You're listening to Breakpoint This Week, where we're talking about the top stories of the week from a Christian worldview. Today, we're going to talk about the news out of Iran, as well as a curious New York mayoral primary. We also have a special conversation between John and Katie Faust commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Obergefell decision and the implications that has had on children's rights. We have a lot to get to today, as always. We're so glad you're with us.
Please stick around. Welcome to Breakpoint This Week. From the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer, alongside John Stone Street, president of the Coulson Center. John, continuing our trend now of kind of hitting some news stories at the top of the show. Just want to bring up the military strike that President Trump authorized last weekend on several nuclear sites in Iran.
And at this point, there's a lot of confusing news about what was or wasn't accomplished on these strikes. But I'm now hearing, we're recording this on Thursday morning, and I'm hearing this morning that. U.S. officials are planning to meet with Iranian officials next week to talk about their nuclear program or lack thereof or pause thereof.
So something certainly happened, but it's hard to know the details. What's your take on the strike? A quick story about how difficult it is to live in a culture with such low trust, right? Because. If one President authorized military force without notifying Congress, the other side says that he has breached the Constitution and and his side defends them.
And that's been going on now for four or five administrations. Seems to me that he was within his presidential powers to do this, but then the The panic kind of sits in. Not only that, but I think I walked through this actually with a group of. High school students on Sunday morning, actually, about how this kind of Jibes with just war theory, something that we've talked about a number of times. Here, but just in terms of limited strikes, reducing civilian casualties, doing just enough to get by.
You know, looking for peace as quickly as possible. And the predictions were pretty quick that we were going to be in a years-long war. And then there was a ceasefire brokered the next day. That was then broken. And then President Trump dropped the F-bomb after dropping the real bombs on national television, which is another news story.
But I talked about it on the World and Everything In It podcast about, you know, kind of the vulgarity of a culture and the importance of language.
some of the other things of what that means. You know, the the the deeper uh part here is is that it's just We don't even know what happened I mean, we know what happened, but we don't know. what happened? We don't know if it destroyed it or not destroyed it, and we've got you know people claiming hit on both sides and you know we want to run to our corners and And listen, I've got thoughts on who's telling us the truth here, certainly. But man, it's a tough cultural moment.
like ours when the trust factor is so low. That's what I was thinking this week is that When we don't know who's telling us what, that's just not a healthy place for a society to be. My husband and I saw the news that it had happened, and we started turning on the news, as you do. And we just kept going from channel to channel. We'd hear like five minutes on one and be like, I can't listen to this anymore.
And go to another one and say, I can't listen to this anymore. And we turned it all off, getting ready to go to bed, going, I don't even know. I wish I knew what happened. Like something happened, but. Yeah, it is a difficult moment.
Well, another story I wanted to hit with you is the New York mayoral. primary, which was a shocking headline this week. The New York Times and the New York Post, who, as Olivia Rheingold at the Free Press pointed out, almost never agree on anything. Did agree when they recommended against, I think they endorsed the former mayor Cuomo. Who lost the primary this week to a very little-known underdog named Zoran Mamdani, who was an assemblyman in New York.
And a very outspoken socialist. There's kind of echoes of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. like very uh anti-Israel He has proposed raising the minimum wage in New York City to $30 an hour. installing city-run grocery stores. A rent freeze.
I don't know, free candy on the corner on street corners. I you can't even imagine. But he is very charismatic and very likable, which I've seen some commentators say that's the real story here, is that if you're likable, you can overcome just about anything. Even lack of people knowing who you are, or crazy ideas like raising the minimum wage to $30 an hour. Be that as it may, he won the primary this week, and now he'll face Eric Adams and a Republican candidate for.
The office of New York City Mayor. You know, it's really something you mentioned all the things. That kind of defines this category, except one, and that, of course, is that he's also a Muslim. It is at least something to say that 25 years or so after 9-11. that the city where Muslims attacked the World Trade Center would then elect a Muslim as mayor.
That that Look, that can't be lost. The other thing that can't be lost on this story is that this is a city that has a Disproportionate population of Jews and Jewish communities, including Orthodox Jewish communities. And these are folks that have reported being afraid, given the pro-Palestinian protest and at times pro-Hamas protest. This candidate was asked what he thought about the genocidal chant. uh globalize the intifada.
Which, of course, is a cry that we've heard a lot from anti-Israel protesters since October the 7th. And he rationalized it. He rationalized it in the same way. That Progressives do, which is it's really not a call for genocide. It's a call.
of the oppressed. It's a cry out of the oppressed. But that's not what it is. It actually is a chant. For genocide.
And so here you have in a city. Not only were 9-11 happened, the election of a Muslim, here you have in a city with a high level of Jews just two years after October the 7th. The election of someone who says globalize the intifada is a is a justifiable cry of the oppressed. Uh so look look I uh I think what's behind all this is just so important with the significance here of world views. Clearly he's a true believer.
given these kind of claims. The claim, for example, of thirty dollar an hour minimum wage that's kind of the crazy Claim of social constructionist, which progressivism devolves into that pretty quickly, that we can. Basically, bend gravity and make it whatever we want, especially financial gravity, but also. You know, other kind of laws of human nature and pretend that they're completely pliable and moldable and so on. This is why in.
Right now when I teach on world views, that the first chapter of the story creation to me is so important. Because we live right now as a society. And progressives act as if everything is pliable, everything is a social construct, everything is changeable. And that's not the world we live in if it's a created universe where there are specific givens.
So, if we do get $30 an hour minimum wage in New York City, then visiting New York is going to be super interesting. I was at a hotel actually down in Dallas last week, and they had robots that would deliver snacks to your room. And they had the robots that had the names, you know, and you could order it. That's going to be the entire city of New York if they get $30 an hour minimum wage. Every restaurant, everything.
Taxi drivers, you know, Tesla taxis are now out. I mean, it's going to be a city of robots.
So maybe that'll be kind of a cool tourist attraction. It'll be like the biggest Epcot center in the universe. You know, that that's kind of th the the laws of gravity. But But here's the other thing, too. With this candidate.
I do think it's a moment in time. And it's a moment in time because the best case scenario is. He is a progressive socialist. The worst case scenario here is that he is kind of the London Muslim politician. The City of London.
has been infiltrated pretty strongly by city council members and so on. Who are just Kind of Western Muslims. but are committed Muslims. at a level of having a friendliness, to radicals Doing things like Instituting hate speech laws for denigrating the Prophet or the Quran. I mean, these of course are very much Sharia.
kinds of laws. And That's the question because the sort of socialism that you see from the progressive left. It's not unlike how Muslims take over uh a community or a city. It's basically they build things and provide an enormous amount of services. particularly to young people.
