← Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey
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Allie Beth Stuckey
A disturbing video of prominent journalist Glenn Greenwald circulated X this weekend. His response, as well as the response from many prominent conservative commentators has left me scratching my head. I will give you my take on the situation and how I think Christians should think through it. Also, Gallup has found that Republican support for same sex so called marriage is the lowest that it has been in 30 years. Happy Noah Covenant Month y' all. This episode is brought to you by our our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to good ranchers.com code ally that's good ranchers.com code ally hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far. A wonderful start to your week. I like to remind you sometimes at the beginning of the week that the only thing we have to do today is the will of God. That is a quote from Elizabeth Elliot that has given me so much comfort. And I like to add on to a quote by Elizabeth Elliot by saying that all we really are responsible to do is the next right thing in faith, with excellence and for the glory of God. So those last stipulations are ones that we've added on over the years. Do the next right thing in faith, with excellence and for the glory of God. That can be small, private acts of obedience. That can be changing diapers and washing dishes. Is sending an email. All of this can be done in a way that is excellent, that is glorifying to God, and that is all we are really responsible to do. And the Holy Spirit helps us do those things. All right, before we get into the content of today's episode, I just want to invite all of you women out there to join my push up challenge for the month of June. I'm not even really sure how I started this whole thing. I'm certainly not the first one to do a push up challenge. I think other people have done this in the past. But I started recording some of my workouts that I do with my husband and started posting about them. Y' all loved that exercise content. And then I started talking about how I have worked back up during postpartum to doing full body push ups and because y' all were interested in that, it just kind of began this whole thing of me doing push ups every day and I read that the average woman can only do 5 full body push ups and I think it's actually way lower than that. Good form. Full body push ups can be really difficult, difficult for women. I think that the average is probably zero and if that's where you are, that is totally fine. Everyone can join in this challenge, no matter how many push ups you can do. I am posting a video today on Instagram to talk about the modifications that I did to work up to being able to do full body push ups. And now we are doing 15 push ups a day in the month of June. I just want to say that I started out saying only 8 to 12 push ups a day, and then Candace Cameron Bure got on Instagram, tagged me and was like, 15 push ups a day. So she upped the ante and then other people started doing 15 push ups a day, and I'm like, what did I get myself into? 15 push ups is a lot. And now I have to record it. So I'm accountable to you guys to do 15 push ups every day. So, again, so many modifications that you can do that I will talk about on Instagram, but I just encourage you to join me. I find when I am able to do difficult physical feats, it gives me endurance and confidence in other areas of my life. It reminds me that I can do difficult things that I didn't think that I was able to accomplish. So it's just a fun thing for us to do together. Go ahead and join in and you can find the details of this challenge on Instagram sometime later today. All right. It is June, which means that to some people out there, it is Pride Month, where you celebrate sexual identities that do not align with God's word. And of course, as Christians, we don't celebrate that. We understand that all people, no matter their sinfulness, no matter their temptation, are made in the image of God. Therefore, they all have innate worth. And everyone has a soul that will live forever. And the only way for any soul, for any person to be saved, is through Jesus Christ. Jesus says in John 14:6 that I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Ephesians 2, as we'll talk about more today later in this episode, makes clear that everyone is dead in their sins apart from Christ. Everyone. There aren't different levels of being dead, no matter what your sin is. Everyone is dead in their sin, apart from Christ. And we all need to be saved by Jesus, by grace, through faith. I was reading Colossians 1 this morning where God, through Paul, says that all of us were once hostile in mind. We were all once hostile to God. And we had hardened hearts, and we had calloused minds, and we had a conscience that was seared. But Jesus can make us new. He can make us new creations, and he can save us and he can wipe our slate clean forever. And that is true. Whether you are someone who erroneously thinks that pride and unbiblical sexuality is something to be celebrated or not. Everyone needs to be saved by Christ. I like to say that this is Noah Covenant Month. The Noah covenant is God's promise to Noah that we read about in Genesis, specifically Genesis 8:20 through 9:17. And this was a promise that God made to Noah after he flooded the earth. And the reason that God flooded the earth is because of man's wickedness. Horrible things were happening, horrible violence was being inflicted on people. And so God said, look, I'm going to preserve this one man and his family, I am going to preserve these animals, but I am going to basically wipe the rest of humanity off of the face of the earth. But after this, God promised that he was never going to flood the earth again. And I, I love this passage too, because it just flies in the face. So much of the climate change propaganda that says that, oh, the world is going to burst in flames, we're not even going to have an earth to live on. But God promises that he is sovereign over the existence of the earth and that the world is not going to end apart from God's sovereign will. And then we also read about the rainbow. So Genesis 9, 14, 15, when I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is sealed, seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. The Noah covenant creates the stable natural world necessary for God's ultimate redemptive work through the birth of his Son, Jesus Christ, sustaining humanity so