Crosstalk: February 5, 2019

Karen Mueller (Mule-er) is a Christian Attorney in Wisconsin. She’s a wife, mother and grandmother who is active politically, legislatively and legally. Her main practice areas involve: sanctity of life issues, religious freedom, freedom of speech, right of conscience and other civil and constitutional rights as they extend into the work place or the world in general. Karen sits on the Wisconsin State Bar’s Civil Rights Section Executive Board and has formerly run for Congress. She is also a commentator, writer and speaker.

Karen began by noting that we’re seeing ‘drag queen’ appearances (See Crosstalk—1/31 concerning a ‘drag queen’ library appearance for children) popping up all over the nation. She’s surprised that parents are bringing their children to such events but that normalization is the goal and that’s a form of indoctrination. The result has included bans on conversion therapy which she believes are blatantly unconstitutional, chilling free speech across America at various levels.

Not only are we seeing ‘drag queen’ story hours at libraries, but school systems are adopting sex education for K-12 students. These efforts emphasize transgenderism and homosexuality. She does not believe that this is the place for children as young as 5 to be learning about such behaviors.

She presented an example from Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and their ordinance to define reparative or conversion therapy. It means any practice or treatment offered or rendered to consumers for a fee, including psychological counseling that seeks to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expression.

On the other hand, if you want to inform a child from a biblical perspective that God created one man and one woman and that there’s only two sexes, or even approach this from the biological perspective and say the same thing, you’ll be subject to a fine of up to $1,000 in Eau Claire (As long as you are a counselor that charges a fee).

Karen indicated that studies are showing that if you leave a gender confused child alone and don’t encourage them to change genders, 80-90% of them will reconcile to their natal gender. She also noted that along the way, such children need compassion, love and support. What they don’t need is adults encouraging them to take harmful hormones as these are things where we don’t understand what the long term ramifications are.

In researching an article on this topic, she found that the federal government is playing a large role in this. It’s the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration which comes under Health and Human Services. In 2015 they published a pamphlet called ‘Ending Conversion Therapy and Supporting and Affirming LGBT Youth’. Karen believes this means the federal government is involved in the silencing of Christian or conservative counselors and pastors, a First Amendment violation.

There’s so much more to take in on this topic, including input from Crosstalk listeners and how you can become involved.