And um This has kind of been the The strategy in you know the radicalization of particular parts of the Middle East. Of course, it also comes usually with revolution. I don't think we're at risk of that, but I do think it smells an awful lot like what we have seen in London for the last decade. And yes, I mean, that's a little concerning, isn't it? Do you think people's commitment to sort of American ideals, even though people on the left might even be reticent to call them that, but do you think it's strong enough that if a person like him was elected and did start to do what you're describing, that there would be a backlash in time.
Or Are they so committed to being anti-whatever is considered, I don't know, Trumpish or right that It's you know, it's a dangerous Yeah, I mean, what did Mark Twain say? Predictions are dangerous, especially predictions about the future. And, um, I don't know. I mean, I'm a glass half-empty guy most of the time, as people know. And mainly because I really do believe in the power of how people.
think and how the what their deeply held beliefs are, right? And whether those beliefs have been honed and cultivated in some way.
So at some level, there's a level of moral instinct. That can be challenged. In other words, people can go too far with their extremism. And usually that involves you know, some level of of of violence. We've seen that with the trans issue, for example.
But at the same time, It always surprises me how far people go. you know, in deception. And I do also think that these Beliefs have to be cultivated When you talk about kind of a nationalistic identity, I don't think that's as deep as one's worldview.
Some people do. I don't think it is. I think it's usually built on other things that influence one's worldview. But we don't have any sort of coherent system How did you put it when you started the question? I don't know, American ideals.
Yeah, I mean, who knows what those are? Yeah. Right. You know, it's to the point where some politicians, when they like claim them, you're like, You don't even know what you're talking about, right? You're like, what ideals are you meaning?
And then they'll make up things. Like, it's never been more American than to be trans or something like that. Right. I mean, who said that? Oh, my word.
I don't know. I feel like it was the President Biden line where he was like, these are the Trans Day of Remembrance or something. Yeah. I think you're right.
So I just am not convinced that there is. You know, Oz Guinness has talked about the kind of the crisis of civic education. And it just doesn't seem like that's there.
Well, and I think. Like if you look at the behavior of cults, for example. Like people, because when I when I say things like American ideals, I think one of the last shared ones that I'm thinking of. With different limits, maybe from person to person, but is autonomy, the idea that you should be able to do what you want within limits of criminality or whatever it might be. But people will give that up in service to higher cravings.
And I'm thinking specifically of cults. Like people have such a desire for belonging. And meaning that they'll give up autonomy willingly. It's just a question of who and how far they'll go. But that's what scares me about.
So, look, I'm going to give my recommendation at the beginning of the show then. Eric Hoffer's True Believer. If you haven't read that book, Hoffer is not a believer. You need to know he's not a Christian. He's talking about the revolutions of the 20th century.
He's identifying what makes revolutions revolutions and what makes people want to join movements, and how do people then sacrifice their own personal comfort for the higher good? How does that happen? And you know, it is a fascinating. look at mass movements.
Well, the last story I want to hit real quickly before we take a break and transition here is that we just saw news this morning that the state of Colorado has settled with Camp Idrahaji. We covered this story just a couple of weeks ago. Colorado had passed a law imposing, you know, whatever they called it, gender equality on camps and schools and basically everything in the state, that you had to accommodate people's chosen gender. And Camp Idrahaji is a Christian camp that's operated for many years. And sued for the right to maintain bunks and showers and locker rooms for girls and bunks and showers and locker rooms for boys, seeing that under this new law, they could be penalized for doing that.
And this morning we got word that the state of Colorado has settled with the camp. Yeah, it's great news. Congrats again to the Alliance Defending Freedom for stepping out on that.
Now, to be clear, the win is limited. It's like if you're a Christian camp, you don't have to do this. But all the other camps do.
So if you're going to send your kid to Boy Scout camp, and I don't know if there is Boy Scout camp in the uh in Colorado, then you know these sorts of things still uh uh uh apply. YMCA camps, it's going to be interesting to see how that applies to YMCA camps because the YMCA isn't. hasn't been super clear on its policy on some of these issues. And look, this is Colorado's now strategy, right? First of all, they stick their neck out and sell something that's absolutely absurd.
And then ADF shows up and smacks them around, and then they back down halfway. They still gained half the ground. And they do nothing then to rein in. you know, groups like the Civil Rights Commission or the far left. part of the state legislature.
uh to pass kind of crazy things that are then gonna later be sued. the public accommodation of misgendering. and spaces and businesses that's still in place. And I know that's something that is kind of the next target.
So, but congrats to Camp Idrahaji. I'd rather have Jesus. I just love that name. And they've been around for a really long time. And it's just so.
great too when people Every time somebody stands up and undermines what I call the inevitability narrative, that it's always going to get worse and worse, and it doesn't matter what we do, and we're all victims and so on. I appreciate when this happens.
So, God bless them. Yes. And it makes it hopefully easier for the next people to do it. And that's the kind of camp where now I'm even more comfortable sending my kids there because they're actually concerned about the safety of kids. I mean, you don't stick your neck out like this in a state like Colorado, no less.
If you're not actually concerned about the kids, and I really appreciate that.
Well, John, let's take a quick break. When we come back, we have a special segment where you talk to our friend Katie Faust of them before us. Commemorating, and that's the wrong word, but acknowledging, let's say, the 10 years since the Obergefell decision. And a really cool conversation about where we should go from here.
So we'll be right back with more Breakpoint this week. The church is called to restore what's broken, and the Colson Center equips believers to do just that. Through the Colson Fellows Program, Gregory gained the tools to help him teach scripture and the truth of the Christian worldview to men who are battling addiction in his community.
Now he's leading others toward healing and hope. That's what restoration looks like. This is what it looks like for the church to be the church. But these kinds of stories only happen with your support. As we approach our fiscal year end, you can help launch more Christians like Gregory into kingdom work.
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Well, we're back on Breakpoint this week. As we mentioned in last week's program, this week is the 10th anniversary. Of the Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which mandated same-sex marriage on the United States against the Will of the voters in 30 some odd states against the majority opinion. Last week, Maria and I.
Talked a lot about the essence of the opinion, what Justice Kennedy wrote in the opinion. the worldview and ideas that it reflected and some of the cultural implications. Also recently, with the help of Jeff Schaefer, talked a little bit about kind of the legal ramifications and what this has meant for the courts. Basically, the idea that the courts think that Obergefeld did more than it actually did. All of which brings up the question: is there anything we can do?
