The new book by Allie Beth Stuckey, Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion (Sentinel, 2024) is selling quite well, and for good reason. It is an important volume dealing with important issues. Primarily, it is about how religious lefties are pushing a false and unbiblical view of compassion, empathy and love.
In that article I looked at three of the five main topics she discusses: abortion, immigration, and social justice. Two other chapters were not covered – on the trans revolution and homosexuality. Those topics I will discuss here. But first, as to how she identifies toxic empathy and how we can spot it, she speaks of “the danger of being led by empathy rather than by truth-filled love.” She says this:
You latch on to what sounds and feels good rather than what is good, often to the detriment of the very people you think you’re trying to help.
Kindness is good, and empathy can be good too. But empathy that affirms sin or lies is always misguided. How can we tell when empathy has become toxic? How can we tell when the point of an emotionally charged argument isn’t to help us love someone but instead to approve of a damaging progressive agenda? Here are a few red flags that we’ll see repeatedly in these pages:
The use of euphemisms…
Contradictions to God’s word…
Exclusively political ends…
Christian-sounding words with unchristian meanings…
Emotional language… (xxv-xxvii)
What she has to say abut two of the most radical and controversial issues of the day is worth examining more closely. As to the trans agenda, she begins with some real-life stories of people involved in this – as she does in each chapter. And she also mentions her own childhood experience, recalling how she was quite tomboyish.
She then writes: “I can’t help but wonder: If I hadn’t had such a solid Christian community or if I’d been inundated at school, through friends, or by social media influencers with the kinds of ideas we see today about gender, would I have developed into the woman I am now?”
The physical, emotional, mental and social harms of the trans agenda are now well known. But the trans militants want scorched-earth policy here: anyone refusing to comply or agree must be punished. Stuckey shares various horror stories about this, including this one from my home state:
Students can be penalized for refusing to affirm new identities as well. In Wisconsin, a public middle school opened a sexual harassment investigation into three eighth-grade students who failed to call a fellow student “they” or “them.” One of the boys’ parents explained the new pronouns confused them, as they didn’t know how to refer to an individual in plural form. (p. 42)
Simply think of how the trans revolution has exploded and grown in such a short period of time. Consider just one fact: “As late as 2005, there were only three gender clinics for children in the entire world” (p. 50). Today they are ubiquitous, and countless children are going through with dangerous and irreversible procedures.
Once again, a big part of the problem is misplaced and mistaken empathy. Too many folks think that the loving and compassionate thing to do to is simply to go along with whatever a gender-confused child says. Stuckey speaks to this sad reality:
Despite these known risks, kids are still signing up for “treatments,” even with their parents’ permission. Why? One big reason adults go along with the madness is moral blackmail. When their child comes out as trans, they’re immediately asked: “Would you rather have a living son or a dead daughter?”
This is one of the main empathy-driven pressure tactics the transgender movement uses. It’s based upon studies purportedly showing that kids who don’t medically transition are significantly more likely to commit suicide. If you don’t accept the transition, you’re complicit in your own child’s death, the argument goes.
The problem is, those studies are bunk. Many are paid for by pro-trans groups and have sample sizes that are too small to be statistically significant. Some studies cited by the trans movement actually show the opposite, such as that those on puberty blockers can be more likely to commit suicide than those not on blockers.
The Heritage Foundation published a study overturning the idea that cross-sex medical intervention lowers the risk of suicide. To take just one data point, when controlling for other factors, starting in 2010 suicide rates actually rose in states where puberty blockers and cross-sex hormone became easily accessible for minors.
But a big question remains. Where are all these gender-confused kids coming from? We went from having almost no gender dysphoria to creating a rising cohort of confused, sterilized, breastless teenage girls with geriatric skeletons – and the craziness isn’t going away. (p. 61)
Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassionby Stuckey, Allie Beth (Author)
The militant trans activism was of course preceded by, and built upon, the radical homosexual revolution. And here as well, it is incredible how far things have fallen in such a short period of time. Consider how rapidly homosexual “marriage” was embraced in the West:
This massive swing in public opinion is unprecedented in human history. Until ten or twenty years ago, very few people in the world would have called a relationship between two people of the same sex a marriage. In 2008, the majority of Americans were opposed to “gay marriage.” That same year, when Barack Obama was running for president, he said he didn’t support legally redefining marriage at all. A couple of years earlier, then senator Joe Biden had declared matter-of-factly that “marriage is between a man and a woman, and states must respect that.”
