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Foreign.
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Against progressive self expressionism helping to keep your biblical immune system ready to rage war against every ideological virus. I am very happy to be joined today by the president of CBMW, Denny Burke and CBMW's executive director, Colin Smothers. I am Jonathan Swan, the executive editor of icon, a journal for biblical anthropology. Boys, it's good to have you all back.
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Great to be here. It's been a little bit since I've been joining you guys via travel or sickness, but you guys held down the fort, so well done.
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Well, thanks, Colin. Now we're going to engage in some talk therapy. Trigger warning to everyone in Colorado. We want to talk today about a big win for freedom of speech and for the Christian worldview. The Supreme Court of the United States ruled yesterday that a Colorado law prohibiting licensed counselors from helping their clients align their gender ideology or sexual identity with their biological sex was unconstitutional. The ruling came after a 2019 law in Colorado that banned what we call talk conversion therapy of minors. It was challenged by a licensed counselor, Kaylee Childs. The law specifically prohibited licensed counselors from providing assistance to clients who desired to change their gender identity or sexual orientation. It specifically stated the law that you could not provide counsel to those wanting to change or eliminate their same sex desire. So here's what the Supreme Court said yesterday. They ruled that this Colorado law violates the First Amendment by regulating speech based on viewpoint. So the court argued that the law unnecessarily violated the rights of counselors by discriminating against them based on their viewpoint. Denny, why is this an important issue to talk about on a CBMW podcast?
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It's important because it's not just a political issue. It's a very practical issue for Christians is the way that they carry out their lives. I can give you an illustration of this. I spoke at a church. Let's just say it was out west, not long ago, a few years ago. I forgot how many years ago. But it was a church out west. They had a counseling center at this church. And I had a meeting with all of their counselors, their counseling staff, and we were talking about what's it like to counsel people with gender identity. What do you say to them? What are the standards of care? And I'll be honest. You know, these counselors were all over the place. I mean, some of them were. Maybe one of them was what we might call a biblical counselor. But a lot of them were just, you know, licensed therapists who were Christians. And so they had state licensure. And it was astonishing to listen to them talk. Because according to their own licensing standards, they weren't allowed to help people. If somebody came in and said that, you know, they had a, they were having transgender feelings, for example, as a little boy, and, and he's wishing to identify as a girl or vice versa, they're not allowed to help them, to tell them that's wrong. You know, that's their own licensing standards. Now you had in Colorado a law telling them it's not just the licensing standards, it's illegal to do this, which means the licensing standards are going to have to follow that. And so, you know, Colorado, it was a big deal. I mean, if you were a Christian and you were a licensed counselor, you, you couldn't say what you thought to be true in a therapy room. And even if, even if, let's say somebody came in and they said, you know, I'm a Christian and I want to walk with Christ and I have these attractions for the same sex, and I know that these are fallen and disordered, and I would like to, you know, I would like to walk faithfully with Christ in spite of these attractions and live a chaste, holy lifestyle. Can you help me do this? Somebody told me you're a Christian counselor. This counselor that brought this case was not allowed to help that person. Now she would be allowed to say that, no, you should embrace your homosexuality because the state, according to the law, actually supports that viewpoint. The state supports affirming a person's same sex attraction, but you can't disaffirm it in any way. And if you do, you would have been, you know, chargeable under their law. So this is an enormous decision and it has enormous practical implications for Christians, especially for those who are counselors and then others who are going to seek counseling. It's going to dictate not just in Colorado, but in about 20 other states that have similar kinds of laws. Those laws are now affected by this because this Supreme Court decision can just wipe off the books all of those laws. And so this is an enormous thing. It's very huge. And it's a good thing, actually. It's a step in the direction of sanity.
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B
Yeah. Colin, what are your thoughts? This ruling was 8 to 1. We see when there's a conservative liberal divide on these courts, usually we see, a lot of times we see a 6, 3 here, we see an 8 one. Colin, why is that significant? What's going on there?