And I wanted to bring into this conversation, not only continue the conversation, because I really do think it's that important. But to bring into the conversation one of the great advocates of children's rights of our generation, and that's Katie Faust, the founder of Them Before Us. Katie's no stranger to Breakpoint this week or the Colson Center audience. Katie, thanks for joining us. Always fun to hear you on 1.0 speed, John.
Thanks for having me. I can never imagine when people tell me they listen to me and spat up and people also tell me I'm I talk too fast.
So I don't even know what all that means for you. Maybe you need to cut back on your coffee intake or something like that. It is a caffeinated world over here. That is for sure. But also it's like I'm kind of an information junkie and I just need as much as possible.
And I can't do that at 1.0 speed.
So you're at about 1.75. 1.75. I've heard two is about the high that I've heard. I've never heard above two, but. No, no, I can't go two.
1.75 is on the upper echelon.
So listen, you and I have talked a lot offline about. What same-sex marriage has done to the kind of cultural imagination. And that's the piece that I really want to focus on. With you, you had a terrific piece at World Opinions just last week. I think that came out.
We're all looking at this past Thursday. I think it was Thursday right, which was. the 10th anniversary over Bergefeld v. Hodges. Just walk us through.
Two or three of the things that you highlighted in that world opinions piece in terms of the cultural. Downstream effects of the Obergefeld decision. That is live on their website as of yesterday, Thursday, the 10th anniversary. And, you know, Jeff has influenced me a lot in terms of understanding the legal implications, but there were also massive cultural implications for this decision. And I kind of talked about some of the main ways that we saw culture shift after the Obergefeld decision.
So, one thing I highlighted was the National Education Association, the largest teachers' union in the country, had a huge language change in how they talked about families.
So, prior to 2015, they had materials that talked about being welcoming to other kinds of parental arrangements, but they still identified mothers and fathers in their material. After 2015, and especially like in the 2020 kind of COVID guidelines, they no longer talked about mothers and fathers, they would talk about caring adults or guardians. We saw a huge shift in terms of the curriculum as it relates to. the gay and lesbian and straight. Education network, right?
They put out guidance in terms of how do you talk to people, how do you talk to children, not just about their own sexual identity, but about what a family looks like. And they Crafted in 2016 lessons for kindergartners to second graders to, in essence, convince five-year-olds that two mothers and two fathers. We were equal to a child's own mother and father.
So it's like they hit the ground very hard when it came to indoctrinating children in the schools. And then like I studied because obviously anybody that goes into a public library and looks at the children's section or the young adults section is going to see shelves dominated by LGBT themed books, even for the preschool set. And so I was like, well, I wonder what kind of changes we've seen in the publishing world. And you can see it, it was measurable, you know. 5 million LGBTQ themed fiction titles in 2021.
By 2023, it was up to 11%. That was 137% increase from 2019. And a lot of those were directed at young kids. We're not just talking about like teen romance, which is a problem as well, but like they were really heading for the youngest of us all. And then GLAD, you know, the gay lesbian.
AAD, advocacy, something. Yeah, there's something like that. And I don't remember. No, they're a big driver in terms of, you know, they kind of collaborate with the human rights campaign to make sure that there's visibility. And they would measure how many LGBTQ characters, how many same-sex-headed households are being depicted in media.
And of course, we saw. Things absolutely skyrocket to the point where. LGBTQ characters were overrepresented in cable shows, in streaming, Netflix series, movies. I mean, like, they made sure that they weren't just represented, they were overrepresented. And I think that it landed at about, you know, 12% of.
online characters and families reflected sort of this queer Worldview, whereas only 7% identify that in real life. And so, what we saw was a queering of the media, of a lot of the different ways that we consume content in story form online.
So, there was a huge sort of shift, like, even though that was a legal decision, the cultural Tasted and saw the impacts of that judicial me, you know, we've long had a conversation, me and Ryan Anderson from EPPC, for example, and some others about whether laws upstream from culture or downstream from culture. You know, Chuck loved to say that law tends to be upstream from downstream from culture. In other words, it reflects the culture you have. And I think that's almost always true. But then at times, you see that law is upstream.
In this case, I think it's both. I mean, obviously, there was a lot of upstream things. That made Kennedy write the sort of decision that he did in Obergefell. But the idea that we were told at the time, this won't affect you. How will my gay marriage hurt you?
call people bigots and that sort of thing. That was all promised. Even in Kennedy's language, he kind of talked about, you know, I hope we can all get along, you know, sort of stuff. And, you know, it really didn't happen. There was a force feeding that took place downstream from culture.
Here's my, or downstream in the culture. Here's my summary of what you just said. I want you to tell me if you think I'm right. The most prominent Effect. And I think there's other downstream from this, but the most prominent.
thing that Obergefeld did. will separate the cultural imagination. from the idea of two. And what I mean by that is, it just was always assumed that marriage was two and parenting was two. If you only had one parent, you were missing a parent.
You know, we use that sort of language. But the idea, really, you know, other than some kind of, you know, maybe goofy sitcoms in the 70s where, you know.
Somebody, you know, I'm thinking of full house, right? Or 80s, you know, where a guy lost his wife, and then the brothers move in, and then it's kind of a big happy family, but it's not sexual at all. Other than that, it was just two, and we just assumed it was two. Even in that situation, it was assumed that there was a loss. And suddenly, If The only reason to limit marriage to two And those two in particular, a man and a woman, is because of children.
It's because of the potential of procreation. And when that was severed, it just kind of kept going. Right. We severed ourselves from the idea of two in terms of also pushing other marital. or relational arrangements as normal.
But then, this idea that parenting isn't about two, and especially not about those two. It's whatever love makes a marriage, so therefore, love makes a family. Is that Would you? Is that a good summary, I think, of what you wrote?
Well, yes, absolutely. And the thing is that you have to convince people of this. You have to. Tell them not to believe their own lying eyes about who children are and what they need, and what we've always accepted throughout all the five major religions of the world, throughout every area of human history, era of human history. You have to tell yourself what you know to be true: that children come from a man and woman, and they need that man and woman, and we should probably incentivize, endorse, and promote those two.
People, that man and woman raising children, we have to put out so much propaganda to override what you instinctually know to be true. And that's why you saw this massive effort in school curriculums, you know, the push in media, the push in fiction, and hey, the commercials, the commercials is what I really know. Remember this about five years ago, three years ago? When it just seemed like every commercial had to have that sort of quote unquote representation, that seemed to be overwhelming. Yeah, I mean, it was, they had to push really hard.
