In Gratitude for Joe Biden

By Fr. Jerry Pokorsky ( bio - articles - email ) | Feb 26, 2021     

Sacraments, according to the Baltimore Catechism, are outward signs instituted by Christ to give grace. The Sacraments define and direct our lives. Our choices form us. When we choose to live a sacramental life, in a sense we become sacraments reflecting the Lord. But the contrary is also true.

In the Sacraments Jesus accompanies us throughout our lives: Baptism and birth, Confession and healing, the Eucharist and food, Confirmation and maturation. Marriage governs families and Holy Orders governs the Church. The Last Sacrament, the Anointing of the Sick, prepares us to enter through the narrow gate of death with God’s grace.

All creation has beautiful sacramental aspects. “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.” [Psalm 19:1] Psalm 104 is a poignant hymn describing how all living things clothe God with “honor and majesty.” Wherever we can see the handiwork of God, we see His image.

God created man in His image and likeness. Our response to His grace accentuates the Divine imprint. The saints in their goodness—Mary above all—reflect the holiness of God: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior….” [Luke 1:47]

But sin and evil, by analogy, are also formative and have their own “sacramental” aspects. Perhaps it is better to say, anti-sacramental characteristics. In the Gospels, we see various metaphors for sin. Leprosy is an outward sign of sin in general. Above all, the Cross is a terrible anti-sacrament of sin. But from the point of view of the Resurrection, it is the triumphant sign of final victory.

Just as holy people magnify the Lord, those spiritually deformed by the evil they commit become anti-sacraments of evil. Solomon in his splendor reflected the Lord’s wisdom. But when he took pride in God’s gifts, failing to attribute them to the Lord, he became an anti-sacrament of apostasy and his kingdom split apart.

Throughout our lives we walk the line, magnifying God’s holiness or reflecting sinful pride and rebellion. It is holy and good continually to seek the crown of sanctity. But a single seriously evil act—committed with sufficient freedom and informed consent—threatens our eternity. So it is presumptuous and dangerous to proclaim oneself as a devout Catholic or to encourage (or even allow) the description.

President Biden’s supporters repeatedly claim that he is a devout Catholic. In 2005, Biden himself protested those who questioned his Catholicism: “The next Republican that tells me I’m not religious I’m going to shove my rosary beads down their throat.” But the words of Jesus are foreboding: “Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” [Mt. 7:21] Biden’s habitual and unapologetic sinful acts are on full display.

In less than a month after his inauguration, he issued a statement celebrating the 48th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. He said he is “committed to codifying” the decision that legalized abortion. He promised he will be “appointing judges that respect foundational precedents like Roe.” He rescinded the pro-life Mexico City Policy, which ensured that foreign aid would not go to organizations that perform or refer for abortions.

Biden revoked the Trump administration’s ban on so-called gender transitioning in the military, allowing troops to serve based on their gender identity. He called on Congress to quickly pass the Equality Act, which would add sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Washington Post called Joe Biden a “president who has been called the most pro-transgender in history.”

Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra, like Biden is Catholic. But contrary to the moral law, he supports legislation that permits partial-birth abortion, forces every healthcare plan to pay for abortions, forces pro-life pregnancy centers to advertise abortions, forces the Little Sisters of the Poor to pay for contraception and abortion drugs, and allows assisted suicide.

For most of his political life—from his consistent pro-abortion record to his officiating at a gay wedding in 2016—despite his Catholic affiliation and public pious practices, Joe Biden has magnified and institutionalized countless major violations of the Ten Commandments. The hypocrisy rivals that of the chief priests and Pharisees and is worthy of the same condemnation. Indeed, Biden is the most aggressively anti-Catholic President in history.

Meanwhile, Catholic clergymen are in disarray. Some of the bishops have tried silence, presumably hoping to avoid greater scandal. Others use flattery, praising Biden for those of his policies that dovetail with USCCB politics, but do not bind the faithful in conscience. A few bishops have attempted praiseworthy polemical pushbacks.

But so far the bishops have not initiated a single disciplinary measure to protect the Catholic faith from scandal. On the contrary, several prominent bishops have declared Biden worthy of Catholic-in-good-standing status. The Georgetown Jesuits celebrate with elation his Mass attendance as President.

