by Jennifer Davis –
As a parent of an Orthodox Christian teenager and frequent counselor of other Christian teens, it’s encouraging to see Christian women like Isabella Chow take a courageous stand against the LGBT tyranny so prevalent in our time. Chow refused to bow down to aggressive LGBT tactics meant to silence her voice and force her to resign for refusing to endorse the LGBT agenda.
“To the surprise of exactly no one who pays attention to the totalitarianism of the LGBT movement, and of diversity culture in general, it is no longer enough to dissent from public orthodoxy. You must affirm it — or be destroyed,” remarks Rod Dreher, the Orthodox Christian senior editor of The American Conservative, regarding the unjustified attack of the LGBT fanatics on Isabella Chow.
LGBT lobby is now pressing for the suppression of dissent
Isabella Chow is learning that she cannot even withhold her approval of an initiative that violates her moral principles and Christian religious beliefs. The LGBT police demands compliance. Chow’s disapproval cannot be tolerated. She must endorse and affirm the LGBT ideology or stand condemned of “bigotry” and “hatred.”
The UC Berkeley travesty is more evidence that the anti-Christian culture war in our society is intensifying. “Having victory in the media, in medicine and psychiatry, in the law courts, and on the secular campuses, the LGBT lobby is now pressing for the suppression of dissent,” warned Fr. Josiah Trenham back in 2017. LGBT activists are getting bolder and more belligerent. They increasingly attack conservative Christians’ free speech and religious beliefs as “hateful” and “intolerant.” LGBT tyrants across most cultural and educational institutions progressively seek to silence all dissenting opinions that disagree with or don’t acquiesce with the pro-LGBT ideology.
As Rod Dreher cautions us, “UC Berkeley is a major public university, in the most populous state in America. This is not a minor thing. This is what I mean when I tell you that American life under late liberalism is becoming more and more totalitarian. If you are a Christian, or any kind of religious conservative, and you are not preparing yourself and your children to hold on to your, and their, faith, and indeed their sanity, in this new world, you are failing to read the signs of the times.”
She’s showing us how to stand up to LGBT tyranny.
There’s an important lesson all Christians can learn from Isabella Chow’s principled and uncompromising stand. She’s showing us how Christians must bear witness to the truth in the public arena. She’s showing us what real courage looks like. She’s showing us how to have a spine of steel. She’s showing us how to stand up to LGBT tyranny. She’s showing us how to peacefully fight back against the darkness of this age. I pray to have just as us much courage and conviction as she did when the LGBT fanatics come knocking or my employer threatens to fire me unless I embrace the LGBT ideology.
Berkeley student senator disavowed over Christian beliefs responds to calls to Resign
by Celine Ryan – 11/9/2018 – CampusReform.org
- The UC-Berkeley student senator who was disavowed by her own party over her conservative Christian beliefs is refusing to back down, despite calls for her to resign.
- In an interview with Campus Reform, Chow said there’s a Christian community counting on her and that, “if I don’t represent their views, who else will?”
A University of California-Berkeley student senator is facing calls to resign after expressing her traditional Christian views.
Isabella Chow is an elected student senator who represents the Associated Students of the University of California party Student Action. But after choosing to abstain from voting on a resolution to oppose the recent Title IX changes proposed by President Donald Trump, Chow’s own party disavowed her.
The proposed Title IX changes lack a legal definition of gender, effectively limiting “gender identity” to one’s physical sex, according to the Wall Street Journal. The resolution before the Berkeley student government was a statement of opposition to these proposed changes, intended to display solidarity with members of the LGBT community, specifically “transgender, intersex, nonbinary and gender nonconforming students,” as reported by the independent student newspaper the Daily Californian.
Chow, who says she “campaigned very clearly as the candidate who would represent the Christian community” chose not to vote for the bill, stating that she could not do so “without compromising [her] values and [her] responsibility to the community that elected [her] to represent them.”
During an interview with Campus Reform, Chow said that she was “unprepared” for the reaction that she received after being disavowed by her own party.
