Culture Friday: Idolizing autonomy in Ohio

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 10th of November, 2023. 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 now is John Stonestreet, the President of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Good morning to you, John. Welcome back.

JOHN STONESTREET: Thanks. Good morning.

EICHER: Well, what do you think is going on at the ballot box? A constitutional amendment for abortion in Ohio, and that keeps the streak alive for the pro abortion side. Do you think that pro life has become politically toxic, John?

STONESTREET: Well, I think that what we have going on here requires a lot of analysis. And it kind of underscores something that a lot of people said, which is the end of Roe doesn't settle this issue any more than the beginning of Roe did. And I think we kind of all thought that but we're kind of feeling it, we're kind of seeing it up close and personal here that just like there were decades of upstream cultural things to do before the political evil, which was Roe v. Wade, could be unseated and done away with state by state, you know, that continues.

I think there's also then upstream from these state ballot initiatives, there's the cultural reality that we are addicted to personal autonomy and personal freedom. That's the defining characteristic of the American people. We may not like abortion, but we're not sure whether there's such a thing as something being right or wrong. We're moral relativists through and through and through. We might not want to choose abortion for ourselves, but we don't want to take someone else's right to choose away because choice is the highest good if you think personal autonomy is the definition of human dignity. So these are the ideological undercurrents that I think that are beneath all these things.

The other thing I think that's worth mentioning here, and I think a handful of people said this on Twitter, the law is a schoolmaster as Scripture says. It teaches us things, it catechises us. And even if Roe is gone, the 50 years of it teaching us lessons is not. And those lessons remain. And that is that to take away a woman's right to choose is to carve away at her dignity. That's what abortion advocates have been saying for a long time. That's what pro-abortion justices have been saying for a long time. And I think a lot of people actually just at the heart believe it. So I mean, one of the stunning things about this Ohio deal was you get into counties that were heavily GOP in the last presidential election, where Biden lost those counties big time, and this still passes in those counties. Look, sometimes elections and ballot initiatives in particular, tell us where the culture is going to go. Sometimes, and this is one of them, it's like a big "you are here" yellow arrow on the map, that says this is where we really are.

So look, I'm glad we celebrated. It's been a year and a half now, since the end of Roe, the celebration is over. And it's not good folks. What we actually believe in our heart of hearts as Americans, including conservatives, including even some people who don't like abortion themselves, is still we are committed top to bottom to this idea of autonomy, to choice, that somehow that is what gives humans dignity and to violate those things is to violate their dignity, even if that means the death of a whole lot of babies.

EICHER: Well, and John, you know, the effect of this on politicians, they they see which way the wind is blowing, and you know how that you know how that ends.

STONESTREET: I think that's possible. I think that if you think of politics as a purely pragmatic thing, then you know, that's going to be the obvious way to go. But it's going to be the wrong way to go because politics is a pragmatic activity. But if it's not moored into eternal principles, then it becomes Machiavellian, it becomes Faustian, you know, it becomes deceptive and you sell your soul in the process. You cannot maintain and sustain the idea of human rights without a fundamental definition of the human person.

I don't think that what we're really dealing with here is that abortion is a losing issue. I think that there's parts of it that you know, we've got to do it differently. We've got to do it better. We got to watch the wording, we got to do more pre work, we need to especially watch the timing of things. We've got to remember, like the end of Roe wasn't put to a popular vote. And if it had been put to a popular vote, we'd probably still have Roe. 

So look, I know that we have a lot of folks and I know what they're saying. And I certainly appreciate many of these folks that you know, are just convinced that we're moving in a pro-life direction. But there is a big difference between being personally pro-life and being really pro-life. There's a big difference between not wanting an abortion yourself and actually understanding that at the core of our human dignity is not this fantasy of autonomy, but actually being made in the image of God. And that just leads to completely different political outcomes.

EICHER: Right, John, before we go, there were a couple of media stories we wanted to get your comments on. I want to begin with the Nashville tragedy, the Covenant School shooting, and the leak this week of a few of the pages of the young woman's writings. Now, of course, we don't have everything, but this is really something because the woman who carried out the attack killed by police, we heard in the early days, was a young woman identifying as a young man, transgender, and so we thought we knew what this was going to be about. And it may still turn out that way. Who knows when the rest of the writings come out, if ever we see them. But with this small amount that has been leaked this week, the only picture we have is that the motivation may have had to do with white privilege, even though the girl was white, the attacker. What do you make of the small bit that we did see? Does it shed any light? And are we irresponsible to even talk about this?

