGBT Studies and Women's Studies programs at
universities across the Western world, Queer
Theory focuses on deconstructing sexuality
and gender--and, consequently, everything affected by
those facets of life, such as family structure.
Academics steeped in these ideas seek to subvert what
has been considered normal and celebrate what were
previously "abnormal" ideas and practices.
To them, it's not enough for society to merely
accept or allow the fullest spectrum of sexual
behaviors and "gender constructs." Their goal is
to "queer" the discourse entirely, meaning to
change mainstream thinking so that nothing is even
thought of as "normal" or "not normal" any longer.
For example, Dr. Roberta Chevrette of Middle
Tennessee State University has written of the need to
"'queer' family communication"--changing
discussions within families so that
heterosexuality is no longer treated as normal
in those families.
The goal of these social engineers is to change
societal thinking so that all forms of sexual
activity are considered equally "normal."
The "queering" of communication has
proceeded at quite a pace.
In fact, social engineers expect us to speak a
different language with a different vocabulary.
Control a language, and you control a people.
We'll explore that new language wielded against
normalcy in just a moment.
First, let me give you an opportunity to request our
free DVD "A World Gone Mad." Featuring all four
Tomorrow's World presenters, this free DVD
explains how social engineers are increasingly
seeking to control how you think, create division
among the public, and to reorganize society, and
redefine history according to their own imagination.
All of this is analyzed from the perspective of
God's eternal word, with the clarity and
pull-no-punches style you've come to respect
from Tomorrow's World.
Here's the information you need for your free copy of
"A World Gone Mad," and I'll be right back to help
you brush up on the new language those waging the
War Against Normal hope to force you to speak.
Don't go away.
♪
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Or go to...
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will help you understand this vital truth--
straight from the pages of the Bible.
If you're calling for the first time, you will also
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World magazine.
Six inspiring issues discussing news, science,
and modern culture will help you make sense of
your world from a biblical perspective.
Call today and join millions around the world
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Call now!
Or go to...
♪
Welcome back.
The prejudice against normal, healthy sexuality and gender
expression can be seen in, essentially, a new vocabulary.
Are you familiar with its words?
Because your college-educated children probably are--
and, increasingly, your younger children are, too.
More importantly, those designing school policies
and programs definitely are.
One new word is heteronormative.
As of mid-2023, Merriam-Webster defines it
as "of, relating to, or based on the attitude that
heterosexuality is the only normal and natural
expression of sexuality." And an Internet search is
enough to show you that "heteronormative
thinking"--that is, thinking that the normal
expression of sexuality is between a man and a
woman--is no longer "right thinking." In fact, if you
think that sexual relations between men and
women are more normal than others, you are considered
guilty of heterosexism.
Similarly, if you're a man or a woman who, like
almost all humans beings, still considers yourself
the same gender the doctor observed you to be at birth,
it's not enough to call yourself a man or woman anymore.
Now, you must be a cisgender man or cisgender woman,
to distinguish from a transgender man
or a transgender woman.
If you are, say, a man who thinks referring to
himself as a "cisgender man" instead of just a "man" is a
little strange, watch out--now you're engaging in cisgenderism.
Also, you'd better not think it is normal for
someone in a male body to think he is a man, because
if you do, you're practicing cisnormativity.
How dare you think anything--any sexuality,
any relationship between sex and gender, any family
structure--is normal?
For a glimpse at how normal sexuality and
family structure have been recast as evils, one need
only look at--believe it or not--Black Lives Matter.
While the Black Lives Matter movement made
global headlines in the wake of George Floyd's death,
some interested in the cause were distressed by what they
found on the organization's "About Us" webpage.
There, under the heading "What We Believe," they
saw Black Lives Matter declare, "We are
self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle
cisgender privilege," "We disrupt the
Western-prescribed nuclear family structure,"
and "We foster a queer-affirming network.
When we gather, we do so with the intention of
freeing ourselves from the tight grip of
heteronormative thinking."
While that page was removed in the days
leading up to the 2020 U.S.
presidential election, the question remained: What
does ending discrimination and violence against black
people have to do with transgender ideology?
Why would supporting black lives also require standing
against "heteronormativity" or traditional family structures?
The answer is that the war against normal has
successfully woven itself into nearly every effort
to create social change.
As critical theorists irrationally recategorize
human relationships as expressions of coercive power,
and any attempt to address injustice then also, has to be
made to connect with all other injustices, real or perceived.
Believing there is a normal family structure,
a normal human sexuality, and a normal understanding
of sex and gender is increasingly equated with
power structures designed to oppress.
To today's social engineers, if you believe
that family is best grounded in a marriage
between a man and a woman, sex between that man and
that woman represents normal and natural
sexuality, and it actually is possible in virtually
all cases to identify a child's gender at birth,
well then you've aligned yourself with the likes of
Mussolini and Hitler and the Ku Klux Klan.
Presuming someone's gender based on their appearance
is labeled an act of ignorance at best and
violence at worst.