As perhaps the most powerful man in the world, Biden’s insistent claim that he is a devout Catholic forces an unavoidable choice. We either: stand with the Church and her sacraments and reject Biden’s iconic culture-of-death policies, or we join those who celebrate Biden’s flouting of Church teaching. In so doing, we will reveal whether we intend to magnify the Lord or magnify Biden’s immorality.

Some prominent bishops and cardinals have already declared themselves sheep of Biden’s flock. Others apparently hope to go unnoticed by their silence. But they are successors of St. Peter, St. Paul, and the other apostles, who were not silenced even when authorities threatened them with incarceration or martyrdom. (Of course, fear of crippling lawsuits likely explains a good deal of current episcopal paralysis.) So their continued silence is an anti-sacrament of cowardice and the spiritual treason of collaborating with the enemy.

The election of Biden has forced a crisis. From the ashes, we can expect the Holy Spirit to raise up successors to those who opposed another anti-Catholic tyrant: Saint John Fisher and Saint Thomas More. May there be many of them.

If only for the clarity this brings to the Church, we have Joe Biden to thank.

https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/in-gratitude-for-joe-biden/

Fr. Jerry Pokorsky is a priest of the Diocese of Arlington who has also served as a financial administrator in the Diocese of Lincoln. Trained in business and accounting, he also holds a Master of Divinity and a Master’s in moral theology. Father Pokorsky co-founded both CREDO and Adoremus, two organizations deeply engaged in authentic liturgical renewal. He writes regularly for a number of Catholic websites and magazines.  See full bio.

The Normalization of Delusional Thinking

William Kilpatrick

I sometimes wonder how so many people can be in denial about the danger posed by Islam to the rest of the world.

The textual, historical, and statistical evidence that Islam is an aggressive religion is overwhelming, but very few are willing to look at it. On the one side, you have a ton of hard evidence, and on the other side, you have ten megatons of wishful thinking: priests, prime ministers, and Hollywood celebrities assuring us that Islam is more peaceful than Christianity, more feminist than Gloria Steinem, and more caring than the Red Cross.

It’s the textbook definition of a delusion—“a false belief or wrong judgement held with conviction despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.” But, as I’ve come to realize, this delusional thinking is not specific to the crisis posed by Islam. Rather, it’s part of a larger pattern. In many ways, delusional thinking has become a main feature of the modern mind.

Take the transgender issue. All of a sudden, a significant percentage of our social and intellectual elites have succumbed to the delusion that a girl can be a boy, and a boy can be a girl, or whatever he, she, ne, ze, zir currently desires to be. This is not merely a rebellion against social convention, it’s a rebellion against reality. It’s a rejection of basic biology.

The most disturbing aspect of the “gender fluidity” fad is not that there are young and not-so- young (e.g. Bruce Jenner) people who are badly confused about their gender, but that there are legions of professionals—doctors, psychologists, teachers—who stand ready to confirm them in their delusion and even pump them full of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.

More sinister still, there are other authorities who want to punish those who fail to honor the delusion. The California Senate recently passed a bill to fine and even imprison nursing home workers who fail to address patients by their preferred pronoun. Meanwhile, the New York City Commission on Human Rights issued a “guidance” to business owners requiring them to use a person’s preferred pronoun or face a fine of $125,000 for “misgendering.”

In the old South there used to be laws against miscegenation, but nowadays in sophisticated, modern Manhattan, you can be fined for “misgendering.” Imagine that. If Max, the doorman, wants to be called “Maxine” today, you’d better go along with it, or else risk bankruptcy. And if on Thursday he decides he’s Maximilian I, the Emperor of Mexico, you’d be wise to address him as “your imperial majesty,” just to stay on the right side of the Human Rights Commission. In short, you are at the mercy of Max and his multiple identities.

There are several parallels here to what has become the standard response to Islam. As with transgenderism, we see an official denial of reality: Islamic terror has nothing to do with Islam, the terrorists (who are only a “handful”) “misunderstand” their faith, Islamic values are just the same as Christian values, and so on.

