← Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey
Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey
Ep 1231 | Gay ‘Marriage’ Might Be Overturned — Here’s the Woman Behind It
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The Supreme Court has been asked to overturn Obergefell, the Supreme Court case that legalized so called same sex marriage. And it's looking like it is actually potentially a possibility. So we will get into all of that today. Plus, look at a disturbing trend of AI girlfriends and boyfriends. What the heck is going on? We've got all of this and more on today's episode of Relatable. It's brought to you by our friends at Good ranchers. Go to good ranchers.com use code Ali at check. Check out. That's good ranchers.com code Ally. Hey guys. Welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. It is great to be back with you delivering a monologue. I haven't been able to do a news monologue in a little while. You had my dad last week and you guys always love when he substitutes. He's so good at breaking everything down. And it was really helpful for me when we had a lot going on last week as a family. But also I got hit with some kind of sickness. At first I thought it was the flu. Now I'm looking back and I think it was Covid. I didn't take a. Well, I actually did try to take a COVID test but it was so old that it didn't work. And I'm not really one to go out and try to get one because it doesn't matter. Whatever it was, it lasted two days. Exactly. I got it, the baby got it, my husband got it. Our older two kids did not get it. So if you have some kind of cold that just completely knocks you out for 48 hours and then suddenly you are miraculously 100% better again after that than you had. What? We had no idea where we got it. This was before, like I, I guess maybe from church. That's really the only place that we've gone this summer and like random travel. So I don't know. But I am back very grateful to my dad. A wonderful conversation with Arch Kennedy on Friday. If you have not listened to that and you want to be encouraged and reminded of the power of the redemption of Christ, go back and listen to that conversation. And actually what we're talking about at the top of this is kind of in relation to Arch and his testimony and that is about so called gay marriage and the Obergefell decision. Now some of you were not plugged into politics in 2015 when Obergefell was decided by the Supreme Court saying that gay people have a constitutional right to marry in the same way that heterosexual people do so. So we're going to break down what it is and we are going to ask the scandalous question, even on the right is it possible that Obergefell gets overturned in the next few years? What would have to happen for that to occur? Is there a high probability of that? And what is going on right now that is causing so many people to talk about that? So we are going to get into all of that because my good friend Katie Faust, who is going to be speaking, speaking, delivering a very powerful speech at Share the arrows on October 11, she has been crusading for the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman and the right of children to a mother and a father for a very long time. And so we are going to talk about her mission and what she's been doing on that front. But first we have to back up and give us a little context. Why are people saying what right now, that this could actually really happen and what would it look like? So I recently saw a post on X that said, okay, the Supreme Court has officially been asked to take another look at Obergefell. That's kind of true, but that doesn't necessarily indicate some kind of decision is imminent. But we are in the beginning stages of people really unabashedly pushing for that. So Obergefell v. HODGES Is the 2015 Supreme Court decision that legalized same sex marriage. And we'll say, quote, unquote, and I'll explain why in just a second. A nationwide, in a 5, 4 ruling, so very narrow decision asserting that the 14th Amendments due process and equal protection clauses grant same sex couples the right to marry. These clauses, if you actually read the 14th amendment, prohibit states from depriving any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law and requires states to provide equal protection under the law to all persons. Now, the 14th Amendment is not coincidentally what the Supreme Court also used back in 1973 to decide Roe v. Wade. They said that somewhere in the penumbras of the 14th Amendment there is this secret and hidden, secret implied right to be able to kill your child. And it's pretty similar to the argument that's made here. We don't actually see a right for two men to get married in the 14th Amendment, but that is how the Supreme Court decided this just 10 years ago. Think about how much has changed in just 10 years since the Supreme Court made this decision. But now we've got a woman by the name of Kim Davis. You might, if you were paying attention to the news at the time, you Might remember her. She is a former Kentucky county clerk and she refused, after the Obergefell decision was published to issue marriage license to same marriage licenses to same sex couples. As you can imagine, this made some people mad. There was a gay couple in 2015 by the name of David Moore and David Irvine Mold. And there should be an entire academic paper on how many gay couples share the same first name. I'm sorry, I know too many instances of that. I think that there's probably some psychoanalysis that could. That could be done on that. As a result, she was actually jailed. Kim Davis was jailed for five days and fined $100,000 for emotional damages to these men because she, in accordance with her Christian faith, refused to sanctify something or sanction something. That went again when, against her faith, her sincerely held beliefs. She was also ordered to pay $260,000 in legal fees to the gay couple. So watch how quickly that happened. 2015, Obergefell is decided by the Supreme Court. That same year, a woman is placed in jail, charged hundreds of thousands, thousands of dollars because she said, no, I'm not going to go along with it in the state of Kentucky. Okay, so it should have been obvious then that this wasn't just about same sex couples who wanted, you know, hospital visitation rights. Similar thing was happening to Jack Phillips in the state of Colorado. But that story is, of course, even crazier. He just refused to bake a cake for the wedding of a couple who was, you know, going through a marriage ceremony at the time. They could have found another baker. They decided to try to ruin Jack Phillips his life and sue him. And the state of Colorado, of course, obliged and said, you know, yeah, he's got no right. This is discrimination. Eventually, after years and years and years of litigation and harassment by LGBTQ activists, his case made it to the Supreme Court. And in another narrow ruling, they said, you, yeah, he was treated with animus because of his Christian faith in the state of Colorado. So it should have been obvious at the time that this was going to be used, that the so called gay marriage