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It's Thursday, May 14, 2026. I'm Albert Mohler and this is the Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. First thing we need to understand is that we could be looking at a political crisis in the United Kingdom, in Britain, and that's because we can see a leadership crisis shaping up that could lead to the fall of the current British government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer. It's a Labor government. That means the more leftist party there in Britain. But under the leadership of Keir Starmer as Prime Minister, his own party lost something like over 1,000 seats in a recent election. A lot of those were local and district. But the point is, it was a massive political loss. And that's coming after Britain's faced all kinds of challenges. Keir Starmer is just not, at this point, really recognized as a really strong prime minister. And at some point, the way the parliamentary system works, where the majority party or the majority coalition gets to name the prime minister, if you lose the confidence of your own party, you're out. So it's nothing like the American system in this sense, except it's something sort of like the predicament of a Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. The majority party can elect you, the majority party can basically replace you. But when it comes to the British government, that means the entire government. And that means when the Prime Minister is removed from office, it also means a rearrangement of the entire cabinet, of the entire administrative structure in Britain. This really is the way it's identified. It's the fall of a government. Now, this doesn't necessarily happen. This is not a politically assured thing. But as we are looking at the weekend, we are looking at the fact that the Prime Minister is losing massive amounts of support. And that becomes more and more clear because this is one of those things that happens fast when it happens because you have a loss of confidence. And there have been dozens of members of, of the Prime Minister's own party who now called for a change in government. You also have some members of his own cabinet, including the Health Secretary, likely to offer a challenge. And then you also have one of the Miliband brothers also very much ready to step in if there's an opportunity for the formation of a new parliamentary majority and this of a new government. There are huge issues at stake. And of course, you also have the rise of reform, which is a more populous Conservative party. And it has basically really grown. It won big, inflation terms of those elections that labor lost big. But we are looking at big political change. We're looking at what could be a political crisis. And just keep in mind that over the course of the last 10 years, Britain has had five prime ministers. So you can look at that, you can see that another political crisis could be coming. We'll watch it. Meanwhile, let's come back to the United States. Fascinating article that appeared. It's based on an interview that CNN's Jake Tapper had with Barney Frank, who's now approaching 90 years old and who was among the very first members of Congress to come out of the closet. And he's usually credited with being the first to voluntarily identify as openly LGBTQ. So he served in Congress between 1981 and 2013 representing the 4th district of Massachusetts. Very liberal district, very liberal member of Congress. He also represents came into leadership between 2007 and 2011 as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. After Massachusetts legalized same sex marriage, he married another man, James Reddy. And that was back in 2012. So we're talking about someone who now at age 86 and who is now under hospice care. We're talking about some of his closing words to his party. And so there have been all kinds of headlines about this. For example, the New York Times headline about the story tells us ex Congressman in hospice offers advice to Democrats. Others have come out saying that it's advice that the Democratic Party is moving too fast on liberal issues. And so that's kind of the bottom line of how the interview is being reported. I want to get to something that should be of absolute importance to Christians in particular. The New York Times article begins this way. Barney Frank, the retired Democratic congressman who represented Massachusetts, the 4th district there from 1981 to 2013 and is now in hospice care, is not wasting a minute of the time he has left. The article goes on, Mr. Frank, age 86, has been hosting a parade of friends and former colleagues at the modest hillside home he shares with his husband, Jim Reddy, there in Maine, quote, where lobster buoys dangle from the trees outside the driveway. He's also offering his fellow Democrats some parting thoughts on what he thinks they need to do to win again, a subject he reflects upon at length in a new book due out in September. Okay, so he's recognized here as a veteran progressive. That's how he's described. Known for his gay rights advocacy. And okay, so let's just skip down to the issue I think is of greatest interest or should be to Christians. And that has to do with his advice to his party about how it's moving too fast on the transgender issue. Okay? So there are some massive dimensions to this that we're going to need to think about. But he goes on to say that he's not advising Democrats, that they shouldn't advocate for things that people consider unpopular. He says, quote, I know that there are some issues that I support that are currently unpopular, and the first thing to do is to try and increase the degree to which they have public support. He says that what are the problems on the left? And he recognizes exactly what we've been talking about. There's increased political polarization. The left is more left and the right is more populous. But he says this, quote, the problem with my friends on the left today is that they want these things to be litmus tests immediately. They don't want to spend any time. So what happens is that they demand that more mainstream liberals sign onto these things, and then they lose because of it. Okay, what is he talking about? Well, what becomes very clear is that he's really talking about the gay rights