Speech and consequence

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NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s Culture Friday. 

John Stonestreet is here, he’s President of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint Podcast. 

John, Good morning.

JOHN STONESTREET: Good morning.

EICHER: Well John, you heard that report there just a few moments ago on the annual Dirty Dozen list from the National Center on Sexual Exploitation … naming companies like Meta, TikTok, Discord, and others—arguing their design choices and algorithms are still exposing kids to harm, even as lawsuits (as we talked about last week), and policy debates around all of this start heating up.

When you hear that though—especially the argument that this is less about content and more about how these platforms are built—what stands out to you about where the real responsibility is?

STONESTREET: Well, I think a list like this is helpful, because it’s not just for lawyers looking for folks to go after, although I think that is going to be a legitimate aspect of this.

I mean again, we’re not just talking about platforms that allow certain content to be carried on them. We’re talking about platforms that harmed young people in an addictive way. This has again, a lot more to do with things like class action lawsuits against the Sackler family because of the opioid addiction crisis—what they knew, what they actually lied about, what they enabled, what they hid, and where they targeted—and big tobacco, things like that.

But at the end of the day, this list is not just for lawsuits. It’s to put these companies on notice that they can’t hide what they’re doing anymore. 

And I appreciate that. I think we’re at the point now where we should expect parents to take the responsibility that parents should have been taking for a long time—for the devices that they let their kids have, the apps that are on those devices, the platforms that are being allowed to infiltrate the hearts and minds of their students. They’re enabling this access.

And I think a lot of parents feel like they can’t do anything, and I don’t know why that’s the case. I mean, I know there are plenty of times in which it feels like, as a parent, that culture just kind of runs over you, like you can’t really prevent the bad stuff from happening. 

But you can, you can know your kids’ passwords. There is no right to privacy for a 12-year-old that lives in your house and might be stalked or harassed or harmed in some way by an adult. At that point, you violate whatever myths of privacy rights that parents often kind of appeal to.

You do have control, you can assert that sort of will, and that’s what a parent’s job is. And so, I do think that, hopefully this will immediately speak to them.

And look, educational institutions have gotten on board in droves in terms of limiting this access, at least during the school day. All of them need to get on board. It’s no longer like up in the air whether smartphones are needed for education; they’re not, and they’re bad for it. There’s kind of no more research here that really needs to be done to demonstrate that.

EICHER: John, you said something—I don’t know how long ago it was—but it really made an impression on me. Something along the lines of, you know "there was a time when young kids went looking for pornography, but now pornography goes looking for little kids."

And I think of that whenever I hear counterarguments about these lawsuits and government coming after these companies trying to hold them accountable. They have built something that is really predatory. This is hardly pure free speech. This is something that is trying to almost surveil young kids, just as you said—they don’t go looking for it; it goes looking for them.

And I wonder if that doesn’t make a big difference.

STONESTREET: It’s an enormous difference, and it’s not just pornography. I think that's like, that’s so the early 2000s when we were worried about pop-up ads on chat rooms or video games.

I mean, what we’re talking about now is actually eating disorders and addictions of various kinds and straight-up lies. The most aggressive sexual grooming that’s happened with this generation is not in trying to get them to behave sexually—it’s to get them to question who they are sexually at a level that no one had ever seen before.

Which is why, when you kind of lay down the social media use trends among young people and then the growth of the LGBTQ identification among young people, it’s like an exact match, you know? We’re talking about the exact same trend.

Pornography has been predatory online for a long time. What we’re talking about here is all kinds of bad predatory behavior.

I mean, frankly, look--I ask parents this, I ask Christian school administrators this—you know, if there were a creepy old man following around all the young girls and whispering terrible things to them of various kinds, would you step in and get rid of that guy?

And everybody says "Yes." And I’m like, "Well, that’s the device. That’s exactly what that is."

EICHER: Well, John, a major win for free speech rights—now we’re pivoting here a little bit—free speech rights for counselors and therapists.

The Supreme Court ruling eight to one—and you saw that this week—ruling 8-1 against a law in your state of Colorado. This had to do with prohibiting licensed counselors from helping clients navigate their way out of same-sex attraction or gender confusion, those kinds of things.

And I think this is what bothered the court: the law allowed counselors to steer clients toward LGBTQ life, but not out of it. And a nearly unanimous court said that is just plain and simple a violation of the First Amendment.

It’s interesting, though—we just talked about arguably limiting free speech or holding these companies accountable in the case of social media, and now we’re celebrating counselor free speech and freedom of religion.

So help us draw a line here. What is the difference between regulating speech on social media platforms and restricting what a counselor can say in private in a one-on-one setting like that?

STONESTREET: Yeah, I don’t think we’re talking about really the same thing at all.

I mean, we are dealing with the ramifications of something that we have in terms of the First Amendment. And what we’re not saying is that these freedoms don’t have limits. You can’t use the freedom of speech to intentionally harm someone—especially you can't use the freedom of speech to intentionally harm minors.

That was the case that was made, is that to actually lead a client into even their own desire to reconcile with their bodies or to manifest a different sexual orientation or desire, to even go along with this state of will, would be to cause harm. And the data doesn’t back this up.

I thought, for example, Justice Jackson’s arguments that the state has to police medicine and that this is the only way to protect young people—I mean, it was fascinating to see that. Because at the same time she's saying that, healthcare institutions, doctors, medical professionals, entire medical associations are backpedaling away from transgender ideology as quickly as they possibly can, saying that there is not the sort of defense of this practice or evidence that supports this practice that we know of.

So she’s actually now arguing that you need the state to police something that’s not effective and not true. So, we’re just talking about completely different things. 