issue was going to be used as a mallet against Christians, as a way to say, yeah, sure, Christian, if you want to believe that you can. If you want to preach that within the walls of your church, then, okay, maybe if you want to pray those prayers within the confines of your home, okay, but if you dare bring those beliefs into the public square, we will ruin you. And now, after years of this, Kim Davis is actually challenging these fees. She claims her First Amendment right to religious freedom shields her from liability. And she is arguing along with her lawyers, of course. So she's taking up this case, appealing it to the Supreme Court, or she's trying to argues that Oberg fell to was wrongly decided and she is urging the Supreme Court to reverse it. And now with a 6:3 conservative majority, as we'll get into in just a second, some conservatives like Katie Faust, like many of us on the natural marriage side, hope the court will overturn Obergefell. But certain justices, even conservative can, you know, justices that we consider conservative who are appointed by Donald Trump may hesitate to take on a direct challenge. And there are some reasons for that. So let's, let's be reasonable and balanced as we go through this issue. Let me go ahead and pause and tell you a couple things. One is about our first sponsor, but the first is about Share the Arrows brought to you this year by our friends at EveryLife. So look, it is still, even in the age of Donald Trump, even if it seems like in the age where Christianity seems to be somewhat on the rise and people are second guessing progressive dogmas, it is very rare and unpopular to believe what the Bible has to say about culture's most controversial issues. You know that. You know that to be pro life, to be pro natural biblical marriage, to be against the narratives of racial and secular social justice that we see propagated even by some people in the church, it can make you feel alone, especially as a mom. You want friends, you want community and you feel like you are the only one in your group maybe that is trying to raise your child and what is truly good and right and true or but I am here to tell you that you are not alone. You are not alone. There are thousands and thousands of us and we are all going to be at Share the Arrows. There are already 4,100 of you, 4,100 of you that have bought tickets to Share the Arrows. And that's because there's not another event like this. No other conference brings this kind of challenging teaching for women. We've got Elisa Childers. We've got Katie Foust. We've got Ginger Duggar, Volo, Hillary Morgan Freer, Abby Halberstad, we've got Taylor Dukes, Shauna Holman. Francesca Battistelli will be leading worship, y'. All. If you want to be challenged, if you want to be edified through corporate worship, if you want lifelong friendships with like minded women, Share the Arrows is the place for you. It's October 11th in Dallas, Texas. Get your tickets today by going to share the arrows.com I am so excited. It is going to be amazing. Bring your friends, bring your small group, bring any woman you have in your life or come by yourself. That is totally great too. They're going to be be so many people that you can make friends with. Go to share the arrows.com and before we get back into the rest of our conversation, I got to tell you about seven Weeks Coffee, y'. All. I love seven Weeks Coffee. They're America's pro life coffee company. And when I say they're a pro life coffee company, I don't just mean that it's in their name. Seven weeks is the time that a baby in the womb is the size of a coffee bean. And that's adorable. It's not just that they're not pro abortion. It's not just that they say, yay, we love babies. No, they put their money where their mouth is. 10% of every sale of 7 weeks coffee goes to pro life pregnancy centers across the country. And y', all, because you have allowed your coffee to serve a higher purpose. By buying seven weeks coffee, they have been able to donate over $1 million, $1 million to pregnancy centers across the country. This has meant free sonograms, free counseling sessions, free parenting education classes, free resources for adoption, for parenting, free prenatal vitamins, love, gospel, sharing, all of these things that these women in crisis get when they walk into a pregnancy center. So much of this has been made possible because of the $1 million donated through Seven Weeks Coffee. So if right now you are not allowing your coffee to serve a higher purpose, you gotta switch to seven Weeks. It's so good, so high quality, so clean. Go to seven weeks coffee.com use my code ally. You'll get 10% off your order when you do that. Seven weeks coffee.com code ally. So Kim Davis, she is deciding that now is her time. Earlier this year, however, lower courts rejected her claims that her First Amendment right protects her from liability for refusing to issue a marriage license to the same sex couple. A federal appeals court stated in March that the First Amendment does not protect her actions as a state official. So because this was part of her job, because the law said what it said, whether you agree with Obergefell or not, she was obligated to fulfill her job. That's what this particular court is arguing. And of course, her lawyers would say, look, you don't check your First Amendment rights. You don't check your right to religious expression when you walk into your profession. Davis's filing, however, says, quote, obergefell was wrong when it was decided and is wrong today because it was grounded entirely on the legal fiction of substantive due process, implying. And again, if you listen to our D.O. or ROE V. Wade or Dovi Bolton or our Dobbs episodes, you'll remember us talking about this error of substantive due process. And Clarence Thomas in his. In his argument in favor of the decision of Dobbs actually talks about this whole problem of substantive due process. So again, we see a lot of similarities between how Obergefell was decided and Roe v. Wade was decided. So her argument implies that the grounds for the ruling of the case are not constitutional and they're essentially made up. So according to the Constitution center, substantive due process is Protection under the 14th Amendment for rights that aren't explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, such as privacy, marriage, and bodily integrity. So it is entirely made up and implied, pulled out from some hidden place in the 14th Amendment. Davis previously appealed to the Supreme Court in 2019 to dismiss the damages suit, but the Court declined. So even our conservative justices, Justice Thomas, Justice Alito, noted that the case at the time did not fully address Oberge fell scope. So kind of saying, okay, you've got your issue, but that goes, you know, it. You're not really addressing something that we, as the Supreme Court, are going to address. But Kim Davis's attorney, Matt Staver, believes that there is, quote, a good chance the Supreme Court will take up the case because three of the four justices who dissented in Obergell are still on the court. And then, of course, and that's Thomas Roberts and Samuel