that the Messiah could, could enter history to save his people. And that specific quote is from ligonier ministries. Hebrews 8:6 says, but as it is Christ has obtained that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. That's amazing. So the promises, the covenant that is made to God's people in the Old Testament, that is just a foreshadowing of the new and better covenant that we get to enter into as God's people through Jesus Christ. So when you see the rainbows around this month, remember that the rainbow is God's, that it is a sign of redemption, that it is a sign of his mercy, that even though mankind has been and still is in so many ways, so wicked, that God in His mercy has promised to never flood the earth again, and he has made a way through Jesus Christ for us to be redeemed from our wickedness because Jesus paid the price for that on the cross. And so that is really good news. Also, remember, there is a difference between the rainbow flag that is so wrongly and wickedly used as a symbol of depravity when it comes to the quote unquote pride flag and the actual rainbow. And it's just so fitting in a very dark way that the pride flag has six colors and an actual rainbow that God created as a symbol of his promises has seven colors. So right there you see a distinction between an earthly counterfeit and God's real, genuine goodness. All right. Now we've got it to get into, I guess a related story about a very prominent journalist by the name of Glenn Greenwald and a video that was released of him over the weekend in the story, for me, it really isn't as much the video itself as the reaction to the video by many prominent Christian conservatives. And this next segment won't be me throwing anyone under the bus that's on our quote unquote side when it comes to, you know, politics and culture, but just giving my perspective of what I think our response should be to a scandal like that as Christians first and foremost. So we'll get into that in a second. Let me go ahead and pause and tell you about our first sponsor for the day. And that is, sorry, we're in a little bit of a different setup today. As you can tell, I'm recording remotely. I have to look at my phone for my ads that producer Bri sent me. So our first ad for the day is from Fellowship Home Loans. So if you are looking into buying a home or refinancing, you want to make sure that you are working with people that you can really trust that your values align with because this is a huge decision. You are talking about the handling of your hard earned money. And it's really important that the people that are helping you with that care about integrity. And the people at Fellowship Home Loans, they are trying to glorify God in everything they do. Mike and Brian, I've talked to them. They are the real deal. They started this company because, one, they want to honor God through their business and two, they really like mortgages. They care about this and they care about making sure that you are getting the best loan that you can and that you are able to refinance your home in a way that makes the most sense for you. For my listeners, they are offering a 500 credit at closing. You have to go to fellowship homeloans.com ally to take advantage of that deal. That's fellowship homeloans.com alli fellowship home loans Mortgage Lending by the Book Nationwide Mortgage Bankers DBA Fellowship Home Loans equal housing lender in MLS number 81938 to Glenn Greenwald. A lot of you probably know of him maybe because he's been a guest on, say, Megan Kelly's podcast, I love Megan Kelly's show or the Tucker Carlson's podcast. I remember watching him as a guest on Tucker show when Tucker was on Fox. He was always very articulate, but he's not someone that I follow super closely. But he is regarded by many as a renowned journalist. He is best known for his stance as what I would call like a free speech absolutist. He is known for his criticism of governments and governmental agencies, including in the US he really sees the US in many ways and United States institutions as regularly violating free speech rights. In 2013, he published a series of articles in the Guardian that revealed facts about British and American surveillance programs that he found in classified documents that had been leaked to him by Edward Snowden. So all of this might be ringing a bell just a little bit. He's also very anti Israeli government. He has also condemned J.K. rowling for her advocacy for women and girls. So you could probably say that he is heterodox in a lot of ways. Now he used to be seen as squarely on the left. For example, several years ago Rachel Maddow praised him as like the most fearless, fearless journalist on the left. But but because he has been critical really of various administrations, he has in the last few years been almost exclusively featured by and platformed by more conservative leaning shows. Now over the weekend, and by the way, as I said, I'm recording this remotely, so my setup is a little bit different. And I've got all of my notes on my phone. And this is a story and the theological interpretation of this story, I just want to make sure that I am getting exactly correct. So you might notice I'm looking down a little bit more just to make sure that I'm following my notes exactly. Over the weekend, a video was leaked that depicted Greenwald, who is openly gay, engaged in very degrading sexual acts with what appears to be a male prostitute. I did not watch the video. You do not need to watch the video, but I read a summary. I saw a couple screenshots of what happened. And those screenshots weren't even like graphically of any sexual acts that were going on. And we won't get into the graphic details, but in the video you see that Greenwald is scantily clad in women's clothing and is videoed doing what seems like some kind of humiliation ritual that includes him paying a male prostitute via PayPal. That's what appears to be happening, okay? Awful, embarrassing, depraved. But after the video was released, Greenwald posted a statement saying this. Last night, videos were released online depicting behavior in my private fit life. Some were distorted and others were not. It's unclear what is meant by that. He said, they were published without my knowledge or consent, and its publication was therefore criminal. Though we do not yet know exactly who is responsible, we are close to knowing, and the motive was a maliciously political one, he says. He goes on to say, as for the content of the videos, okay, this is an important part