Culture Friday - Fighting to change hearts and minds

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, July 15th, 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. It’s Culture Friday.

Let’s bring in John Stonestreet. He’s the president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast.

Good morning!

JOHN STONESTREET, GUEST: Good morning.

BROWN: John, I want to talk about polls and perspectives.

A new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll shows that seven out of 10 Americans favor protections for the unborn after 15 weeks of gestation.

Among that strong majority are 60 percent of Democrats and 70 percent of Independents, so it’s not just those who identify as Republican.

Of course, before the Supreme Court reversed Roe vs. Wade and the Casey decision, states couldn’t offer such protections.

But on the other hand, I see that in the state of Michigan organizers were able to collect more than twice the number of signatures than were needed to place a pro-abortion access measure on the ballot this fall.

This seems like what you and others predicted, that we’re going to be looking at a long and drawn out multi-front battle not just for hearts and minds on abortion, but a whole lot more varied political activity.

So given what seems like conflicting data points, are you overall optimistic at this early stage or more pessimistic?

STONESTREET: Well, I think the wise way forward is to neither be an optimist or a pessimist. And maybe this is kind of a theological punt. But I want to be hopeful. That's the you know, that's the theological virtue word. So I'll throw that out. And I don't see hope as a middle ground between optimism and pessimism, I think it is kind of a embodiment of doing what TS Eliot said, which is, do everything we can and leave the results up to God, you know, for us, there's only the trying, he said, and the rest is none of our business. I do think, though, that the various polls and completely different results we're getting is a fascinating thing. If there weren't so much at stake, it'd be really fascinating. Of course, we've seen this in the political process. You know, for a while now, whether you can trust pollsters or can't trust pollsters in which pollsters Can you trust. And I think that, first of all, what this tells us is that most people didn't know what Roe v Wade was. They did not know that what roe did is essentially prohibit any meaningful restrictions on abortion, based on really flimsy categories, they did not know that we were completely out of touch with the rest of the civilized world, quote, unquote, that this Mississippi law that was at the heart of the Dobbs case, basically made us like France. I mean, people just didn't know that. The last time an issue so morally waited, divided the states like this, it had to do with slavery, and then the ongoing Jim Crow laws in the South after the abolition of slavery, where you had essentially slave states and free states. And then you had Jim Crow states, and, and, you know, states that that did not have those horrific laws. And we haven't really been in a nation so deeply divided along state lines. I think this also underscores in a place like Michigan, it's not surprising that you could find all the signatures you need that a Detroit to tell you, you go to Grand Rapids, and the senator of the state of Michigan, and you're not going to get enough signatures there. That's the reality there, Virginia, right. I mean, everyone thought, well, Virginia, wasn't even really purple anymore. And then the abortion issue specifically drove a Republican candidate back into power as the governor there. And you know, that's a state where you've got basically Northern Virginia and the rest of the world. So I just think that there's a lot of work left to be done. And that's really what this points to.

EICHER: I want to talk about the incident last weekend where Justice Brett Kavanaugh had to sneak out of a DC restaurant after a mob of protesters got word he was there.

I’d like to add right here that I think we need to remember Justice Kavanaugh has already been specifically threatened with murder and a suspect arrested outside his home. (I hear people, including a cabinet secretary, pooh-poohing this, suggesting Kavanaugh needn’t worry about his safety.)

But here’s my question for you, I can see where intimidation tactics like this can work. I can see where people who are just really averse to confrontation, who just want to live their lives in peace, would shrink from the debate and so the loudest voices can tend to win out.

I am not suggesting fighting fire with fire here, but how do you combat that from a Christian perspective?

STONESTREET: I think there's a lot to learn here. And mostly it's what it means to change hearts and minds. There's a real possibility that this will go the way tragically of something along the lines of, oh, I don't know, prohibition, you know, where it became the law of the land until it didn't. And the culture could not sustain where a law was, I think, you know, our best hope is to say, well, unrestricted abortion with no regulations whatsoever. The culture will not sustain that, but I don't think any of us should delude ourselves to think that we don't have a culture that doesn't prioritize sexual freedom above anything and everything else. And no cultural invention or artifact has made possible, unfettered sexual freedom like abortion has, and fully separating sex and procreation. From our understanding of reality, that separation has had such dramatic cultural consequences. And it's so widely assumed that there's an awful lot of hearts and minds to change. If we're going to see pro life laws go forward, I think we have to be really clear, then the level of courage that this is going to take, the attacks are going to get louder, the allowed attacks, maybe more specifically, are going to become more egregious, they're going to become more horrific. And look, we already know that in almost every other area of life and culture. The rules simply don't apply when it comes to sex than all these other areas, when it comes to how we think about sex versus how we think about anything else. We know that that's not the case. When it comes to science. We know that that's not the case. When it comes to counseling and psychology. We know that that's not the case when it comes to law. And by the way, it ain't the case when it comes to civility. And that's what we're seeing. So what sort of courage do we need to have? It's certainly this, you know, response that so many Christians have had to almost apologize for this wonderful legal overturning of roe is spineless, it's pathetic. It's not what we need. We can be strong, we can celebrate and still overcome evil with good. And that is exactly what the scripture commands us to do. This is the great human rights issue of our day. And I will say that those Christians who are telling every other Christian to sit down and be nice, and not say anything that might hurt anybody else's feelings are going to go down in history, kind of like the Christians who appeased the slaveholders.

