The Cult Religion of Transgenderism: Part II

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Commentary

Continued from Part I

After hearing three expert witnesses agree that transgenderism is a religious cult, I decided to pursue this idea further by researching three of the most famous cult religions and comparing them to the characteristics in transgenderism to see if they match up.

First of all, let us define a cult. According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, a cult is a small group involved in an “unorthodox or spurious system of religious worship,” especially with reference to its “rites and ceremonies,” and there is “great devotion or veneration of either a person, or an ideal or a thing.”

Here are the three well-known cults with which I’ll compare transgenderism (all had tragic ends): The People’s Temple—Followers of Jim Jones; Heaven’s Gate—the UFO Cult; and Branch Davidians of Waco, Texas. The following is a short summary of them.

The People’s Temple

Jim Jones, a self-proclaimed messiah, was the leader of The People’s Temple Agricultural Project. Jones coerced many to transfer their possessions to the church. In 1977, he moved nearly a thousand of his followers to Jonestown, Guyana. Conditions were extremely poor there, but since they were so far from home, there was no escaping for the people.

Jones and many of his fellow leaders were heavy users of drugs. He and his fellow leaders physically and emotionally abused their followers, including sexual molestation of women and children.

According to a Wall Street special report, after Jones and the cult members killed U.S. congressman Leo Ryan, who came to investigate conditions at the camp, Jones commanded his followers to drink Kool-Aid laced with poison; many were forced at gunpoint to do so. In total, 912 people died, one third of them children under age 17. The massacre happened on Nov. 18, 1978.

Heaven’s Gate

According to ABCnews.go, Marshal Applewhite and Bonnie Nettles founded Heaven’s Gate in the early 1970s. Applewhite was a trained actor and singer and the son of a Presbyterian minister. He struggled with his sexuality, had a difficult relationship with his father, was often depressed, and kept hearing voices in his head. Bonnie, a nurse, told him the voices were from heaven telling him that the savior had returned and was now in the form of Applewhite.

Applewhite and Nettles required their followers to adhere to increasingly strange and severe rules, including severing all contact with family and friends and encouraging the adoption of an asexual appearance. They were forbidden to have sex. The majority of the men were castrated, and they lived a celibate life all crowded together in their home in a suburb of San Diego, which they called the monastery.

Both Applewhite and Nettles strongly believed in UFOs and taught their followers that they were destined to go to heaven on a UFO. They taught that they were to reach an alien spacecraft that trailed the approaching Hale-Bopp comet. It was the human body that was holding them back by keeping them on Earth, and by abandoning their “Earthly containers” they would move on to the “Next Level.”

In March 1997, 39 people were found dead by suicide in their home. They were all wearing the same black sweatshirts and Nike sneakers and covered with the same purple blankets, with a matching backpack lying next to them. It was the largest mass suicide since the Jones cult massacre.

Branch Davidians

According to History.com, this religious cult was based in Waco, Texas, and is mostly known for its end—the Waco Siege. Cult members all lived together in a compound known as Mt. Carmel. They believed Christ was about to return to the world and establish a kingdom. The leader, David Koresh, told members that they were there to learn, not have fun. They attended Bible studies almost all day, every day.

Koresh considered himself the new Messiah and the Lamb, the only one (as mentioned in the Book of Revelation) worthy of unlocking the Seven Seals and revealing to the world the entirety of the Bible’s teachings. This identification allowed Koresh to justify some of his controversial practices, including taking various “spiritual wives,” some reportedly as young as 11 years old.

The FBI had obtained a warrant to search the cult’s headquarters because they believed the cult was illegally selling weapons. What resulted was a standoff that lasted 51 days.

Accounts of the final events are somewhat disputed. In all, close to 80 members, including Koresh and 25 children, died of either gunshots or the fires that broke out inside the compound when tear gas canisters were fired in and somehow caught fire. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives were trying to force the people to come out because they couldn’t breathe; instead they all died.

Five Characteristics Transgenderism Shares With Cults

1) There is a strong leader or a strong idea. The leader is venerated or almost worshiped; or the strong idea is held as the absolute truth without any question. If someone questions or goes against the idea, they are shunned and cast out.

In the cult of transgenderism, there is no one strong leader, but it is a strong idea that is pushed upon children starting in drag story hours, preschool, or kindergarten and follows them throughout their schooling—the idea that they may have been born in the wrong body, that it is perfectly normal and safe for them to transition, and that that is the only hope for them to be truly happy.

2) The leader and thus the group that follow him have an obsession with sex. This can manifest as sex rituals, multiple sex partners, molestation of children, or in the case of Heaven’s Gate, total abstinence from sex.

The same thing goes on with transgenderism. It is all about sex. The drag queens or kings flaunt their sex in their performances before children. Some children are molested when they are put into group homes, and some boys choose to be castrated as they try to transition to being a female.

3) The group is told to sever all ties to their families.

We see how so many children are being taken from their homes because the parents would not affirm the transitioning child. How much easier it is to be programmed into the cult mentality when you have no loved ones there to protect you.

4) The leaders demand the sacrifice of the group in giving up money and property for the benefit of the whole, and they live together in a compound or a large home.

Again, many transitioning children are being placed in group homes after being taken from their families.

5) Often in the end, many members or the entire cult end up dead by mass suicide.

So many transgender people discover that this is not the happiness they were promised. They are miserable and can never go back to what they once were after all the sex operations have taken place. PublicMed, a government website, states, “Data indicate that 82% of transgender individuals have considered killing themselves and 40% have attempted suicide, with suicidality highest among transgender youth.”

To be continued in Part III.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.