of this statement. He says, as for the content of the videos, I have no embarrassment or regret about them. The videos depict consenting adults engaged in intimate actions in their private lives. They all display fully consensual behavior, harming nobody. And then he goes on to say, it can be uncomfortable when this happens. The only wrongdoing, he says, is the criminal and malicious publication of the videos in an attempt to malign perceived political enemies in advance of political agenda. That, and, you know, he emphasizes, again, this is private life. Some people are going to be judgmental about my private life, but I'm going to continue doing my work and doing what I do. Now, as I said in the beginning, I would really have no reason to talk about this if it weren't for the response from so many conservatives, including conservative Christians, afterward. And I'm not going to go through all of the people who said, said various things. A lot of them are people that I consider friends, that I respect a lot, that I will continue to respect a lot. But I did think it was odd and a little surprising that one after another, these conservative commentators very, very vehemently came to his defense, all saying almost the exact same thing, that whatever he does in his private life is none of our business. He does good work. We should respect that, that blackmail is wrong. And there also seems to be this idea among a lot of his defenders that this was some kind of conspiracy against them, that someone out there is real. It seems to be implied by a lot of people leaked this footage to embarrass him and to hurt his credibility and to stop him from reporting the truth. And I just found the sudden and overwhelming and very uniform defense of him after this very, very disturbing video came out by many commentators, including Christian commentators, to be strange and very confusing. It almost Feels like I missed some kind of, like, mass email that said, okay, these are the conservative Christian talking points after the Glenn Greenwald sex tape releases. Now, I'm not super familiar with Greenwald, beyond him being, you know, a guest on some of the shows that I've watched. And I've always found him, you know, very interesting, articulate. But I had no idea that so many conservatives view him as absolutely indispensable to the cause. To the point to where they have to defend him after something this grotesque comes out. After this level of degeneracy is published, they felt the need to, like, rush to his defense. Now, not everyone did this. They didn't all just give, like, a blanket endorsement of Glenn Greenwald, although some people absolutely did. But then you had some, like Jason Whitlock, he's my fellow Blaze TV host that I'm a big fan of. He said, okay, I love his work, pray for him. I don't like his private actions. Okay? Like, that's a perspective. Certainly it is possible to appreciate what someone does professionally and dislike what they do personally. We do this with artists, for example, all the time. But I. I still can't get on board fully with that perspective in this situation. Like, at the same time, we don't feel the need to rush to defend all of those whose personal lives we condemn. So, like, when an athlete or a celebrity does something terrible, we might ignore it, or we might condemn it and continue appreciating their professional contributions, or we might condemn it and then stop supporting them altogether. But you don't typically see conservative Christians going out of their way to straight up defend that celebrity when they say or do something that is awful. So, like when a football player beats his girlfriend, for example, this unfortunately happens, like, with some regularity, and the tape is leaked. You don't see a lot of people, Christian or not, rushing out and declaring, none of our business. Like, private life. This private life doesn't affect how he plays. Play ball, put him in, coach, love them, respect. Like, you just don't typically see that. No, you would see people say, that's terrible. What a waste of talent. Now he needs to go to prison. Bye. So I'm just confused about why we would feel such an urge to so passionately defend someone. Engagement in the very behavior that we as conservative Christians always condemn, like cross dressing, prostitution. It also looked like hard drugs were in the background, not to mention homosexuality, which I know that there are plenty of people who we ally with politically who accept this as normal. They'll say, like, lgb without the tea. But it's, it's not normal. It is functionally sterilizing behavior that damages the bodies and the souls and the societies of those who participate in it. It. So this guy Glenn Greenwald isn't just a journalist who is being platformed regularly. He is a dad of two adopted boys. And like, does anyone have any concern for their well being while their dad is apparently using hard drugs with a prostitute? Like, I think it is worth asking that question. It's not a private matter when there are possibly kids that are affected. And I'm not saying that Greenwald doesn't love his sons. I don't know, you know, like what the rest of his fatherhood looks like. But to act like this is just a compartmentalized private act that no one should have any interest in whatsoever. I'm just not so sure that's true. Also, like, we can note that he's got a strange past. He met his now deceased partner when he was 38 on a trip to Brazil and his partner was only 19. It's reported that just a few days later they moved in together and you know, got quote, unquote married. Like, I would think that was weird. If that were a man and a girl, a 38 year old man, a 19 year old girl. I would think that's really weird. Like technically legal, but quite the age gap. He also helped run a gay porn business in the early 2000s. That is not disputed. He has talked about that himself. So I'm just not sure, I'm just not sure that this whole thing, that the publication of this video was an accident. Like my theory, and I saw that others had the same thought, is that both the recording and the release of this video were done with Glenn's knowledge. I mean, clearly, as was reportedly depicted in the video, Glenn is into degradation. And this is also known. I know this is like very disturbing, but it's important as we're looking at the reaction to this. It's also known as a humiliation fetish. And the only reason I even know that phrase is because the conversations. A lot of you probably remember these with a journalist by