The idea of evil seems to be on the rise. Hollywood makes millions on the glamorization of evil in movies titled Horror flicks. Millions indulge and enjoy what they justify as entertainment. The industry uses fear and suspense to portray killing, torture, and abuse. The more suspenseful and surprising the better. In the marquess for films the word evil is often used to advertise the production. For instance, the tag line for the movie “Gretel and Hansel” (2020) reads, “A long time ago in a distant fairy tale countryside, a young girl leads her little brother into a dark wood in desperate search of food and work, only to stumble upon a nexus of terrifying evil.”
We describe serial killers as evil. Outside the norm so far that only the word evil can describe them. We do the same for child molesters. Predators and pedophiles are considered the most evil of anyone incarcerated in prison.
Evil is still considered morally reprehensible, sinful, wicked…wrong by most in the culture. The people who commit the acts are dangerous and need to be isolated from the rest of the world. But who determines what is evil? Hollywood depicts all kinds of evil acts and it is acceptable under the Bill of Rights free speech clause. Few seem to object as the industry continues to develop ever more evil story lines to depict in film. But even Hollywood draws a line. Abusing children is the line. No-one would dare depict a film that would portray harming an innocent child in anyway. Physically, sexually, emotionally, spiritually, psychologically harming the most innocent among us is just evil for everyone.
Until now. HBO crossed the line. Evil is now being portrayed to the public in the form of childhood psychological abuse. On November 12th HBO released “Transhood” a documentary following the lives of four children as they are coached, directed, and convinced by their parents and church leaders that they are not their biological gender.
Dr. Michelle Cretella, executive director of the American College of Pediatrics, denounced the documentary. In an interview with The Christian Post, she slammed the “institutionalized gaslighting of our children” by the institutions of “medicine, psychology, education [and] mass media.” It is the attempt to mainstream evil. Cretalla goes on, “When we tell children, parents or the general public that you can be born in the wrong body, that is science fiction and it is gaslighting. When we abuse children psychologically in this way … when we affirm them in this delusion that they’re born in the wrong body, we are making it far more difficult for them to embrace reality,” she said.
“The fact is many kids under the age of seven are still developing cognitively. When we tell these young kids … the lie that they might be born in the wrong body, … it’s psychological abuse because we are disrupting their normal cognitive and psychological development.”
This is the evil of evil. It isn’t the horror movies, or the acknowledgment of serial abusers it is the subtle way in which these ideas and practices are foisted upon the culture as normal and anyone disagreeing is in the way of the evolutionary progress of humankind while the consequences of this insanity is ignored and covered up.
Dr. Cretella continues, “There is hard evidence that teenagers especially and even some young kids who suffer from transgender beliefs suffer that way because of untreated traumas and other psychological illness,” she said. Examples of these underlying psychological conditions include depression, anxiety and trauma from sexual abuse.
“What we are doing to these kids with puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries as teenagers is absolutely criminal,” Cretella contended. “It’s not science. It’s criminal. It truly is institutionalized child abuse coming about because we have these institutions that have embraced radical ideology over the Hippocratic oath and over science.”
I respectfully add to Dr. Cretellas conclusion, this is evil. Evil must be confronted. It must be rejected. Evil has crossed into new territory. The individual and institutional destruction will move to a new zenith. It will not be enough to just be outraged and speak out. We must be ready to be a place of safety as the years go by and these most vulnerable who have been damaged to the core will go looking for hope and truth. Let’s be those people.