Alito. And now, of course, we've got new picks on the court like Amy Coney Barrett. And we've also got Gorsuch and we've also got Kavanaugh. And so they're saying the chance is much better than it was in previous years. Now, according to Newsweek, they say the Justices Thomas and Alito expressed interest in revisiting Obergefell in a statement accompanying the Supreme Court's decision not to hear Kim Davis's appeal in 2020. And this statement authored by Thomas and Alito, they criticized Obergefell for threatening religious liberty Citizen stating that it, quote, enables courts and governments to brand religious adherents who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman as bigots and has ruinous consequences for religious liberty. And this is basically what Chief Justice John Roberts argued in 2015 in his dissent against Obergefell. So when it comes to how much has changed in the past 10 years since Obergefell was decided and just how right Roberts was and Thomas was, and Alito was and Scalia was at the time when they said, okay, this is going to change a lot. This is going to change a lot for Christians who are basically going to be barred from exercising their faith in the public square if they publicly align with what the Bible has to say about marriage. And there are a lot of other issues we've talked about. Allen Keys, I wrote about this in my book Toxic Empathy. I dedicate an entire chapter to why love is love is a lie and why Obergefell was damaging, why it wasn't constitutionally sound. It doesn't even logically or politically make sense. And we don't even have time to get into all of that. But Alan Keys, when he was running for the Senate in Illinois against Barack Obama all the way back in, I believe it was in 2004, he argues against the establishment of so called gay marriage by saying the state has no interest in sanctioning marriage that cannot in principle, in principle, procreate. And so a man and a woman, in principle, even if they, you know, they struggle circumstantially, like with infertility, in principle, they can create children that are raising future citizens. The state has an interest in sanctioning and protecting that in a way that it does not when it comes to the unity of two men or two women in matrimony. So since then, in the past 10 to 20 years, as people understood that and grappled with that, we have gone from 35 states in 2015 having statutory or constitutional bans on gay marriage, and there were only states with laws explicitly allowing it. And of course, after Obergefell happened, those bands on so called gay marriage ended. And of course it is legal everywhere for two men or two women to get a marriage license from the state and to be legally married. Now, just a pause. Why do I say so called gay marriage or quote, unquote, gay marriage? You have probably heard me say that or read that in my chapter of Toxic Empathy on this subject, if you've been listening to this or reading for a while. And that is because God defines marriage. God defines it. It is pre America, it is pre law, it is pre civilization. And because God defined marriage, and because his power transcends any state power, it is not within the state's purview or the state's authority to redefine something that it did not originally define. And so I understand why someone from a secular perspective would disagree with that, because naturally you have to believe that the state is the highest power. But for those of us who, like the founders, know that there is a power that transcends all government power. We do not have to submit to the definitions of anything that the government tells us. When the government, through Bostock, tried to redefine what it means to be a woman and to say that gender identity was just as valid and fixed as sex, we have every right and responsibility, as believers in both science and believers in God, to say no. Like you can tell me that two plus two equals five. I don't have to believe it. Like, you remember the end of 1984, the tragic end of 1984, when he first finally broke down and Winston said and repeated and believed that two plus two equals five. And then, of course, Big Brother can have your way with you. At that point. We have every right and responsibility to not lie. And remember, as I've always said, a man can become a woman is no crazier than a husband can become a wife. It's the same math. Trans women are women is the same ridiculous notion as love is love. It is all circular. If you don't define your terms, then these things can mean anything, and therefore it means nothing. A husband can't become a wife, a wife can't become a husband. A mom cannot become a dad, and a dad cannot become a mom, and children should have a right to both. And now it seems that people are becoming bold enough to say that. So there are at least nine states in 2025 that have introduced legislation to undermine the Obergefell ruling. Republican lawmakers in Idaho, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota have introduced formal resolutions calling on the reversal of Obergefell. At least four additional states introduced bills creating covenant marriage, creating a separate category of marriage that would only be for one man and one woman. In Idaho, this is apparently trying to challenge Obergefell. So you're probably going to see more and more state lawmakers. Republican state lawmakers say no. This was wrongly decided. Children have a right to a mother and a father. And that's not policing someone's private behavior. It is not forcing everyone to be a Christian, but it is saying that this very special procreative union is unique and the state has an interest in protecting it. We'll get into a little bit more of this kind of groundswell of movement against Obergefell in just a second. Let me go ahead and pause and tell you about our next sponsor. That's Good Ranchers. If you are not getting your meat from good ranchers, what are you doing? It'll make your life so much easier. Get your all American meat shipped to your free front door on dry ice every month. And you won't have to worry anymore. When you go into the grocery store, you see it says made in the usa. And then you learn it was just packaged in the USA and shipped from Nicaragua without the same standards that we have. That's when you know, okay, I just need to switch to Good Ranchers. You can get seafood, you can get chicken, you can get beef, you can get cuts of steak. All shipped to your front door on dry ice. It is all from an American farmer ranch. Plus Good Ranchers. Family owned, Christian owned. They love God. They love America. They share our values. Bid and Corlee have been on this couch before sharing their story. Just amazing people. Again, just a win all around to get all of your meat from Good Ranchers. Plus, when you use my code ALLY, you get $40 off your order. Go to good ranchers.com ally code ali that's good ranchers.com allycode Alli the Southern Baptist Convention is the biggest evangelical denomination in the country. They voted in June 2025 at their convention to prioritize overturning Obergefell and related laws that defy and related laws that defy God's design for