the name of Genevieve Glock. She founded the outlet Redux. They've done a lot of good work when it comes to calling out how gender ideology and men who identify as women have infiltrated and infected women's spaces and hurt girls as a consequence of that. Got two episodes with her that I really encourage you to listen to and we can put them in the description of this episode so you can click on them episodes 636 of relatable, 702 of relatable. Those two conversations with her reveal extremely disturbing research into the kind of pornography and chat rooms that fuel much of the transgender trend among men. It's something called forced feminization, or, again, just very disturbing phrases, but also called sissy porn. And common in this porn is the theme of dressing up as a woman and being forced to do humiliating and degrading things. And that seems to be what is happening in this scenario, in this video. I'm not saying that Greenwald is transgender. I'm saying that it seems like he's into some really dark stuff, and he was filmed not just performing certain acts, but also paying this prostitute via PayPal with an account that looks to be linked to his own name. And all of this was done on what doesn't appear to be, like, a hidden camera, but a camera that the prostitute is holding right in front of Greenwald. Like, so you are telling me that the journalist who arguably knows more about cybersecurity and cyber privacy than anyone else on on earth, accidentally got caught paying a prostitute via his own PayPal account? Like, that's just hard for me to buy. So it seems to me that the release of the video is part of the fetish that was fairly obvious to me from the beginning as soon as I saw some of the details about this story, which is why the impassioned and uniform defense of him right out of the gate by so many people on the right just seems strange to me. It just seems strange to me. And while many of them were defending his actions, they were very passionately insisting that everyone separate his sexual depravity from his public work and, like, neatly compartmentalize it over here and pretend like it has no effect whatsoever on anything over there. And I'm just not sure I can hop on to that. And I understand we've got questions. Well, what about Trump? Or what about this? And I've thought through this myself. I've been thinking about this issue over the weekend, not just in relation to Greenwald, but just in general. Like, where is the line that we draw between private life and public life? When should we care about it? How should Christians think about this? And so we'll get into that in just a second. Let me pause and tell you about my next sponsor for the day Day, and that is Cozy Earth, y' all. I love Cozy Earth so much. I talk about them a lot because I use their stuff all the time. I love their sheets. I love their bedding. I Love their towels. I love their pajamas. I love their loungewear. It's all made out of this super luxurious and breathable bamboo, viscous. And, you know, it's getting really hot over the summer and no one wants to be a sweaty sleeper. You want to feel cool and comfortable when you sleep, which means the pajamas that you wear and the sheets that you really matter, you should just be getting all of that from Cozy Earth. They make the most comfortable stuff on the planet. I love giving this as gifts, by the way. Like, good sheets make a great wedding gift. They're pullovers, they're loungewear. Make great Father's Day gifts. My dad and chief related bro both love their pullovers from Cozy Earth. They wear them all the time. Go to cozyearth.com use code relatable for up to 40% off all men's apparel. That's cozyearth.com code relatable. So I just don't fully understand why, and I'm sincerely interested in Yalls thoughts and comments about this, but I don't know that I understand why. If Hunter Biden's drug use and his use of a prostitute mattered, this doesn't matter. Now, to be fair, Glenn Greenwald never went after Hunter Biden. And actually he said, like, oh, I don't think that we should be going after him. So I'm not even saying it's hypocrisy on his part, but a lot of the people just so quickly defending Glenn Greenwald were some of the people going after Hunter Biden and his private behavior. I don't really understand why, if Sam Britton's personal life mattered, Greenwald does it now. Sam Britton was the, quote, unquote, non binary guy who worked in the Energy Department, who stole women's clothing and taught BDSM sessions out of college. Like, he was super strange. And I think, like, we should have cared about that. That was bad. That person shouldn't be in the government. And maybe that's what you would say. Maybe you would say, well, that person and Hunter Biden too. They had to do with our government. And Greenwald is a private citizen. Maybe. Okay? And I saw that Greenwald said, well, what about Trump? Like, Trump has his moral issues. Y' all voted for him. What's the difference? This was his response to some questions that Jason Whitlock had. And I thought about that because, you know, that's a fair question. But Trump's lack of sexual ethics does matter. That is absolutely true. They do matter. I don't agree with them. I think they're bad. I think they're poisonous for someone personally. I think they're poisonous for a family, for a community, and could have an effect absolutely on whatever entity a person is leading, including Trump. Trump, his reported adultery, his reported objectification of women in the past is simple. I've said many times I hope that Trump becomes a Christian, if he hasn't already recently, and that I wish that he didn't have the stuff in the past that he does. I've never been one to shy away from that or pretend that that didn't happen or excuse that. But one, Trump was running for president as one of only two options. The other option, in every case case was worse in every way. His opponent in all of these elections has also had moral depravity in their past and on top of that, advocated for absolutely murderous and destructive policies, policies that I don't align with that I think are bad for children, bad for babies, bad for family, bad for the economy. 