Daily Verse | Numbers 4:20
“But the Kohathites must not go in to look at the holy things, even for a moment, or they will die.”

Monday’s Reading: Numbers 9-12

Monday and we’re off to a new week in the ever more increasingly bizarre clown world that is the Brandon administration.

Politico reported last week that Sam Brinton, an LGBTQ+ activist and drag queen “pup” fetishist, has been appointed to serve as deputy assistant secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition for the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy (ONE).

Behold your new high-level official of a key federal department:

There’s no doubt the “non-binary” man seems capable of his job.

According to a biography Brinton provided to the LGBTQ Religious Archives Network (LGBTQ-RAN), he holds a dual Master’s degree from MIT in engineering systems and nuclear science and engineering, is the founder of “Core Solutions Consulting that provides technical expertise on topics ranging from nuclear waste management to advanced nuclear reactor innovation and nuclear non-proliferation policy to advanced nuclear companies,” and has advised Congress on related issues.

But there’s more to Sam Brinton than his degree, and I’m not going to spend any time on his “pup” fetish or his interest in sex with animals. You can find that on your own if you’re interested. What I’m more concerned about is his activism and what this unprecedented step means for the future of our government and nation.

However, the biography also details Brinton’s work as an adviser to the Obama administration on LGBT issues and an activist for campaigns to ban talk therapy for unwanted same-sex attraction, such as the BornPerfect Campaign and 50 Bills 50 States, ostensibly driven by his experience as a “survivor of a traumatic and torturous conversion therapy experience.”

This is the key. Perhaps you wonder what his sexual proclivities have to do with his ability to do his job.

Nothing. He can (apparently) do the job.

The problem is the agenda that comes with Sam Brinton.

He also openly says, on his website, that he uses his nuclear background to gain access to senior corridors of power, to influence leaders to accept the full panoply of sexual deviance:

You might believe that Brinton’s capacity to do the DOE job has nothing to do with his kink activism, but he doesn’t share your belief. He believes that it is good and right to gain access to senior levels of government, and use that access for advocacy. Anybody inside DOE who has to work with this guy now should be on notice that he is going to be watching them for signs that they don’t affirm him in every way — and he will make trouble for them. Guaranteed.

Here’s the thing: Brandon and his cohort of activists don’t care about you and your conservative norms. The appointment of Sam Brinton is so in our face, so depraved, so contrary to what has been considered “normal” and “moral” for generations, that it offends the sensibilities of Normal Americans.

But “normal” Americans are a dying breed. Brinton is not universally seen as a perverted and mentally unwell person. As Rod Dreher writes, “We live in a culture in which Brinton is not seen as a failure, but as a success.”

It is going to be quite interesting to see how official conservative Washington responds to the Sam Brinton hire. I bet response is muted to positive. Why? Because though what Brinton represents is being championed by liberals, and he is a progressive hero, objecting publicly to people like Brinton and what they represent is something that is no longer done in elite circles, even among conservative elites. By the time the Boomers and the Xers die out, there will be no one left to object.

Meanwhile, as I’ve said, this is radically changing our society. Read the Rensselaer Polytechnic story: the young are being taught, and accepting the teaching, that perverts like Sam Brinton are liberating and sympathetic figures, figures that incarnate possible futures for themselves. Is this what you want for your children? Because we are all going to get it.

We need to all realize — and I’m talking to myself here too — that classical liberalism is not going to save us from this decadence. I have long resisted the implications of this conclusion, because I really do want to live in a world of relative tolerance. I am not as confident as others that this is the natural end point of liberalism, because we lived within classical liberalism for centuries without this kind of thing. What is becoming clear to me is that this is what classical liberalism is when separated from Christian faith, or at least from a metaphysical/religious structure that sets boundaries within the classical liberal framework. This is what the Founding Father John Adams meant when he said:

“We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.”

And here we are today: post-Christian, and plunging into decadence because we have unbridled our basest passions. If Sam Brinton kept his base passions hidden, that would be one thing. But he parades them, has built a lucrative public profile and career on them, and openly exploits them for cultural and political hegemony. When Brinton was in short pants, his predecessors in the movement appealed to liberal values of tolerance and individual dignity to open the doors to people like him. Now that they are in command of the culture, there will be no more liberal tolerance, only compelled affirmation of the kind of deviance that was unimaginable a generation ago to most people.

Giving Brinton a highly elevated role in the federal government validates his sexual perversions, his debased morality, and his mental unwellness. It also pokes a very large finger in the eyes of what’s left of a modest and largely Christian culture.

But this is our country now and it’s defining deviance down further than we ever thought possible.