Culture Friday - School policy on pronouns

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday, March 18th, 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.

A math teacher from Kansas is in the news because for her an x chromosome plus an x chromosome equals female and x plus y equals male. Her conflict is with her school district, which insists that “male” is whatever the student says it is, and the teacher needs to go along or face the consequences.

BROWN: Steve West, reporting for WORLD, says that the teacher, Pamela Ricard, has sued her school district and her school principal.

She challenges their new policy on pronouns, demands a religious accommodation, and appeals her suspension after she was accused of bullying a female student who identifies as a transgender boy.

EICHER: Right, she refused to acknowledge the student’s preferred pronouns and because the school district had no pronoun policy at the time of the dispute, the school suspended the teacher on the grounds of its more general anti-bullying and diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.

BROWN: Let’s bring in John Stonestreet. He’s the president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast and he joins us now. Morning, John.

JOHN STONESTREET, GUEST: Good morning.

EICHER: Well, John, it seems like sooner and not later every school district is going to have its own pronoun policy and without religious accommodations, you’re going to have conflict. Do you see a way out of this impasse?

STONESTREET: I don't I don't see it. I mean, there's, there's places where worldviews overlap. I mean, there's places where atheism and Christianity agree, you know that the world is an ordered place that can be understood. And there's places that Hinduism and Christianity agree, where, you know, for example, that there are realities in the world that are spiritual, not just physical. This, though, is a collision of worldviews, which is that truth is determined by one's inner sense, versus truth being determined in some objective way. And that's, you know, that's not an easy bridge to cross and even further, those that drive this new theory, so that if you don't accept their understanding of life in the world, well, you're being cruel, and you're being hateful. And there's not a place for you in this institution. And I think increasingly, that's what we're going to see from schools, and it's going to demand action on behalf of both students and administrators and parents and teachers. Now, of course, the good news is, is we have seen in certain parts of the country, parents step up and go, You know what, let's at least not do this. I mean, you think about Florida, we talked about that this so called “Don't Say,Gay” bill, at least, let's just not bring this up into my kids out of the third grade. I mean, that seems like a pretty, a pretty accommodating request. Now, the other thing that may stop this, and there was an article recently about this, that, you know, the media tends to cover the LGBTQIA movement as if it's one movement. And that's not the case. There's a incredible conflict between the T’s and the L’s increasingly between the T’s and the G’s. And I think there's a level of discomfort, you know, by how the T’s have, you know, kind of proceeded and a, well, I mean, honestly, in a totalitarian way.

It shows how unreasonable their view is because that's what happens when you run out of arguments, you run out of ideas, you run out of reasons to support your view, then you you know, you just kind of lock down and squash dissent. And we may see it self destruct sooner than we think.

EICHER: Sort of on this same topic, Mary Jackson, reporting for WORLD says international medical associations are increasingly uncomfortable with transgender treatments for young people while American medicine continues to be completely comfortable.

Reading the story here—some excellent reporting looking at France, Sweden, the UK, Australia, government medical boards and academies, they are recommending putting the brakes on hormonal and surgical interventions for young people who question their identities.

For instance, France, where there’s concern about the “epidemic-like phenomenon” among adolescents seeking drugs, hormones, and surgeries. The National Academy of Medicine in France says it could be tied to social-media usage and social contagion.

Looking at Sweden, the Board of Health and Welfare has no explanation for a 1500-percent rise in gender dysphoria diagnoses—that’s a 15-x increase in just 10 years from 2008 to 2018—this explosion of gender dysphoria among teenage girls in Sweden. And the medical establishment is saying, whoa, slow down. Let’s not jump into drugs and surgery, it’s recommending psychological and psychiatric treatment and clinical assessment and diagnosis.

Isn’t that interesting, John, that, for example, the American medical establishment continues to maintain that affirmation-only model?

STONESTREET: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, don't let all that data fool you, Nick. The science is settled, we've already been told this by those who, you know, have our best interests in mind and know which way we should go.

I mean, you know, look, there's not an issue more medically up in the air than you know, this kind of new gender ideology that pretends that everything is fine, especially in our cultural moment. And you alluded to it there with this idea of social contagion and social media. I was speaking with the head of a master’s in counseling program at a Christian university just recently. And he's like, the depression among our students is different. This is a different time, the depression is more widespread, and it's harder to treat. That's a data point that's reflective of a feature across western society. We're not okay, we're lonely. We have high rates of mental illness. We have high rates of deaths from despair and acts of desperation. And in that context, we're so much about mental health and well being is up in the air, we're going to pretend like this dramatic shift in our understanding of basic reality, the science is settled and ignore all the other evidence. And people wonder, you know why it is that our institutions aren't trusted. We did a series of lectures recently, at the Colson Center talking about the catastrophic loss of trust in our institutions. And, you know, the last one really to go was medicine. But this is one of the reasons why. And we just don't trust people who say things that are observably not true. And, you know, this is kind of gone beyond now the ‘live and let live’ way that Americans tend to handle these sorts of things and say, well, that's just happening on the coast, when in reality, now it's being hoisted on every single one of us, including our kids without our consent. And I do think there's going to be a pushback. And there's also such long-term damage here being done to the credibility of the medical establishment. And I don't know where that takes us, but that's certainly going to have long term consequences as well.

BROWN: I wanted to ask about a rebellion brewing within Roman Catholicism, specifically in Germany. Craig Carter, writing for WORLD Opinions this week, reported that German bishops are pushing hard against traditional Catholic teaching on human sexuality. Carter is not Catholic, but he makes the point that Rome has been a real bulwark against, as he says, “many of the most destructive tendencies of secularism and atheism in the larger culture.” Do you think the German bishops will succeed and what happens if they do?

STONESTREET: Well, look, here's what we know. And we know this from Scripture is that the church wins, and the church wins because the head of the church wins, and the Savior of the church wins, and the husband of the bride wins. And that's Jesus Christ. So, you know, secularism and atheism, they don't win. Now, you know, whether finally this, which I agree with Carter, that Rome has been a real bulwark against some of the worst ideas of atheism and secularism. And I'd add to that postmodernism, whether it will continue to be so or not, I don't know. I mean, it has been in some areas, and it hasn't been in other areas. And clearly in Germany, you know, the tie to the Catholic communion hasn't been enough to keep these bishops from fully embracing all the worst ideas of the sexual revolution. I mean, they have been a problem for the church for a long time. You know, I think the hymn writer said it well, is that ‘the church's one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord,’ and even though you know, she's a beaten, battered, bloody, you know, mess. The fact that she's a Pure Bride has to do with the bridegroom, that that's what we know. You know, how that will come out is a good question. You know, the other thing too, that's complicated for, you know, I think evangelicals, where we have, you know, a very kind of dispersed, decentralized leadership is under a centralized leadership, like the church of Rome, it just takes so long and sometimes bad ideas can have a big influence on a whole lot of people. And that's just not something that I think most Christians are comfortable with, because it does take so long. Yeah. So you're asking me to be a prophet here and I run a nonprofit, so I can't really help you [ha-ha].

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

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

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