Confusion about Creation and the Rise of Political Violence


When Rebellion Against Nature Turns Deadly: The Troubling Pattern of Political Violence and Gender Ideology

In a culture that increasingly confuses affirmation with compassion, we risk ignoring some very disturbing truths.

Last week, court documents revealed that Nicholas Roske, the man who plotted the assassination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, now identifies as a transgender woman named “Sophie.” Roske was arrested in 2022 outside Kavanaugh’s home, armed with a gun and burglary tools. He admitted to targeting not only Kavanaugh, but other justices, in response to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade.

This isn’t just an isolated incident. According to the Justice Department’s sentencing memo, Roske had spent months researching, planning, and preparing for the attack. He looked up how to break into homes, strangle someone, and escape prosecution. He studied the anatomy of the head and neck. He searched mass shooting footage and sniper techniques. All to eliminate jurists whose legal opinions conflicted with his ideology.

This was a politically motivated assassination attempt—by someone immersed in pro-abortion and transgender-affirming circles.

Unfortunately, Roske’s story is not unique.

A Disturbing Trend

In recent years, we’ve witnessed a growing number of violent incidents involving individuals either identifying as transgender or deeply embedded in trans-activist ideology:

  • In 2023, Audrey Hale, a woman who identified as a man, opened fire at Covenant School, a Christian elementary school in Nashville, killing six people—including three children.
  • Just months later, Robin Westman, another trans-identified shooter, murdered two children and wounded others in a mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic School. Authorities later confirmed Westman harbored anti-Christian sentiments and fantasized about “killing as many children as possible.”
  • In a different case, Tyler Robinson, the man charged with murdering conservative activist Charlie Kirk, reportedly told his trans-identified partner that he couldn’t “negotiate out” the “hate” Kirk represented. According to family members, Robinson had recently become more radicalized around LGBTQ political issues.

These are not mere outliers. Each case represents a violent collision of grievance-based identity politics with moral nihilism. Each involves individuals who had become deeply politicized in the context of gender identity or allied ideologies. And in each case, the targets were Christians, conservatives, or children.

When violence is repeatedly justified or rationalized on the basis of perceived “oppression,” it becomes clear that we are dealing with more than mental illness. We’re dealing with an ideological deformation of conscience.

The Fruits of a Fractured Worldview

These violent acts raise urgent questions about the psychological and spiritual consequences of building one’s identity around inner feelings detached from truth, nature, or moral law.

When people are told that their subjective sense of gender is sacred—and that opposing it is tantamount to violence—we should not be surprised when violence becomes their chosen response to disagreement.

When political movements elevate personal identity over public morality, and self-definition over objective truth, they create the conditions for extremism. They reward victimhood with moral license. They justify hatred of anyone seen as standing in the way of “liberation.”

This isn’t compassion. It’s chaos.

And it’s being fueled—unwittingly or not—by cultural elites, academic theorists, corporate sponsors, and even church leaders who confuse mercy with moral surrender.

Political Violence is Still Violence

There was a time not long ago when political violence was uniformly condemned—regardless of the source. But we now live in a moment where leftist rage is often indulged, and even celebrated, as “understandable” or “justified.”

When pro-life groups are firebombed, or Christian schools are targeted by shooters, or conservative justices are hunted in the night—too many remain silent. The media covers it reluctantly. Activists deflect. Politicians equivocate.

But violence is violence.

The attempted assassination of a Supreme Court Justice is not a form of protest. It’s terrorism. And when it comes from someone driven by a radicalized view of gender and justice, we should stop pretending this is a coincidence.

A Better Way

As Christians, we must be both compassionate and clear. Those who struggle with gender confusion deserve our prayers, our care, and our truth-speaking—not our silence.

But compassion does not mean complicity.

The gospel calls us to affirm that we are not self-created. We are made in the image of God—male and female. To reject that creational truth is to invite disorder into the soul and body, and eventually into the world.

Christians must be prepared to name this disorder—not with hatred, but with courage. Because love without truth is just sentiment. And truth without love is just noise. But love with truth? That is the medicine our world desperately needs.


Courage to Speak

If you’re wondering whether this trend of violence will continue, ask yourself: are the cultural forces driving it slowing down?