movement, but he's talking about the transgender dimension. Okay. It gets really, really important. Here's what he says. When we were fighting for gay rights, a fight I think we essentially won, we knew that some issues were more popular than others, so we tended to start by trying to win the ones that were most popular. Gays in the military, employment. We didn't go after same sex marriage. We didn't make marriage a litmus test until the very end. The former congressman then went on to say, quote, I analogize that to male to female transgender sports. That is the most controversial part of the agenda, the equivalent of gay marriage. So put it at the end. If you go at it that way, you build support for it. But if you insist on the most controversial parts all at once, you make it harder, end quote. Okay, that's astounding. I hope you heard exactly what former congressman Barney Frank said there. In other words, he wants to have public policy in place that would allow biological males to be in female locker rooms and in girls bathrooms, etc. He wants to see that happen. He says the problem is that the Democratic party is pushing too hard, too fast on this issue, and thus it is losing political support, is losing elections. Okay, I want Christians to understand the distinction between two arguments. Argument number one, that's categorically wrong. Argument number two, the citizens aren't ready for that yet. Those are two very different arguments. The first argument is based on the fact that there is an objective moral problem here. The second sees it merely as a political challenge. The other thing I want us to see is that even as Barney Frank here is celebrating at the end of his life, he's celebrating the fact that he thinks the gay part of LGBTQ has been won. He says that explicitly. When we were fighting for gay rights, a fight I think we have essentially one. He says, we knew that some issues are more popular than others. So you start with the popular issues rather than the less popular issues. Specifically, he says, we didn't start with gay marriage. We started with things we thought that we could win. That's his argument. Gays in the military, non discrimination in employment. And then explicitly, he says, you heard this. We didn't go after same sex marriage. We didn't make marriage a lithmus test until the very end. Okay, so what's fascinating here is that he doesn't say, we didn't make marriage a lithmus test. He says, we didn't do it until the very end. And so here is one of the ways the sexual revolution has just pushed itself forward with such momentum. This is one of the ways the LGBTQ movement has just been plowing through the society. And it is because the strategy has been, don't push for that yet. We know that's what we're going to push for eventually. Barney Frank's saying here that when you have people pushing for the t, the transgender, and specifically, he's talking about biological males in female spaces. That's exactly what he says. He isolates it himself. He says, I analogize that to male to female transgender sports. He doesn't say female to male. He knows that's not the controversy. It's male to female. It's male bodies and female spaces. It's boys bodies and girls, bathrooms and locker rooms, et cetera. He doesn't say he doesn't want that to happen. He doesn't say he doesn't want the government to coerce the fact that biological males can be in those spaces. He simply says we have to go more slowly. He's warned the Democratic Party, you're putting everything at risk by pushing too fast. And so here's another big issue for Christians, and that is it's a fundamental worldview issue. Are we talking about something that's just absolutely objectively, and here's the word we have to use ontologically real, as in the fact that there's male and female. We're talking about something that's entirely plastic. If it's plastic, then it's just a matter of time until you can shape it into something other than that. It's Clear that Barney Frank, no surprise here, is absolutely committed to the entirety of lgbtq. He makes that very clear. It's all about political timing. He's arguing. I just want to make sure Christians understand what's going on here. Bonnie Frank is not saying that he doesn't want to see biological male bodies in female spaces. He doesn't say he doesn't want government to force that to happen. He says that the people aren't ready for it yet. They're not ready for it now that Democrats are endangering themselves because they're pushing too fast. Well, all right. All right. Now, what is the response to Barney Frank? Well, on the part of some, Democrats are not about to say anything. They can't just come out and say, I agree with Barney Frank, because if they do that, they're going to be primaried from their own party. That's the energy. The energy is in the left wing of the party. They come out and identify with what Barney Frank just said, and they're going to face opposition within their own party. So they're going to be silent. But those who disagree with Barney Frank are also. Well, they're telling us a whole lot. So, for example, the Advocate, which is one of the most influential of the media sources in the LGBTQ movement, that's what advocates about, is advocating for lgbtq. Been around for decades. That magazine ran an article with a headline, barney Frank's final interview from hospice was painful, as comments on trans people made it worse. John Casey, writing for the Advocate, says, quote, I was heartsick watching Barney Frank being interviewed by Jake Tapper. It was haunting to see him. Very hard to understand, and he was clearly heavily medicated. The one thing I kept thinking was, why is he doing this? He says, as a lifelong PR guy, I would have strongly advised against it. Strongly. For a larger than life personality like Frank, going out with a whisper felt self defeating, end quote. He speaks about his discomfort with watching the whole thing and then he says, quote, then Frank caused even more discomfort by suggesting that Democrats needed to rethink their approach to transgender rights. When he brought it up, I cringed. Then I scrolled through social media and saw the visceral reaction to his comments. What Frank said was nothing new. He writes, if you know his track record, you know, he has long argued