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Breakpoint
SPLC Indicted; Young Men's Religious Revival; Clarence Thomas on Liberty; Religious Foster Parents Get a Court Win and Tennessee Honors the Nuclear Family
01:02:39
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- [00:02]
A
You're listening to breakpoint this Week where we're talking about the top stories of the week from a Christian Worldview. Today we're going to talk about the indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center. We're also going to talk about a new Gallup Poll suggesting young men are returning to religion. And we're going to talk about a speech from Justice Clarence Thomas that was really profound this week. We are really glad you're with us. Stick around. Welcome to breakpoint this week from the Coulson center for Christian Worldview. I'm Maria Baer alongside John Stonestreet, president of the Coulson Center. John, I had a dream that I met the Pope. Can we spend this episode talking through this dream? I really need to talk about it.
- [00:44]
B
That's a strange dream.
- [00:45]
A
It was very strange. I don't remember what we talked about, but it felt tense at least.
- [00:50]
B
Oh, sorry. You should have taken that as a no. We're not going to talk about it. That's harsh. Sorry.
- [00:57]
A
Moving right along.
- [00:58]
B
Moving right on. Yeah, sorry. I thought that was obvious.
- [01:00]
A
I will talk to my other podcast co host about my pope dreams. For now. Let's get to the news. John, I do want to talk about the Southern Poverty Law Center. Rough week for the splc. Perhaps I should not report on this strictly because I'm a little biased. The SPLC did add my husband Aaron's organization to their list of hate groups a couple of years ago. And now, and in perpetuity, anytime CCV is referenced in any kind of media, they do the obligatory, you know, clause afterwards, just noting that they are an SPLC designated hate group. The SPLC was indicted this week for alleged fraud, including allegedly funding some of the groups that they claim to fight, like the Ku Klux Klan. Now, the SPLC is claiming that they were paying informants, but I did not know that that was something you could do outside of law enforcement and still claim, like a plausible distance from any criminal activity that those informants or that that money then goes to commit? That is clearly what they're gonna try. I mean, officials from the SPLC say we're gonna vigorously fight this or whatever. Do you think this is the beginning of what should really be the end of the credibility of this organization, which was founded to fight for justice on behalf of African Americans who'd been wrongly accused and criminally punished for crimes they didn't commit? Now it's become this kind of ridiculous, like, we list all the people you shouldn't like organization. Is this gonna hurt their credibility? The way I hope it will.
- [02:39]
B
You know, I was thinking about this on a number of levels. One is just a line. Chuck Colson used to say a lot about the problem with ideology. Now, if you define ideology as worldview, then Christians have ideology as well. That's not what he was talking about because the Christian worldview certainly gives us ideas that are true about the world, but to kind of see through and to bank our lives on. But it also is an ideology or a worldview that's open up to more evidence. We actually believe that truth is attainable and it can be discovered and it can be found in the world around us. Like, we just don't have to, like, put blinders onto everything. And what happens, Chuck Colson would often say, is that ideology poisons. When something becomes governed by ideology to the point that it can't see anything else, then it's kind of like to a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And so really, this is an organization that should have been renovated a long time ago. The second thing I thought about was, it's interesting because not that long ago, the stranglehold that the SPLC and the SPLC hate list had on the American imagination, at least the media imagination, was just. It was impossible to overcome that. It just seemed like a mainstay in American culture, sadly. But you know what else did is the HRC Corporate Equality Index. And we just reported just a couple weeks ago how that has kind of now been demonstrated to be ideologically driven in a bad way. It has been undermined in terms of its credibility. And so one wonders, are we kind of seeing the end of some of these, or at least the beginning of the end of some of these organizations that seemed unassailable just yesterday and today seem like maybe there's a way to go through it. And then finally, and this is, I think, kind of at the heart of it, like, what's going on with this story? I think there's more information to come out. So I'm a little hesitant to just jump in and say, well, this is exactly what happened. But the SBLC strategy, just to be clear, I mean, you said it with the organization ccb, the one that your husband runs, and add the Alliance Defending Freedom, add Focus on the Family Turning point. You'd say, yeah, sure, turning point. I mean, you certainly would see it in any conservative political action group. But then you also saw it beyond that. Like anyone who said that marriage should be between a man and a woman or champion things like family values to call them hate. In other words, the business model for the SPLC requires that there's haters out there. So there's two ways to find those haters. Number one is to keep them funded so that these very small groups actually have financial support. I mean, it's interesting that they funded the kkk. I can't imagine the KKK has a robust fundraising model right now. I can't imag a whole lot of people donating money to keep this group alive. So they have to exist because if they don't exist, then the SPLC can't exist. Does that make sense? Like you have to do that. And I think at some level this kind of is a kind of propping up something way bigger than what it could be without their support. And then the other ideas is you have to, you have to name people haters that aren't. And that's been the two strategies. Apparently we knew about the one which is like take someone who disagrees with you and accuse them of hate, label them a hate group. That keeps you relevant. This is apparently part B of their strategic plan, which is prop up organizations that otherwise wouldn't exist and do it financially. But that also shows the harm of the first strategy. Right. Because what Focus on the Family would talk about and ADF would talk about and CCV would talk about is we're being put into the same category as the kkk, which is just insane.
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A
Yeah, I mean, it was always to my mind getting silly and as you
- [07:05]
B
mentioned, well, you know your husband better than I do. I've never known him to be that. You might, you might want to say something else. I don't know.