2. As far as I know, Trump wasn't engaging in those kind of sexual sins when he was running for office. This three. And here's what where we'll get into some theology about all of this. Not all sexual sin is the same. I said it. Not all sexual sin is the same. Now let me explain what I mean by that. All sin separates us from God, no matter what it is, whether it's cheating on a test in sixth grade or telling a lie to your mom or murder or sexual degeneracy. Romans 3:23 says, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and these sins can be forgiven. That's. So we've got bad news and good news right there. No matter if it's a tiny lie or if it's years of sexual depravity. The verses after Romans 3:23 make this clear. For all have sin and fall short of the glory of God. Then there's verse 24. And are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. Faith we are justified, made right before God. Justified. That's such a great word. We are put right with God because of what Jesus has done for us, which is a gift given to us that we did not earn, that we could not deserve. Ephesians 2, 3 says that we all once lived in the passions of our flesh. All of us once lived in the passions of our flesh and carried out the desires of the body and the mind. We just did whatever we want want it. But verse 8 in verse 8 we read that we have been saved from that sinfulness by grace through faith. And this is not your own doing. These verses say it is the gift of God, not a result of work. So that no one may boast. I want you listener viewer to hear this on the off chance that Glenn Greenwald is listening to this podcast episode like I want him to hear this. One, you all of us are sinners in need of a Savior. Savior all of us. And two, that Savior is Jesus and he can save anyone no matter who you are or what you've done. So all sin separates us from God and Jesus can get rid of that sin and forever reconcile us to God, make us friends of God, bridge the gap between us and God. But not all sin is the same. Some sin has greater consequences both personally and societally than others. Some sin is more disordered than others. So a man cheating on his wife with another woman is sinning absolutely his lust. So even the thoughts that he has in his mind of being unfaithful to his wife and lusting after another woman, those are sins. And consequential actions are also sinful. But a man desiring a woman in principle is not inherently disordered. It is natural for a man to desire a woman, and it is by self control and love for his wife and Holy Spirit empowered discipline that he avoids lust and temptation to be unfaithful to the one woman to whom he has committed in marriage. But it is unnatural, inherently unnatural for a man to desire a man or for a woman to desire a woman. Our bodies don't work that way. Procreation doesn't work that way. It is actually bad physically. Health wise for our bodies and for our souls to divide defy God's design. Here's Romans 1:26,27 and I encourage you to read the entirety of the chapter, but for the sake of time we'll just stick with these two verses. Verses 26:27 for this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions for their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature. And the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another. Men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And by the way, all of the conspiracy theorists that say that the word homosexuality was added to the Bible in 1946, they always skip over Romans 1 because the word homosexuality is in there, but the actual behavior is described. This was not added into the Bible this has been there since the beginning in the garden. God created man and woman. He wed them in marriage. He commanded them to become one flesh, to be fruitful and to multiply. Replied. This original marriage is so significant that Jesus repeats it in Matthew 19, 4, 5 when he's answering a question to the Pharisees about divorce. He says, he answered, have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made the male and female, and said, therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So again, going back to those conspiracy theorists who just weave this narrative about homosexuality being added to the Bible, they never look at the positive definitions of marriage that we see repeated by Jesus himself. This definition of marriage is so significant that God through Paul, says the marriage between a man and a woman is an earthly representation of Jesus and his church. Ephesians 5, 31, 32. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound and I am saying that it refers to Christ in the church. Again, I encourage you to read the entirety of that passage. It is so significant, this definition of marriage, of holy sexuality between one man and one woman, that in Revelation 19, all of time culminates in the wedding of a bride, the church and a groom. Jesus. The Bible starts with the marriage and ends with a marriage. A marriage between Adam and Eve, that bride and groom, and a marriage between a bride and the groom. Rome, which is the church and Jesus. And everywhere in between that first marriage and the last marriage, marriages here on earth are representations of Jesus's relationship with his people. The alliteration that I came up with six years ago, I repeat it all the time. I just shared it on Instagram. The definition of marriage, even if you were to say, oh, we don't need to look at any versus condemning homosexuality, because that context and that interpretation, and that's the Old Testament. Even if you were to get rid of rid of all of those verses, holy sexuality and marriage in the Bible is only described positively in one way, and that is between one man and one woman. It's rooted in creation. We see that in Genesis 1:27, first chapter of the first book of the Bible. It is reiterated throughout Scripture. For example, Exodus 20:12, you shall honor your father and mother. It is repeated by Jesus himself in Matthew 19, 4, 5. In that passage that we just read, it is representative of Christ in the church as we read in Ephesians 5. In that passage, we just referenced. And in that way, it is reflective of the Gospel rooted in creation, reiterated throughout Scripture, repeated by Jesus himself, representative of Christ in the church, reflective of the Gospel. That is how important, not just physically for the continuation of mankind, but also spiritually and eternally the definition of marriage is. That is exactly why when someone decides to deny or to pervert Genesis 1:27, they eventually deny or pervert. John 14:6. When Jesus says, I'm the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me, it's not just this, like, tertiary issue. It is so important to someone's theology. If you can deny creation, then you can deny everything else. Because the Gospel is much more controversial than the reality