Oprah, What Are You Thinking....?

[Marilyn777]

Oprah Winfrey: Agent of Moral Insanity

8/31/2004

Albert Mohler

Oprah Winfrey, widely cited as one of the most influential and admired women in America, showed herself to be an agent of moral insanity when she featured a program celebrating young children who are seeking sex-change procedures and transgender identities. In one episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show," the true nature of our modern sexual confusion was made clear, and the broadcast should long be remembered as one of the most frightening hours in television history.

The program, broadcast on Tuesday, August 24, began with Oprah introducing the children seeking a sex change. "This is going to be a very fascinating show, OK?" Oprah began. She then introduced her first young guest: "He is an 11-year-old child. He likes skateboarding and PlayStation. He listens to rap, studies hard, gets good grades and wears those trendy baggy pants. He was also born a girl."

Oprah then moved to the broader theme of her program. "And right now according to experts, there are thousands of children who are living what appear to be very normal lives but deep inside they know something is terribly wrong or they feel that something is terribly wrong, and these children are saying that they were born in the wrong bodies. Their parents have to decide whether or not to let their children live as the opposite sex. Eleven-year-old Kayla lived for years with this secret."

According to a video broadcast on the program, Kayla was born a girl in 1992, but her mother reported that "Kayla never played with girls' toys, never played with dolls. About two years of age on, Kayla was more into dirt and bikes . . . . she would pick out baggy pants, boxer underwear. She didn't like girls' underpants."

At some point, Kayla saw an episode of the Oprah show and was prompted to declare that she was now a boy. She told her mother that she believed she was a boy born into a girl's body. Her mother Angelina responded in a way that left Oprah nodding in approval. "My first reaction was basically blowing it off. A few days later, I said, 'OK, let's find out more about it'." As the show unfolded, the audience was told that Kayla, now "Kaden," was facing struggles at school. Early puberty presented additional challenges, so Angelina put her 11-year-old daughter on Depo-Provera. Kaden told Oprah's audience, "When I'm old enough to, I want to get testosterone and my surgery."

The next child featured on Oprah was Dylan, a boy who at age four declared that he wanted to become a girl. Now, a couple of years later, Dylan is even more certain that he wants to be a girl. Dylan's mom shared that this has become something of a stress point in the family. "Dylan's dad has a real hard time accepting this. He'll reprimand him." As Oprah continued the questioning, it turned out that Dylan's mom has been buying him dolls and painting his fingernails. Dylan's dad, Derek, is indeed having "a real hard time accepting this."

After a conversation with a "transgender therapist," Winfrey then confronted Derek with his refusal to go along with his son's desire for a sex change. Coming out of a commercial break, Oprah told her audience: "And as I--I was saying to Derek during the commercial break, I was saying that this is your holiest hour. This will be your holiest hour as a parent, being able to allow your son to be himself and to love him as he is. Whatever that turns out to be, you know, that's where, where you will be challenged emotionally, spiritually and otherwise, I think."

Oprah's third young guest was Halle, a young girl who at age six announced that she wanted to be a boy. As Karen, the child's mother, explained, "When Halle turned three, she said she wanted to be a boy. My husband, Eric, and I thought Halle was just a tomboy, maybe she'd grow out of this, maybe she'd just be a lesbian. Then Halle began to act out. She became verbally abusive and was extremely depressed. At one point, Halle said to me, 'I'm not meant to be here, Mama. It would be easier if I were in heaven.' Halle was six at the time. We started to see a therapist. She told us Halle was transgendered. When we discovered what transgendered meant, we were devastated. We felt like we were losing our little girl. Halle told us to call her Hal. When Halle turned seven, we began to let her live full-time as a boy. At school, he told his friends that he had a boy's heart and a girl's body. Even though I miss my daughter, I am so lucky to see my son happy." "Hal's" parents are very broad-minded about their child's sexual and gender exploration. Looking to the future, "Hal's" mother commented: "He knows his options. He knows about blockers and he knows about the hormones, but those are things that he absolutely has to come to terms with and he has to make those decisions. We support him whichever way he chooses to go. And we've always supported that. We've always said, you know, 'We understand you are a boy inside. You feel like a boy, but if you ever change your mind, you just tell us and we will support you,' because we don't want him to feel like he's got to be one way or the other."

After all this, Winfrey celebrated what she called an "evolution" in social tolerance and cultural acceptance of the idea of a sex change, even among children. "I have seen such a change in the way parents parent, you know," Oprah declared, "even in the years that we've been here, 18 years, seeing such a--a difference--this generation, your generation, is so much more open to accepting children as they are instead of trying to--forcing whatever your own idea was."