- [07:13]
A
No, I would agree with that. It was never, this was never based in reality. To my mind too, it always felt like the SPLC just throwing a bone to the media. Because when groups get big enough like ccv, like turning point, like Focus, when, when they must be reckoned with in the national media, which I believe would prefer to ignore them, they are desperate for a way to discredit them even as they're forced to cover them. Right. And I don't think that the national media, and certainly not the media here in Ohio want to cover ccv. And so in order to, you know, draw up the strength to do it, they have to put in there that little qualifier. FYI, this group we're about to tell you about has been designated a hate group by the splc. I just look forward now to any time the SPLC is referenced in any kind of media to the clause that should come after them, which is that they've been formerly indicted on charges of fraud and criminal activity.
- [08:12]
B
Yeah, the fraudulent organization as opposed to the hate group organization. Yeah, I could go for that.
- [08:17]
A
Yeah. I won't hold my breath, though, John let's turn to another story. You know, we've talked a lot in the last couple of months about is there a religious revival? We've gone back and forth. We've seen news about people returning to church. We've seen news about some of those numbers maybe being conflated, and we're not exactly sure what's happening and in what sectors. We're certainly not sure yet what this means and if this kind of has longevity or if this is. We just don't know. It's so hard in the moment to know exactly what's happening. But there is another poll that was really interesting and seems to confirm some of our, I think, anecdotal experience. This is a Gallup poll that was released Thursday that shows that more young men in the US now say religion is very important in their lives when, when compared to young women. 42% of men in the US between the ages of 18 and 29 said religion is very important to them. This is a big increase from the last time this was asked, in around 20, 22, 23. Over the same time, young women's attachment to religion has stayed much lower, around 30%. We talk about this in all kinds of areas, including dating and, you know, how, how and whether kids are meeting each other. Do you see this playing out? You're in an Anglican tradition. Have you seen young men coming to your church? Have you seen it in bigger numbers than young women?
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B
Oh, yeah. I mean, I think that there's still a whole lot to know to figure out what exactly is going on, you know, whether it's a vibe shift, whether it's a religious revival and how it impacts specific members of the population. And I think a lot is still unclear and it'll be kind of clarified in the days to come. One place it's going to be clarified is at the Coulson International Conference, because we're going to have this conversation with Ryan Burge, who I think is a very interesting and reliable researcher into some of these things. He has kind of marked where the American culture is when it comes to religion. He does so as somewhat of a neutral observer, or at least not fully on our side, if you could say it that way. Definitely someone who is positive towards religion and Christianity. As a former mainline pastor, but also asking, I think, really interesting questions and willing to say what is true and not overstate what is true. So I think his voice is very, very helpful in this conversation. And one of the things we need to talk about is this specific thing. And this is something that can be seen in other data, not just data about Christianity in America, but the kind of work, for example, that Brad Wilcox has done at the Institute for Family Studies, which is, are men and women going the same direction when it comes to religion, when it comes to moral values, when it comes to an understanding of who they are and an understanding certainly of the basic institutions of society like marriage and family and so on? And this is another piece of evidence that suggests they're not on the same page, that men are headed one direction and women are headed the other. And that is going to have some sort of impact. I don't know what that impact is going to be. I know in kind of a smaller microcosm, even at times, this push that young men seem to be embracing towards kind of being serious about what it means to be a man, to be serious about what it means to follow the Lord and how to go that direction, can be looked on with great suspicion by women. And I think there's reasons for that. I think there's also a narrative that's driving that skepticism. And so there's just an awful lot of interesting things happening. The problem with calling them interesting is that we're talking about really serious stuff, right? Like is whether men and women are going to date, whether they're going to marry, what the future of the family and the church is going to be, what kind of role where the church have in society, and so on. And the other factor in this is, of course, it seems that men are becoming more religious and that women are becoming less religious. That's brand new in Christian history. That's something that really doesn't have a parallel. I mean, you go back to the very first followers of Jesus, of course, we're disciples, mostly men, but that early generation of converts, when the Roman persecutors would accuse Christians of Christianity being a religion of women and impoverished women, in particular the down and outers, you can do the math of that Rodney Stark has done, when the early Christians went out and rescued baby girls and brought them into their Christian communities, these baby girls that were being left to die by exposure by Roman families. So this amazing revival of adoption that took place early on in the church history, and that was primarily young women. And through those young women, as Stark puts it, you know, eventually Roman men who couldn't find Roman women because the Roman families Had killed them all, went to church, you know, to become husbands, and along the way, became Christians, many of them. And so that was a kind of a sociological dynamic that is just really fascinating in church history. And Stark says it largely explains the explosion of the growth of the church in the second century. So I think that's interesting, too, right, that you have this moral teaching, don't commit abortion, don't commit infanticide. That's in the didache, this early teaching. The early Christians followed it. It's an explosion of young women entering the church, and eventually that leads young men. Now, will the explosion of young men into the church, and I don't know if explosion is the right word. It's probably premature to say that it's a real phenomenon that people are seeing, I think. But the question is, will it lead to young women as well? So fascinating questions that we're watching in real time.