In 2004, half of Democrats opposed calling same-sex unions “marriage.” And it was a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who signed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 that defined marriage in federal law as a union between one man and one woman.
Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and the vast majority of Americans weren’t extreme for opposing the redefinition of marriage. They simply believed what human beings across the world have known for millennia — that a society has an interest in protecting the special union between a man and a woman, primarily because of its unique ability to produce children. Without this life-giving relationship, no society exists. (pp. 67-68)
But all this has changed in a very short period of time, for a variety of reasons. And one of them is a false notion of love, empathy and compassion. Stuckey summarises the mountain of evidence showing that children do best when raised in a heterosexual household where the parents are cemented by marriage. She then says this:
Are there exceptions to these observations? Sure. None of this is to say that all kids who aren’t raised by their mom and dad are destined for failure, that there aren’t stellar single parents, that same-sex parents don’t love their children, or that parenting dynamics can’t differ depending on the couple. There are children raised by their mom and dad who faced the same challenges as children who aren’t. But we shouldn’t ignore the data or dismiss our own instincts and experiences when it comes to the need for mothers and fathers.
And we shouldn’t support the redefinition of marriage just because it’s the popular thing to do. True, it’s unlikely that this issue will be relitigated anytime soon. Decades of persuasion through the media and in academia have chipped away at public opinion over time, with a powerful push in the last ten or so years to solidify America’s support for same-sex unions. Regardless, Christians should know where we stand and not be mindlessly led by toxic empathy that will destroy the people we are supposed to love.
We may be in the minority, but no poll can ever change what the truth about marriage or the effect redefining it has on children, the most vulnerable and voiceless members of society. Marriage between a man and a woman is a child-producing and child-protecting institution. “Love is love” may sound like a no-lose slogan in support of gay marriage, but it undermines and collapses the purpose of the marriage union. When this union is deprioritized or redefined based on the desires or political agendas of adults, children suffer, not just during their upbringing but from their conception. (pp. 71-72)
She continues:
The redefinition of marriage is a radical social experiment at the behest of adults and at the expense of children. All progressive social experiments require children to make sacrifices: whether it’s abortion, gender ideology, race-based DEI education, or shutting down schools for COVID19. The voiceless and most vulnerable are always made to pay the price. This is the opposite of humanity’s intended order: the strong are supposed to sacrifice on behalf of the weak, not the other way around. (p. 79)
Stuckey concludes the chapter this way:
It’s easy to see a post on Instagram of a beautiful, happy gay couple and feel the urge to applaud their relationship. When someone tells us that they feel free, that they’re finally living as their authentic selves, and that everything is fallen into place for them, of course our inclination is celebration.
We should want good things for people. We want those we love to feel joy and fulfilment. And they may indeed find forms of these things in their same-sex relationships. But as Christians we must make the effort to think beyond the compelling love story and remember that there are serious theological and societal ramifications of redefining marriage.
We must remember that God’s ways are better. If we trust that God is love, that He is good and trustworthy and wise, then we will believe Him when He tells us that the creation of man in woman in the bonds of marriage is very good Gen 131) and when He calls every other kind of sexual relationship unholy. We won’t use empathy to affirm what God calls sin. We certainly won’t celebrate it. We will only celebrate what God calls good. (pp. 94-95)
Recall that this book is written by a Christian for Christian audiences. We fully expect unbelievers to run with the latest trendy social and sexual agendas, and to live lives driven more by emotions than by moral and mental clarity. But sadly, too many of those who claim to be believers have tended to be just like their pagan counterparts.
These progressives who emote rather than think – and think biblically – are a part of the problem. Stuckey and her new book are a part of the solution. Thank God for that.