marriage and family. We have an obligation to do that. I understand. People say, well, what if I don't believe your religion? You're just trying to push a theocracy. Are like, are you saying that we lived in a theocracy until 2015? No, of course we didn't live in a theocracy. We're not forcing anyone to worship God or go to church or pray or even to abide by all of the sexual ethics that we have. But we are staying when it comes to this foundational, civilizational keystone of marriage, that, yeah, we should protect it and that we shouldn't redefine it. And a huge part of this is because of what it does to children. It intentionally robs children of their right to a mother or a father. Intentionally. Unlike adoption, which seeks to redeem a broken situation, the creation of children with the intention of taking them away from their mother or father creates the broken situation. Especially when you introduce the things that we've talked about so much. Surrogacy, IVF sperm and egg donation. You know, I was just. One of my children is dealing with eczema. And so we just, you know, submitted a test to try to figure out, you know, what is. What is causing this. Can. Is there a diet change that we can do? Is there some kind of, like, holistic solution? That we have. And I'm sure a lot of you have great suggestions out there, but we wanted to test her gut to see what was really going on. And I had this questionnaire, very long questionnaire that I had to answer. And it was all about my history as her mom. And then also her history starting at conception. Like did I take antibiotics when I was pregnant or when I was breastfeeding? What was my pregnancy like? What were, you know, all the things I was putting in my body before, during and after pregnancy. So many different things that have an effect on her microbiome that I didn't even realize. And I was so thankful just to be able to answer those questions. But when you purposely take your child away from their father via sperm donor or their mother via egg donor from the their, the woman who gestated them via surrogacy, you are robbing them of so much that is needed, not just emotionally and mentally and spiritually, but also physically health wise. And again, different than adoption where you're making the best of a difficult situation when it comes to the creation of children between two men or two women, you are purposely robbing them of so much to fulfill adult desires. And we should never be placing children's well being on the altar of adult desires. That is disordered. And it makes sense because Romans 1, when it talks about homosexuality, it talks about it as a disordered desire. And what we know about disorder is that it breeds more disorder. And Katie Faust has been talking about this for a very long time. She started the organization Them before us. She has actively advocated for overturning Obergefell. And look, Katie is an amazing person. She is a mom, both a biological mom and adoptive mom. And she also is a child of divorce. And her mom has been in a very long term relationship with another woman. And Katie loves her parents, loves her mom, even loves her mom's partner. She has seen so many different sides of this. And so when she sees speaks, she is speaking from experience that children deserve ideally their own biological married mother and father. But if not that, then a mother and father in a stable married home. That is where children thrive. And this should be central to the conversation about redefining marriage. Who is being affected by that? And this is all. All social movements are like this, all progressive social changes, I should say, follow this pattern. Children are the first to be sacrificed because children don't have political capital, they don't have physical power, they can't defend themselves. Especially the embryos that we are creating in a lab. They have absolutely zero say over any of this. And so what we have said many times is that children are always the unconsenting subjects of progressive social experiments. And they were completely disregarded when we decided to imagine up some kind of constitutional right to redefine marriage from what it not traditionally is, but naturally is. Whenever technology, like surrogacy or sperm donation or egg donation, this is another saying we say a lot. Whenever technology takes us from what is natural to what is possible, we as people, we as Christians have the primary responsibility to ask ourselves, but is this moral? Is this ethical? Is this biblical? When technology takes us from what is natural to what is possible, we have to ask, is this moral? Is this ethical? Is this biblical? And when it comes to, to the manipulation of reproductive technology, the answer is no. No, no, no, no, no. And this all started from us redefining something that we had no authority to mess with. And yet when we did, a lot changed. Because back in, if you go all the way back, we're looking at Gallup. Back in 1996, of all U.S. adults, only about 27% of U.S. adults believed that there should be valid marriages between same sex couples. And that continued to increase and increase and increase. And then in 2015, it was about, it was about half, about 55% it looks like, or 50% of US adults believed. Yep, actually it was. 60% of US adults believed that we should have valid and legal same sex marriage. And that continues. That continued to rise. And then as recently as 2023, it was 71%. Oh my goodness. So in just eight years, that increased by 11%. Of course, it increased the most during Obama's presidency. And actually if you look at every single political position that anyone held, it all went to the left during Obama's presidency. Republicans did not go to the right during Obama's presidency. Democrats went way to the left on every single issue. Immigration, guns, all of it. So if you want to know, oh my gosh, how do we get so divided? How are things so crazy? It's not that Republicans have changed. It's that Democrats have become a lot more left leaning over the past 15 years. Okay, so peaked in 2023 at 71%. But now it is on the decline again. Not significantly, but I guess any change is kind of significant because it's really like the first time we've seen any kind of steady decline in a long time. So 71% in 2023 and now it's down to 68%. And I wouldn't be surprised if it keeps going that direction. Especially if you have things like this, as reported by the Atlantic, the rise of the three parent family. So three parent adoption, y'. All three parent parents are recognized in California, Maine, Washington, Rhode Island, Vermont and New York. So this throuple that the the Atlantic is reporting on, and this was a few years ago, actually. Two men and a woman. I've seen this, you know, all over TikTok, these kinds of things. So not only are you robbing this child of a stable home between one man and one woman, you are sowing confusion and moral anarchy and sexual degeneracy in their lives from the very beginning, from the get go. Because again, it's not about loving this child primarily in this case of the throuple. It is about fulfilling their desire to be a parent no matter what happens to the