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Yeah, so the fact that the ruling is eight one, I think, establishes it as a strong precedent. I mean, there are three ostensibly Liberal justices, progressive justices on the court, and two of the three joined the conservative majority, leaving Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as the lone dissenter. And I think her dissent is particularly noteworthy. One just how genuinely foolish it is and erratic. And I want to come back to that. But the fact that the other two justices, Kagan and Sotomayor, felt compelled to join the conservative majority against liberal Colorado's law is a huge story. And what I want to follow up on here is just how heavy handed on the scales of justice, progressive jurisprudence has been around this issue. So this law comes out in 2019. And, and again, as Denny already outlined, what it is, banning is what they call conversion therapy around gender identity and sexual orientation. And what they mean by that is if you declare yourself to be sexually oriented one way that's, that is against your heterosexual orientation, biological orientation, or your gender identity doesn't match your biological sex, then it would be banned in the counseling session with a licensed counselor to tell you, or to help you rather change that orientation or identity, even if, as Denny already mentioned, that is your desire. If you come to the counseling room and say, listen, I know this is not according to biology, according to God's design, can you help me to change in a positive biblical direction? The counselor, according to the Colorado law, would have to say, I cannot do that. Instead, what I can do is I can tell you you're wrong and you should continue to embrace know errant sexual orientation or gender identity. So number one, you see right there the viewpoint discrimination that was encoded in the 2019 Colorado law. That is the progressive ideal around sexual orientation and gender identity enshrined in law against any other dissenting opinion such that these counselors, this one that brought the case, would have had her license revoked so that she could not practice in the state of Colorado if she were to pursue that kind of counseling therapy. So that brings me back to Justice Jackson's dissent. What's ironic about it is how she has taken the exact opposite position on other cases that push forward the progressive ideals around gender identity and sexual orientation. So rewind the tape back to the Scrometti case. Her position back in the Scrometti case was that the state is not allowed to ban these gender transitions in order for, you know, in order for the state to be able to intervene in, in these positions. And that's again, the state banning the, the medical practices of, of a doctor that would be helping a patient to be able to align back into, you know, a gender identity that, that matches their biological sex. So do you See how she's playing both sides of the ball and she's doing so in order to advance the progressive ideal. It doesn't matter what the law says, what the First Amendment says, what precedent might dictate if it is in the promotion of progressive gender identity and sexual orientation, she's going to be for it and against anything that would halt or pump the brakes on or anything that, that would curtail the LGBT revolution. And again, you have to see that the other two liberal justices saw that. At least they're trying to be consistent. Jackson is totally on a complete island when it comes to the jurisprudence around the LGBT or so called SOGI laws.
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C
You know, I was watching, I don't usually watch Ms. Now, but I was trying to find out how to pronounce Chiles name. And so I hear Denny, sure. So I'll believe you. I was looking, I looked up a news report and the one that YouTube brought back was a news report from Ms. Now from, you know, yesterday when the decision came out. And you know, these, these reporters at Ms. Now, which are, you know, progressive, are having to deal with the fact that this was an 8:1 decision. And one of the reporters, again and again, these are progressives. One of the reporters is just reading from Kagan and having to admit, well, yeah, this is a viewpoint discrimination. You know, so it's, it's amazing that the people who are intellectually honest can, can admit that that's what's going on here. Now they think that there's a pathway out for somebody else who wants to bring. So that if you make, you could make a viewpoint neutral law. Right, but this was a viewpoint specific law. So they're hoping to get out of this in a different way. But even they had to admit that it was suppressing that speech. There is a basic hypocrisy though, about the way progressives think about this, because they said for forever that you can't try to change the sexual orientation of someone because it's doing violence to them and it harms them. Because sexual orientation is something you're born with and it's, you know, permanent feature of your personality and it would harm somebody to try to change it. And yet when the transgender thing comes along, what do they say? They say, well, they say you, well, you can try to change somebody's body. Now think about this. What's more permanent and a given a person's body or the way that they, you know, their sexual feelings? There's nothing more given and permanent than a person's body. And yet they're saying, just like Jackson was supporting in that other case, they're saying, yeah, you can change the body to match the mind. You just can't do it the other way around. You can't change the mind to match the body. If you try to change the mind to match the body, well, you're doing something that's. That's oppressive. So there's a real, you know, fundamental illogic and hypocrisy to it. And it's because it's. Let's just say it. It's evil, it's wrong. I mean, these are morally implicated things. They're trying to medicalize all this and pathologize all of it and remove it from a moral frame. It is a moral issue whether or not you accept the givenness of your body and the givenness of the purpose that's inbuilt, revealed by the Creator through your body. And so what's happening here, though, with these laws is that they're trying to medicalize everything and they're not acknowledging that. But this is very much a moral issue, and there's a hypocrisy on the part of the left in the way that they approach it.
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Absolutely. You know, I want to bring in another reaction that I saw in the aftermath of this decision, this 8:1 decision being handed down by the court, and that is a tweet by Andy Bashir. I don't know if you guys saw this. So governor of Kentucky, in many circles, maybe the favorite for the Democrats in 2028 for a presidential election. You know, candidate. Sometimes they bill him as, like this, you know, good old boy, moderate that, you know, he's touting his Christian values all the time, and he can appeal to a large swath of the electorate. I don't live in Kentucky anymore, so this is not my governor, Andy Beshear, but this is the current governor of Kentucky responding to this 8:1 decision. He says, my faith teaches me that all children are children of God and practices that endanger or harm them are wrong. That's why I banned conversion therapy on minors in Kentucky. Of course, he got overruled on that through an executive order. And that's why I firmly disagree with the Supreme Court's ruling today. And here's what he says. Conversion therapy is torture. No child should have to suffer from it. So he's calling the kind of thing that this Casey Childs would, Kaylie Childs would want to do that is to someone comes, comes to her counseling room saying, you know, I, I tried this Gender identity on. It's not working for me. I just want help to be able to align with my biological sex. If she were to help her or this individual with that in that counseling section session, he calls that torture. I mean, that's, that's an Orwellian use of words. A total just disregard for the meaning of, of, of reality here. But the other thing I want to point out is this puts Andy Bashir to the left of Kagan and Sotomayor, and with Jackson as the lone descent. In other words, he is disagreeing with the eight justices, including those two liberals and their very sane ruling that, of course, talking to somebody about their gender identity and sexual orientation, encouraging them toward a. Towards embracing God's design, that's not torture. In fact, that's allowed under the First Amendment and obviously is part of good practice. But here's the moderate candidate, Andy Beshear, to the Left of the 8. One Supreme Court decision. And I think that's a huge story in and of itself.