And the truth is, you know, like you talk about, this is not a law like a speed limit. This is a law like gravity. You will either recognize it and flourish because of it, or you will ignore it and you'll perish. And so we are starting to see the perishing. We are starting to see the impact on children.
We are starting to see the declining. I mean, obviously the formation of modern families, which I always say modern families just code for child loss. The child had to lose something, their mother or father or both to be in that family. And we are. observing that these kids are Struggling in terms of their development.
They're dealing with identity issues. And unfortunately, there are all different kinds of stories of children raised specifically by gay men. Horrifying cases of abuse, sometimes to the point where these children have died at the hands of these victimizers. And so I think that the world is starting to see that we thought that we could. Redefine gravity.
And you can't. You can't redefine gravity. You accept it and live by it or you ignore it. And At least children are harmed, and probably all of society as well.
So, here I want to get to that point, both in terms of the harms and in terms of public opinion, because I've heard that as well. And maybe I'm a little skittish after the promises prior to the Dobbs decision that America is more pro-life.
Now, than they used to be, and so on and so on, which turned out to be not exactly right given our kind of culture-wide addiction to relativism. I've seen those same numbers that support for same-sex marriage has plateaued, and maybe even is coming down. And maybe I'm just, I feel like I got burned the last time, and I don't want to be hopeful. But before I go there. I want to talk.
About then the next kind of level of this, and you mentioned it quickly in schools. And it does seem that kind of downstream now, probably in somewhere around the seventh, eighth, ninth year, post-Obergefell. When you say that love makes a family and therefore love makes a parent. Two things happened. Number one is you had to have technological workarounds.
And you spent a lot of time on that in your work, the IVF and surrogacy and the driving of some of these industries because of same-sex marriage. And this bait and switch that marriage isn't about having children, but really it is, and so therefore gay couples need to have children. But then also that loosening between the actual parents and children. And this insertion of government and state agencies, particularly schools, in between parents and kids, that then we saw in the trans issue. And no question, the trans activists took that further than I think even the activists purely for gay marriage would have ever imagined.
But those two also seem to be kind of created around this. Biology was nullified. In the Old Bergerfeld decision. Yeah, that's a great way to say it. Yeah.
If biology matters. Especially in the parent-child relationship, you can't have gay marriage. And they said, Well, adult ideology, adult convenience, adult desire is more important than the biological reality that children come from a man and woman and therefore have a pre-political natural right to that man and woman.
So, to come to the decision that two men or two women can be married, they had to say biology is actually irrelevant. And the trans activists said, Oh, well, if biology is irrelevant, then a man can become a woman. I mean, I will often say, you know, if Biology Doesn't matter. If gender doesn't matter in marriage, it doesn't matter anywhere. The place it probably matters most, even more than the pool or the track or the soccer field, it matters most when it comes to creating and raising children.
So, if you're going to say that biology is irrelevant, gender is irrelevant in the one institution that historically has required a male and a female, then it doesn't matter in the locker room and it doesn't matter in the bathroom.
So, where does it matter? It actually matters everywhere. And it's just. You know, one more indication that the Obergefeld decision and several of the laws that stemmed from that, several of the decisions that stemmed from that. are illegitimate.
Because they reject fundamental realities of what it means to be human, especially what it means to be a human child. Yeah. I well I I think um Going to your point then about whether or not support has uh increased or decreased, or whether we have I think you used the phrase, people are starting to wake up to this. I would love if that were the case. I again, I'm a little skittish.
On this, because I do think that's the case on the trans issue, that people are just. It just went too far. It went after kids. Like that just crossed some lines. But you know The people wanting to stand beside us on that issue, a lot of times, are the L, the G, and the B.
I was on a podcast earlier this week, and they were talking about, you know, at some of the pride parades, this. You're having L G B signs and no T's and specifying that division. We've talked about the certainly the divide between the L and the T's that have has taken place really for a long time now. But you you look at political conservatives, many of them support Same-sex marriage. When, you know, gay.
Uh Celebrities announce that they have acquired a child through surrogacy. Everyone, you know, chimes in with their congratulations as if they did something good and not something. that yesterday would have been considered rightfully so horrific. I just, it seems like the narrative has captured the imagination. The thought of unraveling a Bergefell seems a long way down.
And then, you know, are we doing the same thing with abortion? Like, okay, the point is not to make it illegal, but to make it unthinkable. You know, is that even possible? It seems maybe like what abortion seemed like 40, 50 years ago, that this is here to stay and there's nothing we can do about it.
So, talk me out of that despair. There is nothing that we can do about it. Unless we do things differently. We have to start making the compelling, convincing case. that gay marriage and marriage redefinition victimizes children.
The reason why we saw a turnaround, or we're starting to see a turnaround on the trans issue, is because the harm to children was. Unavoidable. It was right in front of us. We had the stories of kids to prove it. We had the scars to prove it.
And so, what we need to do is take a page from that playbook and say, gay marriage did that too. You might not be able to see physical scars, but you can actually measure the psychological scars or the spiritual scars or the developmental scars or the identity scars that children have because they were not separated from a mother or father through tragedy. They were separated from their mother or father politically, intentionally, commercially. And so we need to do a better job of making that case. We need to directly connect.
The decision to redefine marriage with child victimization. And that's not necessarily the way that we have approached the topic of marriage. We have done it through talking about marriage as a sacred institution, which it absolutely is. We've addressed it from the perspective of when marriage is redefined, it's a threat to religious liberty, which is 100% true. But if In my opinion, things are going to turn around.
It is because we are going to make a legal case, which is actually pretty easy to make, that Redefining marriage undermined the fundamental rights of children. We're going to have to make the cultural case that children are victimized when they lose their mother or father through intentional ideological. Processes. And honestly, we're going to need to turn the church Into a child-centric fighting force. The church needs to remember.
What marriage is, not just from the perspective of a beautiful picture of Christ's union with his bride, but they need to understand that marriage as God designed it. is Plan A for child protection. And child protection is a non-negotiable Of the Christian life. You guys, Glenn Sunshine, has done a lot of incredible work on how everywhere that Christianity has gone all throughout history in every country, the well-being and the dignity of children are elevated because there is something foundational about the Christian worldview that instantly leads to child protection.
So we need to tell the church that that is their job today. And maybe we're not facing The threats of foot binding in China, maybe we're not dealing with child labor laws like they were in the UK in the 1800s. We're dealing with a different kind of threat. The threat of commodifying children by redefining the most child-friendly institution the world has ever known.