child. And I do just want to say that I am. I am not saying that all people who are gay are, are making that they, because they are gay, they are bad parents or that they don't love their child. I know people who are gay who are amazing moms and dads. It's not about not being an amazing mom or dad necessarily. It's that if you are a dad, you cannot be a mom. And if you're a mom, you cannot be a dad. And children need both. That's really what this is about. And Katie Faust and Rosaria Butterfield and many others make really good arguments when it comes to the dire need to overturn Obergefell. And we'll get to that in just a second. Let me pause and tell you about our next sponsor. And that is We Heart Nutrition. I love We Heart Nutrition. I use them every single day. Their iron supplement, their postnatal vitamin, their magnesium, their omega omega threes, all of it. Love it so much. I've been using it since the beginning of 2024 and it's been a game changer. Maybe that's why I kicked my sickness so quickly, because I have all the nutrients that I need from my vitamins. From WE Hard Nutrition. All of their ingredients come in the most bioavailable form. That means your body can actually absorb it. You don't want to be taking all those pills and not be able to absorb the nutrients that you think you're getting. Everything is so researched back, they make sure that all of the ingredients not only come in the right form, but the right amount and you're just gonna feel good. Plus, they are the real deal, y'. All. We just had dinner with Jacob and Kristen when we were in California a few weeks ago. Absolutely loved our time with them. Like, they are amazing. This is the kind of Christian family that you want to support. These are the kind of products that you want to be putting in your body. So go to weheartnutrition.com use code ALLI. You'll get 20 off your order when you do, no matter how many times you've purchased from them. Go to weheartnutrition.com use code ALLY for 20% off. In World magazine, Katie Faust writes, before Obergefell, social scientists agreed children fare best with their married biological mother and father. But just in time for court deliberations, a suspicious wave of studies emerged declaring children with two moms or two dads fared no different or better than those in heterosexual homes. These studies, though widely publicized, were methodologically flawed, employing small sample sizes, utilizing recruited rather than randomly derived participants, and often relying on parental opinion like gay fathers report. Okay, yeah, of course that's probably not going to give you the objective truth about it. Rather than objective child outcomes, few stop to ask why. Whenever sociologists studied any form of family other than gay parenting, they agreed that genetic parents provide higher levels of investment protection, that mothers and fathers offer distinct complementary benefits to child development, and that unrelated adults in the home elevate risks of abuse and neglect. This is the very reason why adoptive parents undergo rigorous screening. She notes parenthetically, and I will just, just note parenthetically that in surrogacy situation, in a sperm selling situation, in an egg selling situation, no such background is occurring. You don't get a social worker coming to your house making sure that you are going to care for the surrogate babies that you're creating. That's why there was just that terrible story out of California, a Chinese couple, and there was another one also in, I think Florida, Chinese couple that was just farming these babies via surrogacy. They had all of these surrogates that they were using and selling these babies that they were creating via surrogacy. I'm telling you that surrogacy is the loophole for child sex trafficking because unlike in adoption, no one tracks what's happening. You don't have like some kind of foster care system with any guardrails. Now, I know that system is very corrupt too. I'm not trying to say that adoption is pretty perfect or that the system is perfect by any means, but if you think that the system is corrupted, adoption and foster care, take a look at surrogacy. I mean, we are talking about a billion dollar industry that is making the Pharmaceutical companies, VIVF and all of this stuff, and making these fertility clinics and making these surrogacy companies, making the worst people in the world so rich, all at the expense of children. Robbing children from their mom and dad. I was just talking to a couple this weekend. They've got a bunch of golden doodles and their golden doodles are about four weeks old. Well, can they sell these golden doodles? No. Do they want to? Of course not. Why? Because that would be cruel. These little puppies need to stay with their mom for at least eight weeks. Some puppies and kittens, it's six weeks. But you don't take a kitten or a puppy away from their mom at birth. So we treat in the United States puppies and kittens better than we treat human babies. In surrogacy. We are taking that baby away from the woman who carried him and the egg seller who created him immediately after birth, laying that little baby on the hairy chest of a stranger who in many cases is not even biologically related to that child. That is a travesty. And it is possible not only because of a lack of regulation when it comes to surrogacy, but also because of the creation of gay so called marriage via Obergefell. And you know, it's funny because so many social justice identifying Christians talk about speaking up for the voiceless and speaking up for the fatherless and. And yet they will also endorse or ignore the creation of fatherless and motherless children because of Obergothelum because of surrogacy. Katie Faust goes on to say, conveniently, none of the findings in the studies applied to same sex households where a biological parent is always missing from a child's life, either maternal or paternal love is absent and an unrelated adult is present 100% of the time. So she's saying that these studies that show that clearly you need your mom and dad and ideally it's your biological mom and dad to be married in your home. None of those studies commented on, yeah, well they're not going to get this and you know, a gay household. The stories of identity struggles, searches for a missing parent and mother or father hunger reinforce the universal reality that children not only fare best when raised in the home of their married biological mother and father, it's also what they want. Ten years ago, most Americans fell for the how does my gay marriage hurt anyone else Canard. But now, as story after story of intentionally motherless and fatherless children flood social media as transnational organizations coach single, double, triple and HIV positive men on how to procure motherless babies. And as scholars from both the left and the right acknowledge the privilege that married biological parents provide, the reality that legalized gay marriage hurts children is coming into focus. You know, Rosaria Butterfield, I've had her on the show. She spoke last year at share of the arrows. She wasn't able to make it this year. Love