Likewise, just as you’re not allowed to call Bruce Jenner “he,” you’re not supposed to say “radical Islamic terror” or “migration invasion” or any other words that might be offensive to Muslims. If you slip up and use “Islamophobic” language, you can expect the same consequences that would follow if you called Maxine, “Max” on the wrong day of the week—namely, ostracism, job loss, and a heavy fine. Years before the New York City Human Rights Commission started policing transgressive words, columnist Mark Steyn was hauled before three Canadian human rights commissions for defamation of religion. His crime? In an article for Macleans, he noted the readily verifiable fact that Muslim birthrates in Europe were outstripping those of native Europeans.

Steyn is not alone. Dozens of prominent Europeans have faced similar trials, not because they said anything false about Islam, but because they made factual statements that Muslims found offensive. That sort of treatment sends a message, and most people have no trouble understanding the message. Whether the topic is Islam, or gender ideology, it’s not prudent to speak your mind. For example, although most adults realize that boys can’t be girls or vice versa, most are too cowed to say otherwise, except to trusted friends and relatives.

As Matthew Hanley observes in an incisive piece on the subject, such compelled speech is “degrading;” moreover, “making [others] agree to something they know is a lie is a hallmark of totalitarianism.” True enough, some people don’t know it’s a lie. They’ve been conditioned in school and college to believe that boys can be girls, that same-sex “marriage” is the equivalent of heterosexual marriage, and that Islam is responsible for most of history’s great cultural and scientific breakthroughs. The fact that these lies are believed by so many is testimony to the soft totalitarian takeover of our educational system.

The totalitarian creep has been going on for quite some time. I remember a university colleague who, back in the early nineties, excitedly told me that the big new thing in educational theory was “constructivism.” Actually, constructivism had already been the new thing in educational circles for at least a couple of decades prior to his personal revelation. It’s the idea that there are no objective truths, and hence each individual has to construct his own reality. According to this school of thought, Huckleberry Finn has no objective meaning, only the meaning you read into it. If you decide that Huckleberry Finn is a story about a transgendered adolescent seeking his true gender (your teachers will happily encourage you in that direction), then that’s the meaning of Huckleberry Finn. Whatever Mark Twain had in mind is irrelevant.

These as-you-like-it educational theories, arose in tandem with the self-esteem movement that began to sweep through schools, colleges, and seminaries in the 1960s and 70s. The self-esteem craze came out of the work of Carl Rogers, the pioneer of non-directive, non-judgmental therapy. Rogers taught that we should trust our inner selves, that morality is subjective, and that what’s right for you isn’t necessarily right for me. In his later years, as he developed an interest in Eastern thought, Rogers began to doubt the existence of objective reality. Reality, he came to believe, was something that each person created for himself.

Post-Rogers, the whole direction of education shifted—from exploring the world to exploring the self; from grappling with objective realities such as mathematics, history, and geography to discovering every nook and cranny of the subjective self. Non-directive education was the prelude to what we have now: in the case of gender ideology, the triumph of feelings over biological facts, and, in the case of Islam, the triumph of feel-good narratives over historical realities.

Another objective reality that came under attack during the self-esteem era was the existence of God, or, more accurately, the existence of the God who reveals himself in the Old and New Testaments—the God who make demands on the individual self. In his place, many substituted vague, New Age-ish forms of spirituality. Either that, or they began to conceive of God as a servant of their emotional needs—an all-understanding therapist in Heaven who just wants everyone to feel good about himself, herself, zeself, zirself.

The famous maxim attributed to Chesterton applies here: “The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything.” Once you lose sight of the central objective reality in the universe, it’s easy to lose sight of all the other realities, and you end up believing in anything—no matter how counter-factual the “anything” might be. You might believe that same-sex couples are truly married, you might believe that males can become females. You might even believe—heaven help you—that Islam is a religion of peace.