So it is going to take a lot of work to turn this ship around. I think it must be through the lens of justice for children and And it needs to happen. Like either we will do this, we will take back marriage on behalf of children. Or we will stand by and allow children to be victimized. And that is simply not an option for God's church.
I want you to talk about kind of the project you're working on here along those lines. But you just, you know, you just said, you know, everywhere the church went, this happened. We have made that argument and we've told stories and there are just incredible stories throughout history. We told a story at this year's Colson Center National Conference of Ananti Jebesing, who has a wonderful set of schools in India, New Delhi, started them in a public toilet because that's what she was given. It's just a crazy, crazy story that's beautiful.
And now thousands of kids are being educated a year. in uh a Christian school in this uh Place where it's increasingly hostile. To Christianity. But the reason the church has done it is because Jesus did it. And I think, you know, maybe this should be a tagline for all of us: let's be like Jesus.
Jesus said things about millstones. Jesus said, please welcome the children around me.
So what would it look like right now to be welcoming to children and not be anti natalist? What would it look like right now to be defensive of children and say, don't you dare offend one of these, or the judgment is going to be really hard on you? I mean, these are. These are the things that Jesus actually said. He didn't talk about radical inclusivity or any of that other nonsense that people talk about and identify as the words of Jesus.
It's just, this is what he talked about. Yeah. Close contact with scripture will absolutely disabuse you of this notion that welcoming and affirming adults is going to be the primary expression of your Christian faith. Protecting the vulnerable. defending their rights.
speaking up for the voiceless. That is what the true one aspect of the true Christian life demands an awful lot of it of us. But one of that is. If somebody is seeking to victimize the vulnerable, you, the church, need to stand between them and say, you have to go through me to do that. And I'm not moving one inch.
So, your piece at World Opinions went live yesterday. We've got our conversation from last week, Maria and I, as well as a commentary. talking about some of the legal realities of it. And you also launched a A collaboration, a website yesterday. Tell us just quickly, we have just a minute or two, tell us quickly.
About that, and how people can get involved.
Well, you can go to endobergefell.com and you can just see that we are. Putting the ideologues on notice. Simply saying That what happened 10 years ago is not something to be celebrated. That so-called adult equality. resulted in child inequality.
That decision that was made by five Supreme Court justices that overrode Like you said. 30 different states that had Identified marriage as the union between one man and one woman, and that has severely undermined the rights and well-being of children, that shifted the gravitational pull in the solar system of marriage and family and parenthood laws away from what children need and towards adult desires. That needs to come to an end.
So, if you want updates on that coalition, That coalition of incredible. bold, courageous? Christian leaders, conservatives, Child defenders, pro-family organizations, all of us are getting together. And we're saying no more. No more.
We're going to create a pathway, a judicial strategy. where we can make the court decide. Choose. Either adults can get their validation or children can be protected. Choose.
And we are going to create a campaign to change public opinion because I don't know, I don't know what's upstream and downstream anymore. I just feel like it's all the same stream, cultural and legal, right? They're all flowing together. And so, We can work on a judicial strategy, but we have to change public opinion. And then we are going to.
Create some materials. that tell the church that your job is not to be welcoming and affirming of adults. Like that might be a byproduct. Of you standing for the gospel and for justice, but your primary job is child protection. And hopefully, Looking at historically how Christians have done that in the past, and then talking about why God's design for marriage creates the conditions for child flourishing in a way that.
A state-assigned family can't.
So, come to andobergerfeld.com. You can plug in your contact information and we will keep you posted. We are going to spend the next year. Developing a strategy in those three spheres because. Not to do so?
Means standing by and letting children be victimized because we value our social acceptance more than we value justice. Katie Faust, founder of Them Before Us, author of the book by the same title, and also raising conservative kids in a woke city. Is that what it is? Did I get that right? Nice job.
Did I?
Okay, good. I was going off memory there. It's a great book. And I'm a part of that coalition in Obergefell proudly, and we're going to figure out what we can do to push back.
So, Katie, thanks so much for joining us again for Breakpoint this week. Yeah, we love Colson Center over here at Them Before Us. Thanks. Hi, John Stone Street here from the Colson Center. If you've ever taken a close look at a really old church building, most of the time you can find a cornerstone.
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So please join us, laying a strong foundation for the future by becoming a cornerstone monthly partner of the Colson Center. Visit us at colsoncenter.org slash monthly. That's colsoncenter.org slash monthly. We're back on breakpoint this week. John, kind of in the vein of what you and Katie were talking about, I heard a re-air of an episode on Radio Lab, which is a sort of like science and culture podcast.
One of the original like highly produced podcasts in the podcast era. This one's from NPR. They re-aired an episode last week that originally ran in 2023 about The story of this colony of seagulls off the coast of Santa Barbara. Where in the 1970s researchers documented this phenomenon where Pairings of female seagulls were nesting together and they would lay eggs. The eggs were not fertilized, but they would go through the way they put it in the report is that they would like mimic mating together and then they would lay eggs that were not fertilized and then they'd hang out in their nest together.
And this became this huge deal. Like Congress got involved, they defunded some of this research. It was very shocking, according to this radio lab episode. And the gay community kind of hopped on this as: see, this is natural. Homosexuality does exist in the animal kingdom.
It is, you know, and the way it was characterized in the episode was that the anti-gay movement, as they called it, really jumped on this because it was their tactic at the time. That tactic is Radiolab's word, not mine. It was their tactic to call. Homosexuality unnatural. And this was a very effective tactic.
And the host of Radio Lab, like a good investigator, she just set out to find where did this. Tactic comes from, and she traced it back to the 1200s to this strange old man named Thomas Aquinas, who wrote that homosexuality was a crime against nature. And as far as she could tell, that was the first instance of somebody thinking or saying that out loud. And then it caught on. He was like the Don Draper of his time.
He was like a public relations genius. And he said that phrase, and then everybody just said it for hundreds of years after that. And so these seagulls who turned out to not actually Be homosexual seagulls. It turns out there had been a problem with the male population on the island. There weren't enough males, and so the females.
Out of a natural craving for mating, they were miming it until the male population rebounded. And then they went back to the normal course of things and began laying actual eggs once again.
So the lesbian seagulls were not lesbians after all, but They were just lonely. They were just lonely. Which, honestly, to me, the irony of that was that it. Not only was it not a suggestion that homosexuality is perfectly normal and natural in the animal kingdom, if anything, it was evidence against that theory because what it actually showed was that the birds had an instinct and that they were built for something. And when they couldn't accomplish that thing, they were craving it elsewhere.