Until the church finds the courage to speak plainly about the dangers of identity idolatry, and until society recovers a moral center rooted in something higher than self-expression, we will continue to reap what we have sown.

And the fruit will not be peace.

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Grace and Truth Came Through Jesus
(John 1:17)

When Queer Theory Meets the Cradle

Queering Babies and the Academic Void Where Ethics Should Be

So after marrying shrimp, what’s next? Apparently, queering babies.

In part two of the Citation Needed Podcast pilot, Colin Wright and Brad Polumbo wade into even more disturbing territory: a peer-reviewed paper titled Queering Babies: Autoethnographic Reflections from a Gay Parent through Surrogacy.”

Let me start by saying this clearly: I don’t toss around accusations lightly. But this paper is deeply inappropriate. Not because it’s about surrogacy, or unconventional family dynamics. But because it tries to sexualize infants under the guise of academic theory—and then gets published in a reputable journal.


What’s the Paper Arguing?

Yes, you read that right. The author, Balazs Boross, attempts to apply queer theory to infants, claiming that because babies defy adult expectations and are not yet “straight,” they are therefore queer.

In short: that babies are inherently queer.

It’s intellectual nonsense—and worse, it veers into incredibly creepy territory.


Autoethnography or Navel-Gazing?

As the podcast explains, the method used here is “autoethnography.” Sounds academic, right? But in practice, it’s just the author journaling his personal feelings and labeling them research.

He reflects on moments like his newborn daughter’s instinctual attempt to nurse from him—an entirely non-sexual, biological behavior—and describes it as “animalistic and perverse.” He says there wasn’t “much intimacy or innocence there.”

Frankly, that’s horrifying. That’s not academic analysis. That’s projecting adult notions of sexuality onto infants, and then publishing it as research.


When Theory Becomes Dangerous

The problem here isn’t just the lack of scholarly rigor. It’s the loss of moral grounding.

Queer theory, as used here, is obsessed with destabilizing boundaries: between man and woman, adult and child, even decency and indecency. In this framework, nothing is off-limits—not even babies.

Colin and Brad hit the nail on the head: this paper doesn’t just explore taboo topics. It removes the taboos entirely, all in the name of challenging “oppressive norms.” That includes norms like age-appropriate sexual boundaries.

If you’re not disturbed by that, you should be.


Why Are Journals Publishing This?

That’s the million-dollar question. Like the brine shrimp paper, this one was published by Springer Nature—a giant in the academic world. The journal? Psychoanalysis, Culture, and Society.

So again, this isn’t fringe. This isn’t some Tumblr blog. It’s the academic mainstream.

And as the hosts rightly point out, when peer-reviewed journals accept “research” that cannot be independently evaluated (because it’s just someone’s diary), the entire peer-review process becomes meaningless.


This Is Why People Don’t Trust Academia

When academic journals become playgrounds for ideology and personal confession, they lose their authority.

We’re told to trust experts. But what happens when the experts are publishing manifestos about shrimp weddings and breastfeeding selfies with psychoanalytic commentary? Public trust collapses—and deservedly so.

These aren’t just isolated flukes. They’re symptoms of a deeper sickness in academia: the prioritization of political ideology over empirical evidence, clarity, and basic ethical boundaries.


Where Do We Go from Here?

We need brave voices like Colin Wright and Brad Polumbo to keep pulling back the curtain.

We need academics who are willing to say: No, this isn’t scholarship. No, this doesn’t help anyone understand gender, sexuality, or ecology. No, you don’t get to sexualize infants and call it “research.”

And we need the rest of us—students, readers, citizens—to stop being afraid to say the emperor has no clothes.

[Citation needed podcast]

Check it out for yourself.

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Stay Human

Virginia School District Pays $575K Settlement for Firing Teacher Over Refusal to Use Transgender Pronouns

A Win for Religious Freedom.

A Virginia school district has agreed to pay $575,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by Peter Vlaming, a former teacher fired for refusing to use a transgender student’s preferred pronouns on religious grounds. The settlement includes damages, attorney fees, and the removal of Vlaming’s dismissal from his record. Vlaming’s legal team argued that the firing violated his First Amendment rights. The case highlights tensions between religious freedom and policies on gender identity in schools.

Details.

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Embrace, Don’t Affirm