Culture Friday: Shifting norms

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 25th of October, 2024.

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 time for Culture Friday, and joining us now is John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast.

Good morning!

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: John, I’d like to call attention to a big story in The New York Times. It cites a new study showing that since the reversal of Roe versus Wade the actual number of abortions increased in most states that ban it. In states like Mississippi and West Virginia, the story says, the number of abortions increased significantly. Telehealth abortions, in particular, saw a dramatic rise, with monthly averages jumping from 8,000 to 20,000 between 2022 and 2023. That’s a 150 percent jump in a single year. Overall the prevalence of abortion in the U.S. has risen, with nearly 600-thousand abortions in the first half of 2023; so we’re on track for 1.2 million when the numbers come in from last year. What does this story tell you?

STONESTREET: Well, I think the story tells us a lot. First is that we've never had great numbers on abortion because they've always been voluntarily reported state to state. There was never a full reckoning of all communities, and certainly not a full reckoning of the number of abortions that were being procured through the abortion pill or the abortion pill regimen. We had no numbers on that. You know, that's what happens when this stuff goes kind of completely unregulated. And you also had the unwillingness on the ground of local health officials, so to ever think we knew exactly what the full picture was, I think, was just wrong.

Secondly, I don't know that the overturning of Roe v. Wade was fundamentally about limiting the number of abortions. Certainly, there were high hopes that the states would trigger laws, that we'd see that, and some of the initial numbers seemed to report that. But at that time, of course, we had no way of knowing who was being sent over state lines, and who was headed over state lines, and all of that sort of stuff we just didn't know.

You know, I would suggest that probably at least some of this number has to do with the shift of half of the country politically from talking about abortion as being safe, legal, and rare, to talking about it as something to be celebrated and shouted, kind of in the same way that we have seen certain people celebrate their promiscuity. You know, this sort of celebration of what is wrong and evil is a way of normalizing this behavior.

So, I guess my point here is that there are so many factors. But look, the end of Roe was good, even if there hasn't been a net improvement in the number of lives. Now, is that what we want? Absolutely. In fact, we want abortion to be in the dustbin of history with slavery and other generational evils, no question about it. But the removal of a bad law is, in and of itself, an ontological good.

No one thought—or at least maybe some people did, but they should have never thought—that this was somehow the end of the issue, or that this was another way that the Supreme Court was “settling the issue of abortion.” It didn’t with Roe, and it didn’t with Dobbs. When we have this kind of lack of regulation, an increase of mobility, and all of that sort of stuff, with the cultural narrative changing on abortion, I’m not sure we should have expected something different.

EICHER: John, of course, the days are pretty much long gone when Saturday Night Live was funny, and a recent skit I think typifies why it’s not. The singer Ariana Grande was guest hosting and she appeared in a skit playing the part of a prepubescent boy who sings in a falsetto. It’s set in Renaissance Italy and the parents bring the boy to perform before a prince. Let’s listen and we’ll learn how the falsetto is achieved.

SNL actress, mother: Go ahead and sing for Prince Enzo, Antonio. [to prince] You’re gonna love this.

SNL guest host, Ariana Grande, as Antonio: [falsetto singing]

SNL actor, prince: Wow, that is very beautiful singing!

SNL actor, father: And did you notice how high his voice was?

SNL actor, prince: I did.

SNL actress, mother: Yes, Antonio is what we’re calling a castrato. It’s a new technique we’ve been experimenting with.

SNL actor, father: Yeah, it’s nothing crazy. You just castrate your son before puberty so his voice never drops.

It’s really heartbreaking … how Ariana Grande plays the role of the boy. WORLD Opinions writer Joe Rigney noted and you really see this, the pained, awkward expression of the boy character. It hurts to watch. But Rigney observed: A joke about treating children in this way for adult fulfillment could only theoretically be funny in a society that would never do this.

This feels like one of those cultural turning points: Is there really anything we can all laugh at anymore?

STONESTREET: Uh, well, you know, I hope so, and I do think that there are some folks who are helping us laugh at ourselves and laugh at others. I think of the Babylon Bee’s best posts and that sort of stuff. There is something uniquely human about laughing and about seeing irony, and about even kind of the self-deprecation that, both in and of itself, acknowledges that there’s something valuable about us and also something broken about us—a way of kind of dealing with the tragedy that is part of our lives together.

But Joe is absolutely right that you can tell an awful lot about a culture by what you laugh at and even what you try to laugh at. I think you can tell a lot about the health and well-being of one's own soul by what you consider funny and what’s not funny. This isn’t absurd anymore. This is actually happening. Maybe one of the reasons SNL thought this would be funny is because basically the norm has moved to the other side. You don’t have that many teenage boys seeking castration. You have a whole lot of girls going through puberty, hating their bodies, and seeking these kinds of permanent alterations, which are damaging.

And the fact that, as some whistleblowers have pointed out, that population outnumbers the other five to one, is—again, none of this is funny. You know, we are a culture that duped an entire generation of women, in a sense, telling them that what’s wrong with the world was men. The answer was for them to be like men. And basically, it was another way for men to gain access to what belongs to women. I mean, I guess you could look and say, God really did get that curse right. I mean, that’s what He said was going to happen.

Even the promises of female empowerment have turned out to be so hollow. It should be offensive. Rigney is right on this. This should be offensive, and the fact that it isn’t tells you just how far detached a group of people can be from reality on a civilizational level. That’s what Romans 1 tells us.

BROWN: Verse 22…claiming to be wise, they became fools.

John, I want to turn your attention to what’s happening in Florida. People in that state will decide if they want to join 24 other states, along with D.C. to legalize recreational marijuana.

It’s legal in Colorado, where you live, and I’ve heard your horror stories… You recently wrote an article debunking one of the promises of legalized pot… personal freedom.

But it's not about personal freedom...you won't be growing your own plants in your backyard.

STONESTREET: Uh, well, listen, weed has been one of those false promises as well. It was promised along the lines of freedom. It was promised along the lines of an incredible influx of dollars that will go to things we should all support, like schools and roads. And there may have been a time where we could say, well, we’re just not sure. Now we know. This past week, The Daily podcast from The New York Times documented the harms of marijuana, particularly its link to psychosis. And they pointed to something, of course, that we should have known—it was obvious to anyone who actually was willing to not just fully trust these talking points.

When we talk about marijuana today, we’re not talking about what happened at Woodstock in the '60s. We’re not talking about Cheech and Chong. We’re talking about incredible levels of potency and intensity that have direct correlations with incredible health problems, including psychosis, depression, and suicidality.

Now what that does is it now shows, too, that the promises of this incredible social windfall that was going to happen financially came along with an incredible financial set of costs that offset that windfall, particularly when it comes to traffic accidents, policing, and the damage done to young families. All of that points to the first thing, which is, what do we mean by freedom?

Listen, the fundamental thing is freedom from or freedom for. If you promise that something will bring greater freedom because it frees you from expectations or frees you from restraints, that freedom always devolves into tyranny. And it’s the worst kind of tyranny. It’s the tyranny that one has to oneself, to one’s own passions.

And, you know, you just need to sniff this out, whether we’re talking about sports gambling, the lottery, or weed. If the freedom that’s promised is not freedom for flourishing but is freedom from somebody else’s rules and expectations, it’ll be short-lived. Look, the numbers are in. Florida needs to look at Colorado, and we need to look across to these other states that have tried it. It hasn’t been okay, and even The New York Times is recognizing this.

BROWN: 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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