for an incremental strategy to secure trans equality. Since the mid 2000s, he has emphasized a granular quotation marks around granular approach to transgender rights. Okay, so now we're given some information. It's like inside baseball here. We're being given some. Some inside information. Here's what he writes. Quote, this was underscored by his controversial 2007 effort to advance the Employment Non Discrimination Act. That's INDA. Quote, Believing an inclusive bill lacked the votes to pass the House. That means including T is in transgender. Quote, Frank intentionally stripped protections based on gender identity, pursuing a, quote, sexual orientation only strategy to secure Republican support and pass a narrower bill. Okay, so here you have someone speaking up on behalf of the whole LGBTQ alliance saying, Barney Frank has disappointed us before because he basically sold us out in 2007, but he did so not wanting to get where we want to go, but instead wanting to move more slowly in the window of what he thought was politically possible. Now, the other very interesting thing here is that John Casey writes for the Advocate that when it comes to Barney Frank, his strategy is not merely wrong, his analysis is wrong. He thinks that the transgender argument is winning. He points to 2014 Time magazine writing of the transgender tipping point, and he says it, quote, has been driven by a surge in high profile visibility across entertainment and government. What isn't reflected in this article is the acknowledgement that the vast majority of Americans do not want biological male bodies in female spaces, period. And especially when it comes to, say, girls sports, girls facilities, women's sports, women's teams, they don't want to see this happen. There's really no acknowledgment of that. Instead, there's huge disappointment here with Barney Frank. But Barney Frank being the first to volunteer gay identity as a member of Congress, he's a part of the honor role in the LGBTQ movement. So this is written with as much respect as possible, but clearly it is written with enormous disappointment in Barney Frank and enormous disagreement with Barney Frank's incrementalism. What I want us to see is that incrementalism is exactly what has been so effective for the LGBTQ movement. They didn't come right out and say, what we want is biological male bodies and female spaces. What they said was, we're going to start with L and G, then we'll move to B. And by the way, they went to T. The problem is, T is not going over nearly as well in the larger population as the writer for this Advocate piece indicates. But this writer does tell us something, and that is that those who are pushing the transgender agenda are clearly convinced it is just a matter of time. Yes, they will say, we've had our setbacks. We have faced court decisions and school board decisions and other things that have set back the transgender agenda. Yes, the polls say what the polls say, but they're absolutely convinced that America is moving into a sunlit future of entirely enthusiastic LGBTQ victory. And don't forget the plus sign at the end. There's more to come. All right, that piece in the Advocate ran on 6 May, just a matter of days ago. Just a couple of days ago, on 12 May, another piece ran at the Advocate with the headline, conservatives are turning to American voters to target trans rights. Okay, same, same media source. The subhead in this article, remember those state ballot initiatives banning same sex marriage? Conservators are now using that playbook to target transgender rights. Christopher Wiggins is the writer on this piece. Again, it tells us a great deal how the case is being made inside the LGBTQ movement. This is how he describes the problem. Quote, petition gatherers began showing up at farmers markets and grocery store parking lots in Colorado last fall. Clipboards in hand, they collected signatures for two ballot initiatives. One to bar transgender girls from school sports, and another to ban gender affirming surgeries for minors. They had help. Colorado's Catholic bishops urged parishes to host signature drives. The lead pastor of Flatirons Community Church asked his congregation to sign. They succeeded, end quote. The writer goes on to say, quote, it is working. At least 5 anti trans ballot measures are confirmed or effectively confirmed for the November general election. Two in Colorado, one in Washington state, one in Maine, and in Missouri, a measure would ban gender affirming care for minors while also rolling back abortion rights approved by voters just two years ago, end quote. So here you have an analysis of the current state of affairs coming from inside the LGBTQ movement, and thus they're expressing alarm about these statewide initiatives. I think there is some logic to the argument here. Yeah, that's exactly what is happening. The same kind of conservative movements that arose in the defense of marriage are now arising in defense of restricting female spaces to biological females, let's just put it that way, when it comes to locker room sports and all the rest. And also, you have, I would just say, common sense American saying that there should not be surgery done on children in the name of the transgender revolution and gender identity and all the rest. The other reason I want to point to this is because this article tells us from inside the LGBTQ movement that they know they have opponents. They know they have just die hard, really serious opponents. And I thought it was really interesting we should see this, that the article identifies a major evangelical church there in Colorado and Colorado's Catholic bishops, so. Well, there you have it. In Other words, who actually understands what male and female means? Well, it turns out you ask evangelical Christians and Roman Catholics, Roman Catholic bishops in this case, guess what? They have an answer. By the way, not coincidentally, on this kind of issue, it's the same answer. It is also clear that when you read this, once again, it's important that Christians understand that people pushing from the other side, they genuinely believe what they are doing. I just think it's really important for Christians to recognize these LGBTQ activists are actually telling us what they think. They think they're making these