Reading recommendations from The Witherspoon Institute staff.
Author: Ryan T. Anderson (Ryan T. Anderson)
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The New York Times Reveals Painful Truths about Transgender Lives
Why should a doctor perform surgery when it won’t make the patient happy, it won’t accomplish its intended goal, it won’t improve the underlying condition, it might make the underlying condition worse, and it might increase the likelihood of suicide? Sound medicine isn’t about desire, it’s about healing.
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The Future of Public Discourse
For the past ten years, Public Discourse has been a different kind of website—thoughtful, calm, and civil, even while defending unpopular truths. In our next decade, we want to keep improving, reaching more people, and addressing a broader array of topics.
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Sex Change: Physically Impossible, Psychosocially Unhelpful, and Philosophically Misguided
Modern medicine can’t reassign sex physically, and attempting to do so doesn’t produce good outcomes psychosocially. Here is the evidence.
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The Philosophical Contradictions of the Transgender Worldview
The thinking of transgender activists is inherently confused and filled with internal contradictions. Activists never acknowledge those contradictions. Instead, they opportunistically rely on whichever claim is useful at any given moment.
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Refreshing, Rejuvenating, and Improving Our Public Discourse: Holiday Book Recommendations
Reading recommendations from The Witherspoon Institute staff.
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Faith and Reason, Beauty and Holiness
We have the obligation to propose with the apostle Paul the more excellent way. And this only intensifies as you graduate today and enter a world that is simultaneously hungry for and resistant to your message.
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Natural Law, Social Justice, and the Crisis of Liberty in the West
A reflection on our nature as “dependent, rational animals.”
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How to Think About Discrimination: Race, Sex, and SOGI
Sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) antidiscrimination laws are unjustified, but if other policies are adopted to address the mistreatment of people who identify as LGBT, they must leave people free to engage in legitimate actions based on the conviction that we are created male and female and that male and female are created for each other.
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Make Religious Freedom Great Again
Donald Trump should commit to protecting the free exercise of religion for all Americans of all faiths.
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Conscience, Obamacare Mandates, and Sex-Reassignment Therapies
No American should be forced to violate his or her moral and religious beliefs, especially when it comes to morally fraught issues in health care.
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Liberty and SOGI Laws: An Impossible and Unsustainable “Compromise”
Big Business and Big Law are using Big Government to impose their cultural values on small businesses and ordinary Americans. Indiana does not need to create new laws on sexual orientation or gender identity for people who identify as sexual minorities to be treated justly. The best way to protect all Hoosiers is for Indiana not to adopt a SOGI policy at all.
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Marriage and the Constitution: What the Court Said and Why It Got It Wrong
The Supreme Court’s ruling is a significant setback for all Americans who believe in the Constitution, the rule of law, democratic self-government, and marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Will the right of Americans to speak and act in accord with the truth of marriage be tolerated?
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Supreme Court Debates Meaning of Marriage and Consequences of Judicial Redefinition
Rather than rush to a fifty-state “solution” on marriage policy for the entire country, the Supreme Court should allow the laboratories of democracy the time and space to see how redefining marriage will impact society as a whole.
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Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Are Not Like Race: Why ENDA is Bad Policy
Sexual orientation and gender identity are conceptually different from race, and beliefs about marriage as the union of man and woman are conceptually and historically different from opposition to interracial marriage. Adapted from testimony delivered on Monday March 16 before the United States Commission on Civil Rights.
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The Defense of Marriage Isn’t Over
Monday’s action from the Supreme Court is a setback for sound constitutional self-government and for a healthy marriage culture. So where do we go from here?
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Protecting the Religious Liberty of Adoption and Foster Care Providers
Provided agencies meet basic requirements protecting the welfare of children, they should be free to operate according to their values, especially their religiously informed beliefs about marriage. New legislation introduced this week would protect this right.
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The Blessings of Liberty and the Index of Culture and Opportunity
Opportunity is not merely the absence of artificially imposed impediments. It is also the capacity to pursue happiness, individually and in community. Adapted from the 2014 Index of Culture and Opportunity.
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The Right to Be Wrong
The right to religious freedom is for everyone, not just those with the “right” beliefs.
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Supreme Court to Obama Administration: You Don’t Have to Agree with Religious Beliefs to Respect the Liberty of the People Who Hold Them . . . and the Groups They Form
Yesterday’s decision demonstrates that the Supreme Court understands what Congress set out to do when it passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Religious freedom is for all, regardless of the popularity of the belief. Congress, in passing RFRA, has said that if the belief can be accommodated, then it must be.
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Marriage Matters, and Redefining It Has Social Costs
What is marriage, why does marriage matter for public policy, and what are the consequences of redefining marriage? Adapted from testimony delivered on Monday, January 13, 2014 to the Indiana House Judiciary Committee.
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What Makes a Marriage? Love, Sex, or Comprehensive Union
Prof. Charles Reid thinks love makes a marriage. He claims we think sex makes a marriage. In truth, comprehensive union makes a marriage. And getting marriage right matters for everyone.