Adventist Today editor libels Abigail Shrier but likely has never read her

 By Ron Corson

Once again Adventist Today has published an article with an abundance of opinions and little facts. Loren Seibold the editor at Adventist Today wrote an article entitled: On Complete LGBTQ+ Acceptance in the Church. I am not going to respond to the full article I think it would be good for the Adventist denomination to examine these new issues in culture and religion. What I have a problem with is when ignorance pretends to be knowledge. Here is what Loren Seibold wrote:

“Recently the youth director of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists recommended on social media the book Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters. The author, Abigail Shrier, revives the old arguments that were once leveled at lesbian and gay people: that there is an “agenda,” a “movement,” in this case to induce young women into becoming male. This excreta is being pushed from the very top of our denomination. (Abigail will make a great deal of money on this book from the many people who love simple answers that blame others for problems they don’t understand.)”

 When a person reads that paragraph it somewhat sounds like the author of the article has some knowledge of the work of Abigail Shrier, unless, of course, anyone has read the book or listened to an interview with Abigail Shrier. Perhaps just as bad as someone who clearly has not read the book or even listened to an interview with Abigail Shrier, Loren Seibold seems to imply that the youth director of the General Conference has done something horrible by directing people to an important book on social media.

But how can it be an important book if the book is about reviving an old argument that transgenderism of young girls is an agenda or a movement.  Well, it is at this point that we know Loren Seibold knows nothing about the book. It is here that I have to come up to the plate and say Loren Seibold either does not know what he is writing about or is purposely lying to his readers. Whichever answer, it is not good for Adventist Today.  Unless of course the purpose of Loren Siebold is not honest journalism but leftist propaganda, in which case lying for the political cause is part of progressivism.

One thing all readers must learn is to identify fictional material that is attributed to someone else. This is most easily done by checking the sources. Is there a quote given, what is the source and can we read the quote. Is there any context to the quote? Here Loren Siebold gives single word quotes “agenda,” a “movement”. By just using the single out of context quotes the reader is forced to accept Loren Seibold’s explanation.  I am pretty sure he is just passing on what some other unscrupulous writer had written. That is a huge problem if someone cannot even take the time to get some first-hand information what good is their information. It is no better than gossip and in this case it is malicious gossip.

So what is the book about? The reason for the book is set forth in the beginning of Chapter 2 under the title the Puzzle:

“In 2016, Lisa Littman, ob-gyn turned public health researcher and mother of two, was scrolling through social media when she noticed a statistical peculiarity: several adolescents, most of them girls, from her small town in Rhode Island had come out as transgender—all from within the same friend group. “With the first two announcements, I thought, ‘Wow, that’s great,’ ” Dr. Littman said, a light New Jersey accent tweaking her vowels. Then came announcements three, four, five, and six.

 Dr. Littman knew almost nothing about gender dysphoria—her research interests had been confined to reproductive health: abortion stigma and contraception. But she knew enough to recognize that the numbers were much higher than extant prevalence data would have predicted. “I studied epidemiology… and when you see numbers that greatly exceed your expectations, it’s worth it to look at what might be causing it. Maybe it’s a difference of how you’re counting. It could be a lot of things. But you know, those were high numbers.”

 In fact, they turned out to be unprecedented. In America and across the Western world, adolescents were reporting a sudden spike in gender dysphoria—the medical condition associated with the social designation “transgender.” Between 2016 and 2017 the number of gender surgeries for natal females in the U.S. quadrupled, with biological women suddenly accounting for—as we have seen—70 percent of all gender surgeries.¹

 In 2018, the UK reported a 4,400 percent rise over the previous decade in teenage girls seeking gender treatments.²

 In Canada, Sweden, Finland, and the UK, clinicians and gender therapists began reporting a sudden and dramatic shift in the demographics of those presenting with gender dysphoria—from predominately preschool-aged boys to predominately adolescent girls.³”

Jumping a head a couple of paragraphs:

“If this sudden spike in transgender identification among adolescent girls is a peer contagion, as Dr. Littman hypothesized, then the girls rushing toward “transition” are not getting the treatment they most need. Instead of immediately accommodating every adolescent’s demands for hormones and surgeries, doctors ought to be working to understand what else might be wrong. At best, doctors’ treatments are ineffective; at worst, doctors are administering needless hormonal treatments and irreversible surgeries on patients likely to regret them. Dr. Littman’s theory was more than enough to touch a nerve.

 Activists stormed the Twitter page of PLoS One, the peer-reviewed scientific journal of the Public Library of Science that had published Dr. Littman’s paper, accusing her of anti-trans bigotry. They claimed that Dr. Littman had deliberately solicited parent reports from conservative, anti-trans parent groups. (In fact, over 85 percent of the parents self-identified as supporting LGBT rights.)” (page 21-22)

 

From there the book is a deep dive into researcher and psychologist data and observations.