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2017/normalization-delusional-thinking

Girl Boy Scouts … and 71 Other “Gender” Options

Paul Kengor

The Boy Scouts of America has announced a major policy reversal, a rather dramatic shift in the foundational policy of the organization. It is now accepting girls as Boy Scouts. Yes, girl boy scouts. That is to say, the Boy Scouts of America is accepting “transgender boys”—girls who are biologically female but are declaring themselves “boys,” or, at least, are currently declaring themselves boys, for now, at the moment, for as long as they feel like wanting to be called boys.

These “transgender boys” will be permitted to proclaim their gender identity of preference on their application and thereby gain entry to Boy Scouts’ programs. Michael Surbaugh, the chief executive of the Scouts, explains that the policy change has been dictated by the “complex topic” of transgender identity.

Boy, I’ll say.

This latest Boy Scouts’ capitulation to our culture’s human-nature redefiners comes on the heels of other Boy Scouts’ white-flags-of-surrender, such as the organization accepting openly “gay boys” as members in 2013 and dropping its ban on openly homosexual scout leaders in 2015. The Boy Scouts should have learned then that when you cave to the secular left, even (seemingly) just once, the left keeps coming back. Let leftists whack you with a club once and they’ll keep beating you until you completely submit to their never-ending list of demands of compliance. The intolerant left is hellbent on remaking the Boy Scouts in its own image. Just as progressives have remade sexuality, marriage, family, and gender in their own image.

And so, now, girls—or, that is, girls who currently call themselves boys—can be Boy Scouts.

What to make of this? Let’s not pussyfoot around. Let’s call this what it is: cowardice and madness.

Today’s Boy Scouts organization has cravenly bowed to the mad dictatorship of relativism. The organization is suffering an obvious lack of virtue and common sense, not to mention faith, reason, and science. As to the latter, here’s a quick biology lesson:

A girl has 74 trillion X chromosomes in her body. Think about that. Try to wrap your mind around a number like that. Start cutting and stacking 74 trillion pieces of paper and see how far you get.

Thus, a seven-year-old girl who calls herself a boy does so despite the reality that she has 74 trillion X chromosomes vs. ZERO Y chromosomes. To repeat: ZERO Y chromosomes. Biological reality could not be more stacked against whatever she might be feeling. 74 trillion vs. zero are utterly enormous odds. You’ve heard the saying that every fiber in your body tells you something? Imagine every chromosome in your body telling you something. What they tell you is your gender. You don’t tell your body your gender; your body tells you your gender.

Yes, I understand that perverse political correctness and radical-leftist ideology has warped and disordered our culture, but secular liberalism cannot alter the absolute laws of nature. Call it that pesky Natural Law thing.

Do our schools no longer teach biology or math?

I’m sorry, but if a seven-year-old girl has 74 trillion X chromosomes, and not one Y chromosome, then she’s a girl. And someone in the Boy Scouts organization needs to man-up and tell her the truth. What happened to the Boy Scouts pledge of courage and honesty?

And despite my necessary bluntness, I say all of this with sympathy toward young people struggling with various such issues. (How about a little sympathy for the seven-year-old boys in the scout troop who will be very confused by this “transgender boy?”) I know three young people who have suddenly started questioning their gender, including one college-age young man close to our family. But biological reality is biological reality. Don’t try to fool with Mother Nature. You’re playing with fire, liberals.

And as for Catholics being duped into this, you’re playing with God, your Church, and your pope.

Pope Francis is a longtime adversary of gender theory, which he has candidly called “demonic” and compared to “the educational policies of Hitler.” Francis protests that the transgender movement seeks to erase the image of God in man. Indeed it does. From the very opening of Scripture, in Genesis, it is proclaimed that God “made them male and female,” which is reaffirmed and repeated by Jesus Christ himself in the New Testament (see both Mark 10:6 and Matthew 19:4). (Christ says this in affirming male-female marriage, incidentally.) God “created man in His own image,” says Genesis 1:27.

Francis thus understands the profundity of what progressive fundamental transformers are doing in messing with God’s image of man.

“We are living a moment of annihilation of man as image of God,” Francis told Polish bishops last summer in Krakow. And what is worse: “Today, in schools they are teaching this to children—to children!—that everyone can choose their gender.”

