Gender Mainstreaming

Gabriele Kuby, born in 1944, mother of three children, holds a degree in Sociology. In 1997 she converted to the Catholic faith. As writer and lecturer she points to the dead ends of our society and the need to return to Christian values. After her bestseller My Path to Mary? The Power of Living Faith she became known for her criticism of Harry Potter and Gender Mainstreaming (translation into several languages). She believes that the sexualization of society produces the need for abortion and is the root of the destruction of the family.

Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil, who change darkness into light, and light into darkness, who change bitter into sweet, and sweet into bitter! (Isaiah 5.20)

A spectre is haunting the world, the spectre of gender. Hardly anyone knows this concept, although it is extremely powerful and has extended its influence over international and national institutions. The gender ideology is in the process of creating a new man, whose freedom should include the choice of his sex and sexual orientation. This means to arbitrarily decide whether he or she wants to be man or woman, heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual or transsexual (GLBT). This view of freedom and sexuality, according to the will of the UN, EU and most European governments is to be imprinted onto the minds of children from the nursery onwards.

Since 1999, gender mainstreaming is Leitprinzip (the guiding principle) and Querschnittsaufgabe (the task for every government ministry) of German politics. On the homepage of the Ministry of Science it is written: "The Federal Government has established an equal opportunities policy based on the political strategy of gender mainstreaming as a universal guiding principle and horizontal task." The Federal Government is thus participating in world-wide activities aimed at the more effective implementation of an equal opportunities policy.¹

The facade of this new ideology is equality between men and women. More equality leads allegedly to greater justice. It is never questioned whether enforcing equality between that which is not equal can contribute to solving the enormous challenges of the future. Behind the facade lurks the general attack on the moral standards to which we owe the Western culture. Without it, neither the family nor Christianity can survive.

Until the 70’s, gender was a term to distinguish the grammatical gender of a word. The term was used by radical feminists, who usually belong to the international gay and lesbian organizations to propagate the idea that "gender" has nothing to do with biological sex. According to them there are not two sexes, but six or more, depending on sexual preference. The Gender choices are to become mainstream by government action, that is the unquestioned Zeitgeist.

The gender perspective recognizes no essential or innate differences between men and women, although each cell of the human body is male or female. It represses and ignores the results of brain research, medicine, psychology and sociology, which prove the different identities of men and women in their brain structure, hormonal balance, and psychological structure and social behavior.

Cultural Revolution

At German universities, there are currently 29 Institutes for Gender Studies, a booming market with considerable growth. Gender research is well established in the humanistic departments and is expanding over department boundaries. The goal is the abolition of the "patriarchal and hetero-normative" teaching contents. Students confirm that the appropriation of gender perspective has become relevant for succeeding in exams and making a career. In addition to the academic institutes, there are countless counselling institutions, funded by individual states or the EU, that are in the process of "gendering" all kinds of organizations.

Since the mentality of adults is not easy to change regarding forms of sexuality, which until recently were legally and socially sanctioned, the whole brunt of this cultural revolution is directed towards the next generation, to children and adolescents.

Some recent examples: In 2008 Brazil officially introduced "sexual diversity" as a school subject in public schools for grades one to nine. The socialist president Luiz Lula da Silva called "homophobia" the most perverse disease that has ever attacked the human mind.⁵

In Vienna the childcare-association "Fun & Care" practices gender-sensitive education with infants and teaches them "gender-appropriate language." Boys will receive a basket of cosmetics and princess dresses, while girls are encouraged to scream and take part in physical violence.

In Berlin "Dissens e.V.", founded in 1989, aims for "gender democracy," particularly through the intentional destruction of male identity in boys.

After sexual assaults by children on children in a Bavarian kindergarten, a leading representative of Caritas informed worried parents that children have a right to sexuality, masturbation and playing doctor. Trying out sexual intercourse would be normal and should be allowed.

The Bundeszentrale für gesundheitliche Aufklärung (Federal Centre for Health Education), affiliated to the Ministry of the Family, sent out 650,000 copies of a "Guide for Parents on Child Sex Education" in which parents were invited to sexual stimulation of their infants. The Family Minister had to retrieve the brochures in July 2007, because of media pressure due to publications of the author.

