The obvious reason for Manning’s reprieve

Each week, The World and Everything in It features a “Culture Friday” segment, in which Executive Producer Nick Eicher discusses the latest cultural news with John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Here is a summary of this week’s conversation.

President Barack Obama this week commuted the sentences of 209 inmates, including Chelsea Manning, the transgender Army analyst convicted of leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents. A military court sentenced Manning to 35 years in prison in 2010. Manning’s name legally changed from Bradley to Chelsea in 2014, and in 2015, Manning began receiving hormone treatments from the government to transition from male to female. The former Army private would have been eligible for parole in less than two years.

At a press conference this week, Obama said he granted clemency to Manning because he considered the sentence too harsh.

“I’d love to be able to take President Obama at his word,” John Stonestreet told me this week. “But there are so many other people in similar situations who face harsher penalties.”

In court, lawyers argued for a lighter sentence because Manning had lived as a woman while serving in a men’s prison.

“The transgender issue was front and center,” from the beginning of the case, Stonestreet said. Not only that, but policies on transgenderism dominated Obama’s presidency.

“The thing that has defined President Obama’s administration, particularly in last five years, has been the LGBT agenda,” Stonestreet said. “You can’t say this is a small consideration. … It’s the highest priority they have.”

Listen to “Culture Friday” on the Jan. 20 edition of The World and Everything in It.