Have you noticed that in American culture today anything goes, that we can do what’s right in our own eyes because, well, we are gods?
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #219 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.
The New Testament verse John 5:6 quotes Jesus asking a question, “Do you want to be healed?” Now Jesus asks this of an invalid lying by the Jerusalem Pool of Bethesda, a lame man who’d suffered thirty-eight years, a man who wanted to be physically well or he would not have been lying near this pool, which people thought had healing powers.
But Jesus’ question went beyond the physical, asking the man to think about his spiritual condition, “Do you want to be healed?” The man apparently understood this, for after Jesus commanded him to pick up his bed and walk, which he immediately did, Jesus later found the man in the temple (Jn 5:14).
This is a question we could ask many people in our society. Do you want to be healed? Their attitudes and behaviors seem to indicate either they don’t want to be healed, or they are so confused they seek solace in debauchery and twisted religion.
Think about what we are witnessing today—abortion, sexual decadence and gender confusion, lawlessness, declining marriage and family structure, political polarization, racial animus, depression, anxiety, nihilism.
How is it that what was once unthinkable, became debatable and is now acceptable?
Transgenderism, or what some call trans insanity is one of these sad human tragedies. Laurie Higgins says it well: “The belief that gobbles up so much cultural time and space is the phantasmagorical and pernicious anti-science notion that men and women can become the sex they are not by the sheer power of their desire, makeup, hormone-doping, and some nips and tucks.
The dangers of this au courant metaphysical superstition are obvious to most Americans, and yet ‘trans’ activists and their collaborators somehow retain outsize cultural influence. Like the clout-chasing, infamy-sucking Dylan Mulvaney, female impersonator Nicholas (Nick) Contino, who now goes by his chosen transonym ‘Lilly’ is the most recent tranny to go viral with his social media victimhood posts.
The 32-year-old Contino…chose to invade multiple women’s restrooms at Disneyworld wearing women’s—sometimes young girl’s—clothing and Minnie Mouse ears, take selfies of his invasions, and post them on social media.
He goes to restaurants explicitly seeking to ‘normalize being a trans person in public,’ looking as creepy as drag queens do. He sets up his phone, knowing full well that normal people will respectfully address him as ‘sir,’ and then, like the cultural predator he is, Contino pounces on servers for speaking truth. At moments Contino feigns feeling hurt…and at other moments, he becomes hostile, berating his obsequious, apologetic servers.
Like other ‘trans’ cultists, Contino believes he has the absolute right to demand that others participate in his fiction. And like other ‘trans’-cultists, he believes everyone in the world has an ethical obligation to participate in his fiction. Therein lies yet more errors in his worldview.
He has a right to ask and even arrogantly demand that others refer to him as Ms., Mx. or she/her. But no one has an ethical or moral obligation to submit to his preposterous and unethical rhetorical demands. No one has a moral obligation to lie in service of Contino’s disordered superstition.
For those who believe rightly that Contino is a man and who believe lying is wrong, demanding they lie and violate their own convictions, which for many are religious convictions, is disrespectful.
‘Trans’-cultists argue ad nauseum that those who reject ‘trans’-cultic assumptions are denying the existence of “transgendered” people. No one denies that there exist people who, for diverse reasons, wish they were the sex they aren’t, or who believe they were ‘born in the wrong’ body, which is just another way of saying they wish they were the sex they aren’t.
What those who reject the ‘trans’ ideology deny is that objectively male persons can become female or vice versa. They reject Contino’s explicit claim that “transwomen” are women. They reject the claim that men who appropriate female fashions and pronouns, and who cosmetically alter their male bodies are, in reality, women.”
“If you believe people are transgender, you have fallen for a psychological operation wherein cultish ideologues invented a state of being that does not exist and then conflated it with same-sex attraction. They used words like love, diversity, and inclusion to hijack your mind and make you think you were unkind if you didn’t play along.
The actual unkindness is participating in any of this madness. We are living among one of the greatest mass delusions in mankind’s history, leading to millions of people believing they were ‘born in the wrong bodies’ — a statement so asinine and undefinable that it should have been laughed out of existence the moment it was first uttered.
Never use any of the language of the cult of gender. If you use false pronouns for a person, you are not nice. You are breathing life into a group psychosis.
There is male and there is female, and that is that. You get what you get, and you don’t get upset. If you want to help people struggling in a cult or with mental illness (or what some call sin), speak the truth.”
The cultural tide regarding transgenderism is finally turning, first with disallowing men to pose as women and compete in women’s athletics and now in terms of disallowing so-called “gender-affirming” care for minors. “A Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in June…showed that 53 percent of Americans support laws prohibiting ‘gender-affirming care’ for children. Only 28 percent opposed these laws. ‘Gender-affirming treatments’ involve prescribing hormone treatments and puberty blockers for minors. These treatments have been found to cause adverse effects on children — especially after they become adults. This is why many European nations have moved away from this treatment model.”
Another LGBTQ+ spectrum ideological insanity that’s been around awhile but is now back in the news is so-called "self-marriage"—sologamy, sometimes called autogamy, meaning marriage by a person to themself. That’s right, a person sets a date, schedules a ceremony with guests and cake, buys special clothes, and goes through the façade of a marriage while proclaiming love for themselves. “Celebrants commit themselves to idolatrous self-service and self-celebration.”
The self-marriage movement is utterly nonsensical, irrational, and absurd, not to mention a waste of time and money. What happens later when the person “falls out of love” with themselves or “grows apart” from themselves or “finds another soul mate” or “needs to be true to themselves,” all self-absorbed rationales used to justify divorce?
The bottom line on these degraded developments in American culture is our rejection of the authority of Scripture. While there have always been people who did not believe, for more than two hundred years the Bible was regarded as the basis of America’s Judeo-Christian moral consensus. This began to change in earnest in the 1960s, in public education, families, entertainment, politics.
It’s very basic, really. If you believe the Bible offers moral absolutes about life, then any debate or doubt can be settled by reference to the Scripture. What does the Bible say? If you no longer believe the Bible is inspired by God, infallible and inerrant, a moral compass for all of life—and you add to this there is no God or at least none that is involved in our lives—well, then, anything goes. Do what is right in your own eyes because there is no moral code, no sin, no negative outcomes, no one to whom you are accountable, no eternal punishment.
In terms of sexuality, if we want to believe men and women can change their biological sex, well, so be it. If we want to promote same sex “mirage,” then so be it. If we want to narcissistically exalt self and conduct a faux marriage to ourselves, then so be it.
There is no God, or wait, yes there is, we are gods.
Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. For more Christian commentary, see my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com, or check my YouTube channel @DrRexRogers.
And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2025
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