It was a picture of a distorted desire. But what I found really fascinating about it was I wasn't around in the 70s. Was that truly the movement at the time against so-called gay rights? Was it fully based on this idea? The strange, weird idea from Thomas Aquinas that homosexuality is kind of just gross, like it's unnatural.
Was that the central argument? Yeah, you know. There's a couple of reasons I think this conversation's important, not n necessarily. Talk about were they seagulls? Is that what they were?
Seagulls? They were seagulls. Seagulls, yeah. But, you know, you sent this to me and I and I looked at the description in the Apple podcast app. In the 1970s, as LGBTQ people in the United States, Face conservatives whose top argument was that homosexuality is unnatural.
And it just reminded me how the whole history of this has been told and retold. And this is. Actually, part of that recommendation I made in the first segment about Eric Hoffer's book, True Believer: if you want to start a social movement, there's a lot in there about how you spend. The narrative, how you tell history.
Now, of course, we're in a cultural moment. In which a dominant view in academia is that there is no metanarrative, that there are only narratives, and narratives compete. For the powerful top spot to shape how we view.
So if you can retell history. And you can win that retelling of history. then it can be really, really effective. And, you know, that's kind of how this whole thing. Has been spun now.
It's been spun as if, you know, look, there was this kind of group of people minding their own business, and then suddenly, A whole bunch of Christians showed up and were trying to make the case: this is unnatural, this is unnatural, this is unnatural. I'm old enough to remember all this. It was the exact opposite. It was the kind of wide consideration that this was you know, not something that was normal or acceptable and There was an entire movement who rose up. Instead trying to convince us this is natural, this is natural, this is natural.
In other words, you know, what the status quo was and what changed. W was ex is exactly the opposite of how this story is is often told. There's a good bit of reckoning happening within the LGBTQ movement. Because there's a lot of people who were part of it at the very beginning. who don't like what's happened, particularly when the T's And the Q's and the I's and the A's.
Well, not not so m much those folks 'cause they don't do a whole lot, but the plus. Folks, the Q and the Plus pu folks, I guess. It's a hard acronym to keep up with, but they're. There's an extremism and a radicalism. That they have now become uncomfortable with.
There's an undermining of From from the the the the the attack on on what's called the gender binary on The L's and the Gs, because it kind of undermines who they are. There's the narrative that drove the movement forward, which is born this way, born this way, born this way. And now, the dominant vision is it doesn't matter how you were born, you can be whoever you want to be. And be your true self means to construct your true self, and then let's reorient. everything from parenting to medicine to accommodate that.
And there's now been a backlash on this movement for the first time in a long time. There's at least been brakes put on. and Andrew Sullivan this week in the New York Times. has an opinion that he uh put out uh on the anniversary of a bergefell now You and I talked about a burger fill last week. We talked about the decision, what was made of the decision.
what Kennedy claimed, how those claims were wrong. And where it came from. And then we had a piece this week where we really looked at the legal ramifications. of a Bergefell and how the courts really kind of embraced the reasoning. And applied it in ways that were inappropriate.
And everyone kind of felt like, oh, the Supreme Court has settled this issue for us. And then. The conversation that people just heard with Katie Faust is You know, more on, listen, this has been really destructive and damaging for children. But you know the There's just a number of ways, you know, I think the word is gaslit, right? Where You know, it's just that the story's being retold, and everyone was just kind of minding their own business.
You know those memes where it's like You know, no one, no one, no one. And then somebody says something like crazy, absurd to make an argument against something. This is kind of the way this history actually happened. It's like there was this uprising. connected with the sexual revolution that then decided to force everyone to to agree or be bigots.
And there was always this kind of promise of equal rights and all that sort of stuff, but it never was about any of that to begin with. And So That's why I think the Obergefeld decision is so worth talking about. because it was a moment in time, it was a pivot point in this movement. And it opened the floodgates. In other words, when the LGB, which is really where the movement was.
10 years ago when that group got everything that they had fought for for so long. in the Obergefeld decision. And this is what Andrew Sullivan doesn't realize in his piece, which I have great sympathy for. You know, talking about the extremism, for example, of going after children with gender ideology and you know, attacking the gender binary, which is You know, really a way of talking about something that's obvious in creation, that there's a difference between male and female. It's just interesting.
As soon as that happened, the floodgates of extremism came out. and he thinks it's an anomaly. in this piece. And you and I, well, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but to me, it's inevitable. Because as Katie and I were talking about, When you remove the inherent connection between parents and children, Then you remove the number two, and you remove those specific, that specific mom and dad for those specific.
All that stuff goes out the window. And then you come back around and say, Oh, I have a right to children. And then it can be any children that I want acquired by any means that I want. Oh, and I can make them think anything that I want. And, you know, and no one can say anything.
Who counts as parents? What kind of scrutiny and protections we have for children? You know, suddenly you have this one group that plays by completely different rules. They can acquire children by any means. They don't have to be related to a kid.
In order to claim parentage over them, I mean, it's just. Or even go through any legal documents. I don't have to adopt. Like, it's just, there's a presumed parentage in this. It's just.
It it's gone, so Far, but there's a direct result. Of what a Bergefell wrought. It's not like an anomaly. That was what was so glaring about this Seagull episode, because later in the episode, the host, who is a lesbian and is married to a woman, She talks about how, you know, She still is just out. She's really outraged by the fact that she has to apply to adopt the child that her wife gave birth to.
and how wrong that is and how that's an indication of how far we still have to go for gay rights and those kind of things. And it it's like listening to that episode is like listening to something while there's like an alarm going off or like a l Huge bright light blinking in your eyes, and everyone just pretends it's not happening. It's gaslighting, like you said, because. There is no mention, almost to the point where you assume that they're not aware. that the reason homosexuality has been characterized as unnatural.
From the beginning of time, is that you cannot create a child with the sexual union of two people of the same sex. It is about children. And it truly did not appear to occur to anybody. Even when she you know, it's like a throwaway line. Like, well, these eggs that the seagulls were laying were not obviously not fertilized.
Like, they still have to go and get them fertilized somewhere else if they wanted to have like that was always and so that's why I brought the question to you. Like, Because was that argument ever made? You know, I want to, it's a shame if what she took, I don't know if she was being uncharitable, but it's a shame if what she took from the original sort of, you know, movement that rose up in opposition to all of these new claims about homosexual couples being exactly the same as heterosexual couples. If what she took was that people were just grossed out by it. There was no other argument.
Yeah. Well, I think two things. Number one is, yes, people were grossed out by it until they weren't. And there was actually someone who wrote about that back then, talked about the ick factor and the gag reflex that people have and actually arguing in support of it. It was someone at the Gospel Coalition side.