arguments. So, for instance, someone inside the movement says, quote, our opposition is trying to confuse voters and undermine bodily autonomy, end quote. Okay, that's just giant. What in the world is bodily autonomy that could be undermined by saying, boys are boys and girls are girls? Well, that definition of bodily autonomy is autonomous from biology. In other words, what you think you are is far more important than what you are or you can think yourself into what you are. That's the logic of the transgender movement. I just want us as Christians to note that the issue here, when they talk about undermining bodily autonomy, they mean that the body actually doesn't tell us anything. The body is now just a form of our self expression if we want it to express ourselves. If not, we change the body. Of course, there are severe limitations to that. Let's just point out biology is a significant impediment to what's defined here as bodily autonomy. They can rearrange things, but they cannot turn a male into a female or a female into a male. Let me put it this way. The reproductive process doesn't work. All right. I just thought all of that is really important. And it's also emotionally moving. I think when you look at someone like Barney Frank giving an interview like this, I can tell you it is very sad to see a man at this stage in life who's clearly failing physically. And he does speak very honestly about that. He's very old and he has some very significant issues, health issues that have now put him in a hospice. I think it's really sad for Christians to observe that he's thinking himself into these issues even at this last stage of life. And he's giving advice, and the advice is not, hey, biology really matters. No, that is not what he's saying. He's saying, nope, the political strategy has to be to go for the wins you can get. Now, don't talk out loud about your long term plans, but work towards them, because incrementally, that way, you win. I just want to point out that when he says that, he says it with the voice of experience, that is exactly how they won. But I also want to point to something else, and that is this. When you look at same sex marriage in the United States, it is not true that 50 states voted to approve same sex marriage. It isn't true that in 50 states legislation worked its way through that way. No. What's true is that in 2015, the Supreme Court of the United States came down on the issue, on the wrong side of the issue, coercing all the states into compliance with that issue. It is the parallel to Roe v. Wade on the question of abortion in 1973. That decision wasn't reversed until 2022. And even then, we've got a lot of work to do when it comes to same sex marriage. It is impossible for Christians just to say, well, I guess that's all right. After all, we have to understand once again, we either believe in objective reality revealed in scripture or we do not. If we do, it just underlines the scale of the battle out yet ahead. One final angle on this, the same issue, it appears in yesterday's edition of USA Today. It comes from Brianna Turner, who is a player in the wnba, the Women's National Basketball Association. She writes a piece, an opinion piece, quote, I am a WNBA player. Trans women aren't a threat to the Olympics. So she's writing against the new policy, the Olympic Committee, to make clear that male and female really matter in terms of Olympic competition. Brianna Turner says that she liked the 2021 IOC policy better, which basically left the question open. She says about the new policy, quote, this new mandate abandons that groundbreaking and collaborative framework, ignores established medical and human rights guidance, and rejects the science that says physical appearance, chromosomes or individual traits do not determine athletic performance or success. End quote. I just want to say that that is an absolutely irresponsible statement, but it's published here and people are going to read it as if it's true. She says that the current new Olympic policy, which I think is absolutely right, she says it, quote, rejects the science that says physical appearance, okay, chromosomes or individual traits don't determine athletic performance or success. Does anyone for a moment believe that that's even plausibly true? Yeah, it doesn't matter how tall you are when you play basketball. It doesn't matter how well built and athletic you are when it comes to swimming. None of that matters. No, it's all a matter of political construction. And by the way, the Olympic authorities were basically forced into a more realistic policy precisely because the presence of some biological male bodies in female sports turned out to be disastrous. It undermines the integrity of female sports. And by the way, if you don' there's a difference between male and female bodies when it comes to a lot of athletic endeavors. Just understand, this is written by a player in the wnba, not a player who's a woman in the NBA. That, let's just state, is still unlikely. And yes, it does have a great deal to do with biology. Okay, just in order to make the worldview of this writer clear, here's how she concludes her article. Do not use the names of women athletes to target, shame or exclude transgender women. Transgender women, she says, are women. Women with intersex variations are women. I welcome these women and all women onto my teams. End quote. So you notice right out front, she just says transgender women are women. Well, I just want to state something that Christians need to keep in mind, and that is that saying something doesn't make it real. She can say out loud, she can write, she can insist that transgender women are women. But you know what? She can't make it happen. I'll tell you who does get to speak and make it happen. That's the one true and living God in Genesis chapter one where he speaks it. And it is that, brothers and sisters, is all the difference in the world between divine speech and human speech. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website@albertmuller.com youm can follow me on X or Twitter by going to x. Com albertmohler for information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. for information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege.com I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.