← The CBMW Podcast
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- [00:00]
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Foreign.
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Welcome back into the CBMW podcast. Your refuge from the sexual revolution and safe space from our cultures. Gender insanity. I am Jonathan Swan, executive editor of Icon, and I'm joined by the president of CBMW, Denny Burke, as well as CBMW's executive director, Colin Smothers. This is the week of the 4th of July, and I just want to know what level of America 250 maxing are you currently at.
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A
Right now I'm going to sail across the Delaware in my American revolutionary costume that I have. So I've got some. I got big plans that's on.
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C
You got a 4th of July for the church. It is pretty unbelievable. 4th of July fellowship tonight for the church. I haven't bought any fireworks yet, so I don't feel fully realized in my patriotism until I've blown off a couple dozen dollars worth of fireworks. I try to keep it minimal, but I love watching fireworks. I love blowing stuff up. One of my favorite things.
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B
Absolutely. Well, hey, last week the PCA was in Denny's backyard in Louisville and. And they had a vote on the Danvers statement. And so, Denny, can you let us know what happened there? Why was the Danvers even being discussed at the pca and what does it mean for their denomination?
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A
Yeah, I think it was a really good thing. They had, you know, a couple items on their agenda that had to do with complementarianism, role of women in ministry. This was one of them. So there was an overture. 61. So whenever you want to propose some kind of a new measure or departure within the denomination, it's called an overture. And this is from the Calvary Presbytery, which is in South Carolina. And they're basically moved that the denomination affirm the Danvers statement as a biblically faithful declaration. And then to refer the Danvers statement to the Committee on Discipleship Ministries for inclusion and promotion amongst its denominational teachers, teaching materials. It's the same thing that they did with the Nashville statement several years ago that was controversial at the time. This one also had debate as well. It's interesting because the PCA is a solidly complementarian denomination. I don't even think the nature of the debate was mainly, are we complementarian or not? And if we are, we're going to affirm this. I think it was mainly everybody there is pretty much complementarian. It's. Do we want to use an outside statement? I think that was the only. I think that was the main point of debate. And the people who said, yeah, let's use this outside statement. They won the day. And this ended up passing, which is a tremendous affirmation in my view, because the Dammever statement has been a kind of a staple and a bedrock of complementarian conviction since 1987, and this puts them squarely in line with that. I also think it's not just a bulwark against the feminist influences within the culture. It's also saying that we're not going down the hyper patriarchy route either. I think that that was probably a part of the appeal on this as well. So it's just mere complementarianism. That's what Danvers is.
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B
That's an interesting phrase.
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A
Yeah, I know. Which we believe roots male and female roles within the created order, and it's revealed in Scripture, and it has relevance for wherever you find males and females, home, church and beyond. But it's a wonderful, faithful biblical statement, and I'm glad that they adopted it.
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B
Yeah, it's very encouraging to see, nearly 40 years later, churches, denominations, still being able to reference, use that statement.
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A
Speaking of one more thing, though, there's another one here. They did another overture number 37, which was from their pacific presbytery, and this overture was proposing female deacons. Now, a lot of our listeners will say, well, what's the big deal with female deacons? Lots of complementarian churches have female deacons within the PCA polity. Deacon is an ordained role, and ordained roles carry authority with them. So it actually doesn't work with complementarianism within that polity. And they overwhelmingly voted that down. It was, you know, it was not even close. So those two complementarian measures both were, you know, successes. From, from our perspective, the. The Overture 61 on the Dammer statement was a little closer. The Deakin one was overwhelming.
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B
Yeah.
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C
And it really comes on the heels of the successful denominational meeting the SBC had. So sort of in successive weeks between the SBC and the pca, my takeaway was that the reports of the death of complementarianism have been greatly exaggerated. We don't see complementarianism in retreat or waning in influence, but very much being affirmed and really leaned into by these very conservative, you know, denominations as leaders in the evangelical world. So I was thankful to see both of those actions.
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And wherever you have God's people listening to the voice of God's word, complementarianism is going to be there because it's what the Bible teaches.
