Culture Friday: Courts, community, and controversy

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, March 6th. 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.

I mentioned yesterday our team is on an editorial retreat this week—which of course does not mean the work stops. It cannot stop. So we invited some board members and friends and colleagues to join us and sit in while we do what we normally do. So friends here in the room, why don’t you say hello to your fellow listeners to The World and Everything in It.

We’ve had a full week. David Bahnsen spent a day with us talking about the economic truths journalists need to understand—and he also led a session on what the Bible says about our work and how we do it. John Stonestreet has been here teaching on what the Bible says about culture. We’ve had devotionals, and a lot of singing. It’s been a great week.

And speaking of John Stonestreet—who’s been on his feet teaching most of the day—we asked him to come in, grab a chair, and keep the conversation going.

Glad to have you here, John. Welcome.

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: Well John, the U.S. Supreme Court this week sided with parents who were challenging California policies that allowed schools to withhold information about a child’s gender identity from mom and dad. The court’s majority said that parents likely have the constitutional right rooted in the 14th Amendment to guide their children’s upbringing and to be involved in major decisions affecting their mental health and well being.

Now, for years, advocates of these policies had argued that schools should act as a kind of protective, and I’ll put that in quotation marks, a protective buffer between children and parents, but the court appears to be pushing back on that.

So we’ve been talking a lot about civilizational moments, John over the past few days. Does this feel like one of those civilizational moments? Possibly a cultural course correction? Are things getting better?

STONESTREET: I’d love to call it a course correction.

I think it’s maybe a little early, but it’s absolutely the right decision. I mean, listen, what’s missed in all this is when school officials either say out loud, which some of them have, or initiate policies that insert themselves between children and their parents, they’re intrinsically asking or answering another question, which is, if it’s not going to be the parents? Who’s it going to be?

And, you know, the answer has increasingly, over the last several decades, been the experts, and then the state, and then the state appointed experts, as if they would have more understanding and more empathy, more connection with children than their parents, which, of course, on its face, is just absurd, but it becomes a thinkable thought in a culture that increasingly devalues the family, increasingly sees parents as purveyors of traditional morality, and traditional morality being not just neutral, not just outdated, but actively harmful.

EICHER: So this is the kind of thing, though, that we were talking about last week the State of the Union address, and it called at that one moment when the child came forward who had been kept from her parents, had been kind of forced into this social transition and finally freed up. But this is of a piece with that story.

STONESTREET: Oh, absolutely.

And what people need to know is that there have been kind of more modest attempts to separate parents from children, or to insert state officials in between parents and children, but nobody went as far as the individuals leading this transgender movement.

And of course, the trans movement, from the very beginning, was always moving forward on the backs of other so called civil rights movements. It never had its own case. It never had its own reality. It could never ground any kind of sense of identity.

I don’t think by the way, the gay movement’s grounding was in scientific or biological realities, either. But it was a little bit more successful in at least trying to argue that where the trans movement just kind of hijacked a couple other movements and went forward and increasingly, what’s become revealed and exposed is that the claims to the science being settled were completely bogus. They were just made up out of thin air.

We know from the WPATH emails that so many of those who were ideologically leading this movement, we’re just making stuff up, and not only just making stuff up, but even admitting to doing things like socially experimenting.

What will happen is we’ll find out that those who are really pushing forward this movement were primarily middle aged men. A with a sexual fetish, which, if you go back 20 or 25 or 30 years ago, Oliver O’Donovan, for example, the Anglican ethicist, talked about this issue as being exclusively an issue of sexual perversion of middle aged men.

And then all of a sudden we had this explosion of adolescent and pre adolescent, primarily girls. But all this was being driven, I think, by by these same men and so, I think just so so much is being exposed and being revealed.

I think we can thank God that it’s being exposed and revealed, and we’re going to have to figure out how to uncover the power that was wielded by some of these men to make the absurd and bizarre happen.

EICHER: Sounds like a call for some investigative reporting …

STONESTREET: … and some people should go to prison.

BROWN: Well, John this week, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison testified before the House Oversight Committee about fraud in federal food-aid programs.

During the hearing, a Minnesota pastor invoked Matthew 25—the passage about caring for “the least of these”—arguing that Christians have a moral duty to support these programs. This is Reverend Mariah Tallgaard.

TALLGAARD: Jesus teaches us in Matthew 25: whatever you do for the least of these you do unto me. History will tell its story about us, but long before then our own souls will know whether we stood with them or turned away.

Texas Congressman Michael Cloud responded that the passage is often quoted in Washington—but rarely in context.

CLOUD: You invoked Matthew 25, and that’s a scripture we see tossed around a lot up here, but often without context. What Christ didn’t say was to lobby your government. He said, if you have, you give.

Second Corinthians chapter 9 gives us probably the best understanding of charity. It says each of you should give what you’ve decided in your heart to give—not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

And yet here in Washington we often define our worth by how much of other people’s money we give away.

