Culture Friday - Cross-dressing and chocolate

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, October 29th, 2021.

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. It’s Culture Friday.

Joining us today is Albert Mohler, he’s a theologian and public intellectual, a seminary president, and editor of the new WORLD Opinions.

Glad to see you.

ALBERT MOHLER, EDITOR: Nick, and Myrna. Great to be with you both as always on The World and Everything in It.

EICHER: It’s the last Friday in October, meaning the first Tuesday in November is right around the corner—Election Day in Virginia. And this one is maybe by virtue of its being an off-year election, but this is one everybody’s watching.

If you listen to David Bahnsen on economics every Monday—and you ought to—David stresses the importance of this one as driving the outcome of the jumbo spending bill in Washington as a bellwether of the strength or weakness of the president. If very blue Virginia goes red and the Republican wins—or it’s closer than it should be—that’s a proxy for President Biden’s weakness and the willingness of congressional Democrats, then, to defy him.

But apart from pure politics, this Virginia governor’s race may turn on the issue of education. The state has become something of a representative of the clash of worldviews over parental involvement in education versus education by experts only and that’s where the Republican candidate has turned the issue to his advantage.

Is this a real issue, do you think, not just in Virginia, but are we seeing the beginning of something big across the country that may change the way we educate children and teens?

MOHLER: It may change the shape of public education, it's more likely to reshape the political landscape, the public education establishment is so deeply entrenched, and quite frankly, has defense mechanisms that gets any kind of correction. But parents are now alerted in a whole new way to the problem, whether it's South Lake, Texas, or it's Virginia, you have parents showing up saying, these are our children, they don't belong to you. They don't belong to the school, they don't belong to the state. They belong to us. And we bear the responsibility. This has been a long debate in the United States, American Christians have been so acculturated into the public school movement, we forget how controversial it was in the beginning, and and how, in the early 20th century, the ideologues of public education, were already talking about separating children from the prejudices of their parents. And now the amazing thing is, you had the the former governor would be governor, again, Terry McAuliffe, just tell parents, it's none of your business. And even recently, it after that statement, you have public education figures coming back and saying, Okay, no, it's really true. Parents have no role in deciding what's taught in the public schools. So yeah, I think it's a big thing. I don't know what change it will bring in the public schools. I just seen the resilience of the public schools to any kind of change. And quite frankly, they can make incremental change. Conservative thinks something's happened, only to find out they went, you know, one step backwards and five steps forwards. But it has alerted parents and hopefully Christians, to the larger issue of who's in charge here.

EICHER: Right. But it's just one of these things where you see Virginia, it's kind of a flashpoint Loudoun County, right. And there's a lot of controversy there. But it comes in the context of politics. But it's not just in Virginia, it's all around the country. And that's why I was wondering, if is there Do you have a sense that it's a movement? 

MOHLER: It is a movement, and it it has begun in places like Minneapolis, California, where people have discovered parents have discovered what's being taught to their children. They have complained about it, and we're talking about radically unacceptable curriculum and is brought to the attention of the schools and the schools insist you don't have any say here. In other states, you have opt out provision such as California, where the legislature put in an opt out on sex education, so the health educators just re labeled it as health rather than a sex education. nullifying parental rights. So it's happening everywhere. I hope it's a huge wake up call.

BROWN: Twix, the candy company, has a disturbing Halloween series out on social media—2.5 million people have watched a young boy, home alone, dressed in a princess dress, visited by a cross-dressing nanny in gothic. They end up at the park. The boy, still dressed as a princess, is approached by another boy wearing a superhero costume with a cape. Boy with cape asks why he’s dressed like that. The boy wearing the dress says, because it makes me feel good. Boy with cape says you look weird, your nanny looks weird, you’re both weird! The boy in the dress says, no we’re just different. Then the Nanny gets involved and conjures up a strong wind that sweeps the boy asking the questions away, leaving behind his cape. Then boy in dress and gothic nanny walk away hand in hand.

This seems so much bigger than a culture war. What do you think?

MOHLER: It's an absolute exchange of one entire system of meaning for another we are at it. It's like James or the the evangelical philosopher over a century ago said it's the deepened radical antagonism between the Christian view of the world and the world's own view of itself now, and that's what we've got this deep and radical antagonism. But you know, Myrna as I look at that, here's, here's what I'm thinking this is overacting. This is Twix virtue signaling as a company is preaching this transgender ideology and a little boy wearing a princess dress, but I just have to tell you, it's not working on the ground. The reality is that in Britain, and in the United States, the big movement right now is a push back against the transgender ideology and the non the gender non binary. And it's, you know, there were claims I dealt with just in the last few days in which 41% of Generation Z are supposedly said, they have some question about this, I just want to say it's not true. It's not true. Just go out and public 41% Not even close. And it just tells you that they have told themselves, this is the future. But I'll just point out there will be no babies of this as the future the entire, you know, sexual ideology being taught right now. But the reality is, it's not working. This is desperation. We should be very concerned about it. But it really shows you the desperation of ideologues who are now having to use candy commercials to try to sell their message.

BROWN: With President Biden’s December 8th vaccination mandate looming, do you think Christians can claim religious exemption when many Christian leaders support and promote getting vaccinated.

MOHLER: Well, there are two different questions there. And I appreciate the way you ask it. The first question is, would there be a Christian, deeply historical, biblical rationale against this vaccine? The problem with that is, is that there has been a very eager Christian case for vaccinations. So the question will be why this vaccination? That I don't believe is the strongest ground? I'll be honest, I think the strongest ground is against the mandate itself and what it would what it means is as government intrusion upon the private institutions, and corporations, making those corporations or institutions for instance, the seminary and college I lead, just saying you're now responsible to intrude into the health decisions of your employees, I don't even want to know the answer to this question. So I think there's a conscience issue here. That's bigger than the vaccine. It's the problem is the mandate, especially the way it's being handed down. This is coming from OSHA. You know, this is this is not something Congress has the authority to to legislate it couldn't possibly allegedly is the attempting to use the administrative state for political ends.

EICHER: Albert Mohler is a theologian, seminary president, and editor of the new WORLD Opinions. Enjoyed the talk, thanks!

MOHLER: Great to be with you and I'm proud of this project and proud to be with you.

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