Now I don’t expect people to take the time to read her book but this is an important topic. Take the time to listen or watch her Interview with Jorden Peterson. Peterson as a clinical Psychologist is very clearly a deep thinker even if he is not the best at interviews. Please take the time to listen or watch and then see just how much truth there is to Loren Siebold’s statement: “Abigail will make a great deal of money on this book from the many people who love simple answers that blame others for problems they don’t understand.”

Update. Here is the Joe Rogan podcast with Abigail Shrier. It is a more conversational program with a bit more on cultural and activists content. Pretty sure that after listening/watching this most people would say that Loren Seibold's paragraph in question above is really activist in nature. https://open.spotify.com/episode/4SIh4Pt39AtGQYzMJMNkv1

You can read articles by Abigail Shrier at: https://muckrack.com/abigailshrier/articles

Update 12-9-21

Read her speech at Princeton: What I told the Students at Princeton

Shawn Boonstra, lies about the Tea Party

The Adventist Review has a recent article entitled Would Jesus Be in Zuccotti Park? By Shawn Boonstra. In his second paragraph he writes:

“Would He?  Conservative evangelicals would likely disagree, preferring instead to see Jesus on the other side of American dissatisfaction, attending Tea Party rallies and helping push America back to its religious roots.  Of course, no self-respecting liberal would agree: Jesus, they would emphasize, is clearly about social justice and toppling corporate greed.”

Now I am not going to accuse Boonstra of being a deep thinker, he is not after all his answer to his question is:

“Where would we find Jesus in the heart of the world’s current mess?  At rallies and protests?  His current occupation provides the answer: He’s chosen to stand in heaven’s sanctuary, devoting His full attention to the same underlying problem He focused on during His earthly ministry: sinners in desperate need of reconciliation to God.”

So he has limited thinking ability that he must apply to Jesus Christ who is God a physical location, the heavenly sanctuary. As if God has a building in heaven that was the model for earthly buildings rather then a God who deals with reality and trying to express reality in earthly terms. Even Adventists realize much of the furnishings of the temple can have symbolic meaning and can connect them as symbols of Christ, so why have a whole building of symbolism where Christ can minister to symbols. It is foolish but it is traditional Adventism.

But what bothers me more than his traditionalism is his lack of discernment. Take for instance the statement that the Tea Party rallies are helping push America back to its religious roots. Is that what the Tea Party is about? If so you sure don't find it in their online material. For instance:

“The Tea Party movement is a grassroots movement of millions of like-minded Americans from all backgrounds and political parties. Tea Party members share similar core principles supporting the United States Constitution as the Founders intended, such as:

•  Limited federal government
•  Individual freedoms
•  Personal responsibility
•  Free markets
•  Returning political power to the states and the people

As a movement, The Tea Party is not a political party nor is looking to form a third political party any time soon. The Tea Party movement, is instead, about reforming all political parties and government so that the core principles of our Founding Fathers become, once again, the foundation upon which America stands.”

Newt Gingrich one of the candidates running for the Republican nomination for President has a Contract from America which lists several points, but not one about pushing America back to its religious roots. His points are:

1. Protect the Constitution

2. Reject Cap & Trade

3. Demand a Balanced Budget

4. Enact Fundamental Tax Reform

5. Restore Fiscal Responsibility & Constitutionally Limited Government in Washington

6. End Runaway Government Spending

7. Defund, Repeal, & Replace Government-run Health Care

8. Pass an ‘All-of-the-Above” Energy Policy

9. Stop the Pork

10. Stop the Tax Hikes

How does someone who begin with such fallacious understanding of current events think they can give us any beneficial information. If your argument begins by misrepresenting people or groups it has a faulty foundation and all arguments built upon it will fall. As Boonstra next line shows:

“But students of the Bible ought to ask themselves if Jesus can safely be co-opted by either movement.”

You see his false premise is growing, building more errors upon his original error (is the Tea Party co-opting Jesus). We could argue his errors of no self-respecting liberal would agree it is about social justice and toppling corporate greed. That might be true of Jim Wallis and his ilk, but there are many at the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests that are protesting such things as Jewish Bankers, that Jews must leave this country. Others that are saying destroy capitalism and start a revolution that creates a new country under communist philosophy. Antisemitism and communism are just two of the ideas we hear from various OWS protesters. So it is any wonder they would disagree with the fictitious Tea Party return to religious roots. I would guess they also disagree with the propagation of flying elephants. It says nothing to say someone disagrees with something that is not even being talked about.

Lying about people and organizations is used when the facts don't fit well with someone's own opinions and speculations. Adventism has a high degree of speculation about what the future holds. That speculation is often considered inspired. The speculation has never proved correct in their areas of prophetic prognostication but that seems to not stop them from pretending that their speculations are true. So when the facts don't line up with the reality, tell another lie.

Better yet tell it in the official church publication. If our church leaders cannot be trusted to be accurate in the small things, why trust them with the more important things such as our spiritual lives and our doctrines.

Perhaps it is time we occupy our churches and remove these thoughtless leaders. That might be something the OWS supporters and the Tea Party supporters could agree on.