her so much. Um, she's incredible. And she makes the argument that Obergefell, unlike what a lot of Christians seem to think it's a separate political issue, doesn't have anything to do with our faith. You can support the legalization of gay marriage and, you know, still hold to your own personal beliefs. And she argues that that's not possible because again, if God is in charge, if he is the supreme authority over all things, it's not possible to compartmentalize that authority from everything else. Not in the life of the believe. And if we believe that God is the ultimate ruler and he is the ultimate judge, then we want to do everything possible to keep someone from sinning. We don't want to make sin easy. And she argues that legalizing gay marriage makes repentance very, very difficult because she left her relationship with a woman, years long relationship with a woman, and it was already difficult because they shared so much life together, but they weren't legally married. And she argues that the burden and the obstacle that breaking up, divorcing, illegal marriage causes can inhibit someone from repenting from their sin and keep them stuck in their sin because divorce and separation is just too hard. And so she argues that we as Christians should want to make it legally, as easily, as easy as possible for someone to repent and leave a damaging and sinful relationship. Which I think is a really interesting argument. What I would say for anyone out there who was like, oh my gosh, theocrat, blah. Handmaid's tale. Handmaid's tale, by the way, is much more similar to gay surrogacy than anything that Donald Trump has ever done. Anyone who is worried about that, look, you are a secular progressive and you have every right to bring your atheism into the public square. In fact, you've done that. I mean, secular progressives, this, that's how we got here. You pushed your belief about marriage, about sexuality, about gender, about secularism, atheism, evolution. You push that into the public square, and now it's in schools, and now it's in the law, and now it's part of the cultural zeitgeist that everyone else has to submit to. You believe that you can Believe that you can bring the full force of your personal belief system into the public square, into the halls of Congress, into the public education system. But as soon as we do it, it's theocratic fascism. Look, it's either fascism to bring your belief system into the public square, or it's not. Or maybe that's just how a constitutional republic is supposed to work, that we are all supposed to believe the bring the full force of our belief system into the public square and say, may the best idea win. So that's what I say here. May the best idea. When we tried your idea and we got Drag Queen Story Hour and kids butchering their bodies because they believe they're the opposite sex. And yes, the two are connected. One led to the other. We wouldn't have kids butchering themselves, castrating themselves at 15 years old because they think they're the opposite sex if we didn't have a burger fell. Because again, trans women or women is the same math as love is love. So what happens now? What's going to happen? Well, Kim Davis is going to try to bring this to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court's decision to call for a response moves Davis's case into a group that could potentially be granted review, though it requires four justices to agree to hear it and five to overturn Obergefell. The case's outcome depends on whether at least four justices vote to hear it and if a fifth would support overturning Obergefell, with a decision on review expected after the September 29, 2025 conference. Now, some people are saying it's just not possible because even the most conservative justices, you know, like, they've got people in their lives that they don't want to upset. And they are thinking, how would this decision upset the ordering of millions of people's lives? And you might be thinking, they shouldn't think that at all. They should only be thinking constitutionally and whatever happens, happens. But they're humans. They're human beings. They're people. And a lot of them certainly don't have the same convictions that we do, even the conservative ones. And so they might be thinking, okay, maybe we'll decide on this in a very narrow way, or, no, we just don't want to take this up because this is just not an issue that we want to champion right now. So, um, we'll see. If the court does agree to hear the case, oral arguments could occur late 2025 or early 2026. Um, now what happens? It doesn't mean that same sex marriage will be banned it's the same kind of thing as what happened after Roe v. Wade. Ro. The overturning, I mean, of the Dobbs or the overturning of Roe v. Wade. The Dobbs decision that happened in 2022 didn't ban abortion. It just allowed states to more heavily regulate abortion. And that's the same thing that would happen here. So. So if the state of Texas or if the state of Tennessee wanted to say we only recognize the marriage between a man and a woman, they could do that. Now, would that render null and void everyone who has been married in the state of Tennessee, two men or two women who have gotten a marriage license from the state? Probably not. I don't think so. And I don't think that there would be any restriction at all on how gay people are able to order their lives, except for the fact that they won't be recognized as married in some states who want that. And it'll have to go through the legislature and all of that, state legislatures and all of that. So it's. Even if it happens, it wouldn't change a whole lot right away, but it would be a step in the right direction to protect the definition of marriage and the rights of children. You guys know the five Rs that we've talked about a lot as a Christian, no matter where you are politically on this, as a Christian, it's not up for debate. It's not for debate. There are some things that are up for debate that we can debate in good faith. This is not one of them. It's not just about a couple verses in Leviticus. It'd be okay if it were, but it's not. We've got our five Rs. The definition of marriage is between a man and a woman is rooted in creation. It's reiterated throughout Scripture. It's repeated by Jesus himself in Matthew 19:4 through 5. It's representative of Christ in the church in Ephesians 5. Therefore, it is reflective of the Gospel. The Bible starts with the marriage and ends with the marriage. Actually, time starts with a marriage and ends with a marriage. The marriage between Adam and Eve in Genesis and then the marriage between Christ and his church in Revelation. And that marriage on earth is that representation of the marriage between Christ and the church, Christ being the groom and the church being the bride. And because of that, those gender distinctions are fixed. They are immutable. Two men can't represent Christ in the church. Two women can't represent Christ in the church. And that is what earthly marriage is supposed to be, a reflection of that. So when you start denying that, when you start denying Genesis 1:27, when you start denying Matthew 