that God made us male and female, to be able to physically and spiritually fit together together. Homosexuality and transgenderism are forms of sin that fundamentally deny the created order, that deny the fundamental functions of the body, deny that we are made in God's image as male and female. A husband can be a wife is just as damaging and nonsensical as a man can be a woman. A dad can be a mom is just as nonsensical as a woman can become a man. It's the same math. You'll see the same kind of circular propaganda. Love is love. Trans women are women. But if you don't define love, if you don't define woman, then you're not really saying anything. Then anything is a woman. That anything can be love. Predation, stalking, all different kinds of things can be love. If you don't define it, it. But God is love, 1st John 4:8. So he has the authority to define it. He says in First Corinthians 13:6 that love, among other things, never rejoices in wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. And the truth is that the God who is love made us male and female. And by the way, whatever God does throughout Scripture, Jesus participates in too. So you can't separate some verses that Jesus said from the rest of what God does, because Jesus, Jesus is God. You can't love someone and affirm them in their sin. You can't love someone and lie to them. And if you've got more questions about this, then I really encourage you to read Toxic Empathy I saw on Amazon. It's on sale right now for like 16 bucks. And so I really encourage you to get that. We have a whole chapter on this lie, that love is love, and we look at how we should approach this and how we should think about this. Yes, biblically, as Christians, but also politically, as conservatives, like, what does it even mean to be conservative? What are we actually preserving? What do we stand for? What do we stand against? The difference between us and the left, just politically speaking, is supposed to be that the left just is out to destroy everything. That's why they can be so much more unified. Because it doesn't matter how you tear down a building, anyone can do it. But conservatives are supposed to be for something. We're supposed to be building something. And that's much harder to do because when you're building something, you have to agree on the materials used and the strategy that you are employing to build it. You have to agree on the foundation, you have to agree on the bricks or the wood or whatever you're using to create this edifice. And that's much more difficult. But it is worth having the conversation, the very, you know, fundamental conversation of like, what is our foundation? Do we believe in absolute truth? If so, where does that come from? If we agree that it comes from God, then we should look to him to define other things too. And if someone, someone disagrees with that very fundamental premise of like our conservative foundation or our societal foundation, like, then they probably shouldn't be defended. Right. At any length. Okay, we've got some good commentary surrounding this, though. I was definitely not alone in saying what the heck is like, going on here? Like, why are we vehemently defending this guy? So we'll get into that in a second. I just want to remind you about Share the Arrows here, y' all. This year's Share the Arrows is brought to you by our friends at EveryLife. If you are looking around and you're like, I feel alone. Like, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills because so many people are compromising on biblical values. And I feel alone in my community, or maybe alone in your family, even alone in your friend group, alone among the people that you see online. I don't want you to feel alone. I want you to know that there are thousands and thousands of literally like minded believing women that believe in God's inerrant, authoritative, infallible word. And we want to live like it. And we want to be encouraged by God's word. We want to be challenged in our theology. We want to be taught apologetics. We want to know how to apply good theology to every area of our life, whether it's motherhood, whether it's health. And that's why Share the Arrows exist. The concept is that when a believer is getting the arrows of bullying or pushback or persecution, that instead of the rest of us looking at that one persecuted sister and saying, I'm glad that's not me, we all stand up and we say, you know what, if you're going to cancel her, if you're going to bully her, if you're going to slander her, then you're going to have to come at me too. And we all link arms together because I have watched that over and over again as those of you, you out there have shared the arrows with people in our community who are being lambasted for standing up, for example, for a biblical marriage, how powerful that is, how it gives people just the gumption and the strength to keep going. And that's what this conference is about. We've got Alisa Childers, we've got Ginger Duggar Volo, we've got Katie F. Who we'll talk about in just a second. We've got Shauna Holman and Taylor Dukes. I'll be on a biblical health panel. It's going to be amazing. We're going to have a motherhood panel with Abby Halberstad. She's an author and a homeschooling mom of 10. We've got Hillary Morgan Ferrer, who is the author of the very popular Mama Bear apologetics. And then our friend Francesca Batticelli, Grammy Award winning artist, will be leading us in worship. And it's going to be amazing. October 11th Dallas, Texas. Go ahead, get your tickets now. I don't want you to miss out, okay? I don't want any messages of phone mo because you can't say I didn't tell you. Go to share the arrows.com get your tickets today. Cannot wait to see you there on October 11th. That's share the arrows.com my friends at the Daily Wire, who I am almost always in alignment with when it comes to our reactions to things, Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, they have this to say about the situation. Matt Walsh. Walsh said Greenwald was asked specifically about the apparent meth pipe in the video and he didn't deny it. Instead, he said he's proud of his personal life. How can anyone defend this? There are three children in that home. Okay, I didn't realize there were three children. Does anyone really think that a home with hard drug use and male prostitution is an appropriate or safe place for children? It's true. And then he posts screenshots of, of someone saying, hey, like there's, there's a meth pipe in this. And he doesn't deny