I’m going to make a bold assertion:  Barack Obama does not care about transgender people particularly.  Hardly any of the liberal left pushing this issue really do, any more than they care about minorities, gays, or poor women.  At least with some of those groups, there are sizable voting blocs to go after.  But with transgenders, there isn’t even that.  This is a tiny percentage of people.

I think really it’s just as simple as a demand to bow to the power of the state.  It’s just O’Brien demanding that Winston agree that 2+2=5.  It’s just submission to power that matters.

In Revelation 13, the false prophet puts the mark of the beast on everyone who bows to the beast, and without that mark you cannot buy or sell.  In the Roman Empire beginning under the reign of Decius you had to have a certificate, called a libellus, to prove that you offered sacrifices to the emperor.  Without that certificate, one would often not be permitted to transport goods into or out of cities, or to sell goods in the marketplace.  Membership in guilds was also required for many different professions, and membership in the guilds required engaging in pagan rites.

So here we are again.  Increasingly, it will be necessary for people to signal compliance to the state, by affirming nonsensical things like the idea that a man can decide to be a woman if he feels like it, or that two men can get married to each other, in order for us to be accepted in this society.  It’s the mark of the beast, the certificate that one has bent the knee.

Now that’s not to say there aren’t some confused individuals who really struggle with their own feelings and identity.  Of course there are, and they should be dealt with in compassion.  But they need to be helped to understand reality, not to be encouraged in their delusions.  Most children who deal with confusion on this issue get over it in a short time.  They need patience and encouragement, not an immediate rush to get surgery and hormone treatment.  But no matter how someone feels about it, a man is a man as every single cell in his body testifies, and a woman is a woman, and rearranging genitalia and pumping someone full of hormones just damages them.  It doesn’t change their gender.  And I suspect the people in charge pushing this message know full well the damage they are doing, but pursue it anyway, because their goal is not the good of people who struggle with these issues.  Their goal is power.

One proof of this is the speed with which these changes are demanded.  Why no careful campaign of persuasion and education, along with toleration for those who disagree?  In the case of transgenderism, the mainstream culture wasn’t even talking about this ten years ago.  But all of a sudden, on a dime, we must all bend to the new reality.  It’s because they don’t care about the issue, and they don’t care about persuasion.  They care about power.  And this is a handy way to identify Christians, as well as training people to deny reality itself if it is what the state demands.