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A
Well, I do wonder if there are. If there is a similarity to be drawn between that early church situation, like, are men returning to church because that's where the women are at. You know, I mean, we've talked before about how the many, many churches, at least anecdotally, have a lot more single women than young, single men. So maybe that's part of it. I think that would be a positive development. I mean, there's all kinds of reasons to imagine what would draw a young man to church, including in our cultural moment. Right. The Christian life invites people to rise beyond themselves, to live for something that's bigger than them, to structure their lives, to get disciplined, to do all kinds of things we were made to do. And there's not a lot of other areas in culture that will call them to do that anymore, including institutions of higher ed and even the workplace. There's just not a lot of opportunities or places where you're still gonna get that call to be better, I guess, or to be disciplined or to value something outside yourself. And I think people genuinely crave that. I don't know if that's what's driving this. Maybe this is a vibe shift. Maybe this is a reaction, or maybe. And this could be a positive thing, too. It's. You know, this is still due in part to the popularity among young men of people like Charlie Kirk or kind of the podcast realm where things like Christianity and churchgoing are falling more into favor than they used to be. But either way, I think the hope is that they still encounter Jesus wherever they're landing, if they are going to church, that they encounter Jesus, because if he meets them, there Then the rest is history. It's gonna be awesome. Well, John, talking about calling people to something higher than themselves. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas gave a speech this week at the University of Texas at Austin. It was about an hour long speech and it was extremely powerful. You know, this was mostly in honor of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration. And I think the central theme of his message was that the idea that our rights and our liberty don't come from the government, but come from God or come from something that cannot be violated, come from outside of ourselves was new when our founders wrote that into our Declaration and is really the founding. Like, if we get away from believing that, then the project we've built on top of it being our country is really at an existential risk. It was a fascinating speech. Did you get a chance to listen to it?
- [17:29]
B
Yeah, it is a fascinating speech and it's getting a lot of attention, and rightly so. We should just probably not say a whole lot about it and just say that's our recommendation for the week, is go listen to Clarence Thomas. But part of the interesting side of this is that, remember early on in his tenure as a sitting Supreme Court justice, he was accused of never saying anything because he never said anything. He rarely asked questions, he rarely said anything. It was a very, very different approach, especially early on, than, for example, Justice Jackson, who right off the bat in many of the oral arguments is the one talking the most. And Clarence Thomas was not that person. Now, maybe one of the reasons is at the time Justice Scalia was on the Court and Justice Scalia was teeing things up. Scalia will be known forever as a brilliant orator, a brilliant writer. His use of language and his opinions and decisions. And here's the other interesting part is, remember, Scalia is doing this at a time when the Court was decidedly progressive, when the jurisprudence behind lawmaking at that point was this idea that the Constitution was living, it needed to be reinterpreted around issues of today. And the idea of authorial intent or original meaning was irrelevant. Now you have the Court certainly swung the other way, and you have Justice Alito, who's also seems to be very concerned with jurisprudence, very concerned with articulating what that is, a conservative jurisprudence, in contrast, certainly with a progressive one, but even, I think, in contrast with more libertarian one that maybe a Justice Gorsuch would represent. And Clarence Thomas, though, in the last decade has just become way more verbal, he's become way more outspoken in oral arguments, but he's saying things like this and is this about legacy? Is this about clarifying? Is this about seizing an opportunity? You don't want to be, certainly with the Court, you don't want the court to be kind of where the executive branch is, where it's just kind of going from executive order to executive order, and you can't keep up with it because it's so dizzying from one administration to the next. You don't have any real progress made because the next administration undoes the previous one. And basically the only progress made in any sort of real sense is administrations getting more clever to weave their orders into the bureaucracy of federal government, so they're harder to unravel. This is different. And it seems to me that there is a concern from Justice Alito, but certainly Justice Thomas here to try to put some stuff in place, to try to articulate a conservative jurisprudence, to kind of articulate the foundations, which is what he did in this speech. Like, look, this is where the Constitution placed us. You may not like that, but this is the argument, right? And where laws come from and what it means to be human. These are fundamental questions that will drive this. And so that seems to be the concern. And listen, if you ask me, who do I prefer, the quiet Clarence Thomas or the more verbose one? Give me the more verbose one every day of the week. Because you can just tell there is such incredible substance behind the job that he's doing. And this speech is an example of that.
- [21:12]
A
I did think it was interesting this morning. I was just reading a story about this. You know, the flag out front of Stonewall in New York City? There was some dispute about it with the Trump administration. I honestly didn't even care to go back and look at the details, but the flag was rehoisted. Okay, the lgb, the rainbow flag or whatever. And Mayor Mamdani said, quote, our administration, meaning his mayoral office, will keep working to ensure lgbtq. So I guess they haven't adopted that new one from Canada. With all the M's, New Yorkers can live safely and with dignity in our city. And I thought that was fascinating in light of Justice Thomas speech, because one of the things that he said so powerfully was that when he was growing up and when his grandparents who raised him were growing up in the segregated south, they were never under the impression that they didn't have dignity because of the irrational laws that governed the country at that time. They didn't like those laws. They knew that they were irrational. They hoped for them to change, but it didn't even occur to them that it had any functional impact on whether they as people had dignity. And that was because they never believed that their dignity came from the government or came from laws. And that's what you get in progressivism is what he was saying in his speech. And you see it in a quote like this. I mean, something as silly as a flag like that, your New York City mayor is really standing in the gap between you having dignity and not having dignity. And, and part of that depends on whether a flag is waving outside this building. I would be embarrassed if I felt that he were speaking for me. And I'm really happy and glad that we still have leaders like Justice Thomas who don't believe that that's how dignity works and how human rights work and even how our country works.