That is no reason to be at ease: In all sex education writings of the Federal Center for Health Education (BzgA) children are seduced with words and pictures to early sexual activity and homosexuality, which is consistently presented as an equal and positive alternative to heterosexuality. It pushes the question: How is it possible that such a revolutionary ideology can take hold, when most people instinctively recognize it as false? We know that we are either a man or a woman.

We know and feel that the opposite sex is essentially different and therefore attractive. Love is the only key to the foreign country of the opposite sex.

Yet the new message is: Sex differentiation is a social artifact, designed to oppress women. Women must become men! Men must become women! Or anything in between. This is your right.

How is it possible that homosexual conduct, which every religion rejects, and until a few decades ago was punishable in Western societies, is now encouraged, even aggressively promoted, in schools, to children? Are there really any parents who rejoice when their children are homosexual? What is the contribution of homosexuality to the public interest and the future, especially in times of epic demographic crisis?

How could this happen?

The attack on the sexual identity of a man and woman has a philosophical background: relativism. According to relativism, there is no truth, because reality arises only through subjective perception. Contemporary philosophers think that they can throw natural law and metaphysics on the scrap heap of history. Instead, only "the human quest for happiness, lust or love" applies. Their credo is: "Pleasure is good," as we can read in the College of Practical Philosophy.

If there is no way to recognize truth, and from truth to judge what is good or evil, then all talk about "values" means nothing. If someone speaks of values he implies that his goal is what is good, assuming that there is an agreement about what is good. But this is not the case, because there is no longer a consensus about the nature of man (nor about what is good). On the bases of which values can man decide what is good? If it is reprehensible to derive absolute values from reason, from natural law or from divine revelation, then the values of a society can only be enforced by power. Therefore, relativism leads necessarily to a regime where values are dictated.

In his sermon at the opening of the conclave on April 18, 2005, Cardinal Ratzinger said: "A dictatorship of relativism is about to be created, which recognizes nothing as final and accepts as criteria only one’s own ego and its desires."

For Christians, truth has a face and a name: Jesus Christ. He does not say, "Live according to my values," but, rather, "If you love me you will keep my commandments." (Jn 14.15) With the denial of the possibility of recognizing truth and of deriving a criteria for good and evil from it, all doors are open to ideologies. Ideology in its various manifestations left an appalling trail of blood through the previous century. Be it fascism or communism, they both denied God and persecuted those who believe in God. But first they blinded and seduced the people with promises of equality and justice.

Roots of gender mainstreaming

The root of gender mainstreaming is in Marxist soil. Marx and Engels formulated the utopia of a classless society, which seeks equality for all people. The new totalitarianism operates with the old socialist bait of "equality," to which people are always vulnerable, because ever since Cain, envy continues to flow in human veins. And yet, we know we are not "equal." Of course, each and every person has equal worth in the ultimate sense, as children of God our Father, but we are not all the same. And the social revolutionaries invariably reduce the meaning of equality to sameness, forgetting in the process that uniformity destroys our humanity, whose essence is uniqueness.

Like previous utopian projects, gender mainstreaming tries to create a "new man," this time on a deeper level than ever before. The program was already formulated by Friedrich Engels in the 19th century: "The first social conflict, which occurs in history, coincides with the development of the antagonism between husband and wife in the monogamous marriage and the first social oppression with the oppression of women by the male sex."

To abolish the alleged class conflict between husband and wife, therefore, the family must be destroyed. The most influential feminist of the last century, Simone de Beauvoir, called on woman to escape from "the slavery of motherhood" and heralded the gender revolution with her famous phrase, "One is not born a woman, one becomes a woman."

The intellectual fathers of the student rebellion of 1968, Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Wilhelm Reich, flanked this battle cry with the theoretical dethroning of the "authoritarian family" and the legitimation and practical agitation for the dissolution of Judeo-Christian sexual morality in favor of a so-called "sexual liberation."

Now, little more than a generation later, we see the effects: Gender mainstreaming has led us to the edge of absurdity. The main ideologist, Judith Butler, professor at the University of California and the European University for Interdisciplinary Studies in Switzerland, is a member of the leadership of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. She declares "biological sex" as a "normative fantasy" which is imposed by the "regime of heterosexual hegemony."