EICHER: Well, again, speaking of confrontation. This one is all over the internet—the exchange between a law professor at U-Cal-Berkeley and a conservative senator in a congressional hearing—that was set up to discuss the overturning of Roe vs Wade and what that might mean for abortion access.

This was professor Khiara Bridges and Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri. So you had two ivy league trained lawyers who are from different planets philosophically. And I say that because the senator seized on some of professor Bridges’ rhetoric about “people with the capacity for pregnancy” versus the compact and easily understood term “women.” I mean, why use one word when six will do?

But the exchange was revealing—about a minute and a half.

JH: Professor Bridges, you said several times, you've used a phrase, I want to make sure I understand what you mean by it. You've referred to "people with a capacity for pregnancy." Would that be women?

KB: Many women, sis women have the capacity for pregnancy, many cis women do not have the capacity for pregnancy. There are also trans men who are capable of pregnancy as well as non binary people who are capable of pregnancy.

JH: So this isn't really a women's rights issue. It's—

KB: We can recognize that this impacts women, while also recognizing that it impacts other groups. Those things are not mutually exclusive, Senator Hawley.

JH: So your view is, is that the core of this, this right, then, is about what?

KB: So I want to recognize that your line of questioning is transphobic. And it opens up trans people to violence by not recognizing that, oh—

JH: You're saying that I'm opening up people to violence by asking whether or not women are the folks who are gonna have pregnancies?

KB: So I want to note that one out of five transgender persons have attempted suicide. So I think it's important in—

JH: Because of my line of questioning, so we can't talk about it?

KB: Because denying that trans people exist and pretending not to know that they exist—

JH: I'm denying that trans people exist by asking you (are you?) if you're talking (are you?) about women (are you?) having pregnancies?

KB: Do you believe that men can get pregnant?

JH: No, I don't think men can get pregnant.

KB: So you're denying that trans people exist!

JH: And that leads to violence. Is this how you run your classroom? Are students allowed to question you? (Absolutely!) Are they also treated like this? Where they're told that they're opening up people to violence.

KB: We have a good time in my class. You should join. (Oh, I bet.) You might learn a lot.

JH: Wow, I would learn a lot. I've learned a lot (I know!) just in this exchange. Extraordinary.

These are smart people and they both knew what the other was talking about. This was pure rhetorical sparring. But useful, don’t you think?

STONESTREET: Well, yeah. And I thought that the distinction between how they approached it was a tremendous distinction. Senator Holly continued to ask respectful questions and let the patent absurdity of the law professor from Berkeley bridges, her comments kind of speak for themselves. And I thought that was a wise strategy. Basically just say, is this what you're really saying? On the other hand, in response to questions, and we saw, by the way, the same thing I think if you go to some of the experts that were interviewed so-called experts that were interviewed and Matt Walsh's documentary, what is a woman? That when a question, as basic to a Professor of Women's Studies, what is a woman? The accusation back is one of anger, you know, you're being transphobic. And the disdain in the law professor’s voice and her facial expressions and her demeanor and posture towards the Senator, I think spoke volumes. It tells you which person's ideas actually can hold water, and which ones cannot. And I think that that's one of the reasons Christians in particular, to go back to our last question need to be confident and what is true, if you're not confident that the preborn are fully human, made in the image of God worthy of protection from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death, then you need to be because you can rest solidly on that ideological foundation. You don't have to make it up, you don't have to be angry or sarcastic or cynical or snarky about it. If you really believe that there are men and there are women, this is not something you have to apologize for. This is clear. The other side's views on this are patently absurd, and their refusal to actually engage in any sort of conversation about it and to immediately tell everyone that disagrees that they're transphobic and evil when that's been the consensus throughout human history, and is still the consensus for the record around most of the world forever. I think the absurdity speaks for itself. And that's, you know, I think that's one of the strategies that Christians can use is let the absurdity speak for itself and then we point to a better way.

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

STONESTREET: Thanks so much.

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