John, Cloud’s point is that Scripture calls Christians to charity—but that doesn’t automatically translate into government programs. Is that a fair distinction?

STONESTREET: It’s a very fair distinction. That’s exactly what the text is written for. Is written to Christians to behave like Christians, and there is a call to charity.

Now look, I think the legitimate critique here is, is that oftentimes Christians who call that distinction out and say that these clear teachings of Christ are written to individuals and not to the state, oftentimes use that as an excuse to not actually be the sort of charitable individuals that we should be, and the more that non governmental institutions take care of some of these social problems, the less room there will be for the government to come come in.

But listen, the whole practice of manipulating scripture in order to serve a predetermined conclusion is, of course, a method that is a epidemic within the church, but especially in the progressive side of the church, including the side of the church that this Reverend talgard tall guard is a tall guard. Tall guard, especially the angle, especially the corner of the church where this Reverend tall guard comes from.

There’s always already an awful lot of twisting of scripture in order to justify all kinds of things and including her own ordination.

But there’s other things as well that are at work here, and that is the danger of, I think, treating the Scripture as a tool to be used to advance some other kind of political agenda, then it can be used by someone else.

So I think at some level, we need to be careful. Those of us that do claim the authority of Scripture that we’re not guilty of trying to manipulate the Scripture into saying whatever it is that we want it to say in order to support whatever predetermined point that we have. We need to be under its authority. It’s not under ours.

EICHER: So we talked a good bit about, or you did talk a good bit about marriage. And I’ve got something sort of on this subject, John, that I want to bring to your attention, a new relationship trend.

And it may not seem new, really, but it’s gaining some traction among younger couples. I saw this in the New York Times this week, the wedding party without the wedding more couples registering as domestic partners, sometimes throwing these big, expensive celebrations deliberately, though stopping short of actual marriage.

So they want the photos they want, the DJ they want, the food they want, the public affirmation they want, the party, but not the covenant, not the financial unity, not the permanence that marriage traditionally implies.

So the times, so the Times carried a front page piece on what seems, as I say, a little passe, you know, people taking advantage of domestic partnership laws. And, of course, you remember not too many years ago that this was floated as the alternative to the push that was happening for same sex marriage, but now it seems like it might be back.

So question to you is, do you consider this kind of a signal of something to come? Or are you saying to yourself, what took the time so long to do the story?

STONESTREET: I mean, I mean, what a story, is it? Is it a you know, is it an advertising story? Is it a marketing story?

EICHER: It’s a human-interest story. It was on the front page.

STONESTREET: I mean this in the number of ways that we have manipulated and changed marriage. And of course, it all comes back to the fundamental question, Is marriage a thing? Is marriage a thing in reality? Is marriage a thing in reality, like gravity? In other words, whether you recognize it or not, it’s still there, or is marriage a social construct?

And of course, in so many different ways, we have treated marriage as if it’s whatever we want it to be. And so if we want to substitute it for marriage, or if we want to take another relational arrangement that’s not marriage and call it marriage, then suddenly it becomes marriage.

Or if we want to do something like this, which is just put together an alternative and then act like it serves all the same social purposes and so on. But we tried that. I mean, cohabitation is obviously the most notable example that has exploded in popularity over the last several decades. Even as the popularity of marriage has taken a real hit.

Fewer people are getting married, more people are living together. But all the social benefits that have long been marked by marriage, you do not find in something that looks exactly like it, which is really a remarkable thing, right?

Because young people are told all the time, it doesn’t matter if you stand up in front of a justice of the peace or a church or your friends, all that really matters is that you love each other. You know, as if you know love is all we need, or whatever.

And the fact of the matter is, is, if you look at the social outcomes, not only do you not get the goods that marriage brings, you, actually get the opposite. You get actual bad things from cohabiting relationships, on average. Not that there’s no good people that are involved in cohabiting relationships, but you don’t get that on a social level.

So this is just another way of trying to do something with marriage, as if Marriage isn’t a thing, as if marriage is a social construct, like a speed limit, that we just decide what it is, and as the social conditions change. We can change the speed limit.

It doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked. G, K. Chesterton, I think, said it best that that marriage is a triangle of truisms, father, mother and child, and it cannot be destroyed, but it will destroy civilizations that disregard it.

And we don’t have a future without marriage, and that includes when I have a future with all the things that we substitute for marriage and treat it as if it’s the same thing.

EICHER: Well, John, I want to go to some of the extremes on this, and you’re aware of the kind of anti-marriage activists, or the ones who are talking about this, the influencers, the Andrew Tates, the Pearl- whose name I can’t remember exactly. But they are against marriage, seemingly mainly on economic grounds.

Do you think that that may be a place that a lot of people say, “Well, you know, I don’t want to go as far as Andrew Tate, but I sure don’t want to get messed up and get wrecked in a divorce and all of this ."