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B
That's exactly right. All right, brothers. Well, I want to move our attention now to the final slate of Supreme Court decisions that were released yesterday. We have one Titled West Virginia v. BE BPJ that allows states to prevent males who identify as women, which we call transgender women, from participating in female sports. Colin, can you give us a little bit of information about the decision, why we're seeing so many conservatives and Christians hail it as a good decision?
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C
Yeah, absolutely. This was a definite win for conservatives, social conservatives throughout the country, because here you have Supreme Court going on record that not only boys should not play in girls sports, men should not play in women's sports, but also some definitional issues on what is a man and what is a woman, which I want to get into in a, in a second on the opinion. But yeah, what we had was, you know, these challenges coming out of West Virginia and Idaho sort of responded to rolled up in one opinion from the Supreme Court that was decisive, a 6:3 majority that said that, you know, boys that identify as girls and men that identify as women do not have some kind of constitutional right to play in, you know, opposite sex sports. It's just because, you know, that's how they feel on that given day. And so what you had was actually a unanimity around the question. It was a 9, 0, whether there were Title 9 protections, you know, provided for boys that want to play in girls sports who identify as girls. And then it was six, three, which, you know, this is actually the more important question. Is there some kind of constitutional protection for biological boys? You know, what we used to always call boys or biological men, whether they can, because they identify as women or identify as girls, whether they can go and play in those sports. And so, you know, it was an obvious split, you know, the conservatives versus the, the progressive liberal wing. Kagan and Sotomayor and Jackson were all dissenting. So it was a 6:3 decision. And Justice Kavanaugh actually wrote the majority. And one of the things that he says, I mean, it was sort of a tour de force on the question. But one of the things that he said in his opening for the majority, he says that all agree. I think this is an interesting statement because actually not everybody agrees on this, but he says all agree that females and males have inherent physical differences relevant to athletic performance. Now, that's sort of the question that they were, you know, debating. And here he is just saying it outright. And then he goes on to say, again, I'm quoting from his opinion, those physical differences between men and women are enduring. The differences include, among other things, height, weight, strength, speed, endurance and jumping ability. Therefore, in contact sports, forcing female athletes to compete against males can create significant safety risks in virtually all competitive sports. Forcing female athletes to compete against males can undermine competitive fairness. In other words, that's what we used to call common sense. You know, that people could just recognize that, hey, you know what? There's differences between boys and girls and men and women. Well, now, Americans, my fellow Americans, you can say on the authority of the Supreme Court that there actually are enduring physical differences between men and women, boys and girls, and that's a big win.
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B
Yeah.
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Colin. Colin, I know none of us are attorneys on this podcast.
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B
How do you know that, Denny?
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Surprise, surprise.
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B
How do you.
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So as I was looking at news and listening to news about this, it made me think about how does this sit next to the Bostock decision? Have you looked at that and thought about that?
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C
Because I did, and I was looking
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A
for something that made gender identity a, you know, protected.
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B
It is referenced in the syllabus, and it says it's a different issue because it's a different statute.
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C
Well, so Gorsuch, who wrote the majority in Bostock, he has a concurring opinion with Kavanaugh where he, like, half of it. He's trying to untangle that web. He's basically saying, this is different from Bostock because. And he uses some very technical language. I think one of the statutes that they're looking at for equal protection is something like because of. So there's this prepositional phrase because of versus. In this particular consideration, the phrase was on the basis of sex. So instead of because of sex, there's on the basis of sex. And he made a big deal about the distinction there. To me, that just, you know, amounted to legalese and sort of this trying to have your cake and eat it, too. But he definitely takes on the question, I think. And I think that because Bostock was
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for employment, this is for sports.
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It was employment. This is for sports.
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A
But doesn't some employment entail differences of mobility?