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C
You know, Colin, now that you've moved away to Kansas City, if you stay away long enough, maybe Bashir will be removed from your algorithm.
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Maybe.
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No idea how you're seeing this anymore.
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I don't know. I have too many Kentucky friends that retweeted into my timeline, I think.
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C
Yeah, well, he's definitely an up and comer on that side of things. But, you know, the thing I would want to ask Bashir is just to say you think that's torture. What would you say if you remove the healthy reproductive organs of a minor child? You think that's torture? Or do you support that? Because, in other words, that's what the left wants to do. They want it to be legal for you to change the healthy body through destructive services that destroy healthy organs. They're all for that. But if you try to change the mind to match the body, they're like, oh, that's torture. Give me a break.
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I notice. And we see this all the time now in a couple weeks ago with James Talrico making the rounds on the Internet, you have guys like him, David French, calling him a genuine Christian, or however he characterized him. And you have now Governor Bashir saying that these are in line with Christian principles. And I said this elsewhere recently, tongue in cheek, of course. But the left loves Christianity. They love it. They love it when it's used to advance their political agenda. They use it just like the 20th century liberals do by using the terms but importing foreign unchristian content into it. That's exactly what Andy Bashir is doing here what he and Ketanji Brown Jackson are doing when they claim that these things promote harm. We're okay with laws that regulate medical procedures and even regulations for therapists. Right. Those are good things. We need laws that are just and right, that promote public good. These issues, and I've said this on this podcast before, are we're protected by the great structures that our founders put in place and things like our constitution. But ultimately, these come down to worldview differences. It is a good, in Ketanji Brown Jackson's eyes that we limit counselors from saying that it's unnatural for a person to be born male but to seek to be female. It's wrong for biological females to have mastectomies, so on and so forth. It's just fundamentally a different moral viewpoint, a different metaphysical viewpoint that is driving these opinions. And yes, we have the First Amendment, but everybody's interpreting and using the First Amendment and any other legal principle from within their worldview. And so we have a war of the worldviews we're fighting here. The culture war is really a call, as you call it. It's ideological warfare. And we need to use the speech that we have to keep speaking the truth to keep talking about these things. And so I'm speaking to pastors. I'm not saying every sermon needs to be a culture warfare text, but when these things come up, we've got to educate our people. We've got to inspire people to stand up for truth. Just like this young lady Kaylee has
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put a bow on it. Yeah, to put a bow on that. You know, if. If folks that designed that legislation in Colorado in 2019, if folks like Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson get their way and really grab the levers of power in this country, either in the presidency, in the courts, and the. In the Congress, podcasts like this could be illegal. And that's not. That's not overstating things. I mean, look at what's happening in Great Britain there. People are getting arrested for posting on social media, the kinds of things that we're saying in this podcast. So this is not, again, some just esoteric issue. We're talking about the ability to speak the truth in love, and we're going to continue to do that even if they make it illegal.
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C
But look what just happened in Finland.
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Yeah, exactly.
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You know, with. With the professor in Finland, she published a Christian pamphlet on dealing with sin two decades ago.
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Right?
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Yeah, over two decades ago. And before it became illegal in hate speech to do so. And yet a court just found her guilty of violating a law they passed after they published it. And so if you think these things are far away from us, you need to wake up and listen. This is going to be a big deal for pastors, because guess what? I've had this happen to me. And so I know that this is going to happen to pastors. People are going to come and ask you. They're going to say, you know, the law says that I can't say this kind of thing. That's prohibiting me from saying the truth, the truth that's revealed to us in God's word. What am I supposed to do? Well, you can't say to them, well, just go along with the law. No. If the law ever becomes that, we're going to be counseling our people to be obedient to God, even if it makes you disobedient to the government. And we're going to do that because the Bible says, the apostle said in Acts 5, we must obey God rather than men. And so if we end up with a state that's conflicting God's law, we're all in a pickle at that point. And so this is a big deal for all of us. And I'm glad that this particular case came down in the right way.
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Absolutely. Well, to our listeners, thank you for enduring this speech therapy session. To find out more about CBMW, visit cbmw.org.