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B
Yeah, it's a good example.
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A
All right. Well, let's take another break. John we'll be right back on breakpoint this week,
- [23:16]
B
in a culture that tries to redefine what it means to be human, the church can lead the way in restoring a God given understanding of human identity. The Colson Center's mission is to equip Christians for this work, but we need your support when you make a gift to our ministry by May 8th. We'll send you a copy of Dr. Carl Trueman's new book, the Desecration of Man, as a thank you. This timely book examines our culture's transgression of human identity and how Christians can lead the way toward restoration. Make your gift by May 8 at colsoncenter.org April that's colsoncenter.org April
- [23:54]
A
John, let's turn now to another issue in the courts. This is a case out of a district court in Washington state that ADF argued on behalf of would be foster parents who were denied a license because they said they did not agree to socially or medically transition any children that were placed into their care. So they pushed back against that. And a district court this week said that the lawsuit can proceed. So the state had asked for it to be dismissed outright. This is a positive sign. It's by no means the end of the case, but this feels I frankly was surprised that this didn't happen in Colorado. So a feather in your cap that this was at least a different state this time. But it does feel like frustrating that these courts aren't seeing the writing on the wall when they continuously get smacked down for things like this. But it is positive for these foster parents and for the kids who need care.
- [24:52]
B
Well, I think the punchline here, and I could be wrong and our ADF friends who listen maybe could, could reach out if I'm getting this wrong. But I think it wasn't that long ago, and by not that long ago, I mean years ago, a few years ago, that the only hope for relief in cases like this where a state refuses someone to be foster parents because of their religious beliefs and because, for example, I mean, there's a case, there was a case out of Vermont with another ADF client and there have been so many others where you have even families that were considered all stars in the system but would not sign on to some new requirement that they would take their kid to a pride parade if they wanted to, and then all of a sudden they were unfit to be foster parents, things like that. Your only relief was in the Supreme Court hoping that the Supreme Court would get there. And I just think that there are the harms to children that were, that have now been revealed as plain and as evidence based from trans affirming care, quote unquote, are now clearly in place. And I think even states and local courts are going to be pushing back on this. In other words, I just think it's an untenable thing. You're going to have state legislatures like in Colorado continue to carry these kind of ideological, you know, sexual progressive things against children violating parental rights, things like that. I just don't think at the court level you're going to get that same level of support anymore. I mean, maybe I'm being a little bit too hopeful. You know, this is coming out of Washington state and District court. Then, of course, we had the story out of a New York district Court, you know, just recently on another angle having to do with transgender things. I just think that it's a new day and praise God for that. You don't have to wait for the Supreme Court to give relief. There's relief to be found to other places. That's not to say we won't get another crazy ruling from another district court, but it is different than it was, I think, a decade ago.
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A
Yeah. And I know we just talked about Justice Thomas, but it reminds me of what else he brought up in his talk, which was that if you hold to these foundational truths that your rights and dignity and that truth exists outside of you, and it doesn't come from the government, and it's not determined by the government, then you'll have to be prepared for what that might require of you. And for our founders, they were aware that by signing the declaration, they were committing treason. And people who fought for the union and the Civil War, you know, gave their last full measure of devotion, as President Lincoln put it. And, you know, think it is. It is no small thing that a couple who wants to be foster. It's no small thing, first of all, to sign up to be a foster parent. I mean, already the what you're giving up and what you're agreeing to do has gotta be one of the most difficult ways to care for children. But then to be willing to push back against a requirement like this. I could see, you know, the waging you do inside yourself or your family to say, guys, let's just sign this. You know, what are the odds that we actually get placed with a child who this applies to? It's probably small. Let's just go for it. I'm just really grateful that there are people like this couple who are not only willing to be foster parents, but are not willing to live by lies.
- [28:29]
B
Yeah, it does show the differences, I think, in the various branches we talked earlier about. Kind of the moment we're in, where presidential administrations rule by executive order, and you live by it and you die by it, and it gets changed one to the other. And now we're, at least with a judicial branch, I think, have some stability. But the other one that's really weak is the legislative right. I mean, this is the state of Washington trying to basically force gender ideology in an area and carry it forward on the backs of children in need. I mean, that's what's so crazy about this story. In other words, it's not like there's an overwhelming number of foster parents that are willing to step up. And the foster system has been, in many ways, highly represented by Christian families who will have these sorts of. So you're saying you can't apply even if we have the need, Even if these kids don't have a place to go, you can't participate because you don't believe. And then this week we also had this story, which is a good news story we often get. Why don't you say more good news? Well, here's some good news. The state of Tennessee has decided not to participate in Pride Month. Instead, they are participating in Nuclear Family Month, which doesn't have the same ring to it. But you know what I'm a big fan of. Let's go with an alternative. Here's the point that I want to make. I say this oftentimes when I'm talking about abortion in front of, for example, a Pregnancy Resource center banquet. I do a lot of those supporting pregnancy centers in various parts of the country. And it's so interesting. Several couple years ago, I was in the state of Massachusetts. This is working with a center that had been firebombed, and the state of Massachusetts had basically clouded up their own investigation or just basically not done a wholehearted investigation because they didn't care. That's very different than the kind of support you get. For example, speaking at a pregnancy center in Indiana or in Kentucky or in Tennessee, Colorado. I mean, you're talking about people who are very clearly, if you're working, especially in abortion pill reversal, you may very well be signing your name up to something that's going to have the state come after you. The