Culture Friday: Socialism in the city

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Friday the 27th of June.

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 and joining us now is John Stonestreet. He is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Good morning to you.

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning!

EICHER: Well, here we are—Friday morning—and in just a few hours, we expect the U.S. Supreme Court to issue the final decisions of its term. One of those may be the most culturally significant: a case that will decide whether parents have a right to opt their young children out of public school instruction they believe is harmful—in particular, lessons on sexuality and gender identity.

This comes just one day after the 10th anniversary of Obergefell v. Hodges—that’s another Supreme Court decision … this one redefining marriage nationwide. Ten years later, we’re now asking whether parents even have the right to guide how and when their children encounter these contested moral ideas.

John, it seems like there’s a straight line between Obergefell and the parental-rights decision the court will announce today. What are your reflections on this cultural and legal moment?

STONESTREET: Well, it’s interesting on a number of levels. I think the two are absolutely related, and I’ll tell you why in just a second. But I also think that it’s important to remember what the decision actually was—not only that it mandated same-sex marriage on all of the United States, including 30-some states that had defined marriage otherwise as between a man and a woman, as civilizations had always defined it, including civilizations that had no influence whatsoever from a Judeo-Christian morality.

So what has Obergefell wrought? Justice Kennedy told us at the time that the real reason that we needed to have same-sex marriage is because we were a more tolerant, more moral, more accepting and loving people, because marriage in and of itself was not inherently connected to procreation. That’s an argument that’s now been extended in many ways, but it was instead an argument that was primarily about adult happiness.

So what we were told is that Obergefell would then extend the definition of marriage to include this other relational arrangement. But the net result has been—by extending it, it redefined it. And it redefined it by making irrelevant the number two. The only reason that the number two is important in a marriage is because we’re talking about man and woman—man and woman who, as Jesus put it, could become one flesh. That’s not a Christian reality, that’s just a reality. In other words, it’s a procreative union.

That’s why every county clerk and every state law wanted to know if the man and the woman were, you know, related in any way, if they were of certain age before issuing a marriage license. But if there is no inherent connection between marriage and procreation, then the number two becomes irrelevant. If we’re talking about two men or two women, there’s no reason we can’t be talking about three or four or a mixture of the two, because it’s not inherently connected.

What we have seen downstream from Obergefell was that the redefining of marriage meant the redefining of family. And then what happened really quickly—even though we were promised that this decision had nothing to do with procreation or children or parenting, but was just really about adult happiness—is that all these couples that were in this new arrangement of adult happiness then demanded children.

Now how is this connected to this case about whether parents have the right to remove their children from teaching that they consider to be explicit or obscene or inappropriate for them? Well, listen—if you start saying that not only does love make a marriage, but love makes a family, and therefore what we’ve seen now—biology is irrelevant and “love” makes parents—well then, it’s basically who loves and who cares for our kids more.

Then the state inserts itself in that conversation and says that the will of the parents is actually less important than the will of the state. And those family bonds between mom and dad and child—what G.K. Chesterton called that triangle of truisms—has been dramatically weakened, both in law and in the cultural imagination, from Obergefell.

So there was a whole bunch of upstream things to this law, and there’s been a whole lot of downstream things from this law. Obergefell has radically changed our understanding of the relationship between moms, dads, and kids, and introduced all kinds of other parties in the middle of it. And it hasn’t—obviously—hasn’t been good for kids.

EICHER: Well, John, I think we’ve got to talk about this—it really was, in some ways, the story of the week. The U.S. launched a surprising and forceful strike on Iran over the weekend, and by Tuesday, we had a ceasefire. We’ll see in time how effective the operation really was, but clearly, it had an effect.

But alongside that military action, another story caught fire—culturally. And that was President Trump’s reaction to the ceasefire. Speaking in front of Marine One, just hours after ordering the strike, he dropped a bomb of a different kind—an F-bomb. Not in private, not off-mic, but on camera, deliberately, and unapologetically.

Now, some people will say it’s “just a word,” but I can’t recall ever hearing a sitting president use that language publicly and proudly. He said it, turned, and walked away—like a mic-drop moment. What do you make of that?

STONESTREET: Yeah, I think it’s a little bit different than the Hot Mic moment for President Biden. This was just brazen. It was direct. It was clearly out of frustration. And you know, I guess—as one of my colleagues said it—you never really have to worry what he’s thinking, do you? He just kind of says it out loud. That’s the case. “Coy” is not an adjective that you would use for the man.