If a young girl is plagued by thoughts that she might
be transgender, to help that girl feel more
comfortable being a girl is committing the sin of
"conversion therapy."
But as bad as things are, we are far from how bad they can get.
Ultimately, the war on normality is a war on boundaries.
Human beings crave sexual "freedom," unbound by any
rules, definitions, laws, and even shame--to define
sexuality based solely on individual desires.
So, the boundaries keeping sex within marriage must fall,
the boundaries defining marriage as between
one man and one woman must fall, and the boundaries
defining differences between sexes or genders must fall.
There is, however, at least one boundary that
remains--one land the War Against Normal has not yet
conquered, but that is under siege and could fall
at any moment.
For the sake of your children and
grandchildren, we'll discuss the assault on
that final boundary in our next segment.
But first let's take a moment to give you another
opportunity to request today's free DVD,
"A World Gone Mad."
We are living through unfolding prophecy, and
you need bold and unflinching analysis of
what is going on--analysis willing to speak difficult
truths instead of comfortable lies.
This DVD, "A World Gone Mad," does that.
Like everything on Tomorrow's World, this DVD
is free of charge--and its insight is priceless.
Contact us right now to get your copy, and I'll be
right back to warn you of the hottest front of the
War Against Normal.
♪
This clear and straight-forward resource
will help you understand this vital truth--
straight from the pages of the Bible.
Call now!
Or go to...
♪
In our last segment, we noted that the War Against
Normal is an attempt to remove all restrictions
and boundaries.
No rules, no definitions, no shame--just worship of
the will and personal autonomy.
But there is a boundary that remains,
even as it is under continuous assault: The age boundary.
Thankfully, many still consider childhood a time
for protection from the incursions of modern
sexual "liberty." Yet many of our self-appointed
superiors deem that this boundary, too, must fall.
Consider the flood of sexual content into school libraries.
In the United States, the American Library
Association found that nine of the top ten school
library books most challenged in 2021 were
challenged due to their sexual content and explicit nature.
The most challenged book--which we will not
name, so as not to risk promoting it
accidentally--contained imagery that any
reasonable person would consider pornographic.
Not long ago, any teacher who shared such a book
with a child would have been labeled a pedophile
and a predator, and that teacher would have been
disciplined or dismissed.
Consider, too, the phenomenon of Drag Queen
Story Hour, in which men who dress as women--often
in exaggerated and sometimes sexually
suggestive clothing--read to children in libraries
and other venues.
Such events are designed to blur sexual and gender
lines and family attachments in children's
impressionable minds so that they grow up thinking
that everything is just as "normal" as everything else.
Don't take our word for it.
Take theirs.
In the academic journal Curriculum Inquiry,
"critical pedagogy" researcher Harper Keenan
and a drag queen organizer of events known as
"Lil Miss Hot Mess" collaborated on a paper
titled "Drag pedagogy: The playful practice of queer
imagination in early childhood."
The authors are completely plain concerning the goals
of Drag Queen Story Hour.
"Ultimately, we suggest that drag
pedagogy offers one model for learning not simply
about queer lives, but how to live queerly."
They note that drag is "implicitly transgressive"
that "While drag has some conventions, it
ultimately has no rules-- its defining quality
is often to break as many rules as possible!"
They note that drag "is all about bending and
breaking the rules," often,"turn[ing] rejection
into desire, transforming the labour of performance
into the pleasure of participation."
They tell us "Drag Queen Story Hours offers a queer
relationality with children that breaks from
the reproductive futurity of the normative classroom
and nuclear family."
In their conclusion, they point out that they "have
occasionally encountered critiques that [Drag Queen
Story Hour] is sanitizing the risqué nature of drag
in order to make it 'family friendly.' We do
not share this pessimistic view," noting, "it is less
a sanitizing force than it is a preparatory
introduction to alternate modes of kinship."
It's not an exaggeration or hyperbole: The War
Against Normal is coming for our children.
You might wonder--how could things get so far?
Well, a large part of the answer is that, to a great
extent, the attitudes and philosophies motivating
this are nothing new.
Ecclesiastes 1:9 says, "That which has been is
what will be, That which is done is what will be
done, And there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which it may be said,
'See, this is new'?
It has already been in ancient times before us."
Indeed, the attack on sexual barriers between
children and adults goes back to philosophers and
academics whose ideas helped lay the foundations
of today's Queer Theory.
In 1977, supposedly "enlightened" souls such
as Paul-Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, and
Jacques Derrida signed a petition to the French
government to allow adults to engage in "consensual"
sexual relations with children.
As reported in the Guardian, these
intellectuals demanded that French law "should
acknowledge the right of children and adolescents
to have relations with whomever they choose."
The same article reported on the positions of French
philosopher and author Tony Duvert of the 1970s,
who "praised 'the great adventure of paedophilia'
and raged at 'the fascism of mothers.'" According to
its English-language publisher MIT Press,
Duvert's 1976 book Diary of an Innocent ends with
"a fanciful yet rigorous construction of a reverse world
in which marginal sexualities have become the norm."