gender issue is very similar because you have states like Colorado, states like Washington, states like Massachusetts that are driving this forward, this gender ideology, even despite how much the evidence has changed. Right. And then you have states like Tennessee. What does all this mean? And it's a good thing to talk about in light of our 250th. The issue of slavery divided the United States state by state by state. Now, you could argue that we were already a collection of states, not really a United States until after the Civil War. But the point is, is that on an issue of incredible moral gravity, what gives humans dignity? What counts as a valuable human being? What does it mean to be human? We were divided not people by people, not groups by groups, but states by state. Free states, slave states. The Dobbs decision resulted in the issue of abortion being meted out across America in the same way where we have life states and death states. That's what we have. We have abortion states and no abortion states. Now you could. I mean, I'm also saying the abortion states, you know, send pills to non abortion states too. But I mean, on a state by state level, and now we have this. Tennessee is the first one to stick their neck up and say, you know what? Pride Month is bogus. And let's celebrate the thing that actually has brought good to our society. You know what doesn't bring good to your society? One of the seven deadly sins. You know what does bring good to your society? The nuclear family. Why? Because that's how God created it to work. And by the way, thanks to groups like the Institute for Family Studies and others, we have all the data, the empirical data we need to support the fact that what makes societies flourish is a healthy and flourishing family. So two thumbs up for the state of Tennessee. And I would say that we all follow their lead because we don't have to participate. And Pride Month, there's Another alternative, which is something that we've been involved in that has been imagined and built out by Professor Robbie George at Princeton University, which is Fidelity Month. Which has a good ring to it. Fidelity. I mean, who can argue with fidelity? Let's celebrate faithfulness. You know what brings good to a society. We're going to be doing more stuff on this as it comes. I'm going to have a conversation with Professor George about this, and we're talking about June. So we're giving everyone a heads up. It's the end of April. You got a whole month to plan what you're going to do. And fidelitymonth.com has a lot of cool resources. And I would encourage you to do it at a church level. I would encourage you to do it at a family level. I would encourage you to do it as individuals. Post it on your social media. Let's celebrate Fidelity Month. Let's celebrate the good of not pride. Right. Which is bogus. This kind of radical inclusivity or diversity is our strength. That stuff is ideological and non empirical. You know what's empirical? Faithful families, man. You want a good society? Get some faithful families and that builds a strong society.
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A
Yeah. To me, that's the exclamation point here, is that this is not about a state or a group of people choosing sides. Like, we just aesthetically, we like a nuclear family better than pride, which is a defensible position, because I don't know if you've ever been to a Pride parade, but I don't recommend it. But it's people saying, we, as we, as people who lead a state, we have a vested interest in the success of our state, which is directly related to the health of our nuclear families. And you mentioned the Institute for Family Studies, and they recently put out, along with ccv, the Family Structure Index, which looked at it was kind of similar to what some of these LGBT groups do, like the hrc, where they rank states based on how good of a place is this to live if you're a gay person? And so what are their DEI hiring practices like? And all this. This instead looked at what are. What is the health of their families and what is the health of their nuclear families, and how does the government interact with or get out of the way of those families. And what they found is what they always find, which is the states that have the smallest government and generally the most flourishing economies are those states with healthy families. Because when you don't have healthy families, healthy nuclear families with a mom and a dad who are married at home, with their kids is when the state has to step in and the rate of incarceration grows. The amount of money they spend on state welfare programs and medical aid programs and food assistance and everything in between has to grow. And the education system tends to get bloated. And that's because the health of the families is lower. So that's why a state government has a vested interest and it's good and right for them to say, we wanna celebrate this. Arrange not just because we like the vibe, but because it's truly better empirically, like you were saying, for all of us. If this unit is healthy.
- [36:21]
B
Yeah. Go to fidelitymonth.com, seriously, start thinking about kind of how to participate in this. The brilliance of this plan is that it's the same thing that Tennessee is doing. It's not attacking something. We've been suckered into this arrangement because of the movement. You know, love wins. What are you anti love. You know, I mean, we basically have been suckered into being against it, against something. And this is what we're actually saying is, no, we're for this. This is what brings good and flourishing and the good and flourishing tourist society. The other does not. So, yeah, good stuff. TriFidelityMonth.com and there'll be more on this in the weeks to come.
- [37:02]
A
Well, let me offer just a small anecdotal example of what this looks like on the ground. There was a. A video that circulated on social media this week. And we've gotta thank Katie Faust at them before us, I think, who highlighted this video. But this was from a man who I believe is like a. He's written a Broadway play, he's in kind of the theater world and is a well known person in that world who's a gay man who somehow acquired a baby along with his partner. So one assumes it was surrogacy. I guess it could have been adoption, but they posted a video of him laying on the couch playing with this adorable little baby. And the baby keeps asking for mama, and the two men are just on a joyride giggling about this, telling the baby, that's not an option, sweetie, you've got dad and you've got pop. Which one do you want? You know, and what really struck me about it, I mean, is quite dystopian, but what really struck me about it was that the men did not. It didn't seem to occur to them how distasteful this looked, like they were laughing and giggling about it. And then of course, the baby breaks down in tears and doing baby things. But you wouldn't post a video like that if you felt like you were being maniacal, which is how it comes across, I think, to me and to a lot of people. So it's not just the fact of that they have denied this baby his or her mom. I couldn't tell if the baby was a boy or girl. But it was also that they don't think that's weird or that that's something to be embarrassed about or to try and hide or to even try and justify. They were willing to laugh about it and they thought it was cute to the extent that they posted it to social media as if it were cute.