They sure are. It is another maniacal manifestation of the “ideological colonization” of the family, marriage, sexuality, and gender that Francis has denounced, an “ideological colonizing” (he notes) backed by “very influential countries.” “This is terrible,” he said.

As Francis shared these thoughts last spring, he related that he had recently discussed this gender claptrap with Pope Benedict: “Speaking with Pope Benedict, who is well, and has a clear mind, he was telling me: ‘Holiness, this is the epoch of sin against God the Creator.’ He’s intelligent! God created man and woman, God created the world this way, this way, this way, and we are doing the opposite.” Francis urged these bishops to reflect: “We must think about what Pope Benedict said—‘It’s the epoch of sin against God the Creator.’”

Pope Francis has addressed this many, many times. I could give numerous examples from off-the-cuff remarks he made in interviews to statements at formal Church gatherings to homilies to official Vatican letters. As to the latter, he addressed this several times in his apostolic exhortation, Amoris Laetitia, particularly section 285, where he wrote the following (twice citing himself in previous statements, including his encyclical letter, Laudato Si):

The young need to be helped to accept their own body as it was created, for “thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation…. An appreciation of our body as male or female is also necessary for our own self-awareness in an encounter with others different from ourselves. In this way we can joyfully accept the specific gifts of another man or woman, the work of God the Creator, and find mutual enrichment.” (Encyclical letter, Laudato Si, May 24, 2015) …. Sex education should help young people to accept their own bodies and to avoid the pretension “to cancel out sexual difference because one no longer knows how to deal with it.” (Catechesis, April15, 2015)

Indeed, because one no longer knows how to deal with it. A young person might be having questions or struggles about his feelings as a male or female, but trying to trick 74 trillion chromosomes, or even a few sexual parts, surely is going to be a tall task. Such is an enormous subjective battle against objective reality.

And that brings me in closing to an especially apt phrase of Francis’s predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI: if ever there was another clear-cut case of what Benedict unforgettably dubbed the dictatorship of relativism, this is it. Like their reinventions of marriage and sexuality, the leftist human-nature redefiners don’t seem to give much thought or a rip about the latest can of worms they’re opening. Like the inherent problem of the redefinition of marriage, once you try to kick down absolute standards for gender, you open the floodgates to all sorts of novel reconfigurations that even the most “open-minded” liberals will be uncomfortable endorsing.

In the case of gender, consider the ideological crazy-house that is New York City, where city employees now have the option of choosing from a minimum of 31 different gender identities. Not two gender choices, or even three, four, five, six, or 12, or 20, but 31.

In categorizing oneself, New York City employees are free to fluidly fluctuate among various male-female combinations and derivations. It’s a fascinating thing. You cannot merely change your gender identity once or twice or a handful of times, but you can keep changing it over and over, daily if you’d like, or even hourly—and the government will legally support you in your whims and fancies. The selections include not just “transgender”—which is merely the breach in the dam—but “pangender” and a myriad of other possibilities ranging from “androgynous” and “agender third sex” to “drag queen,” “drag king,” “femme queen,” “Butch,” “MTF,” “FTM, “Hijra,” and (among many others) the particularly convenient “gender fluid,” which is more elastic than the more limiting (presumably) “gender bender” option. There is also the PC-esque choice, “Person of Transgender Experience.”

Also listed by these high-minded New Yorkers is the “two-spirit” gender option, which was spearheaded by the pioneering “gay” communist, Harry Hay.

In responding to this lunacy, a city official confirmed to The Daily Caller that the panoply of gender identities are all protected by the city’s anti-discrimination laws, and added that the current list posted online is “not exhaustive.”

Indeed, why would it be exhaustive? How could it be? Like progressivism, transgenderism is in a state of constant evolution. There will be new forms tomorrow, rest assured. New York’s merry liberals are generously allowing lots of room for yet new gender forms that a person is apparently free to create for himself, herself, or (better) oneself.

As for New York-based businesses that do not accommodate the “gender” choice, they risk six-figure fines under rules established by the city’s Commission on Human Rights. No surprise there. In fact, if you dare not refer to a transgender person by his or her preferred pronoun, regardless of their vast XX or XY chromosomal reality, there are a bunch of angry New York progressives who would fine you and shut you down—in the name of “tolerance” and “diversity,” of course.

