Culture Friday - Civil disobedience, eh?

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, February 4th, 2022.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Well, it’s Culture Friday. Time now to welcome John Stonestreet. He’s the president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast.

Morning, John.

JOHN STONESTREET, GUEST: Good morning!

EICHER: This is an older story, but we haven’t had the chance to talk about it the past couple of weeks. I did want to ask you, though, John, about the controversy in Canada, and I’m not talking about the trucker protest, which is interesting in itself.

But I’m talking about Canada’s criminalizing so-called “conversion therapy” which is understood to be a certain counseling practice designed to convert people out of homosexuality.

The new law there appears much broader than simply that. I’ll link to an article on our site by a Canadian professor and theologian that might be helpful to the listener. The point of it is that the language seems vague enough essentially to outlaw Christian counseling.

Adding some heft to that point: A law professor in Canada, who supports the central aim of the law, by the way, made the same point in a Canadian publication. He came up with an interesting hypothetical:

“Take the case of a man who is experiencing sexual attraction to other men. What if, to remain faithful to his wife and children, he begins to meet with a licensed counsellor? According to the law, the counsellor may well be engaging in a ‘practice, treatment, or service [designed to] repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behaviour.’ [This is the language of the law.] Do we really wish [the law professor says] to live in a society where this man cannot get this help, and where professionals who provide it might be branded as criminals?”

So that’s the background, here’s the question: Do you think there’s a way to live with a law like this for Christians in Canada or do you think we’ll soon be hearing about acts of civil disobedience … or is there another possibility?

STONESTREET: I think we'll be hearing about acts of civil disobedience. I mean, this is Canada. We've already seen acts of civil disobedience by Christian leaders and pastors over COVID shutdowns. You know, you mentioned the vaccine mandate trucker..what do they call it? The convoy? There's an old country song, you remember that? That was, yeah, that was about the speed limits, not about vaccine mandates. But I mean, in other words, there's just not the same space created in Canada's founding documents for freedom of conscience and religion. It's, it's similar language, but it's not the same. And there's not the history of the courts recognizing this. And so I think we'll be hearing about acts of civil disobedience. But to be clear about this one, I think we'll be hearing about acts of civil disobedience, not just from Christians. Again, when we're talking about homosexuality. And this language of this particular law extends to transgenderism as well. There is an assumption that everybody is on board except religious fundamentalists, that is just not the case. This is a very legitimate question, what do you do with someone who is married, has responsibilities to children and then expresses the same sex attractions, there's a lot of counselors that would actually say, you know, what, you have a responsibility, you need to own up to that responsibility, and the language of this law is unnecessarily broad, but then you go into the transgender issue. I know there's thoughts that the LGBTQ thing is a nice happy family of a unified acronym. It's not. And there are plenty of counselors, I think, and plenty of other professionals who are not going to be okay with treating gender dysphoria in the same way that we treat same sex attraction, or sexual orientation. The transgender movement hijack the sexual orientation discussion, but they're kind of an unwelcome visitor on this for some, and I think that includes certain counselors, particularly those who are concerned about the erasure of women in public spaces, and also just where the science goes. Look, there is an awful lot of really honest science, right there that says that gender dysphoria, particularly among young people, tends to work itself out in incredibly high numbers and to have that sort of backdrop and then to basically refuse to say anything that helps people resolve it ups people come to terms with it. There's a lot of counselors who are not going to be okay with that. There's a lot of counselors that are you know, gonna agree with this sort of conversion ban language on sexual orientation, but not on the transgender issue. So I think there's probably going to have to be ways to work this out. This is a classic case of a law being a chainsaw when you need a scalpel, and it just doesn't have the precise language, nor do I think it can in order to protect the conscience rights, the speech rights, and the religious rights of people, particularly professionals in the field.

BROWN: John, this month, of course, is Black History Month. And so I was thinking about this initiative by Morehouse College in Atlanta: The Black Men’s Research Institute. They say the goal is to equip black men to challenge and navigate through a society constructed in ways that may marginalize their contributions and humanity.

But I’m also thinking—speaking of the contributions of black men—thinking about the passing just a few weeks ago of one of the famous Tuskegee Airmen, Charles McGee who died at age 102.

A quick rundown here of his contributions: He flew 409 combat missions over three wars during a time when the prevailing opinion was that blacks did not possess the intelligence or courage to be military pilots.

Here was a quote by Charles McGee that ran in an obituary, listen to this: “One of the things we were fighting for was equality …” And I’ll stop here and stress McGee’s word choice, “equality,” not the new concept of “equity.” McGee went on: “Equality of opportunity. We knew we had the same skills, or better.”

Interact with that, John, the difference between equality of opportunity and the new term we’re hearing so much about, “equity.”

STONESTREET: Well, you know, equality of opportunity is a great way to put it. I, gosh, how do you not just stand in awe, really, of a guy like this, a man like this, who contributed so much to our country, and did so much to advance the cause of civil rights because of his courage and his accomplishment. And I think equality of opportunity is one aspect of this difference between equality and equity. Equality of opportunity is as everyone gets the same starting point, and because everyone has the same starting point, then it really is up to, you know, skill and hard work and dedication. And these things that we have recognized as being ways of being human that are, that are good, that are virtuous, that are ways of being made, ways of reflecting the quote, sort of gifts and opportunities that God has given us. You know, you consider like some of the language of equity these days, and of course, the famous example came last year, out of the African American History Museum in Washington, DC, where some of those same qualities, hard work, perseverance, were examples of white privilege or white supremacy, I can't remember the language that they use. But basically, this is a a white way of looking at the world and not a black way. And how insulting that is to someone like Charles McGee, who, who applied this, I caught the just the beginning last night of a movie that my first watch with my daughters, and we love to catch, it's one of those, you know, there's some of those movies when they pop through the TV, you're like, Oh, I'm gonna watch that again. And Hidden Figures is one of those. And same thing, you know, where you saw the equality of opportunity was not afforded the what these individuals had to overcome in order to make contributions that literally made landing a man on the moon possible. And the equality of opportunity wasn't there. And so what made the difference that overcame the inequality of opportunity was hard work, dedication, that's not a white supremacist sort of thing and undermines the incredible work and the incredible giftedness, both natural and enhanced through hard work and, and dedication that these women in this case so clearly exhibited. And it is because if you don't get any equality of opportunity up front, then you don't recognize the ultimate source for equality, which is inequality of identity. And of course, the only thing that's ever been sufficient to ground that is the, the Judeo Christian understanding that we're made in the image and likeness of God. That is such a rich, wonderful, dignifying way of addressing cultural evils and inequality. And it's so much better than the alternative, as you mentioned, which is equity, which is just no matter what, where we begin, no matter what contribution we make, we want an equity of outcome. And any disparity in outcome is proof of a racial bias or racial intent or a racial motive. That basically takes all the dignity out of individual actors as being subjects in their own story, and basically makes them objects of pity and objects of injustice. Now, we do need to understand many people have been victimized by injustice. But we need to do it in a way that doesn't rob them of inherent dignity to begin with.

BROWN: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thanks, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

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