- [38:50]
B
I've thought a lot about this one. It is an awful, awful video. Whenever you see something that's posted where intentional cruelty is being done to a child, you know, it should turn your stomach. It should make you angry. It should, you know, create a sense of righteous indignation against this. I'll just give you an example. In some countries, it's a. I guess, a tradition, or at least in some communities, they post videos of young children with their birthday cake and they get their face shoved into their birthday cake. And for some of them, it's upsetting, and rightfully so, because it's embarrassing and all that. This is kind of in that category. If we didn't actually look at the issue itself, but just basically looking at a little baby and egging that baby on towards more and more distress until finally they break down. How is that okay? Well, it's okay if you are individuals so deeply brainwashed into a movement that says you're the one that has been oppressed in all this. Right? So a movement that says anyone that does not fully affirm you needs to be publicly corrected and canceled or whatever else. I mean, in a sense, they're doing to the baby what you might do to a protester, Right? Somebody who shows up at your pride event saying God created Mary. You think that this baby, who clearly is not coming from any. Like, where is this call from mommy coming from? It's not like this baby read a book about it. It's not like this baby attended a lecture. It's not like this baby has perused them before us's website. In other words, this is coming from where inside?
- [40:48]
A
Well, I mean, we have to be fair. Like, I do think there's an element of this, given how young the baby was. Like, I remember reading about this because I got mad when one of my daughter's first words was dada instead of mama. And some of this has to do with, like, what syllables you learn how to say first. I have no doubt that this baby craves his or her mom, but I don't know if the baby was directly calling for mom in this moment. Like they knew some, you know, they were saying that. But the reaction is extremely poignant.
- [41:19]
B
Yeah, yeah, okay, fine. We don't know that that's fair. Just to see somebody egg a child on and think that it's okay is crazy. Okay, but if that's your outrage here, then you're missing half the. Not you. But I'm saying in general, if that's our outrage here, then we're missing the main part of the story, which is that the cruelty that is being demonstrated here verbally is demonstrated non verbally in every sort of gay adoptive situation. Right? And every time, whether it's argued or said or goaded in the same way that this video shows a child is being deprived of a mom no matter how much they want it, no matter how much that child wants a mom. And so, in other words, this is, as you've said about other things, this is a feature, not a bug of the system. In other words, what's happening to this child is exactly as this whole thing was intended. And that's why it's so hard to. That's why it should be so hard to watch. This guy's just putting words in a cruel way to the reality that's there in every single situation. And the reason that we justify this in our behavior and in our laws is because of the same motivation that makes these guys think it's completely okay to do this. Being completely oblivious to how it looks. Right. You see what I mean? It's the same thing.
- [42:48]
A
That was the part that got me.
- [42:51]
B
It's all being driven by, I want this. I have a right to do it. And if you take away my right, then you're a bad person, whether you're a lawmaker or however old this child is. To me, it's one of the more disturbing videos that I've seen.
- [43:09]
A
It was like, if you wanted to write like a short info spot, like a small morality play about the situation, you couldn't have made a more on the nose version of it. It reminded me of, you know, Abigail Shrier has this advice column now, and a man wrote to her a couple of weeks ago. He said he was in his 30s, he's gay. I think he's in a relationship. But his mom, who is always been very supportive and loving and loves him, but is also, you know, not fully on board with his lifestyle because of her Christian beliefs, she has expressed a real hesitancy to his desire to one day adopt children. And he was asking Abigail Schreier in this letter, how do I approach my mom? Like, I don't want to lose a relationship with her, but isn't this so outrageous? And what should I do? And Abigail Schreier wrote back to him in a typical Shrier way, I think with some tough love, which is the name of her column, just kind of about like, hey, you need to stop needing approval from everybody in your life and, you know, stop being so fragile, make your decisions, be an adult about it. And completely missed both of them. Completely missed. Just like the couple in this video who missed, like, the garishness of posting something like this. Completely missed that what he was asking for was a way to maintain this really fundamental relationship that means so much to him, which is his relationship with his mom. And he's outright saying, I intend to embark on this new chapter where I shall deny a child of their mom. And I want everybody to bless it, especially my mom, because my mom means so much to me. Like, you couldn't make this up. It has taken decades to create that sort of blindness that nobody on either side of this equation. From Abigail Schreier, who usually has a sharp eye about, you know, irony and, you know, social, you know, obliviousness. They all missed it, and they just went ahead like that wasn't a real thing. I hate that we've gotten to that point where we act like that's not real. But unfortunately, you know, as kids continue to grow up and we continue playing out this experiment, we're just gonna see the results of it, I think.
