Culture Friday - One step closer to the pro-life goal

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, September 3rd, 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. I want to welcome John Stonestreet, the president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast.

Morning, John.

JOHN STONESTREET, GUEST: Good morning.

EICHER: Let’s talk about the Texas law that took effect on Wednesday that has the effect of banning most abortions in the state in a legally unique way.

Some pro-abortion commentators noted that Wednesday, September 1st marked the first day since January 23rd, 1973, that abortion was illegal somewhere in America. Big cultural signpost. What are your thoughts?

STONESTREET: Well, I think it's great news. I think it's great news that the court is allowing a state to make these decisions. I mean, we have seen state restrictions on abortion stand and we have seen them be struck down. What is different is I think there was kind of this gut level feel that it had to do with the overall number of abortions. And this is kind of the first example we have that maybe it's not about the sheer number of abortions that’re going to be made illegal, a lot of the restrictions that have stood were largely irrelevant. This one's very relevant in terms of the number of actual children that will be safe.

So great news, and the other thing that it underscores is just something that we've said before here, and that is, even if Roe v Wade is somehow overturned holistically by this court, the fight is going to go back to the states. So the ending Roe v Wade is a goal of the movement. It's not the goal of the movement. It is a great sign if Roe v Wade is made to be a matter in the dustbin of history. But it doesn't end our calling to defend innocent human life, especially when you talk about how abortion has changed since 1973 to more chemical abortion and all the other ways that human life is under threat.

So good news, it points to potentially good things ahead. And that we'll see where it goes from here.

EICHER: Let me get you to comment a bit on the public relations piece of it. I mentioned this is a unique law where the state is not doing the enforcement. It’s relying on private parties to sue, to go after the abortionist or the abortion business and that’s the enforcement mechanism—not a prosecutor.

So the abortion industry and abortion advocacy groups are calling this vigilante or bounty-hunter kind of stuff. What do you think about the messaging here?

STONESTREET: Well, the one thing you can never count on from the pro abortion side is to say anything remotely accurate to what is actually happening. You know, they flat out lie about the place of abortion in Planned Parenthood's budget, or at least in terms of their business plan. They flat out lie about whether or not there's body parts actually being sold and marketed. I mean, there's nothing you can count on in terms of media coverage of this, to tell you the truth.

This is a similar approach to how prostitution has been best dealt with. In other words, let's go after this quote unquote, “the owner of the business” and seeing this as a business that promotes something so evil, like abortion, then go after the providers. I think that makes actually a lot of sense. And many pro-lifers don't want to see women be penalized, don't want to see women who are in difficult life situations be thrown in prison for making a decision that they feel like they have to make.

I think it's going to be more complicated the more this goes and rightly so. But this is a great first step and a great first way to do it.

EICHER: John, the bathroom wars just got a tad more interesting. Hobby Lobby was found to have violated the Illinois Human Rights Act for barring a transgender employee from using a restroom of the employee’s choosing. Mary Jackson reporting for WORLD wrote “A nearly decade long legal dispute between Hobby Lobby and a transgender employee over women’s restroom access came to a close … with an Illinois appeals court ordering the … company to pay $220,000 in fees for causing ‘emotional distress’.”

Going on: “The ruling … could become a new norm for businesses in more than 20 states with nondiscrimination statutes for employment and public accommodations … .”

What struck me about this John is that this particular Hobby Lobby had installed a unisex bathroom and that was not an acceptable compromise. I’m not seeing any room here for that, for compromise.

STONESTREET: There's not any room here for any sort of compromise, and that includes schools. We had that case a decade ago here in Colorado Springs, where a local public school had made that sort of adjustment, allowing an elementary student to use a restroom that was reserved for teachers and was single use. And that wasn't enough for the parents who said that it's still isolated or ostracized, their child.

It's never been about the bathroom, just like it's never been about the cake. It's been about social approval and the full recognition that there's nothing different. And I know this is something that many teachers are facing. I've had conversations even heading into this year of teachers in Virginia, who are facing a, you know, a school district’s trying to align themselves with this law that Virginia passed on this issue. And basically, what the law says is, you have to do anything that the student demands. In other words, you can try this. But if the student isn't comfortable, then you just have to keep changing. And that's basically what they should have said is that you have to do whatever the student demands.

Which brings up the question in my mind, if a student can demand access to a bathroom reserved for people of the opposite biological sex based on sexual identity, why can't they actually make that same demand based on sexual desire or sexual attraction? In other words, if identity is a deeper category than attraction, you would think they'd have to allow that as well. And I think that some of us remember our days of junior high enough to know that that's going to be a real thing, in one way or another.

But this has never been about privacy or safety in the bathroom. What it's been about is, is a recognition that the language one uses to call themselves can rearrange reality in order to change what is true. And you know, that's, that's the situation here, I think.

BROWN: John you tweeted about the term deconstruction and questioned Christian leaders advancing the idea of deconstruction being a good part of faith. Growing up in the South, at least twice a year we had Spring revival and Youth revival—week-long times of nightly gatherings to recommit, a time for corporate repentance and restoration. John in your tweet you ask: why not just call it reform? So is this semantics or is deconstruction a totally different thing to be avoided at all cost?

STONESTREET: Yeah, it was an interesting conversation. It sparked quite a debate on my Facebook page and and I just want to be clear, I was not actually asking you know, whether deconstruction itself as a word should be abandoned. Because deconstruction does describe something very real every time that I have seen deconstruction used, particularly by those who are doing the deconstructing, it has ended in a walking away from the faith, it's ended in either a heterodoxy or maybe all out embrace of apostasy. My question was different. My question had to do with seeing more and more Christian leaders who would I you know, claim to be Christian, and who are seeing this trend of questioning among students in particular, but also just millennials, especially, but also others in the Christian fold, kind of going through this kind of self reflection doubt process, and encouraging the process of deconstruction in a prescriptive sense. And I just think it's really unwise because deconstruction itself has to do with going after foundations not going after peripheral issues. Deconstruction is about tearing down. There's nothing in deconstruction about building up. And so I guess I was just confused why so many Christian thought leaders are actually prescribing deconstruction as some sort of good thing. It seems unwise it doesn't seem like a word or a concept that is actually consistent with any Christian worldview. And let me just be clear, a Christian worldview is very open to doubt. It's very open to questioning. It's very open to to having hard questions for God. Read the book of Job, really the book of Psalms, Israel's hymnbook, is full of times when David and the sons of  Korah and Moses and other authors of the Psalms are going, “God why, God what? I don't understand this, you say this in your word and this doesn't…” So the idea of doubting the idea of questioning, the idea of making sure that what you inherited from your family, what you grew up with actually is in line with what's true, completely valid. I just don't know why we would a call it deconstruction or encourage what we know to be deconstruction as a valid method to pursue in order to get past these doubts.

EICHER: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thanks, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.