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 decision in the U.S. v. Spermetti case before the Supreme Court with insight from the Coulson Center's attorney. We're also going to talk about top news stories of the week, including a massacre in Nigeria and the political shootings in Minnesota.
We have a lot to give to you today. We're so glad you're with us. Please stick around.
Well, welcome to Breakpoint this week. I'm John Stone Street. We're going to start our program here right off the bat talking about what I think is a pretty monumental Supreme Court decision, at least for this term. But I think in light of the cultural moment we've been in, In the last several years, we could argue. Just as we come up on the 10th anniversary of the Obergefell v.
Hodges decision. That's a lot of this traces back to that. But a very important decision by the Supreme Court about a Tennessee law. that banned the so-called medical treatment For gender dysphoria for minors.
So basically, banning puberty blockers, banning cross-sex hormones, and banning. surgical intervention. And I wanted to talk about the ins and outs of the case. and the ins and outs of the decision, really some fascinating Concurring opinions and dissents written, as well as the majority opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts. And really thrilled to invite my good friend and our attorney for the Colson Center, Ian Speer, founder of Covenant Law, and Chief Counsel there.
Ian, thanks so much for joining us on Breakpoint this week. Great to be with you, John. All right, so let's start here first. There's a little bit of a legal technicality side to this case in terms of the scope of what Justice Roberts decided upon. Just give us an overview of what this case was really all about.
Yeah, so uh Skirmetti is a case that arises out of Tennessee. It involves a Tennessee law that's referred to as SB One. The full title is Prohibition on Medical Procedures Performed on Minors Related to Sexual Identity. And as you pointed out, this is a law. There are about 24 states now that have enacted.
Similar laws banning mutilating surgeries and puberty blockers and hormones, specifically as applied to children, minors, for the purpose of treating gender dysphoria or some kind of perceived inconsistency between gender identity and biological sex. And uh so this law was challenged by As the court described it, three transgender children and their parents, as well as a doctor at some point in the United States under the Biden administration, intervened, but then kind of withdrew its participation in the case, made its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court and The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Tennessee's law, which again bans these treatments on minors. And so, yeah, we can talk through some of the particulars of the decision, but I mean, I think the.
The top line point for listeners and viewers is that this is a win for kids. It's a win for the protection of children against. Radical gender experimentation. It is a win, and it's not a small win. But just also to be clear, Despite what the headlines said yesterday, and I'm saying this, we're recording this on Thursday, this came out on Wednesday.
Despite what the headline said, this is not a ban on gender treatment for minors across the United States. This is merely upholding. States' rights, essentially. A state has a right based on the legislature's best analysis of where the medicine and science is at the time to enact these bans and enact these protections.
So, that in and of itself is a win. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it affirms the power of states. To protect minors from this kind of harm. And importantly, it refuses to constitutionalize a right to sex-rejecting medical treatments and really pumps the brakes on.
the aggressive trans movement, at least as it relates to kids.
So Justice Roberts basically ruled that this wasn't a law that required kind of the additional scrutiny. And this was about kind of the level of scrutiny that various Uh levels of legal discrimination. And we think of discrimination as a bad word, but essentially, like, the law has to discriminate. And so there is this kind of. Tradition from the Supreme Court, or this ruling from the Supreme Court, a standing in which certain cases involving certain things require heightened scrutiny.
And Justice Roberts said, This does not. Walk us through what that means. Yeah, right.
So, this was brought as an equal protection case, and the plaintiffs or the challengers to the Tennessee law claimed or alleged that this law classified based on sex and transgender status. And it's well established that if a law does indeed classify or discriminate on the basis of sex, then it is subject to.
some form of heightened scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause. The courts have not resolved whether a law that discriminates on the basis of transgender status. Is subject to heightened review. But the other thing to know is that laws that don't classify on an impermissible basis, that don't classify based on sex. Or race are subject to what's called rational basis review, which is the most kind of deferential to policymakers and to legislatures.