The question is, does a professional have the right to free speech as a professional? You don’t leave your freedom at the door just because you’re a healthcare professional or a mental healthcare professional.

That’s different than allowing anyone to say anything that they want in any way that they want. That of course, is what’s happening with these social media companies—there is no regulation and there is an intent to harm and clear evidence of harm.

BROWN: Erin Hawley, John, the lawyer in this case who represented the Christian counselor, wrote for WORLD Opinions that this ruling puts roughly 20 states with similar laws on notice.

Do you see this as a turning point—not just legally, but culturally—in how dissenting views on identity are treated?

STONESTREET: Well, I would listen to Erin Hawley, that's her analysis which is going to go well beyond mine [laughs].

Because I've been asking a lot of the same questions. Colorado, of course, has earned a lot of the ire of the backlash of this headline because Colorado is now 0 for 3. And by the way, that makes ADF 3 and 0 on some of these conscience rights cases.

But they’re not the first state to have enacted some sort of anti-conversion law. There are others out there that are built a little bit differently. And even in their concurring opinion, Justices Kagan and Sotomayor suggested that "Hey, this could stand if it’s done a little bit differently." And it was almost like they were attempting to coach progressive lawmakers into heading down that path, which would make the constitutional question a little different. 

But by the way, I think another thing that's going to be worth thinking about and talking about is that you have kind of old-school liberal judges like Sotomayor and Kagan, and then you have a younger progressive judge like Justice Jackson—and they’re not on the same page, and there is a lot of difference. 

And it’s interesting how liberalism evolved into progressivism. Liberalism, which was once about the liberation of the individual being able to do whatever you want, and progressivism now being about absolutely making people believe and say and do what you want. It’s absolutley the opposite of being liberal or liberating modern day progressivism. 

I mean, to hear Justice Jackson say that the state should police medicine—you’re like, go back 150 years.

There's a lot of interesting ramifications I think that come out of this case. And I think also, there's something to be said as I mentioned earlier, about the landscape—I mean, this is a decision that's being decided in which sexual orientation and gender identity have been lumped together by Colorado lawmakers. And healthcare professionals and even the LGBTQ various groups that are part of the acronym don’t want to be grouped together anymore, and especially on gender ideology thing, medical professionals running away from it and making some pretty dramatic admissions about what it does not do, especially when it comes to minors.

So yeah, this is a moving target to try to figure out everything that this particular decision means. 

And the fact that it was eight to one is another thing to talk about. Usually when you have a big ruling like that, it’s because of a narrow almost technicality, you can go back to some of the bigger ones. This was a 8-1 but it wasn't really a narrow ruling. It was basically like look, professionals have speech, period. 

And it was a fascinating defense of free speech.

I think there's a lot here to talk about, and maybe what we should have done is all 3 of us sit down with Erin Hawley on this program—we could have asked her all these questions. 

BROWN: One day, right? One day.

STONESTREET: Yeah, there we go.

BROWN: So John, before we let you go, you are a basketball guy. We know that, and so I know you’ve been following Jayden Ivey and the NBA drama. Ivey publicly proclaimed his newness in Christ back in February.

IVEY: I’m not the Jay I used to be. But the old Jay is dead. I’m alive in Christ. No matter what the basketball setting is, I’m born again with the Holy Spirit and I’ve been saved by Jesus Christ.

But it wasn’t until he spoke out against the NBA for promoting so-called "Pride Month and unrighteousness" that the Chicago Bulls essentially fired him on Monday. 

Here he is again on his social media platform:

IVEY: They proclaim Pride Month in the NBA. They show it to the world. They say come join us for Pride, for Pride Month to celebrate unrighteousness. So how is it that one can’t speak righteousness?

So John, you have said this many times on this program: as Christians, we have to cultivate a theology of getting fired. How would you compare/contrast the stand Ivey is taking with some of the other cases that we’ve talked about in the past? I’m thinking of Barronelle Stutzman, Jack Phillips...?

STONESTREET: Well, I think this is a fascinating story, but we’re talking about a real life and someone who has actually you know, now been fired. And I think it’s going to be a very interesting question. The NBA is the kind of business where you could get picked up by somebody else, but what will that mean for other front offices and others that are having to make this decision? Because now to hire this guy back is a statement. 

Now, is it a statement that should be made? You bet. Was this unfair? Completely unfair. 

I mean, are you kidding me? Of all the things NBA players and professional athletes don’t get fired for, this is what you’re going to get fired for?

I don’t know that other players are wrong for not saying what Jayden Ivey has said. If he felt the Holy Spirit was leading him to say this out loud and he didn’t say it, then that would have been disobedience, and he said it.

I would have liked to see a lot of other NBA players, many of whom claim to be Christian, now speak out for him.

I mean, we all remember back a decade or more ago when Jason Collins made this announcement on the cover of Sports Illustrated—“I’m black, I’m gay, and I’m in the NBA”—and the amount of overwhelming support he got from NBA players, NBA legends, at the time, the First Lady of the United States and the President, for making this announcement about his sexual desires.  

And now you have a guy where a lot of other people claim to believe the same thing, to hold to the same views and so on, and it’s been kind of crickets.

But your question was about a theology of getting fired, and I do think that sometimes, in a culture like ours, I mean, again, I'm with Solzhenitsyn--you don’t always have to show up at everything and say everything out loud, but you need to be willing to never live by lies and you need to be willing to take that stand.

I don’t see him backtracking. He’s showing, at this point, the courage of a Russian hockey player refusing to put on the pride jersey.

EICHER: Provorov!

STONESTREET: So, yeah, good for him!

EICHER: All right. John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. 

John, thanks so much.

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

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