And I mean, even then, you would have thought that that was the most ridiculous, offensive thing that someone could actually say.
Now, yes, to be morally repulsed by someone is wrong. To be morally repulsed by a behavior. And to be able to distinguish between being morally repulsed by a behavior and someone, which can get really difficult. In times of great evil, like when you're talking about things like the Holocaust or something like that. But moral repulsion is not a bad thing to have.
It's a good thing to have. And when it changes, it's pretty dramatic.
Now your question was, did we argue Back in the day. you know And prior to our burger foul. you know, along these lines about the inherent connection of uh uh of of children And what that means in terms of the distinct relationship between a heterosexual couple and a homosexual couple? And the answer is. The answer is yes.
Many people did. I remember Most notably, there was a remarkable work that was put out by. Robbie George. Ryan Anderson and Sharif Gurgis, you know, two young protégés of Professor George. called What is Merit?
And this was a book in which they made an argument that marriage was a particular thing. It was a a high-level work. It wasn't long, but it was. Pretty. thorough and and thick.
And I remember. wrestling with how important the work was. And they adopted a phrase called the conjugal view of marriage, which is seeing marriage in this way. But the average everyday person on the street to hear conjugal view of marriage, we used to joke that it sounds like marriage called an STD. You know, like that's a really clunky word, right?
So what do we mean by that and how do we make that case? Sean McDowell and I jumped in and wrote a popular level book that tried to make the same arguments, but at a much, much, much more accessible level. just on the specific issue of same sex marriage. But here's what we faced. When you argued That there was an inherent designed to marriage, that marriage looked a particular way.
And that way. included more than just deeply held affection. But it actually included your body. It actually included how bodies fit together. It actually included.
And here's how my friend Frank Turek put it really helpfully at the time. If every single person on the planet lived in a loving, committed, faithful, monogamous, Seagull-like. Heterosexual relationship The world has a future. But if every single person lived in a loving, committed, monogamous, faithful, seagull like, HOMOSEXUAL RELATINSIP The world doesn't have a future.
Now notice there's nothing in that statement that says anything about the morality of the sexual encounter. There's nothing in that statement that says anything is different. If it's true, as the meme which basically created this told us that love is love. Then There shouldn't be such a dramatic difference. between those two things, when all the adjectives are exactly the same.
but it's only the relationship that's different. Does that make sense? And so, but see, what had happened is that no fault divorce had already redefined marriage. That was my question. What caused it?
Because if you read Jane Austen, John, or you read Middlemarch or whatever. What caused the redefinition of marriage?
Well, just the reconceptualization of it, that it was just about affections and whatever.
Well, listen, because it's not about affections. It's just also about bodies. I mean, I mean, look, you could kind of say this started this, and this started this, and this started this, and eventually you're back. you know with a um A snake in a garden. Right.
But at some level, there is the disconnect. of the moral norms of the universe.
So, even when the argument of the sequel is saying it's natural, notice the implication there. If it exists in nature, therefore it has to be acceptable. Which always to me was a bizarre argument because you know what else exists in nature? Cannibalism. You know what else exists in nature?
Monkeys throw their feces. You know what else exists in nature? Animals eat their young. No one is ever making this argument as this, we should change law and relax our murder standards because it also exists. No, it was always a bizarre argument, but it presumes an entire worldview.
But at the same time, here's what happened. No fault divorce. This is the fundamental shift. No fault divorce in law, and there were upstream things ahead of law. but turned marriage into an institution of adult happiness.
So you enter it when you want. You end it when you want. And of course, we've talked about the narrative: all the kids will be fine. Kids need happy parents, not more, you know. Married parents.
So there was the elevation of happiness, there was the increasingly internalization of moral norms. And there was this disconnection from any fixed moral universe. There was also a cynicism of tradition. And you could tell You know, this goes back to what I was talking about: historical narratives. You can just lie, you can just say, oh, marriage is bad.
Marriage is patriarchal. None of the evidence, by the way, ever fit that. But here's the other thing we had. We had an awful lot of seminars. And this is this includes in churches.
This has to do with something that Oz Guinness wrote about years ago. that Christians were susceptible to the modern age. in profound ways. because they did not understand the history of ideas and the sociology of knowledge. The sociology of knowledge is how people think and what people think.
The issue of plausibility. In other words, What seems normal.
So What happened was. We were dealing with a divorce rate. The divorce rate was spiking inside the church. Divorce was becoming more and more normal. And well-meaning churches then turned around and said, let's have a Bunch of seminars on how to do marriage.
And so we did. We had tons of seminars: how to have a happy marriage, how to have a godly marriage, how to have a Better sex life, how to have better finances. I mean, these, there were seminars all the time helping married couples. But there wasn't biblical teaching on this is what marriage is. And I remember when Sean and I wrote this book, we talked about Matthew 18 when Jesus is asked about divorce.
And his answer is to go to creation norms.
So somehow because of complementarity, And conjugality, the conjugal union of man and woman, which is only between man and woman, Jesus says marriage is permanent. He's arguing. Against divorce. from what's created. And We'd lost that feel.
So basically, it was almost as if The seminars we had on marriage and even parenting. We're kind of Christian morality decorated on an increasingly secular vision. That marriage really was about human happiness. Right, because the implication was if things are going poorly.
Well, gosh, employ all of these tools to try to make them go better as opposed to things that are going poorly. That was always going to happen. Listen, it makes perfect sense. And I'm not impinging the motives at all. I just think we missed the boat.
Because, you know, it does matter what your worldview is. It does matter the deeply held beliefs. This is T.S. Eliot. I quote him all the time.
Before we know what to do with something, we need to know what something is for. And we were being told we should do all these things with marriage. And we didn't like those things. but we never got back.
So we said, don't do those things, do these things instead. But the narrative was shifted in our public, and it really was a cultural imagination stuff. In our book, we talked about how this is clear in the history of television, right?
So the number one show of the nineteen eighties, which is now a loaded reference, but was the Cosby show. It was literally the number one show for the entire decade. That was also though where we got family matters and must-see TV on Thursday. It was all family. Family was good.
Family is where the hijinks happen, but at the end of the day, Yeah, full house, but family was also the place you went to get your problem solved, right? That was the eighties. The top shows in the 90s were Seinfeld and Friends. In the 90s, it wasn't about family. It was about community.
It was about friends. The family, when it showed up, wasn't the solution. The family was always the problem. You know, remember George's dad? Right.