STONESTREET: Historically yes, and I think there have been governmental policies that penalize marriage, and it’s foolish and it’s bad. And so the mistake is then to turn around and say, like some of these influencers do that because there are bad policies that end up leading to bad outcomes, and because we have a bad culture with a bad understanding and a bad message of marriage, then therefore the problem is with marriage itself.

It absolutely is not, you know. I mean, there was almost a Christian version of this movement, you know, years ago, where it was all like, Y’all, yeah, men need to stay free, and they shouldn’t be domesticated.

And I’m like, What are you kidding? Men absolutely need to be domesticated. You know why? Because men do stupid things systemically and epidemically.

And marriage is good because marriage makes men think about something beyond the moment, right? That’s why you don’t hear married men say, Hey, y’all watch this as they do something really stupid.

It’s unmarried men that do that, because marriage makes people think about something other than themselves, and that’s what maturity is when it comes to men.

I do think, by the way, there’s some really good news on this, which is we are seeing study after study now, which says that it’s more young men that want marriage. Marriage and that want children than young women do.

That’s both good news and bad news. It’s good news that the men are coming around. It’s bad news that young women have been on a whole so convinced that that who they are is a problem that needs to be overcome, that their fertility is a is a disability or something like that and that and that men are never out for their best interest.

So I think what we’re seeing, at some level, I guess, is men reacting to this constant messaging that their masculinity is toxic. And now women also are reckoning with this message, and it’s bad for them to believe that messaging.

BROWN: Umm, hmm, wake up, y’all.

STONESTREET: Wake up, y’all.

BROWN: Yeah, well, John, let's end our time together talking about basketball, and we certainly know who you want to win on the college level.

EICHER: Wake Forest, right? I believe it was one of those North Carolina teams.

BROWN: Go ahead, go ahead. Say it.

STONESTREET: I’m a Duke fan, that's all. I’m a Duke fan, which means I just lost most of the audience.

BROWN: Well, I want to talk about, really, what’s happening in the NBA. Did you hear about the NBA player calling out the Atlanta Hawks organization for a promotion it wants to run during an upcoming game?

The promo is involving a well known local gentleman’s club. So here’s the background, San Antonio Spurs center, Luke Cornett is asking the Hawks to rethink its magic city. Monday plans for March 16 game against Orlando.

Now Magic City. John is a strip club the Hawks is describing the one night collaboration as an old to an iconic cultural institution.

Luke Cornett wrote this in medium. He says the NBA should desire to protect and esteem women, many of whom work diligently every day to make this the best basketball league in the world.

We should promote an atmosphere that is protective and respectful of the daughters, wives, sisters, mothers and partners that we know and love.

Allowing this night to go forward without protest would reflect poorly on us as an NBA community.

You know John, I appreciate his willingness to bring out the point about the message this so called celebration sends to women. What do you think?

STONESTREET: I think what needs to happen is Luke Cornett needs to run for the state legislator later in Colorado. Because, you know, obviously in my state, we have a bunch of lawmakers who think the exploitation of women is a good way to advance women.

This is a foolish thing for the Atlanta Hawks to do. These are institutions that are not to be celebrated. They’re not iconic. They are damaging.

Because anything that you know not only degrades women, but compromises the fundamental institution of marriage in a society is not good for that culture.

What do you say strip clubs have been good for the city of Atlanta? Has anybody driven through Atlanta? I mean, are you kidding me?

These aren’t the cultural highlights of this city, and it’s a cool city, right?

And these are the parts of town where you don’t want to, you know, stop. These are the parts of town that are also enabling all kinds of other things.

This is the conversation we’re having on a legislative level in Colorado that with the these sorts of kind of sin policies that take things that everyone is universally understood to be wrong, and then pretending like they’re okay.

In that case, you know, prostitution, it comes along with other evils as well. It makes other things possible.

So congrats to Luke Cornett. I don’t know who he is. I wonder if he’s coming from a place of faith with his courage to say something out loud like this.

I think so, yeah, well, good for him.

I do think, by the way, we’re getting more and more examples, not only of I do think, though, this is another example, and there seems to be more and more examples, not as many as the NBA, as we see, for example, in college football and even increasingly in the NFL of people who are athletes and people of faith and willing to say it out loud.

And not only willing to say it out loud, but willing to say things out loud that might be perceived as being too conservative or too, you know, too Christian.

We need more of those voices in the NBA. We need more of them who are willing just to speak out, but, but good for him for doing this.

I hadn’t seen the story until you, you brought it up. But I hope, hopefully it’ll go a long way into convincing the Atlanta Hawks to do the right thing.

BROWN: Standing up for Jesus.

STONESTREET: Yeah!

BROWN: All right. John StoneStreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast, John. Thank you for this terrific week, and thanks for joining us week after week. What a treat!

STONESTREET: It is my pleasure. Thank you both.

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