that. Michael Noel said so. He is kind of playing on screw The Screw Tape Letters if you haven't read the Screw tape letters by C.S. lewis, gosh, it's a short book, but it is jam packed with just amazing wisdom that makes you think. And so he's kind of playing on that. In this post he says, tell the patient never to feel embarrassment or regret over supposedly consensual actions between adults. Encourage him to stay true to his own principles, no matter how erroneous. Your affectionate Uncle Screwtape. As we've talked about many times on this show, consent is not the only determinant of morality. Consent based morality is extremely slippery and superficial. People can consent to things that are immoral. People can consent to things that are awful. We've talked about how, oh, if someone chooses to objectify themselves or if someone uses, chooses to, you know, rent their wombs out for someone who is seeking a surrogate, well, they're consenting to it. They know what they're doing. It doesn't matter. It's still wrong. Self objectification is still wrong. So this whole idea that I see a lot of conservatives latching on to, that while they consent to it, okay, people consent to murder. People consent to rape if they are the one doing the raping, that doesn't make make it okay. Okay? And consent is not the only thing that makes something wrong. It's not the only thing that makes something right. There are all different kinds of values and virtues that we use as inputs into making our moral calculations. And that's really what this debate is about. What are those inputs? It seems like we should be able to agree as Christian conservatives on what those should be. Lila Rose also, I agree with her. She says sexual ethics matter. What you do in your bedroom does impact other people as well as yourself. A society that says anything goes sexually holy is in free fall right now. Many right wing elites seem to care more about shielding their friends than standing on principle. That's a recipe to lose. The zealous, eager, hungry for truth, next generation who can smell hypocrisy a mile away. She says don't squander this opportunity. She also brings up different scenarios that have kind of been an interesting gauge over the years. When like Dave Rubin, for example, he announced that they were using two surrogates to welcome, you know, two boys. And then we had Ashley Sinclair like announce her pregnancy, intentional pregnancy with Elon Musk. And there have been several other instances like that. And by the way, like when I not only did not congratulate Dave Rubin, but made a video explaining why I didn't Congratulate and my stance on surrogacy. That was several years ago, kind of when I just started talking about all of that and when I did not congratulate at Ashley St. Clair and I explained why, like, I fielded a ton of criticism from our own side for that. But I just, I just want to say, like, I do, I still stand by the responses that I had. And over the years when there have been things like that, when people on my side have said, oh, you just need to congratulate or do this, like, I will say, I don't want to say specifically who because I don't want to violate their privacy in any way way. But a lot of those people on the other side of the situation whom I did not either congratulate or I didn't like, give in to the endorsement of that behavior. Those people have ended up reaching out to me and thanking me for being clear and consistent. And so I don't say that to pat myself on the back. I say that as encouragement to fellow conservatives that even if you field criticism and in the moment, one, it doesn't matter because you are trying to glorify and obey God. But two, it almost always like comes back around and you never regret just standing on principle, biblical principles and not giving any idea to others that you are compromising for the sake of political alliance. Because I see some people out here, like Billboard Chris, for example, who is not a Christian, who is expressing he's, if you don't know him, he's like an anti gender ideology activist that works on behalf of the well being of kids. He seems understandably very confused about the conservative Christian reaction to him, like why so many people are rushing to defense. And it makes me feel sad because I'm wondering, like, what kind of testimony is this when we are the ones that are helping sow the moral confusion when some, someone who is not a Christian, like Billboard Chris is like, this is clear. This includes the possible endangerment of kids. Like, why are we brushing this under the rug? Like, I want people to look to Christians and see clarity. And I understand, like, this can be complex when we're talking about politics and we're trying to distinguish between public ethics and private ethics and all of that. And maybe we won't all completely 100% unconditionally agree on everything. But I find this situation to be what should be kind of easy for public conservative Christians. And it ended up being a very surprising scenario. All right, we'll just get into one more brief story to close this out. But first, let me tell you about our last sponsor. I love this sponsor so much. It's Interior Delights. Sarah is a related gal. She is a Colorado Christian that owns this amazing company that helps you design your home in a way that that will make any room feel complete and refreshed and beautiful. And if you're like me, maybe you don't have a lot of time or maybe you don't even have the skill to be an interior designer for your own home. That's why I love Interior Delights because they make it super easy. Every season they curate brand new collections and show you exactly how to style their decor in your home. And once you have a few core pieces, you'll love how Interior Delights shows you how to restyle them for every season. And so you're not spending a bunch of money every season on like these new over the top design pieces. Actually, they're very classic and traditional and they show you how you can make them look unique and new every few months. I love that about them. I love Sarah. She is someone who is glorifying God through her work and so it's just a win all around. To support her, go to interior delights.com/ally use code ALI for 10% off your first purchase. That's interior delights.net ally there's a new study out via Gallup that shows that Republican support of gay marriage declines for the first time in decades. Also, if you're new here, I say quote unquote, marriage or I say so called marriage because God