Culture Friday: How to be winsome with a backbone

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It's the 26th day of August, 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, this was the big pro-life culture moment and I just heard about this. It was an exchange between pro-choice podcaster Joe Rogan and Babylon Bee CEO, Seth Dillon.

It’s pretty long, but I edited really tightly just to show how Dillon was able to hold firm and it seemed like he turned Rogan around. So again, this is my editing job, I’ll admit. It doesn’t go this fast. But it does go. I think. Listen.

“If a 14-year-old child gets raped, you say that they have to carry that baby? I don’t think two wrongs make a right… I don’t think murder fixes a rape.”

“What if we’re talking about an abortion when the fetus is literally like six weeks? Well I just disagree…. I would lay it out like this. It is wrong to intentionally kill a human life. Abortion intentially kills a human life. Therefore abortion is wrong.”

“Do you think that once the conception happens, there’s some sort of miraculous event…at some point you’re going to have to say it was a magic moment that happened because you believe that we eventually become valuable humans right? Where’s the moment when you think the magic moment happens?

“We’re talking about a procedure that ends innocent human life and we’re calling it healthcare. That’s like calling rape lovemaking. And this is why it’s such a human issue. I see what you’re saying.”

John, did it hit you the same way it hit me? What do you think?

STONESTREET: Oh, absolutely. I thought it was just a terrific dialogue. Congrats and thanks to Seth for standing up that way and being really clear and being prepared. And I think there's a number of things that stood out to me. The first is this very important response to what we often hear, what is often kind of presumed that we're just talking about a clump of cells. And if it's only six weeks, it's super small. And it's all and what's missing in that conversation is the very important question that, at some point, if you're going to reach a conclusion that humans are worthy of protection at any stage, you've got to have some magic moment where a person becomes a person. And the only place to really put that in any sort of logical sense. And of course, according to embryology is the moment that the sperm and the egg combine, because prior to that, you have two different things that's merman an egg when sperm and egg combined something miraculous as the word goes, happens, and now we have a completely different entity. And that's an impossible thing to avoid. Now, it also brings up something that I think is really important, which is, if you don't know how to have these conversations in the public square, if you don't know how to have these conversations, and make these very important, you know, thoughtful, not, you know, not profound, like not none of the things that Seth said we're you know, kind of, as my old friend in Tennessee would say it ain't rocket surgery. I mean, this is like kind of real basic, straightforward, you know, sorts of things that you can make never quoted a Bible verse never, you know, pointed to a my religious beliefs say, but you know, made, you know, argument, if you don't know how to do that, then really, that's your fault. And I think there's this thing where a lot of people haven't taken the time to look into it. And the times that we live in demand that we know, it demands that we're able to articulate this, and too many pro-lifers, then either go silent or go angry, because they can't do something as simple as this. I mean, you go back and listen to it. And that's the thing, you know, you won't listen to this and think, well, that guy must have a PhD and work at a top tier university, you just think he's an interesting guy having a conversation and making some really important points. And we all can do that. And we'll have that moment. It might not be with Seth Rogen on a, you know, the biggest podcast in the world. But we'll have that moment on an airplane with a kid with a with a friend with a neighbor, and we should be ready. And if we're not ready, that's on us.

EICHER: OK, John. Maybe you’ve heard about the school near Tampa, Florida—Grace Christian School. It seems pretty mundane that a Christian school should have a statement of faith and code of conduct. But it became a story because the school put out a clarification essentially saying students would have to leave the school if they identified as LGBTQ+, that it would run afoul of the statement and the code.

But again, it was a controversy. All you have to do is Google “Grace Christian School” and you get a blizzard of news results. Really interesting headlines, things like “Christian school refuses to change long-held policy …” “Christian school will only refer to students by ‘biological gender.’” 

But journalism is not supposed to be “dog bites man.” It’s supposed to be “man bites dog.” That’s news. Christian school expects Christian conduct. That’s not news.

Or is it these days?