For the record, not among the 31 options in New York is “dragon lady,” which is the gender choice of 55-year-old Richard Hernandez, a transgender banker who has had his ears and nose removed in order to become a new gender species altogether. Hernandez now identifies as “Eva Tiamat Baphomet Medusa,” a name taken from a video-game character, and wishes to be referred to as an “it.”

But even then, all of this is limiting, is it not, liberals?

Consider that Facebook lists more options than New York City does, and even those generous options remain (inevitably) in a constant state of flux. Facebook has at various times in the last two years listed 51gender options, 53, 56, 58, and 71. The list, too, is fluid. Of course, it is. How couldn’t it be?

What a farce. Who died and made Facebook God?

I ask liberals in all seriousness, and I want an answer: which gender options among the lists of 51, 53, 56, 58, or 71 are invalid? Which are illegitimate? Tell us, dear pioneering progressive—which, if any, of these would you rule out? How do you arbitrate acceptable choices? Please, help us, just as you’ve helped so many of these multi-gendered persons.

Will you say? Can you say? Who’s to say, eh?

The answer, of course, is that the logical (or illogical) assumptions of secular liberalism/progressivism inevitably lead to an endless possibility of identities. And dare I say that liberals will not be comfortable with some of those identities. But too bad, liberals—reject the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God and this is what you get.

And that is to say: this is another insane consequence of your dictatorship of relativism, liberals. And so is the idea of girl boy scouts.

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2017/girl-boy-scouts-71-gender-options

Journey to manhood: a former ‘transsexual’ tells his story | LifeSiteNews.com

he lived as a woman for 8 years

Journey to manhood: a former ‘transsexual’ tells his story | LifeSiteNews.com

BY PETER BAKLINSKI

CARLSBAD, California, November 3, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Walt Heyer was a little boy growing up in California in the mid 1940s, interested in cowboys, cars and steel guitars when one day, his grandmother fancied that he wanted to be a girl. She naively made for him a purple chiffon evening dress that he would wear when he visited her.

According to Walt, donning that purple chiffon dress triggered something that put him on a 35 year long path that led through a dark valley of “torment, disillusionment, regret, and sorrow.” His gender identity confusion led him into alcoholism, drug addiction, and attempted suicide.

Ultimately, Walt would resort to vaginoplasty “gender reassignment surgery” to make himself appear like a woman, something that he came deeply to regret and that he now counsels gender confused individuals to steer clear of. “He (God) had made me a man, the way I was, and no knife was ever going to change that,” Walt told LifeSiteNews.com in a recent interview.

Ashamed of Being Male

In his 2006 book, “Trading my Sorrows,”  Walt recounts that the purple dress was only the first of many influences in his life that made him ashamed of being male. There was the sexual molestation he suffered at the hands of his uncle that he says made him feel ashamed of his genitals. There was the severe discipline from his father—practically indistinguishable from physical abuse, he says—that made him feel incapable of being the boy his father wanted him to be.

Walt remembers never feeling good enough for his parents, never being able to please them, and never receiving the affirmation that he greatly desired.

“What I desperately wanted was affirmation from my parents for what I excelled in, and to find my own niche where I could express myself, develop my talents and do something I enjoyed,” explained Walt in his book.

The little boy who had no self-esteem began to despise himself and his body. Walt began to find consolation dressing as a girl, and keeping it secret from his parents. Dressing as a girl became his hiding place where he felt safe from the painful conflicts and discipline dispensed by his father and mother.

The Woman Tyrant Inside

As Walt moved through adolescence, he says the girl inside his head grew more powerful and demanded more of his time. Despite the fact that Walt enjoyed eye-catching cars and dated attractive girls from his high school, no matter how hard he tried, he could not drive away the obsession to become a female. After high school, Walt moved out of his parents’ house so that he could enjoy cross-dressing in the privacy of his own home. By now he had amassed a number of female outfits but he was still deeply ashamed of his secret habit.

Walt ultimately married, became rich, and from all outside appearances, was living the American dream. He kept his continuing escapades into the world of the female a secret.