- [45:31]
B
Hey, breakpoint listeners, the Colson center is coming to Knoxville, Tennessee. Join John Stonestreet and Os Guinness at the Knoxville Convention center on May 27 for a truth Rising watch party. Truth Rising is a groundbreaking documentary about courageous faith in this civilizational moment. It tells the stories of Christians like Chloe Cole, Seth Dillon, and Jack Phillips choosing courage over over fear. Making a difference where God has called them. We'll have free popcorn and soda at the Watch Party, and we'll enjoy a live Q and A with Johnstonestreet and Os Guinness after the film register today at colsoncenter.org Knoxville that's colsoncenter.org Knoxville
- [46:14]
A
well, John, there was some other news this week out of Washington, D.C. the Trump administration had kind of two big announcements regarding the FDA and the future of medicine kind of stuff. So one of them is that they have decided to declassify the use of medical marijuana. So medical marijuana has typically been classified among drugs like heroin, which is deemed to have no demonstrable medical benefit and is in danger of addiction and should be treated with respect and reticence. I guess, especially in the medical community. They've declassified it now to say it should be more available, I believe is what their hope is. And they're putting it in the same camp as medications like ketamine and anabolic steroids. They're basically lending a lot of credibility to the idea of medicinal marijuana to make it easier to sell and to create and to obtain. Is this a positive development?
- [47:14]
B
You know, strictly by the letter of the law. I think with the decision that was made this week on changing the classification, I don't think it was declassified. I think it was just. The classification was changed to a different.
- [47:25]
A
Sorry, I think it was reclassified.
- [47:27]
B
Yeah, classified. Declassified. Reclassified. They all have different meanings. Yeah, reclassified. You know, it's. I think it's, you know, not in the category of heroin. I don't think the evidence points to that. Unfortunately, what we have seen both at the state level and at the federal level is this trajectory, that there is a set of steps when the end goal is already in mind and already widely known, which is to go from somehow a justification of marijuana for medical use, which is one question, to the declassification of marijuana as a substance and saying that it is nothing different than say alcohol or tobacco or something like that. Look, I don't trust the motivation behind this because it does seem that there is always a push towards declassification and reclassification is just a step in that end. So I have real concerns. I have real concerns on two levels. Number one is I think it would be illegitimate to continue down this slippery slope, which it seems that that's where it's going. Even if this in and of itself is a harmless move. The second thing I have a concern about is I've watched it. I watched the justification of medical marijuana in Colorado to full blown legalization in Colorado. I remember all the promises. This is how these things, these kind of sin laws, you could call them, this is how they proceed. They promise one thing and they deliver something else. It's the same thing as, for example, euthanasia, which is promised as a way of dealing with chronic and horrific and terrible physical pain, but it's chosen because of emotional and mental pain. Same thing here that it is. It promises all kinds of things. I remember being in an Uber in Michigan, just a year or so after Colorado became one of the early states to legalize marijuana, beyond medical marijuana, just marijuana in general. And hearing the Uber driver talk about the promises of funding and, like, all the money that's gonna come into the schools, you know why? Because that's how it was sold. Money into the schools. Money into the schools. Money into the schools. Well, just everybody needs to know that. The headline of every conversation right now in terms of the state budget of Colorado is we have a dramatic shortfall of funding for schools. Now we should be, you know, living in it. Because now. Right. I mean, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars each year going to our schools. Look at this. No, no, no. Now we're challenging the taxpayer bill of rights in Colorado so that we can actually fund schools. And that's the thing. And by the way, this is the strategy now, because trying to fund our roads, which are crumbling, didn't work. But it's a promise that doesn't deliver. And it doesn't deliver because there's an incredible amount of social costs that go along with it. So I have concerns, not necessarily because of the letter of this law, but because of the context in which this is going. And I think it's a bad move. It's not good for young men in particular any more than sports gambling is. You don't want things incentivized that motivate young men to be demotivated. Yeah, I mean, it is. It's an incentive to be demotivated, and I think it's a problem. So we'll see. But I don't have a whole lot of help, a lot of hope for this.
- [51:24]
A
I worry about it, too. I am grateful that we can always just watch Colorado for, you know, for what our future might look like if we head down this. If we head down this road. So thanks for taking up that mantle for us. In the same vein, this week, the FDA announced that it is fast tracking its research on the use of psychedelics in the treatment for mental health conditions, in particular, addiction. And, you know, the kind of press conference and all the media about this centered on the fact that this was supposedly a result of a text message that podcaster Joe Rogan sent Donald Trump to say, hey, you should. We should allow more of this because, you know, he has some friends that have used it and it has helped them or some, you know, it's. It's kind of a bigger deal, I think, within the veteran community. It's been tried a lot there, and we're talking about, like, psilocybin hallucinogenic mushrooms, things, you know, that the Beatles were singing about that we're now trying to use in mental health. It's hard to be against more research on something, but I do think that this, I have a concern here, just in general, that the answer to the over medicalizing of mental health struggles is not going to be more medicine. And I just fundamentally believe that we've over medicalized it. And I can't sit here and say it has never helped anybody with addiction. I really don't know how to touch that with a ten foot pole. I do just have my. Yeah, I just feel concerned about it. But I do find this interesting on another level, John, because just because of the historic Christian reticence and all of the wisdom literature against things like drunkenness. I don't mean to call this the same thing or to be, you know, like too simplistic about this, but should this be a concern for Christians on that level that even if something were deemed official like medical practice or, you know, this has been tested and we've approved it, is there any hesitancy in your mind on being a Christian and engaging in something that is by definition mind altering?