“I didn’t expect the backlash and misunderstanding to be so swift,” Chow said, adding that she believes said misunderstanding is one that comes from “a difficulty to reconcile how the traditional Christian worldview can espouse love and validity for all individuals and yet disagree with certain identities or choices.”
“At the end of the day, it’s a belief in objective truth,” Chow explained.
Despite the fact that students are now rallying and displaying banners that read “Senator Chow Resign Now,” she says she views the events of the past week positively because they have sparked a dialogue within the Christian community at Berkeley surrounding LGBT issues.
“As a Christian, I believe that God redeems and he uses all situations for the good of those who love Him. There is so much happening, and even though it’s been a really, really rough week for me, I know that God is working and I know that he is using this to strengthen the church, to awaken the church in a sense,” Chow told Campus Reform.
Chow said if nothing else, she wants the controversy to further inspire dialogue within the Church.
“I want the church to be able to dialogue even more about where we stand on this theologically,” she said, going on to acknowledge that there is a diversity of opinion amongst Christians about how to treat these issues. “I think that it’s time for the church to stop being silent. And it’s time for the church to start speaking up, and to back our words with actions that really reflect the love and the truth of Jesus.”
“I want to stand by my comments on last Wednesday when I said that my God is a God that loves. No matter how I’m treated, no matter how my community is treated, we want to be able to love unconditionally in a Christlike manner and to respond in a Christlike manner,” she added.
Chow told Campus Reform that she has no intention of resigning, citing the importance of representing her Christian constituents. “There’s a Christian community and campus that has been praying for me and encouraging me throughout all this. And if I don’t represent their views, who else will?”
In her original statement to student government, Chow prefaced her choice to abstain by stating “My God is one who assigns an immeasurable value to and desires to love each and every human being. In God’s eyes and therefore my own, every one of you here today and in the LGBTQ+ community as a whole is significant, valid, wanted, and loved – even if and when our views differ.”
The Daily Californian refused to publish an op-ed written by Chow explaining her decision. The publication rejected her submission on the basis that it “reinforces” her original statement, which they claimed, “utilized rhetoric that is homophobic and transphobic by the Daily Cal’s standards.”
Chow asked how she could edit her piece in order to comply with the publication’s standards but was told that because of its content “the submission as a whole doesn’t meet the newspaper’s editorial standards.”
The paper cited a blurb on its website in its rejection email to Chow: “Op-eds that are deemed libelous, racist, sexist, homophobic, or highly offensive in any other manner will not print.”
Additional information from the Rod Dreher post.
Ask Isabella Chow. She’s a student senator at UC Berkeley. Recently a bill came before the Senate that would put the body on record supporting transgender rights. The resolution was entirely symbolic. Here’s what happened next:
Senator Isabella Chow, 20, abstained.
Reading a five-paragraph statement explaining her decision, Chow told her 18 fellow senators, who all voted for the bill (another was absent), that discrimination “is never, ever OK.” She condemned bullies and bigots. She said she abhorred stereotypes. And she called the LGBTQ+ community valid and loved.
“That said,” Chow continued, voting for the bill would compromise her values and force her to promote groups and identities she disagreed with.
“As a Christian, I personally do believe that certain acts and lifestyles conflict with what is good, right and true,” she said. “I believe that God created male and female at the beginning of time, and designed sex for marriage between one man and one woman. For me, to love another person does not mean that I silently concur when, at the bottom of my heart, I do not believe that your choices are right or the best for you as an individual.”
How is she doing now?
Why are those opposing her so afraid? Their own intolerance reminds me of that of European Fascists and the Red Guards during the so-called Cultural Revolution in China. In fact, this sort of intolerance has never been gone for very long. It arises in those that want control over others. We’ve seen it recently among ISIS militants and terrorists in other places, such as Northern Nigeria and Myanmar
It might be useful for folks to read what the Eastern Orthodox Church has to say about the passions and the virtues. Today’s intolerant people have caved in to the passion for controlling other people.