Walt says he was living three distinct lives of “successful, hard-drinking businessman, picture-perfect loving father and husband, and twisted transvestite.” On the inside however, Walt experienced fragmentation and disillusionment. Everything in his life began to unravel.

He turned to alcohol as a coping mechanism, but this only increased his desire to become a woman. He says he allowed the girl inside his head to express ‘herself’ more and more as he desperately grasped for moments of relief from life’s raging sea of pain and trouble.

Ultimately, Walt pinned his hopes on sex surgery as the solution that would make his pain go away permanently.

The Surgery

First came the large breasts, implanted by plastic surgery. Then came the procedure that Walt regrets the most, the surgical transformation of his male reproductive organ into the appearance of a female reproductive organ.

Walt had hoped that the procedure would alleviate his “debilitating psychological distress” and that it would stop, once and for all, the conflict that had tormented him since childhood. But to his dismay, rearranging his private parts and changing his appearance did not effect the corresponding change on the inside.

After the surgery Walt’s mind became a battleground of conflicting thoughts and desires that he could only describe as “aggravating, distressing, depressing, discordant, distorted, [and] unpredictable.”

Every day after the surgery, it became clearer to Walt that he had made a “huge mistake.” His addiction to cocaine and alcohol, in an attempt to numb the emotional pain, only increased his misery, depression, and loneliness.

Walt now knew that the surgeon’s knife and resulting amputation had not changed him from a man into a woman. He realized that the surgery was a “complete fraud.” He felt that he had no choice but to live life as a surgical woman, an “impostor.”

Suicide attempt

At this point, he hit rock bottom. The surgery had destroyed Walt’s identity, his family, his social circle, and his career. He felt that there was nothing left for him but to die. Walt, who went by the name Laura Jensen, tried to hurl himself from a rooftop, but was stopped by a passerby.

Homeless and penniless, the broken “transsexual” would have ended up living on the street had not a good Samaritan given him a place to sleep in a garage. This new friend encouraged Walt to attend Alcoholics Anonymous where he realized that he needed to tap into a “higher power” if he was to come out on top of the mess he had gotten himself into.

Walt began to realize more and more that he truly was a man, but one that was wrapped in a “woman’s masquerade.”

“I was well aware that I was now on the scrapheap of humanity, a thrown-away life, distorted by my own choices. Alcohol, drugs, and surgery had rendered me useless to anyone. I had failed miserably as the man God had created me to be.”

Out of the Valley of Darkness

Through the help of some newly discovered Christian friends, Walt began a journey towards healing and the discovery of his true identity as a man. Walt realized that the key to winning the battle that raged inside of him was sobriety. His mantra became: “Stay sober—no matter what—stay sober.” He put away the bottle and turned to Jesus as a new-found source of strength.

Once, during a time of prayer with his Christian psychologist, Walt says he spiritually experienced the Lord, all dressed in white, who approached him with his arms outstretched, scooped him up and said, “You are now safe with me forever.” It was at this moment that Walt knew that he would find the healing and peace that he so greatly desired in Jesus.

Walt told LifeSiteNews in an interview that those who are struggling with their identity as a man or woman and think sex surgery is the solution “need to go to a psychologist or psychiatrist and get into therapy and dig down deep to find out what is causing this desire, because there is some underlying psychological or some psychiatric issue that is unresolved that needs to be explored—whether it was sexual abuse, whether it was physical abuse, [or] whether it was modelling.”

“It may take a year to explore the deep issues that are going on and then, when you do that, you can bring the person to a point where they can begin to understand their gender and begin to accept their gender and want to live out the gender that God gave them.”

As a now old man, Walt believes that if he could go back in time and say a few meaningful words to himself as a younger man, he would tell that younger man to avoid the sex surgery, and to discover the root cause behind the desire for surgery.

Walt believes that his story witnesses to the power of hope, that one must never give up on somebody, no matter how many times he or she fails or how many twists and turns there are on the road to recovery. Above all else, says Walt, one must never “underestimate the healing power of prayer and love in the hands of the Lord.”

Contact Walt Heyer
E-mail: waltsbook@yahoo.com