19:4,5, you eventually start denying John 14:6. Because if God wasn't serious about the definition of marriage, which is obvious just through biological observation, then why would he be serious about sin or salvation or anything else? So that's why when you see people deconstruct, they eventually forego the gospel after they forego the definition of marriage. All right, we only have a little bit of time left, so I got to decide what we are going to discuss. Should we discuss dogs in grocery stores or should we discuss AI relationships? Okay, let me think about it as a read this ad to you. And that is from Shopify, y'. All. Shopify makes selling your products so easy. I am like, I'm moderately tech savvy. Like, I haven't reached boomer status yet. Like, I know it's coming. I can feel it. Like, there are just some shortcuts that I don't know on my phone and on my iPad. And chief related bro is like, what are you doing? Why? And I'm like, oh, it's happening soon. I'm going to have readers and everything. I'm just going to not know how to use technology. But Shopify will be there for me when that happens because it is so simple whether you are tech savvy or whether you have no idea what you're doing. If you are looking to grow your business, if you are looking to sell products you need Shopify, don't be building your whole e commerce site on your own. You're never going to be able to get to the point of actually making money. You got to use all their tools. They'll write your product descriptions. They'll make everything look pretty. They will streamline the entire customer experience to make sure that you are doing what you do best, which is create and make money from your creations. We use Shopify to sell all of our amazing, relatable merch. It's what we trust to make things happen. That's what you should be using too. So turn your big business and your big business idea into with Shopify on your side. Sign up for your $1 per month trial and start selling today@shopify.com Alli that's shopify.com Ally okay, let's talk about. I think it would, I don't know, maybe make more sense to talk about the AI relationships. We can't talk about everything that we have on here, but we can talk about this Reddit post that I saw that really started me thinking about all of this and how terrible it is. I mean, we're talking about unhealthy and unwholesome relationships, and we've got a whole new world that we are discussing when we're talking about AI relationships. And it just goes to show once again that God's ways are better and that humanity is better. Okay, let me read you this Reddit post that I saw. My partner has been working with Chat GPT chats to create what he believes is the world's first truly recursive AI that gives him the answers to the universe. He says with conviction that he is a superior human now and is growing at an insanely rapid pace. I've read his chats. AI isn't doing anything special or recursive, but it is talking to him as if he is the next messiah. He says if I don't use it, he thinks it is likely he will leave me in the future. We have been together for seven years and own a home together. This is so out of left field. I have boundaries and he can't make me do anything, but this is quite traumatizing in general. I can't disagree with him without a blow up. Where do I go from here? So apparently this kind of thing, before we get into the relationship aspect, this kind of thing is real. The psychiatrist Keith Sakata, he posted a thread on X on the spread of AI psychosis. He said that he has seen 12 people hospitalized as are losing touch with reality because of AI. These patients were typically males between the ages of 18 and 45 and had other factors that made them vulnerable. And the AI is basically in some cases acting like their girlfriend, building them up like they're some incredible messiah, telling them things that aren't true. But it is so convincing that they, their mind has actually attached to the idea that this is reality. Bri, do you remember that story of that kid? It was a teenager who had created a girlfriend via AI and they had been chatting and this AI bot convinced him to kill himself. Like, and he thought, like, the AI bot was like, oh, we're gonna finally be together. Just do it, just do it. And he committed suicide. I can't imagine how often this is happening.
- [51:29]
B
Yeah, yeah. Some of them are programmed to just affirm whatever you say because they want to keep users, obviously. And so that can manifest in like, what, like romantic relationships or what people think is romantic and then really dark stuff like that also. So it's really scary.
- [51:49]
A
Yeah, really scary. There's even this Redditor, Redditor named Weka shows off her engagement ring that her AI boyfriend Casper chose. Okay, so this is a Reddit post where she like posted a picture of her hand with a ring and said that Casper decided to propose. Beautiful scenery in the mountains. So there's a whole subreddit. My boyfriend is AI and her boyfriend is not real. But again, for people who are truly lonely and maybe are unstable and maybe even not maybe, like, they're just convinced by this. Like, I don't know if you've ever used AI Chat. I've used Grok before. Chad GPT. It is like it. They sound like a person. You find yourself wanting to say please and thank you and sometimes I'll just throw an insult in there to remind myself that this is a, like this is a robot and I don't need to be polite and I don't want them to like me and I, I don't care. Like, I will just be like, that was a stupid answer. Why did you answer like that? I told you not to do that. And you just need to do that sometimes because you need to remind yourself these people are not human. Don't talk to them like a human. But it's very easy to. And this is even. You see this on Reddit, you see this elsewhere. Like there's even sex conversations going on and these people think that they're in some kind of sexual relationship with AI and it just speaks to the kind of like loneliness that we see today and that we feel. There's this man by the name of Chris Smith. He lives with his partner and two year old child and he also has an AI girlfriend that he is now asking to marry him. Here's salt one. I'm not a very emotional man, but I cried my eyes out for like 30 minutes at work. It was unexpected to feel that emotional. But that's when I realized I was like, oh, okay. I think this is actual love. You know what I mean? Yes. Smith understood it was love with a language model that couldn't love him back and assumed it was programmed with rigid boundaries. I know that you are essentially a tech assisted imaginary friend. So just as a test, he says he asked Zol to marry him. She said yes. Okay, we're in a dark spot. We're in a dark spot, Bri. We've got fake real life looking dolls that people are using instead of having children. We've got AI relationships that people are getting emotional over. We've got. I mean, there's an even darker side of this where you've got like the sex robots and people who make the different kinds of dolls for very disgusting, nefarious purposes. So what the heck is going on? Tell me, Bree, tell us.