Isn't that increasingly the world we live in?
A "reverse world" in which the marginal has become the norm?
The world of no boundaries is not the world God intended.
We will take a look at that reality--the only
reality--in a moment.
First, let me give you one more opportunity to
request our free DVD, "A World Gone Mad."
This DVD is a no-holds-barred
explanation of why cities are seeing riots,
why schools are being transformed, and why
people all over the world are increasingly at each
other's throats--all illuminated by Bible prophecy,
the teachings of Jesus Christ, and the light of God's law.
Here is the information you need to get your free
copy of "A World Gone Mad."
And when we come back,
we'll examine what God thinks of the chaos that results
when nothing is "normal"--and what He will do about it.
♪
For today's free offer call...
Or go to...
This clear and straight-forward resource
will help you understand this vital truth--
straight from the pages of the Bible.
If you're calling for the first time, you will also
receive a free annual subscription to Tomorrow's
World magazine.
Six inspiring issues discussing news, science,
and modern culture will help you make sense of
your world from a biblical perspective.
Call today and join millions around the world
who are turning to Tomorrow's World for
truth, prophecy, and hope in these confusing times.
Call now!
Or go to...
♪
Welcome back.
We began by reading Jeremiah's comment to God,
"O LORD, I know the way of man is not in himself;
It is not in man who walks to direct his own steps."
But the very next verse gives us the key to
resolving the War Against Normal:
"O LORD, correct me, but with justice;
not in Your anger, lest You bring me to nothing."
God is the Creator of all reality.
It is His design, His law, and His will that defines
what is normal--or what should be, and what will
be in the world Christ will bring at His return.
Concerning sexuality, gender, and family,
God made it plain from the beginning.
Referring back to the Genesis account of creation,
Jesus taught about marriage. In Matthew 19, we read:
"Have you not read that He who made them at
the beginning 'made them male and female,'and said,
'for this reason a man shall leave his father and
mother and be joined to his wife, and the two
shall become one flesh'?
So then, they are no longer two but one flesh.
Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate."
In one fell swoop, Jesus definitely affirmed the
gender binary of man and woman, the biological
design of male and female, and the place of sex in
marriage between a husband and a wife.
While the War Against Normal seeks to abolish
any sort of boundaries, God seeks to establish
boundaries and to make them clear and firm.
In fact, the very first pages of Scripture
illuminate exactly how our Creator deals with
boundary-obliterating chaos-- and that is reestablishing
order and normalcy by reestablishing boundaries.
The opening pages of Genesis details chaos:
"The earth was without form, and void".
Now a world "without form and void"--without guiding
distinctions, shapes, and ideals--is exactly the
society today's social engineers seek to create.
The Creator brought order to that chaos by
establishing clear boundaries.
He separated light and darkness, the waters below
from those above, and the land from the seas.
He established a distinct boundary between animals
and humanity--humans are created beings, and yet
unique in bearing God's own image.
He organized humans into two sexes: male and female.
And upon ordering the world He had created,
God declared it "very good".
We enjoy the goodness of that ordered world today.
Eradicating all borders, boundaries, and
limitations does not produce a better world.
It only creates a more chaotic one--in which the
joys God designed go unrealized, and the sufferings He
intended to keep at bay become the new normal.
Still, let's be careful.
It's ironic that so much of the world is waging a
passionate war against normal, because Jesus
Christ Himself will fundamentally correct the
definition of what is normal when He establishes
a new world at His Second Coming.
Often, those who lament the War Against Normal
also fail to see that the traditions they see as
normal are tainted and broken in their own ways.
The Kingdom Jesus will establish will not look
like 1950s America, nor the Judea of Jesus' day.
Nostalgia for a better past is no substitute for
the full transformation called for in His Gospel,
and the life to which Christians are called
transcends what was ever lived throughout history.
To live God's way requires a complete change in
how we see ourselves, our relationships,
and our obligations.
And, frankly, no civilization has ever
fully gotten it right. As God tells us through Isaiah:
"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher
than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts."
After Jesus' return, the world will learn what
family, sexuality, relationships, and society
can be when we follow the original design and
intention of our Creator.
From the blessings that follow, mankind will
finally understand why no one should ever exchange
God's normal for anything less.
It is that time to come that we proclaim here on
Tomorrow's World.
If you want to begin seeking the power of
tomorrow's world in your own life, seeing through
the madness of today's world is a great start.
I hope you'll get today's free DVD,
"A World Gone Mad," and begin doing that.
And I hope you'll join us again next time.
When you do, Gerald Weston, Richard Ames, Rod
McNair, and I will be right here, ready to share
with you the teachings of Jesus Christ, the real
meaning of the Bible's end-time prophecies, and
the beautiful news of the Kingdom of God.
Until we see you again, take care.
♪
For today's free offer call...
Or go to...
Call today and join millions around the world
who are turning to Tomorrow's World for
truth, prophecy, and hope in these confusing times.
♪
The preceding program is produced by the
Living Church of God. 502 00:28:22,634 ♪