Once the biological sexual identity of men and women has been destroyed, nothing can prevent the deconstruction of social roles and institutions. Because no sector of society is free from the influences of bipolar sexuality, all areas of social life are targeted for deconstruction: marriage, family, fatherhood, motherhood, education, language, work, culture, religion. This is called "undoing gender." The graduates of the University Institute for Gender Studies have much to do and they are indeed doing a lot.

On the 3rd of September 2008 the European Parliament enacted, with 504 against 110 votes, a "resolution on the impact of marketing and advertising to promote equality between women and men" (A6-0199/2008). The EU parliament wants to ban by law so called "sexual stereotyped images" from advertising, from text books, video and computer games and the Internet, "starting in the early years of the socialization of children" – in other words, no woman at the stove, but instead a man; no man at the helm, but instead a woman. First the language was changed, now the pictures.

The EU parliament feels entitled to break the innermost core of the culture, namely the different identities of men and women. Here are iconoclasts at work. What will be left of art and culture when the drama of the attraction of the sexes is eliminated? People who state that sexual polarity is given by nature, or even believe that human beings are created by God as man and woman, are considered Christian "fundamentalists" who must be rendered irrelevant and powerless.

With the same strategic enforcement, the members of the European Parliament could have decided to clean our culture of the toxic waste of pornographic and violent images. On the internet, 35% of all downloads are pornography; porn sales worldwide are about 57 billion U.S. dollars each year. This is the quagmire in which the gender ideology is flowering. This is the reason why there is almost no resistance.

Why do women not see that their freedom to be wives and mothers is about to be mercilessly strangled? Why do men not understand that the raging battle of the sexes is seeking to take away their male power and identity – a battle which has won considerable territory such as the tangible discrimination against boys in education? (see Spiegel online 25.08.08)

Totalitarianism in new clothing

Ideology – by which I mean false thinking in the service of the interests of a minority, veiling these interests at the same time – destroys healthy social structures and leads to totalitarianism.

A crucial role is played by the European Court of Human Rights. The former federal president of Germany, Roman Herzog, warned about the erosion of national sovereignty and democracy, because the decisions of the ECJ automatically eliminate national law. The ECJ is a power center of the gender agenda.

Resistance against the homosexualization of society is met by slander, loss of influence and professional exclusion. The overthrow of the designated Interior Commissioner of the EU, Rocco Buttiglione, in 2004, was the most spectacular case. Freedom of expression no longer exists.

A new pejorative term becomes a judicial fact, criminalizing the resistance: homophobia. The term turns reality upside down. In reality, a phobia is a pathological state of fear. "Homophobia" implies that those who base their beliefs and practises on natural law and the morals common to all healthy societies are pathological. Those who maintain that sexuality serves the well-being of individuals, families and society, if it is the expression of conjugal love of man and woman and open to procreation, are now considered by a dominant elite to be ill, in fact dangerous, and thus in need of silencing (or worse) by all the force at the law's disposal.

In the documents of the EU "homophobia" is put in the same category as racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia in order to criminalize it. Anti-discrimination laws and "hate laws" already exist in several countries, and a battle wages for their worldwide enforcement. Any utterance against homosexuality, whether in scientific research or biblical quotations, is interpreted as hatred. With this lie, a widespread emotional condition is created in the general populace, rendering them more passive to the criminalizing of resistance against the homosexualization of society.

In the resolution B6-0025/2006 of January 18, 2006, the EU announced its will to "eradicate" homophobia by "educational measures, such as information campaigns in schools, universities and the media, by laws and administrative regulations." "Hate speeches colored by homophobia and incitement to discrimination should be efficiently punished. The fight against homophobia has to be allocated by the distribution of funds for the year 2007." The process "should be strictly monitored" and "any omission by a member State to implement these measures has to be reported to the European Parliament." Here speaks the spirit of totalitarianism.

Ideologies create victims. The previous century has amply demonstrated that revolutionary attempts to create a "new man" produce totalitarian suppression that destroys man. Who, then, are the victims of gender ideology?

The gender ideology

– fights against common sense because it denies the biological, psychological and social differences of man and woman.

– fights against woman because it causes the feminist man-oriented images of women to prevail and devalues mothers materially and morally.

– fights against man because girls and women are systematically privileged, whereas the authority and influence of men is diminished, by effeminizing man.

– fights against the unity of man and woman in marriage and their necessary cooperation in service of the future.

– fights against the unborn child, because it declares abortion to be a "human right".