But also—listen—it should shock our sensibilities. And I think it’s something that we have so many people telling us that it shouldn’t—that tells us something about the state of our culture. We’re a much more coarse culture. It is not unusual now to hear that word dropped consistently. You don’t have, for example, the networks censored by the federal government. You’ve got Netflix and Hulu and all of these workarounds.

So, you know, series that are otherwise the same as you would have watched on network television 10 years ago are full of these sorts of language bombs. You also hear it out in public all the time. You go to a sporting event, you hear it all the time. Now, some of this is not new, but it’s all a lot worse than it was five or 10 or 15 years ago.

Words matter, and especially within a Christian worldview, words matter—that word in particular. And the reason that word in particular matters is because it’s referring to something in reality that is a sacred, good gift from God. And when that act is actually corrupted in real life, we know that it brings great harm and great damage.

Because the center of the Christian worldview is that words created the world—God’s words, first and foremost—and we’re made in His image, and our words have incredible power. When we denigrate something that’s sacred—whether in deed or in word—then it will have consequences. And I think we’re a way worse culture because we accept that sort of coarse language.

I don’t think that’s the same thing as being prudish. I don’t think it’s the same thing as being old-fashioned or traditional. There’s a time and a place. There’s a professionalism. And this wasn’t it. And it does say an awful lot, I think, when you have that coming from, you know, kind of the dominant American spokesperson. There’s better ways to communicate. And I wish he would have used those better ways.

BROWN: John, the political world is still digesting what just happened in New York City. Zohran Mamdani—a 33-year-old self-described democratic socialist—he’s won the Democratic primary for mayor, defeating former Governor Andrew Cuomo. That makes Mamdani the odds-on favorite to become the next mayor of America’s largest city.

And this was no fluke. He went from near-zero in the polls to a decisive win. He was powered by a massive grassroots ground game and endorsements from progressives like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. His platform? Hard left, all the way. Here’s his pitch:

MAMDANI: I’ll freeze the rent for millions of tenants, make buses fast and free, and deliver universal child care. And before you ask, I’ll pay for it by taxing the rich.

Some are calling this a litmus test for the future of the Democratic Party. Others see it as part of a broader political and cultural realignment. So, John—what do you make of Mamdani’s win? And what might it mean beyond New York?

STONESTREET: Oh, this is an enormous story, if you ask me. I think it’s incredible that in the city where 9/11 took place—now, less than 25 years later, after Muslims perpetrated that disaster on New York City—a Muslim is now the leading candidate for mayor in that same city. That is a stunning development that says an awful lot.

I was incredibly concerned when you hear his explanation—and really justification and rationalization—for the chant “Globalize the Intifada,” basically giving you the critical theory answer that it really is just a cry of the oppressed and it should be justified.

So now, in that city where 9/11 happened—but you also have a city with a disproportionately high population of Jewish citizens—and you have then someone rationalizing or justifying a call for genocide against those people. He might be able to dismiss it, but I think it’s highly concerning.

Because where it leaves us is in the significance and importance of worldview. You mentioned: self-described socialist here. Clearly he’s referring to kind of a critical theory sort of framework that he’s applying to clear hate speech and a call for genocide. So that means at best—at best—he is a woke socialist.

At worst, he’s one of those candidates that have dominated London politics for the last decade or so: Muslim candidates that move into the city and start doing things to increase ties, create space for radical Muslims, penalize any critiques of Islam whatsoever, criminalize it in the name of hate speech and speech codes.

So that’s what we have to, I think, really watch out for—is what kind of candidate here are we talking about? Are we talking about a westernized, progressivized, woke-ized Muslim candidate? Are we talking about someone who’s deeply committed to Muslim tenets? You know, that’s the thing—it’s the promise of free buses and free childcare and free city-run grocery stores that are basically subsidized—yes, that is a far-left socialist strategy. It’s also an Islamic strategy. It’s also—when you see, you know, basically Muslims move into a city and deal with poverty—it all becomes state-controlled, and then it becomes redistributed.

I think it shows us that worldview matters, and which worldview we’re talking about remains unclear—but it’ll matter. What’s the answer to that question?

BROWN: John Stonestreet, president of the Colson center and host of the Breakpoint podcast, thanks again, John.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

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