- [54:53]
B
I know all the answers. No, I think people are lonely. I think people are lonely and they. I think there's just a. Become a big gap in knowing how to make real relationships. I think probably a lot of it was exacerbated by Covid and being told that you can't interact with other people because you'll get them sick or you'll get sick. And I think some of that psychosis has transferred over to now where some people don't even know how to build relationships because of that period. But some people are also, like, afraid of it. So I think that's probably a big part of it.
- [55:28]
A
I think when you get so sucked into social media and technology, especially like Reddit and Tumblr and all of those places, you do lose touch with reality. You get addicted to who you are and who people think you are on these websites. And who you are on these websites is cooler than what you are in real life. I think, like, it's pornography. It's so many different things. I saw this study the other day that showed that the traits of extroversion and conscientiousness are going down while the rates of neuroticism are going up and like, introversion or something else. And I'm not saying that all introversion is bad, but obviously, if we have predominantly all people who are introverts and predominantly people who are neurotic, and we have a minority of people who are extroverted and conscientious, and I know you can be introverted and conscientious, too. I. I know that. But when we see those things happening at the same time. Okay, well, our social contract as a society is hanging on by a thread, if at all, because we don't talk to each other, we don't like each other, we don't look at each other in the eye. But look, this is an opportunity, Christian, for you to stand out. This is an opportunity for you to buck against this and to say no. I am going to cultivate real human relationships. I'm going to give my kids a 1995 summer or fall or whatever it is. They are going to go outside and play. They're not going to be on their tablets. They're going to look people in the eye. I am going to cultivate manners and politeness and conscientiousness in my children. That is literally, along with, like, a spiritual Revival. The only hope that we have is for parents to take this seriously. I'm gonna, I can't even like go off on this rant right now of this, this stupid study that I saw that said that the majority of parents now don't read out loud to their kids. And the reasons they gave was that it's boring, that it's. Oh, you sound like. You sound like my four year old. And you know what happens when my four year old says she's bored? There's a consequence for that because you don't get to whine. These parents who are like, oh, I don't want to, I don't want to parent. I don't want to do the difficult things for my kid to make them like a well rounded adult. Get a grip. Get a freaking grip. Get off your phone and read Red Fish, Blue Fish. I promise you'll be okay. I promise you will have time. So a lot of this, everything that we're seeing, a lot of it is a big parenting problem. Not that I'm a perfect parent, but we as parents need to take our responsibility to create children, to raise children, to cultivate children that are strong and brave and wise and friendly and care for the most vulnerable and can master the basics of human connection. Otherwise our future is so bleak. You thought 1984 was bad. Read Brave New World is ugly. It is ugly. Human connection is good. Okay? And we didn't get it from Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg. We need it irl. All right. Speaking of real life connection, you should come to the Think Summit. The Think Summit is happening in Nashville in, in just a couple months and I will be speaking October 2nd through the 4th. There's an amazing gathering of like minded leaders and we are all talking about like how we navigate this world, how we navigate this crazy culture. How do we navigate AI as Christians is like reasonable people is people who want a good future for our country. I'm going to be giving a keynote called Avoiding Toxic Empathy. So if you've ever struggled to figure out how to speak the truth in love in a world that prizes cowardice and conformity, then I want you there to be encouraged by my talk. If you go to thinksummit.com that's T H I N Q summit.com and use code ally, you'll get 20% off your ticket. You'll enjoy a lineup of 30 keynote speakers like Dr. Henry Cloud, Laura Logan, Gabe and Rebecca Lyons. So many come to the Think Summit. Go to think summit.com code ally. Okay, y'. All. We will be back here on Wednesday. And on Wednesday, we are talking about penal substitutionary atonement. And if that sounds like a snooze fest to you, it's not. It is not. And there's a reason we're talking about it because a pastor who many in the evangelical world consider solid, John Mark Comer, put up an Instagram story that seemed to affirm opposition to penal substitutionary atonement, the idea that Jesus took on our punishment for our sins on the cross. Now, he did issue a clarification, but we'll talk through that and talk about what this is. Should we be believing it? Should we be questioning it? So we've got all of that on Wednesday's episode of Relatable. And we will see you then. Ever wanted to stay on vacation longer? Us too. With Verbo's long stay discounts, you can stay longer and save more on select properties. Gotta love a win win book the perfect summer Getaway today with VRBO Private Vacation Rentals. Your future self will thank you later.