created marriage and he defines it one way that's through a man and a woman. So it is not possible actually for two men or two women to be married. Ten years after the Supreme Court's Obergefell decision made same sex marriage legal nationwide, new Gallup polling that was published May 29 shows Republican support has hit its lowest point point since Gallup began tracking this sentiment 29 years ago. The numbers suggest that Republican acceptance after the court ruling may have been short lived with many conservatives now reverting toward a traditional biblical view of marriage. So just 41% of Republicans now back so called same sex marriage down sharply from 55% in 2021 to 2022. Okay, a 14% drop. The 47 point gap between Democrats and Republicans. So 88% of Democrats think gay marriage should have the, you know, the same rights, the same validity as actual marriage and 41% of Republicans do. It's the biggest divide that Gallup has ever recorded on this issue. Oh my goodness. When Asked about moral acceptability, the split is similar. 86% of Democrats versus 38% of Republicans view same sex relations as morally acceptable. Whoa, whoa. Two thirds of regular churchgoers reject same sex marriage, showing that a majority of professing Christians continue to hold the biblical view that marriage, that marriage is between a man and a woman. Two thirds is not enough. It should be 100%. We need pastors to be out there simply preaching the Bible. You don't have to get political to Preach through Genesis 1. Public support, both Democrat and Republican started at 27% in 1990 and gradually increased to 42% by 2004 and 2011. A majority of Americans supported same sex marriage for the first time. After the Obergefell ruling, public support jumped to 61%. Republicans hit majority supportive same sex, quote, unquote, marriage twice, 55% in 2021 and 2022, Democrat support has reached an all time high. Here's what's crazy about this, is that it makes so much sense. Sense why Republicans have moved the way that we have. It doesn't make sense why Democrats have moved the way that they have. Because over the past few years there has been a movement to simply reveal the kind of indoctrination that is going on in schools. We have seen the grossness and depravity of something like Drag Queen Story Hour. We have seen the propaganda in books, in school libraries that not only encourages kids to start thinking about their sexuality at a young age, but to start questioning if they are born in the right body. Okay, we were sold several years ago, before Oberge fell, the modern family depiction of what gay unions looked like. That these were just two people who loved each other, just like a man and a woman who wanted to start a family and adopt poor kids from Thailand and to be able to, you know, be there in the hospital while their loved one is dying. That's how it was advertised to us, that it is the exact same as, you know, like leave it to Beaver Cleaver family home in the 1950s. The two people just happened to be in, you know, the same sex. But since Obergefell to now, which is only 10 years, 2015 to now, we have watched it go from that depiction to men dressed in push up bras and fishnet tights reading stories to children on the taxpayer dime and library and parents getting their children taken out of their custody so the state can allow the child to mutilate their genitals in the name of gender affirming care. That happened really fast. So as we've seen the quickness and the destructiveness of the sexual revolution that has its crosshairs on children's bodies and minds. Of course, people have started to say, huh, okay, maybe this whole sexual revolution wasn't really about what they said it was about. Like, maybe it is destructive. Maybe love is. Love is just as destructive and stupid and deceitful as a man can become a woman. And so people have started to work their way backwards and see that when we decided that husbands and wives were interchanged, that led to the idea that men and women are interchangeable, that boys and girls are interchangeable, and it's caused all of this confusion. So as they've worked their way backwards, they have logically said, you know, maybe it's just better that we realize that a man and a woman are different, that their biology matters. It's meant to complement each other. And the most stable place for kids and for society is for men and women to be married together. Like, it makes sense. But as we've been revealed, just the dark underbelly of transgenderism and all of this stuff Democrats have said, I want more. I want more of that. Like, if you don't see the spiritual distinction between the two parties, that's not to say Republicans are perfect. I just spent this whole episode talking about how a lot of conservatives are very morally confused. But there is a clear distinction here. There is a huge distinction between the two parties and the general worldview of the two parties. All right? And like, I just to want. Want us to be grateful for a second. I. I'm kind of grateful for Gen Z. I think Gen Z Christians actually have a whole lot of clarity on this issue. Not all of Gen Z in general, but those who identify as Christians, I think they have a lot of clarity. Maybe even more than, like, the Gen X and the millennials and some of the boomers. So good for them. But also, like, I. I just want to say that a lot of people in our sphere fear are to think for this. Like, by the grace of God. I think Rosaria Butterfield and Nancy Pearcey and Katie Faust and a lot of the other people that I mentioned today. And I'll just say, I think this podcast and all of you have taken the message of this podcast out into the world. Like, I think that we've made a difference by the grace and power of God. I think that we have made a difference, that this generation in this age demanded a culture for clarity and that a lot of us answered that call. Praise God. Praise God that he uses those who are those who are willing, but without him would be unqualified to be vessels of the goodness and the mercy and the truth of God. So I just want to encourage you, whether you have a public platform or not. Kubecon going. Keep going. Keep going against the pushback. Keep going against the persecution. Keep going against those who call you all kinds of names for standing up for what is good, right and true. If you love your neighbor, then you believe and you advocate for the reality that God's ways are better. All right, guys, that's all we've got time for today. We'll be back here tomorrow. Sam.