This isn't "evolution," this is insanity. Oprah and her guests were involved in an absurd and horrific exercise in moral inanity. What culture can survive such a rebellion against the moral order? What devastation and destruction will be brought into the lives of young children before some level of sanity is reestablished?

The ideology of the homosexual movement has been subverting the reality of gender for decades. The very fact that human beings are created as male and female flies in the face of the utter rebellion against and rejection of the moral order that stands at the very center of the homosexual agenda.

Instead of helping these young children to grow into maturity as the boys and girls they were meant to be, growing into womanhood and manhood with the assistance and moral direction of parents and other authorities in the society, these children are encouraged to "explore" their gender and sexuality in order to determine who they really are. The very idea that we "discover" our gender as a matter of interiority is itself an act of aggression against the moral order and a demonstration of human arrogance against the divine design of creation.

The postmodern enablers of the homosexual movement and its transgender wing have convinced the cultural elite that gender is merely a matter of social construction and biological accident. Sexual and gender "identity," we are now told, is simply a matter of coming to terms with the self and its own orientation. Gender is now a plastic reality, moldable and changeable throughout one's lifetime. Oprah, joining the insanity as an agent of moral revolution, brought on a guest introduced as a gender therapist to clarify the issues. Explaining Dylan's situation to his father, therapist Jana Ekdahl told Derek, "Dylan feels that he's in the wrong body. Dylan wants to be a little girl. And there's really nothing that you can do to change that nor is there anything that you've done to cause that. Frequently parents, especially mothers, feel that they've done something to cause it, but that's just not true." Oprah Winfrey, ever the scientific expert, asked, "It occurs in the womb, does it not?" Ekdahl responded with assurance that gender orientation "does occur in the womb." She went on to suggest, "The research so--so far shows that it occurs in the first trimester." As she explained, "Something happens, whereas the brain develops in one direction and the body develops in another. For instance, for Dylan, it might be that his body was developing as a boy, whereas his brain was developing as a girl. Then he comes out, and he looks like a boy. So it's much easier to change the body. We can't change the brain."

But this isn't medicine at all--it's more like therapeutic voodoo. Jana L. Ekdahl, the therapist featured on the Oprah program is, according to her own website, a psychotherapist who "welcomes the transgender population." As she explains, "The youth of today are indeed our future. I have had the rare privilege of meeting and working with gender-variant youth. They are changing the face of gender for us all. I sometimes view them as archetypal warriors on the cutting edge of that space between the two polarities that we hold onto so tightly. Perhaps it would serve us all to go to that place . . . that special space between genders . . . and see what we find there."

What we find there is an absolute moral meltdown. The very notion that we should see young children suffering this level of sexual confusion as "archetypal warriors on the cutting edge" of gender development is insidious, tragic, and should be scandalous. Ms. Ekdahl's agenda is made clear when she suggests that it would "serve us all to go to that place."

Oprah interviewed Ms. Ekdahl as if she represented the medical establishment, but her own website identifies her education as including baccalaureate and master's degrees in psychology, and certification from the State of Washington as a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and a Certified Sexual Minority Specialist--whatever that is. As she shares with her perspective clients, "I embrace the philosophy of Carl Jung and Depth Psychology. The union of East and West is essential to my work, as I have studied to learn about the modalities of each. Buddhist thought and Native American spirituality are interwoven into the fabric of my psyche. I have access to this wisdom to share with my clients, either directly or otherwise."

Is this where we are headed? Oprah Winfrey did not merely feature the subject of children struggling with their identities, she chided the parents who would not go along with this "evolution" in moral consciousness and, as she warned one parent, "And what do you think will happen if you remain as closed as you are? What damage will be done by you not opening up to who he really is?"

In reality, that father was the only adult to appear on that program with the slightest degree of common sense and moral wisdom. Yet, he was the one blamed for wanting to limit his child's self-exploration and gender transformation.

America learned a lot last Tuesday. We learned that we are in much deeper trouble than most Americans could ever have conceived. We learned that the moral revolution pushing a complete transformation of the sexual order has now progressed to the point that our children are being told they should explore their gender identity and, if inclined to do so, change genders. We also learned that Oprah Winfrey has taken sides in this revolution. After Tuesday's show there can remain little doubt that Oprah Winfrey is an agent of moral insanity.

[georgesbluegirl]

Too young - I think that the issue of "correct gender" should not even be brought up with these kids until they are out of puberty, which is when a lot of "self-finding" happens. Why bother to change Halle's name and call her a boy? Let her be herself, allow her to do "boy" things like any other tomboy. Let her figure that out before you act upon the "transgender" aspect of her life.

For the record, gender identity disorder (that's not the technical name) is a real psychological thing. It's not made up - many people have to deal with it, and they do in a variety of different ways.