So then you go from there to will and grace. Got a lot of problems with you people. Then you go to will and grace, right? What's fascinating about will and grace is. Will played the role for Grace.
Homosexual will, played the role for heterosexual grace. That Bill Cosby played in The Cosby Show. He was the problem solver. He was the normal one. Grace was the eccentric one.
Then you had glee. Beverly Hills, and we could talk about Beverly Hills 90210, which scandalized my parents back in the late 80s, early 90s, or whenever it was, because it was a show about those California people and all the times they talked about. No one ever had sex in Beverly Hills 90210. They just talked about sex, which was crazy for a high school student. Then you fast-forward to glee.
And they're not just talking about it. And it's not just heterosex, it's all the various versions. But. It also ain't in California. That show was set in Indiana.
I've seen it. Setting all this stuff. Ohio. Was it Ohio? Yeah.
Okay.
Sorry. Small town in Ohio. But but you get the point and then, you know, the pinnacle then it becomes modern family. which is family is whatever we make it. You can have The traditional marriage?
you can have the Divorce, remarried, trophy, wife, marriage. You can have. the same sex marriage, and it all makes a modern family.
Well, the last tether seems to be like when you, if you were to ask somebody what makes a modern family, they'd say, what? Love, as long as we love each other. But. We've lost the definition of that. Just as we've lost the definition of marriage, you know, I yeah.
This week I'm I'm parenting my kids and I have this moment where I'm like, You know, parenting violates in a single day every single tenet of like the therapeutic how you should approach relationships. Like, you should never be required to do emotional labor. You should never give more than you receive. You shouldn't just be a taker in a relationship. And I'm just watching my kids like, man, all they do is take, John.
They don't thank me for stuff anymore. And I'm like, but this. This is how you, I had a rough week. This is how you love a person, especially children. Like if you if you think that love makes a family in the way that our culture defines love.
Then why wouldn't you as a parent Walk away from your kids at some point, or walk away from your spouse, or whatever. I mean, it's, I'm glad that we're holding on, at least for now, somewhat to that vestige of like, Commitment is still kind of approved of, if not in all circumstances. We certainly rationalize ourselves out of it a lot, but. but I don't see how logically we can hold on to that. Let's see.
Two two parts of that. Number one is you got to define love. What do we mean by love? Not all love is love. Lewis talks about the four loves.
I always think that that's probably a pretty good book. for your annual reading list. Come back to that at least once a year. The other thing, though, is Notice the the evolution.
So as our television sets were evolving, to portray what a family is. and our laws were evolving, from Obergefeld now as we talked about. On Thursday with the legal ramifications of this, We went from love makes romance To love makes a marriage.
So love makes a family. The love makes apparent. And that, you know, that's, of course it was inevitable.
So, you know, you you read these feature articles about polyamorous couples and They're like, man. Think about it. If a kid benefits from two parents, They'll even more benefit from five. which is absolutely insane. There's no evidence to back this up.
It's another way of us saying all the kids will be fine. And then we'll get to the bottom of the file. Oh, there's plenty of evidence that suggests kids are at very high risk. Oh, high risk. Oh, it's not even close.
It's super high. I mean, it's. Listen, they're at way higher risk from cohabitation. they're at way higher risk from step parents. You know, if you just kind of look at the actual data.
And I know that there are incredible people who step into the lives of children. In a second. You know, marriage or something like that, and provide real love.
So, what we're just saying is that. When you sentimentalize everything. It's just like as if strong feelings can change reality. And, um, That's the history of the movement.
So I do think it's helpful every once in a while to go back and go, okay, how did we get here? What were we talking about in the Seagull conversation and the Andrew Sullivan piece? It's fascinating to kind of watch both the retelling of the story and go, wait a minute, this is not how it went down. You know, I'm old enough to remember it. This ain't how it went down.
Well, John, you've already shared your recommendation for the week, Eric Hoffer's True Believer, which I've officially added to my reading list. Yes, and it's by the way, it's a recommendation with a nuance. This guy is not a believer, but he's writing about the history of social movements and how social movements began. And how they grow. And I think it's actually pretty helpful when you think, oh, if we want to have a movement, for example, to end Obergefell, what would that look like?
If we wanted to have a movement to make abortion unthinkable, what would that look like? There's really helpful stuff there. Yeah. Well, I'll just recommend listening to the Seagull episode. To me, the most tragic part, and that comes with all the caveats as well.
I mean, you all have heard us explain it. But the most tragic part of it to me was that the woman hosting it. I know, I'm not going to claim that this is true for every person who has same-sex attraction or who's in this situation, but she clearly feels. Strange about this. She wanted it to be true so badly that animals do this too.
And she's very forthright about it. She says, I wanted to feel less like an anomaly. Like, there isn't something wrong with me. That this, and for, you know, she ostensibly, I would assume, knows that animals do terrible things and that it's eat, kill, or be killed in the animal kingdom.
So she's not saying. She wants to base her entire morality on animal behavior, which is ill-advised, but she wanted to see it there because I think deep down she's still. understands that this is not right. This is not ordered. This is not right.
And she she, like, like the rest of us. w is looking for validation of her inner feelings. And I Empathize with that and sympathize with that, and I feel for her because I can't imagine how difficult that would be if you were same-sex attracted. But it was a helpful reminder because if you just sit back and watch the gay community, which Really, at this point, has allowed the T's, as you said, to really co-walk, I mean, just take over the movement. If you watch them long enough, you get the sense that they really don't care if anybody, I mean, to shock you is the point.
That's their mantra, right? It's a helpful reminder that that's probably a cope. Like that's probably not true for most of them. which is both positive and negative. I mean, we should pray for them.
But also Remember that, like, it should give us confidence that it is worthwhile to talk about what's natural and good. She wasn't really asking. Is same-sex sex natural? Do animals do it too? She was asking, is this good?
But she just doesn't have a worldview that has categories for things like good or bad.
So she asked it in that way. But it's really worthwhile listening to just to hear someone wrestle with it. in a very strange kind of obtuse way. But with honesty. That'll be my recommendation.
We didn't have time this week to get to questions and feedback, but we have some in the hopper, so we'll try to get to those next week. And as we record, the Supreme Court decided in the Medina case, which is whether or not South Carolina can block Planned Parenthood funding, and they can.
So, the Supreme Court is allowing states to defund Planned Parenthood. That's actually a big thing. We'll have to come back to that next week and we'll have to go to the next step. Oh, that's great news. Yeah.
Okay, great.
Well, thank you so much for listening to Breakpoint this week. From the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer alongside John Stone Street. We'll see you all back here next week.