And so the court ultimately concludes, Chief Justice Roberts for the court ultimately says. This is a law that does not classify on the basis of sex. that the relevant classifications here are based on age, namely minors. And medical use of particular treatments, the purpose for which. Uh these treatments.
Are being used or prescribed. And Chief Justice Roberts says, and the court agrees, six to three. Um, that's not a sex-based classification, that's an age and medical use-based classification, that's subject only to rational basis review. And the court ultimately says the state can, under that level of review, the state can. you know, take sides in a in a Frankly, what's still a kind of medical debate?
There is not, despite the dissenters and And the plaintiff's attempts to portray it this way, there is not a medical consensus around the risks and benefits of these treatments, particularly for minors. And in fact, John, as you know, and as you have covered on this program and elsewhere, the the direction of travel for the studies Now is that these treatments are indeed harmful. In some cases, they result in irreversible. Damage to these children, infertility, regret. We have a whole detransitioner movement that has begun to surface.
And so what the Supreme Court says is Tennessee and other states can take a look at the state of the evidence. They can take a look at the direction of travel of the studies and say, you know, we think this is harmful to kids and we're going to ban it. Or we're at least going to restrict it and limit it in certain ways. And the court says that's rational. States can indeed do that.
Yeah. I mean, that was, I think, really important to really admit up front, too, on the medical discrimination part of things, right? Because these are medicines. You know, for example, if you have a child who's dealing with early onset puberty, right, which is harmful. Th th th these certain puberty blockers Are a legitimate treatment.
You know, someone is. hitting puberty way, way too early. But using it for a mental issue of mental distress, that's not physical harm at all. That's off-label use, right? Just to basically say, well, because we want to use this medicine this way, even though it's in a completely different sort of a source is just completely, you know, uh That doesn't qualify as sex discrimination.
So, making that distinction, even though it's a bit of a technicality that Roberts is ruling on here, that's actually a really important distinction to make, I think, isn't it? Yeah, that's right. I mean, and he points out that using it for early on, using these hormones or blockers for. Early onset puberty is is Is different because those treatments actually end when the child hits the normal puberty age, whereas these off-label treatments to treat gender dysphoria. In some cases, they're used to block what's a normal kind of human process of development, which is puberty for these kids.
And when you do it at that stage, And you keep it in place during that stage, that's what actually results in the harm. And actually, in some cases, permanent harm. Permanent infertility, yeah, and other things.
So the very thought that this could be considered sex discrimination, the attorneys here for the the children were really arguing that that comes out of Bostock, right? I mean, that the Bostock decision. Which was decided a few years ago, having to do with employment discrimination. Justice Gorsuch writes that opinion makes this really strange claim. That it's not really sex discrimination, but it is sex discrimination because it's sex discrimination.
That was my understanding of the book. He's talking about employment law, it's different, but that they were really relying on that. both Roberts, certainly Justice Thomas. And Justice Barrett all said, no, it just doesn't apply here. Yeah, that's right.
I mean, what you see is a court that is reluctant to apply Bostock outside of the Title VII employment context. And so we've got numerous decisions now, both from the lower courts and now from the Supreme Court saying. Seeking to limit Bostock essentially to its both to its facts and to its legal context. And saying, at least for purposes of equal protection cases like this one, Skirmetti, we're not going to apply the logic of Bostock. And that logic is sort of highly technical, and the distinction that.
Chief Justice Roberts draws here in Skermeti is also a kind of. It's a very technical distinction, and you have to sort of get into the The strange logic of Bostock. But the basic point that Chief Justice Roberts makes is, at least in the employment context, you know, the the an employer's decision. About say terminating a man who is attracted to men versus not terminating a woman who's attracted to men. The only thing that you change in those scenarios is the sex of the person.