STONESTREET: No, I don't think it is. I mean, I think you know, you have to keep in mind, according to the initial inventory of what was taken from the shooter, there's twenty some pages, so there's a whole lot more to this manifesto than just this. But what came out was pretty indicting, pretty damning, and, you know, at the very least, underscores why people want to know, when you talk about someone who identified as a sexual minority category, one of these made up categories, then going in and aiming at Christians. You know, in every other situation, we either got the manifesto, within minutes, or some analysis of it some kind of telegraph of, well, this is what it means. And it has just been quiet. And I can't help but look at this and contrast with what has happened here in Colorado Springs. So we're coming up to the one year anniversary of the shooting at Club Q, that LGBTQ club, and which was immediately labeled across America by every authority, without any manifesto, or any sort of evidence whatsoever as a hate crime.

EICHER: I mean, in this case, we were all thinking this is going to be a transgender issue. But the information we have is that this is more of a white privilege, kind of thing. I mean, that's all we've got, though.

STONESTREET: Yeah, well, that's all we got on that. And there was still some of that critical theory-mood language that decorated that whole thing. So I wouldn't be surprised if it goes beyond but here's my point. In contrast with the Colorado Springs thing, it was like a month of saying this out loud over and over and over as if we knew it were true without any evidence whatsoever, no manifesto, nothing like that, that could ever support it. Basically, there was this history that was being looked at of this troubled person, the sick person and then pulled together and made it seem like clear an anti-LGBTQ hate crime. And everybody repeated it everywhere until they stopped and they got really quiet and they haven't said a thing. And mainly because this guy came out as having visited Club Q for around a year and identifies as non-binary and now you force now all I know the motive behind that, the best explanation is he's just trying to get out of federal hate crime charges.

How can we be so absolutely certain of the motivation here? And so mum about the motivation that spelled out in a manifesto in Nashville. I think that is the reason that so many of us are so frustrated, and it actually is leading to violent actions, and those actions have happened, you know, here in Colorado Springs, and I just want to commend the Covenant School community for the remarkable way that they've demonstrated grace and mercy throughout this whole thing

BROWN: Well, from Nashville to Colorado, to Alabama, here in my home state. An Alabama, nonprofit news company is being blasted for a story it ran revealing the transgender alter ego of F.L. "Bubba" Copeland. He was the mayor of Smith Station, a small town in Alabama, and a pastor of the local Baptist Church. The news outlet posted pictures of Copeland dressed provocatively as a woman, pictures found on a website he confirmed he operated. Copeland claimed it was only a means of getting rid of stress and called the postings a hobby and a fantasy, saying what he did in his private life had nothing to do with what he did in his "holy life."

Well, since his death by suicide a week ago, a number of news outlets and public officials have jumped to defend his behavior. They are framing him as a beloved member of the community and downplaying the double life he led. Most of the media coverage has just blasted the website that broke the story, all but accusing the publication of driving this mayor to suicide. John, it is a weird and sad story. What do you take from all this?

STONESTREET: It's hard to know what to take of all this. It is weird and it is sad, and it's easy to just use those adjectives when you're this far away and just looking at it. I no way I'm going to defend the predatory journalistic impulses that have dominated so many of these, you know, freelance websites. And then at the same time, I mean, what a bizarre and ridiculous statement that what you do in your private life has nothing to do with what you do in your “holy life.” And that that doesn't even actually comport with anything that makes any sense.

But you know, another aspect of this, it's just the media read on this. I mean, think about it, if this pastor had made this decision after committing an act of sexual perversion, against someone else, there's no way he would be celebrated as being authentic or, you know, unable to be truly himself or whatever, other kinds of crazy narratives that get superimposed, only in the case of when you have someone who betrays his community and betrays his family, betrays his friends and people who trusted him as a spiritual leader, in this way. And that kind of underscores the critical theory mood.

Now look to dress a particular way and to indulge your fantasies a particular way, at least it didn't hurt another individual, I get that, but sexual brokenness, as G.K. Chesterton said, takes a lot of forms, there’s a lot of different ways to fall down, there's only one way to stand up straight. And you know what, this did hurt a lot of people, maybe not in the way that a direct act of sexual abuse did, but a sexually abusive mindset that expresses itself and betrays a group of people you're supposed to lead, you know, and you can just see the confusion. I mean, to say something like, my personal life and my holy life, or, I mean, what does that mean? That doesn't make any sense, you know, whatsoever. So it's tragic, and it's sad. And in the coverage of it, you see an awful lot of that same framework that shaped the coverage of the what we were just talking about, the national shooting in the Colorado Springs shooting

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

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

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