[Guest LadyC]

when i began reading the article posted, i was thinking surely these kids were born with ambiguous gender... i.e. hermaphrodites, in which case many infants are assigned a gender at birth by the attending physician, and it is frequently the wrong gender.

i've got to read further into the article it seems these were just very confused children.... being made further confused by parents and oprah and anyone else who entertains the thought of letting these kids identify themselves as the opposite sex!

i never did have much respect for oprah.

[Orr v'emet]

I saw parts of this episode and told my husband that I lost any respect I ever had for Oprah. It just shows how much she really needs Jesus.

[Guest LadyC]

ok, i've read the part about the kids and their situations, and skimmed the rest. these children are not hermaphrodites, which can be identified at birth, usually is, and is usually medically "corrected" at that time.

here's my opinion of both...

these children referred to in the article above should be raised as they were born, little boys and little girls. heck, i wanted to be a boy when i was little too, boys had more fun! i didn't play with dolls, i wanted to play with my brother's g.i.joes. i wanted the freedom my brother had... boys are less overprotected than girls are. but i was, and am, a girl, and quite happy being one.

on the other hand, those born with ambiguous genitalia should never be assigned a gender as an infant. they should grow up gender neutral until the day (which CAN be during childhood) when it becomes apparent to them and to their parents which gender they more fully identify with, and when the child can take part in the decision for surgery. on infants born with this abnormality, doctors often choose the operation which is most physically convenient, therefore assigning a gender the child can't identify with... they make a mistake.

in either case, a child undergoing such operations is stuck having to take massive hormone therapy for the rest of their lives. why would a parent want that for their child?

[Guest Called]

What is so dangerous about Oprah is that she conveys the attitude that she is some religious person and alot of her viewers see her in that capacity. She is always talking about God and prayer. She is leading many people astray. She lives in sin with her boyfriend and she has very unbiblical beliefs. She is far from being a spiritual person and the fact that she acts like she is, is a very scary thing, especially considering that she has a large fan base.

[Orr v'emet]

What is so dangerous about Oprah is that she conveys the attitude that she is some religious person and alot of her viewers see her in that capacity. She is always talking about God and prayer. She is leading many people astray. She lives in sin with her boyfriend and she has very unbiblical beliefs. She is far from being a spiritual person and the fact that she acts like she is, is a very scary thing, especially considering that she has a large fan base.

Yup

[Guest LindaInChrist]

This is the vast difference between "caring for the human spirit" touted by Oprah and the privilege of being led by the Spirit of God in the believer. Oprah's religion of simply caring for the human spirit bypasses the Lord Jesus Christ and elevates the nature of man apart from God. In that line of thinking, tolerance of everything that is against God is substituted for the true agape love found in Jesus Christ, which is God's best for every man. God's best is that man come into relationship with Him through His Son and find completeness and wholeness in Him who is the head of all principality and power. I don't know if Oprah ever mentions God but if she does, she is literally making Him out to be a minister of sin, tolerant of those things that go against His nature. It is not wrong to love the sinner but it is wrong to, in the name of that love, to encourage them to be something other than what God created them to be just because they are in darkness and confusion and "think" they know better than God what is best. I feel sorry for those who have taken ungodly counsel from her and accepted it as truth because of her public image of being someone who truly cares. If she truly cared for others, she would first believe on the Lord Jesus Christ herself and then share Him with others. His love is the only real love that exists and no man can love another man properly without knowing the love of God him or herself. Those who take her advice and have the changes will find themselves very unhappy later on when they come face to face with receiving Christ and discovering that they could have found the wholeness they sought from her in Christ to begin with. Until then, she is giving advice out of a carnal, natural mind to others with carnal, natural minds.

[Qun Mang]

Well, so much for Oprah being one of the "good ones" as my mother always says when comparing her to Jerry Springer, Ricki Lake, Jenny Jones, etc. Maybe she was at one time but this kind of episode shows she isn't all that much different now from those sensationalists.

But then, I think she watches Dr. Phil more these days rather than Oprah.

[Marilyn777]

I must admit that I don't really know a whole lot about this topic or trans-gender children, but I do agree with LadyC about letting kids be kids. Some girls just like to be tomboys it depends on your environment, your influences, there are a lot of variables here to take into consideration. People have given Oprah way too much power and its gone to her head. She is not a good role model, but some people are blinded by her smooth talking, all the money she gives away and her vast empire. Still some of us forget she is just a human being like the rest of us and will have to give an account of herself before the throne of God, you can't get to heaven on good works alone. And I'm sure she knows that, but chooses to live in and be a part of this world. But I've never seen a U-Haul behind a hearse, she can build up billions of dollars but she leaves this world with nothing just like she came into it.