And that changes the employer's decision making. And so that's sex discrimination in the Title VII context. And Chief Justice Roberts here in Scrimetti says that's not quite the way this works because we're talking about. Yeah, we're talking about not only a distinction based on age, because this applies only to children, we're talking about a distinction that turns on the purpose of the medical treatment. And there are permissible uses of these and impermissible uses.
Those the impermissibility doesn't turn on the sex of the child, it turns on The purpose for which that treatment's being used.
So it's just a different logic than Bostock. But I think it's important. And the reason I think it's important is, I've said this for a long time, is that when it comes to the sexual revolution, We treat issues of sexuality as if they play by a completely different set of rules, right? Things we would never allow. I mean, this goes to the heart of the trans issue anyway, right?
Body dysmorphia in some form when the mind and the body doesn't align. We don't treat any other. Dysmorphia, and there's a lot of them, right? Most notably, eating disorders. We don't say, oh, you know what we need to do?
We need to align the body with the mind. In other words, even though this girl is is crazy skinny, and is desperately and dangerously not eating enough. Uh, you know, we're going to believe her mind that says she's overweight, and we're going to continue to align. We would never do that, it would be insane. It's only in this category.
And I thought that was the logic in the Bostock decision, where you know, suddenly you have this kind of category that doesn't apply and it plays by its own rules. And it seemed like Roberts was saying, Nope, not this time, it's not playing by these rules this time. Yeah, I mean, and I think that point, John, really ties into some of the worldview implications of a decision like this. You know, I mean, Scrimetti isn't doing Christian worldview, obviously, Chief Justice Roberts is not doing Christian worldview, but This decision is consistent with the idea that sex is, biological sex, is an embodied reality. It's part of the truth of who we are, it's part of the created order.
And thanks to this decision, now states can. Align their laws and their policies with that truth, with that reality. Yeah, that is good news. I want to talk quickly about the concurring opinion. Uh, from Justice Thomas, and you might want to mention Alito too.
It seemed to me that even though Roberts' majority opinion was limited, as Thomas. Intends to do. He went further and he went into some weeds, both in terms of: look, all this was created by these so-called experts, and we've got to stop listening to the so-called experts. That was a smackdown essentially of a lot of people, but especially WPATH. And then he mentions WPATH, the World Professional Association of Transgender.
Health people and basically, I think that's what that stands for, but it's just basically a bunch of self-proclaimed experts that made a bunch of stuff up and referred to each other as authorities and created a lot of this mess. You have him going to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and surgery and talking about their long-term potential and permanent harms that they can do. I mean, he really, and he went into Bostock, and it sounded to me like he was like, hey, Bosak created a lot of these problems, and we're going to have to come back. It seemed like he was daring people. you know, to come and hey, let's challenge this.
Did you have that same read of Thomas and maybe Al Alito? Yeah, I mean Thomas' concurrence is, you know, everybody should go read it. It is a kind of devastating takedown. Of the so-called medical consensus around this issue. I mean, he uses that term so-called experts several times throughout his concurrence.
And scare. That's right. You know, and he has some great, he has some great lines in there and some great discussion of the state of the medical evidence. He says, for example, there's no medical consensus on how best to treat gender dysphoria in children. He points out that kids can't consent to this kind of medical treatment, that even scientists don't fully understand the implications yet.
And, you know, how much more so is that true of kids who don't fully understand the implications for their own fertility and their own kind of long-term identity and sexual health? He also points out, you know, this term gender-affirming care.
So a lot of the headlines about Skirmetti after this decision were, you know, in blow to gender-affirming care or something like that, or Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care is upheld. And Justice Thomas points out that that's not even a good or accurate term. A better term is, you know, I've heard the term. Gender transition services is how sometimes these are described. But I think the better term is sex-rejecting medical treatments.
I mean, that's really what these are: medical treatments that reject one's. Biological sex. But then on the WPATH point, he really goes after and just takes down WPATH.