- [53:41]
B
I think yes. I think it should always be something that's reticent. I was thinking about it this week. Relatedly, there's always a number of people who speak out, for example, against I'm going to go in a different direction here, contemplative prayer. And there have been various authors, including modern authors, that call believers to this practice of contemplative prayer. They cite, for example, passages about meditating in Scripture in the Psalms, meditate on it day and night, some of the language that the psalmist uses, even some of the practices of Jesus going off by himself and that sort of stuff. All that's fine until you get to then the substance of what some call a Christian to do in what they are labeling contemplative prayer, which is I'll just in the most basic level, empty your mind. Right? That's an Eastern strategy. That's a strategy that comes out of Buddhism and Hinduism. If you look in, for example, the Psalms, whenever meditation is called for, the call is never to empty your mind and just see what comes in. It's always to fill your mind and push everything else out. And you're to fill your mind with what is true. You're to fill your mind with the law of God according to Psalm 119. You're to fill with what is known to be good, the good acts that God has done in your life, the testimonies, you're supposed to think about real things. So I think along those same lines, the devil's in the details here of what do we mean by this and for who. Now again, maybe I'm shaded on this because I come from Colorado. Colorado, of course, the city of Denver was the first city to legalize psychedelics recreationally or one of the cities a couple years ago. And you look at that and you say, well, is the point of going medical to go recreational or is the point to go medical actually to go medical? I don't really like FDA policy being driven by a podcaster sending a text. I don't know how accurate that is, whether that kind of started the conversation or whether there was actually more to it. I think that there is now amazing reports in terms of severe mental health, especially when you're talking about something like PTSD and what many people saw coming out of the Iraq and Afghanistan. And I don't want to undermine that at all. I think medicine for medicine is great. I think the psychological well being at times requires medicalization. No question at all. I'm probably, maybe not in a different place than you, but maybe not exactly where you are. And kind of my concern on that. I think there's been incredible promise. But we just have a culture right now that is medicalizing things to legalize them later. That's my concern. In other words, this is a worldview question that I have not a specific because I'd be guessing about the medical stuff here. And I've seen impressive things, people have sent me things that are really interesting. The question is we have a culture that is incentivizing, especially when it comes to young men, drunkenness, to use the proverbial phrasing. We want people to empty their minds. We want people to seek an experience and a feeling over and above everything else. And we want to put that in law at the expense of encouraging what needs to be incentivized, which is hard work, reward earned success. If you go to what we now know, for example, from Arthur Brooks, about happiness, Arthur Brooks will define in large ways happiness has earned success. You've actually done something that you sought out to do and you had to actually earn it. And that actually brings something else. But you think about all the things that we're incentivizing, sports, gambling, you know, pot. And if this is in that category, which it's hard for me to believe that it's not, I hope it's not. That would be, I think, the concern in an Otherwise, here's the thing about laws in an otherwise healthy society, legalizing bad behavior doesn't make a whole lot of difference. Right. In other words, if you have a society that cultivates virtue, in which people are held accountable, people have something bigger and hire to live for. They have goals, they have a means to achieve the success that they want to set out to achieve. You know, they're probably not going to murder anybody now. Maybe they will. You know, you still need the law for that. But legalization in a setting where none of those other things are present, that to me is a much bigger concern. It's the conscience or the constable. The law holds back evil. We don't have a conscience right now. We need a constable. Is the framing that I see.
- [59:25]
A
Well, I think my biggest concern with. I think it's that those rules change a little bit when you're talking about legitimizing something as medical practice. Because what we've already seen, there's just no arguing with this, is that once we go down a medical route in treating mental health that will. Because it's easier than any other route of treatment, that will become our first line of defense. We deprioritize all of the other ways to deal with those kinds of problems, like changing your lifestyle and changing your habits and changing the way you think and your controlling beliefs, all those things. It's much easier and much more lucrative, frankly, to throw chemicals at it. That doesn't mean that.
- [60:11]
B
Yeah, that's another cultural reality. Yeah. That we. We're not trying to get to the root of it always. And that's a question about the culture of medicine itself.
- [60:20]
A
Right, Right. But I also think that the other controlling cultural belief here, that we. This is the implicit message we send when we medicalize things like emptying your mind, which I really appreciate that analogy, is that we're also suggesting that a state of total comfort should be your default. And that's just never been the case for all human history. That's not what the Bible promises us. That's certainly not what Jesus promised. But when we start sending the message that that's what we're after, things that are not abnormal, like discomfort and discouragement and setbacks and boredom and all of these difficult emotions start to feel to us like an emergency and something that needs medical intervention, as opposed to the normal status of life in a broken world, which require us to develop resilience and a better worldview that can manage and hold us up in those moments and doing something like jumping headfirst into psychedelics which I don't know if that's exactly what we're doing, but it sends the message that that's what we're after, is this sort of blissful state and that in any moment when you're not in it, that's kind of an emergency and someone should intervene on your behalf. I don't like that message. Well, John, we both, I think, would recommend, as you said, Justice Clarence Thomas speech at the University of Texas at Austin this week. You can find the whole thing, and I think it was a beautiful speech and certainly worth listening to. I'm also gonna memorize with my girls, depending on how old your kiddos are. But I had started this a couple of months ago and then we set it aside, although it is still hanging on my refrigerator. But memorize the preamble to the U.S. constitution. That's one of my goals with my girls this summer. And Justice Thomas talked about doing that when he was young as well. And I think that would be a great practice. Did you ever do that with your girls?
- [62:15]
B
They did for school, I think, or parts of that, I don't remember.
- [62:19]
A
Yeah. Highly recommend. Well, otherwise that's going to do it for our program this week. Thanks so much for listening to breakpoint this week. From the Poulson center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer alongside John Stone street, wishing you all a great week. We'll see you back here next time. God bless.