STONESTREET: Now, it's still not news. You know, most Christian institutions have been clear on this, that maybe they've been clear to various degrees. I think all of them need to become more clear. I mean, what Grace Christian school is doing is the kind of accepted wisdom right now. I mean, 10 years ago, you go back. And, you know, the idea was, you don't want to put too much on your website, because you might draw, you know, attention and you might become a target. And now it's you need to be able to demonstrate top to bottom, that this is a long held commitment that you consistently enforce as part of faith commitments that you consistently enforce. And that is true, whether you're talking about religious institutions, you know, hiring policies for nonprofits, or whether you're talking about even, you know, for profit, you just want to be very, very clear on this is how I'm operating. And the Constitution gives me that right to protect. That's interesting because about the same time I visited another school that recently doubled down as well on their policies. And one of the reasons was having to do with the fact that they're a covenant school now and I'm what this means is in Christian education, you have schools that are covenant schools, these are for Christians, by Christians to educate Christianly. And then there are what we might call evangelical schools or, you know, more open enrollment schools, where the parents don't have to claim to be Christians in order for their kids to attend. But there needs to be a very clear outline of this is what's going to happen to your kid. And this school, doubled down on those policies, lost 100 families right away, and then gained 100 families back because people are looking for that sort of clarity.

So yeah, there are certainly schools that are going to, you know, struggle with this. And the way these conversations are going, particularly because there's so many now different brands of nonpublic schools, at least in the traditional sense, that they're all facing different challenges. We had a colleague, you know, just recently that was enrolling at a charter school, her kids that attended that place before, all was well before. And now five years later, the question about these policies came up. And the response that my friend received was, oh, no, we are, we don't talk about that we think the best place to talk about that is home. And you know, for many parents that would have settled the issue. But my friend wisely asked, Well, wait a minute, what happens then if a student because we're talking about junior high demands, “These are my pronouns”? What would you expect of the other students? And the answer was, oh, they would need to use the preferred pronouns. And if they didn't, they would be subject to disciplinary policy. So now think about this. So we're not going to talk about this, we're not going to require some of these crazy, you know, pro LGBTQ reading materials to be, you know, shoved down the students throats. But we're going to enforce the decision that's already been made on their behalf. And there's no discussion that so parents just need to know this up one side down the other. But, you know, here's the thing. We'll continue to have these breathless headlines of can you believe this, remembering that every single school on the planet, referred to students by their biological gender, just yesterday, and what I mean by that is, within the last 10 years. This is brand new, this is brand new in the world, and social transitioning is being encouraged. And it's not actually yielding the results that we are promised. And that's why we see so many nations around the world getting a lot more skittish on what they're actually enforcing. The United States is quickly becoming an outlier and how they talk about transgender ideology, and particularly when it comes to students.

EICHER: Interesting development in Asia: Two things involving the laws of Singapore. Number one: the government is going to pursue a repeal of criminal sanctions against the practice of homosexuality, but here’s the second thing: it is also seeking to amend the constitution to safeguard the institution of marriage and prevent any future amendments from instituting a right to same-sex marriage. From our report in WORLD: “Singapore’s National Council of Churches said it wants pastors and church workers protected from ‘hate speech’ accusations and from pressure to be ‘LGBTQ-affirming’ in counseling sessions.”

So my question is, do you think the repeal of criminalization will unleash changes that they can’t really stop, as we’ve in the west? Or do you see Singapore as seeing what happened in the West, and are trying to get ahead of it?

STONESTREET: Well, I think maybe the answer to both of those questions is yes, I think they are trying to get ahead of it. That doesn't mean that they will, and I don't know how the Singaporean government works or how secure it is to pass an amendment saying no future amendments can be passed. I mean, that's not a doable thing in the United States, there's been, you know, plenty of things where the, you know, including just recently in the US where the court has settled the issue or something like that, and it turns out not to be siloed at all. And there is going to be a real question in a place committed to a democratic way of life to, you know, increasing human freedom to say that there's nothing inherently wrong with this behavior, then why can't you know, people order their public lives around it? You know, maybe there's a compromise here, but I'll tell you what, it hasn't worked anywhere else. It hasn't worked in Utah, it hasn't worked in the United States the same sort of compromise solutions have been pursued in the US, including by evangelical groups, and it just, there's no reason to compromise by the side that seems to be taking so much ground day by day by day, both cultural and governmental. And so, I guess I'd have to know more about the Singapore government to know the specifics. I just, I can just tell you, the history and the history has been that there is a powerful thing that's lost when the presumed sinfulness - whether within a faith tradition or just within a cultural setting - of a particular behavior is removed. And, you know, once that gets taken out of the picture, it really seems to be impossible to stop the ball from rolling down the hill.

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

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

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