Now, some of that's enabled by the fact that. There was a release of a lot of the kind of internal discussions and documents from WPATH called the WPATH Files. If you Google that term, you'll come across. Come across that. And so he uses some of that to point out that a lot of their guidelines and their standards.
Really are driven by politics and ideology, and a desire to get these kinds of laws struck down or. These kinds of medical treatments upheld. And he points out that this, you know, they're not really doing science. They're doing a lot of ideology here.
Well, listen, it was notable that when this case started. And when this case now concludes, an awful lot has happened, right? I mean, we've had the whistleblowers, we've had the closing of gender-affirming or these so-called gender-affirming care clinics. We've had Uh with uh uh additional medicine. And I was really struck.
Just quickly, I know we're trying to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time, but justice, so do my dissent. Just made claims that would have been easily made and were often made. When this case started, it was almost like. She heard the oral arguments or read it before the oral arguments and wrote her dissent way back when. and then ignored everything that came out.
Ethan Heim is an ADF client. Who was one of the first whistleblowers on this and got in a lot of trouble for being fired and was even fired for standing up against this? And he wrote a devastating. Threat on Axe, where he kind of took over.
So, do my York's claims about the medicine and people are going to die and all that. And you're just like, None of this is supported by the facts. In fact, the data now, as you said, is headed the other direction very, very clearly. And basically, you know, her sadness led her to dissent, she said. I mean, it's just a strange thing, but it does seem like there's a lot of progressive elites that aren't keeping up with where the science actually has gone on this.
Yeah, that's an interesting comment about. Justice Sotomayor seeming to have written this dissent really in the face of. Or contrary to the evidence and the reality. And Dr. Him's post on X, you and I have both dug into that and read it.
It's really good. And he points out that The views of Justice Sotomayor and her colleagues really just don't align with the evidence. Or really with the logic and the fact that these kinds of laws seeking to protect kids. just don't discriminate on the basis of sex. And it's a bit strange for Sodomior and her colleagues to be relying on WPATH and citing them as some kind of.
medical experts, I mean, that ship has sailed. I mean their credibility has been deeply undermined, let's say.
So yeah, and she does Sodomayara has this line about in sadness I dissent. I can't say I've ever seen a justice at the Supreme Court say that they're dissenting in sadness, but that was her line. I think it's also interesting to point out that the six justices in the majority plus Justice Jackson, who joined Sotermeyer's Descent, all of them actually have children. Two out of the three dissenters, Justice Sotomayor and Justice Kagan, don't. And I don't know whether that plays a role here, but like, if you know, if you have kids, and I in you know, the polls show parents across the country are concerned about the direction of these kinds of Uh medical treatments.
And uh and Dr. Heim has been doing, you know. really wonderful work and being the whistleblower suffering. Significant personal consequences blowing the whistle on Texas Children's Hospital and what they were up to down there.
So he's one to follow in this debate for sure. Absolutely. I've met him. He's a bright dude. Let's just put it that way.
And he is a force of nature. A last question: in the scheme of things, both in terms of where we've been, where we're headed. In light of something like Obergefell being a 10th anniversary, that we're coming up on the 10th anniversary, we got Bostock and so on. What's the significance of this decision? Yeah, well, you know, I actually.
I think the primary significance is going to be in the realm of the sort of the transgender movement and the transgender debate. I don't know whether there's any spillover between That in Obergefell and the debate around same-sex marriage. I think those two are happening in parallel. But, you know, Skirmetti really pumps the brakes, I think, on the trans movement. I mean, the New York Times today had a piece about how big of a loss this was for the trans movement in particular.
And, you know, I think we should celebrate that because this is a movement that, at least with respect to children and as well as adults, really has been. Has been uniquely harmful. And so it's gratifying to see that states like Tennessee and many others can step up and say we are going to ensure that medical standards for kids are grounded in science and evidence are not harmful. And, you know, I think that gives parents comfort too, knowing that, you know, particularly in places like this, that they're not going to be sort of emotionally blackmailed into thinking that they have to go along with some of these treatments when they're children, when they do have, you know, there are kids who experience gender dysphoria. And knowing that rather than trying to change the body to align with one's mind, that what we should be doing is helping.