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C
The consistent one in both of those cases is actually Clarence Thomas. And I want to get to something that he said in his. So he writes a concurrence, too. It's only like two pages long. I would highly recommend everybody, you don't have to read this entire decision. It's almost 100 pages, 95 pages. Clarence Thomas's is only two pages. And it's very edifying. And I want to quote from it, John, if I can, please. He wants to make two more points. In addition to what the points that he's agreeing with what Kavanaugh wrote. But on his second point, he. He just. I love how direct Clarence Thomas is I saw people saying, like, if only our court was composed of nine Clarence Thomases. I mean, that would be awesome. But here's quoting from his concurrence. He says men and boys with gender dysphoria are not women or girls, even if they believe they are. Mic drop. I mean, that's the whole thing.
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B
Ontological clarity.
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C
Exactly. Just because you believe you're something. Just because I believe I'm a fish doesn't mean I'm a fish. Just because I say, you know, I'm something or someone else or the President of the United States does not make it so. I mean, reality and reality judgments have to be based in what is real. And that is something that, you know, Justice Clare Solomons is. He kind of cuts through the quick really clearly, and I appreciate him for that phrase. The other thing that he says, though, and I think this is even more significant and goes to your question, Denny, about how we use language. So right after he said that. So that quote was circulating a lot, but this quote was a little bit. I didn't see many more people commenting on this one. He says this sex is an immutable biological characteristic. It is binary. Man and woman, boy and girl are the terms that correspond to adults and children of each sex. So here's what he's getting at. He's saying, stop saying biological boy or biological man, because a boy is just a boy and a man just is a man. A woman is a woman, a girl is a girl. He then goes on to say this. To use language to obscure reality, to show indifference regarding the truth, is to lie to the public and cease to treat our fellow citizens as equals. So you see what he's saying there? He's saying the way you are using the language, and he's really indicting, especially the dissent in this case where they're making this entire argument that a girl, a transgender girl, really is a girl, and they should be able to play whatever he's saying. You're actually lying to the public, and you're not even treating your fellow citizen as an equal because you are not using language how they and everybody else use language. That's amazing.
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B
Yeah, we're thankful for that level of clarity. Hey, last question here, because we're coming short on time. I have two data points. And, Denny, I want to ask you a question here. I was reading a summary of this at the SCOTUS blog, which is a really helpful blog, but I noticed that the authority referred to the biological man, who's the transgender woman in these. In one of these cases as a she. So the use of the female pronoun in describing this person. And then also that's one data point. The other one is the reason why this case happened, this decision occurred, was because both the ninth and the fourth Circuits denied these laws or challenged these laws. So, Denny, what are those two things? Given this is a good decision, but what are these other data points? How do they give context to what's actually happening yesterday in this decision?
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A
Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, to me, this seems like I'm implying it in what I just said to Colin a minute ago, but I think this is in tension with their previous precedent, and at some point they're going to have to. I'm not an attorney here, but I don't know how you make this square with Bostock in principle, because if you're going to say these things about male, female difference mattering with respect to sports, how can it not matter with respect to employment and other things? It seems like it could matter in these other areas. So I don't know what they're going to do with that. So I think Bostock is still a major bad thing in our country. And as long as you have this decision which makes gender identity a protected class, we're in a bad way. And so that has to somehow get rolled back. This decision doesn't do that, but at some point I'd like to see that, that somehow done. Is there a will for that amongst the American public right now? I hope so, but we'll have to wait and see. You know, we talked about early last year about the so called vibe shift because you had all of these transgender challenging executive orders coming down from President Trump. We're celebrating that because they were great. I mean, it was a total change from the previous administrations and a total stopping of the trajectory towards transgender insanity. I'm hoping that that trajectory can be sustained. But we really do need some more laws that are permanent, not just EOs, executive orders, because when the next president comes along, those get wiped away. So we need laws and we need jurisprudence that's confirming reality and it's not at variance with it. And so this isn't over. These discussions aren't over. A new president means you sweep away all those executive orders that we like so much. And if we don't have any laws in place to, to, you know, as a bulwark against the transanity, it's just going to continue.
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B
Well, in a fallen world, I'm very happy to again celebrate what God has given us in our country this week, but also the decision at the pca, this Supreme Court decision. And by the way, we didn't mention this, the latest issue of Icon is out. It's available. It's out there on the web. You can subscribe for the print edition. It's available in PDF and in blog form, free. Guess where? CBMW.org.