– fights against the child because it destroys the family, the irreplaceable place of formation of healthy personalities and the place of transfer of culture and faith.

– fights against the family because it ideologically, socially and materially cuts off its bases of existence.

– fights against the scientific ideal of truth and reason because it turns science into an agent of ideology and abuses its resources to enforce goals that transform society.

– fights against free speech in the media and science by suppressing dissenting opinions.

– fights against democracy, because through the power of the state the common good is sacrificed for the interests of a minority.

– fights against Christianity, in particular against the Catholic Church, the only bastion of the resistance in international organizations.

– fights against God and the order of creation.

Ideologies do not serve the ultimate good of the human being; they intend to re-create man in order that he serve the interests of the ideologists. But only the creator of man has the right and the ability to create his creature anew: God. The attack goes to the root of the human being. On the first page of the Bible it says: "So God created man in his image, an image of God he created him. Male and female he created them." (Gen 1.27) God created man with a bipolar sexuality, because the experience of the need of complementation pushes us to extend ourselves to another human being and transcend our boundaries. As an image of the triune God, we are called to love, and only by loving can we find peace and happiness.

At this stage of history, the main attack of evil is in the field of sexuality. Christians need to meet the enemy there, otherwise they will have lost. If the young generation is pushed into moral degeneracy, the human condition of family and faith will be further destroyed and abortion will never be overcome. We need a movement for purity among the young generation. Because gender mainstreaming is the "guiding principle and all-important task" of global politics, Christian sexual morality must become the "guiding principle and all-important task" of the Church’s pastoral work with the young. Will the spiritual movements, in the power of Jesus, prepare the way and attract the youth, where the need is greatest: in the chaos of sexual relationship? Will they recognize the need to bring the topic of sexuality out from the private space of the community and make it the starting point of evangelisation?

John Paul II has given us a marvellous new light on the meaning and beauty of sexuality with his Theology of the Body. Let us use this treasure, so that truth can transform the present situation!

When will the Church reclaim the ground that it has lost by the rejection of the encyclical letter Humanae Vitae? Cardinal Schonborn of Vienna made a first step in the Supper Room in Jerusalem in March, 2008. He said: "Europe has said ‘no’ three times in the last forty years to its own future. The first time in 1968... by rejecting Humanae Vitae. The second time in 1975, when the abortion laws flooded Europe. And now the third time with homosexual marriage. The ‘no’ to life was also a sin of us bishops ... Even if we were not bishops at the time, we need to repent this sin of the European episcopacy, who did not have the courage to support Paul VI.... If we would have known the consequences of this ‘no’ to life, we would have never said ‘no’ to Humanae Vitae, we would have had the courage to strengthen our brothers: ‘Have faith, believe in life!’ "

In so speaking and acting, bishops would not risk their lives. They would risk some media and ecclesiastical bullying. They would protect their flock from the wolves and would infuse new life into the body of the Church.

Gabriele Kuby

Re-printed with the kind permission of Gabriele Kuby’s publishers

 

PONTIFF WARNS AGAINST NEW THEORIES OF "GENDER" While protecting nature is an essential mission of the Church, it’s no more important than protecting the nature of the person, said Benedict XVI on Dec. 22, 2008 in Rome, at the traditional meeting with the Roman Curia for the exchange of Christmas greetings. "Given that faith in the Creator is an essential element of the Christian creed, the Church cannot and should not limit itself to transmitting to the faithful only the message of salvation." "It is necessary that there be something such as an ecology of man, understood in the proper manner," he said. This human ecology, he affirmed, is based on respecting the nature of the person, and the two genders of masculine and feminine. "It is not outmoded metaphysics," Benedict XVI affirmed, "when Church speaks of the nature of the human being as man and woman, and demands that this order of creation be respected." The Pope warned against the manipulation that takes place in national and international forums when the term "gender" is altered. "What is often expressed and understood by the term ‘gender,’ is definitively resolved in the self-emancipation of the human being from creation and the Creator," he warned. "Man wants to create himself, and to decide always and exclusively on his own about what concerns him." "The rain forests certainly deserve our protection, but man as creature indeed deserves no less," he added. Benedict XVI explained that great theologians have "qualified marriage, that is to say, the link for life between man and woman, as a sacrament of creation, instituted by the Creator."