There’s a chill wind blowing in our cultural ethos.

It reminds me of those days when winter’s first breath slaps your face as bitter, freezing, and gusty winds sweep southward alerting you that shorter days, lower temperatures, flu season, and barren landscapes are on the way.

It seems like just yesterday, maybe ten years ago, when celebrities urged us to let people love who they wanted. What harm is it to you? It doesn’t impact you, they said.

It seems times are a changing.

The Democrat-controlled Michigan House of Representatives recently passed an “anti-hate speech” bill that, if enacted, would make it illegal for a person to make any individual “feel terrorized, frightened, or threatened.” The bill includes “sexual orientation” and “gender identity or expression” as protected classes. Violators, according to this new bill, will be charged with a felony. One conservative commentator observed that Michigan’s crackdown on “hate speech” is not “about actual crime but about policing thoughts, with the only evidence being if you hurt someone’s feelings.”  This sounds eerily like similar laws in Canada where minister’s have been charged for things they said from the pulpit.

And all they had to do was redefine “hate speech.”

Then there is the case of Dr. Johnson Varkey, a biology professor at St. Philip’s College in San Antonio Texas. Last Fall, Professor Varkey taught the fundamentals of the human reproductive system to his students.   Four students were offended and walked out of his class.  What did he teach that was so offensive?  On November 28, 2022, Dr. Johnson Varkey, as he has in the past, told his students that chromosomes determine male or female sex. He said in class that procreative sex, necessary for the propagation of the species, is between males and females.  During the same class, he also explained that when a sperm fertilizes an egg, it creates a zygote with 46 chromosomes.  He told his class, “If we allow that to continue, we have a beautiful baby,” adding that no information is added or removed after the zygote is formed. “That zygote is the beginning of life, not birth.”

In January 2023, this tenured faculty professor was fired. In Varkey’s termination letter, the college said he was fired for “religious preaching” in class, “misogynistic banter,” “anti-abortion rhetoric,” and “discriminatory comments about homosexuals and transgenders.”

So much for following the science.

Parental rights are feeling the chilling winds as well. The State of New Jersey is suing three of its school districts.  What sin have they committed? The State accuses these districts of discrimination.  Why? Because they require teachers to notify parents if their child requests to be treated as a different gender, be called different pronouns, or use a restroom that doesn’t correspond with the student’s actual sex. 

The State knows best.  How dare a parent want to know what is happening to their minor children?

It gets worse.

California Bill AB 957 would add “affirming” the sexual transition of a child to the State’s standard for parental responsibility and child welfare—making any parent who doesn’t affirm transgenderism for their child guilty of abuse under California State Law. California courts would be given complete authority under Section 3011 of California’s Family Code to remove a child from his or her parents’ home if parents disapprove of LGBTQ+ ideology. The bill is currently headed to the State Senate. While it is not a law yet, it reveals the extent to which the Left seek to intimidate parents into affirming their children’s identity.

And all they have to do is redefine the meaning of “child abuse.”

At an annual PRIDE march in New York City, some marchers chanted, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children.”  Some LGBTQ activists quickly dismissed any concern by saying they were just mocking a talking point from the Right. While other activists made it clear that they meant what they said.

Recently, Chief Diversity Officer Dr. Sherita H. Golden of Johns Hopkins University announced in their January 2024 newsletter that “privilege” was their “Diversity Word of the Month.”  The newsletter went on to list what is considered “privileged:” white people, able-bodied people, heterosexuals, cisgender people, males, Christians, middle- or owning-class people, middle-aged people and English-speaking people.  She later retracted the newsletter stating she did not mean to offend anyone.  But such declarations are becoming more commonplace in corporate America, usually insisting that such privileged groups need to shut-up.

This ideology may explain why Christians are increasingly being labeled as bigoted, hateful, and oppressive in an effort to intimidate them into silence. 

This arctic progressive wind has a chilling effect on parents’ rights, freedom of speech, and freedom of religion.

Lest you think these musings are but an overreaction from a thin-skinned believer, listen to these words from a report this month by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on the State of Religious Liberty in the United States.  Seeing increased attacks on houses of worship, the bishops proclaimed, “There is no greater threat to religious liberty than for one’s house of worship to become a place of danger, and the country sadly finds itself in a place where that danger is real.” Such attacks represent the “largest threat to religious liberty in 2024” and could threaten “the very lives of people of faith.”

But don’t worry, remember Hollywood told us years ago, there is nothing to fear.

Wind chill advisory!  Brrrr.