Children and people, adults also become comfortable with their God-given sex because that's a gift and it's something that's beautiful about what God has given us. Yeah, Ian Spear. Attorney for the Coulson Center and founder of Covenant Law, and grateful for your contribution here on Breakpoint this week. Thank you, John. The church is called Restore What's Broken and the Colson Center equips believers to do just that.
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Well, we're back on Breakpoint this week. I'm Maria Baer. John, I want to take this segment now to talk about some of the top news stories of the week. As many of our listeners will know, we usually record on Fridays, sometimes Thursdays.
So, this feels like a lifetime ago now, given this news cycle, but last Saturday was. a shooting in Minnesota, a series of shootings that is really remarkable. There was a a man who's now been caught, but he was on the run for about 24 hours. who went in the middle of the night on Saturday night to the home of a State representative in Minnesota and killed her and her husband, and then went to another state representative's home and shot another couple who have survived. He has now been caught.
This is a 57-year-old man. He was caught about a day later, found in the woods. And ever since then, people have been trying to make sense of this for obvious reasons. But I think trying to kind of pigeonhole who this guy was. I'm just looking at the latest on CNN, and they would like us to know that he was an outspoken evangelical Christian.
Other news coverage has tied him repeatedly to Governor Tim Waltz, who, of course, is a Democrat. I think he'd been appointed to some commission under Governor Waltz. But this is a really scary, kind of dystopian-feeling story. Just. He clearly hunted down these political representatives for political reasons, but his reasoning, of course, is difficult to follow and unclear.
But it's a really scary situation.
Well, it's just hard to know specifics. And of course, immediately everyone landed on a political explanation for this. And, you know, sometimes the political. Motivation behind something is absolutely clear.
Sometimes, however, you think it's absolutely clear, and I'm thinking here of the shooting of Gabby Giffords years ago. Just because it was the shooting of a Democrat, the assumption was, well, it must have been a conservative. And then somehow Sarah Palin got blamed and it just became this kind of long thing. That has something to do with the superimposition of political allegiances and political loyalties. As the fundamental reason and cause for everything.
It's the hyper-politization of life, which doesn't always carry weight. In this case, it does seem that the fact that he had been appointed by Governor Tim Waltz to a committee probably isn't relevant. It just, you know, a lot of times these things are bipartisan and so on. The church of which this guy was a member has now issued a statement and, you know, saying, look, we're horrified. This is terrible.
So on and so on. It seems like his pro-life convictions. were were bigger than um the other motivations. They found the no kings signs in his car.
So, what does that mean? It might mean that he was going to a rally. It might mean that he had stolen from people who were going to a rally. I mean, that's what's so hard about just kind of immediately. Landing.
We had a commenter, someone who comments a lot, and I know this isn't the question segment. Of our program, but this is someone who accuses us of being too political, being right-wing, not saying enough. You know, Snidely said that last week on the program, we talked about there being a violence problem on the political left.
Now you have to take that back. And I thought to myself, why would I have to take back? Even if this was part of the political violence problem that does exist on the right. That means we have a political violence problem on both sides. I mean, the political violence on the left is obvious and overwhelming.
And it has been now since before 2020. The fact that we have a political violence problem on the right. can also be seen in various incidents. Not as many, to be clear. but but in in many incidents.
And specifically when it comes to people perpetrating violence against abortion clinics. Or in the name of a pro-life cause, that goes back as well, although it's incredibly rare. for how significant of an issue that is. I mean, we're talking about someone who believes Like I do, that the abortion industry has slaughtered. millions and millions and millions of children who are valuable.
If you think children are being harmed, that tends to be a motivator for people to step in and do something. Not that this is ever right. It's always horrific to do this. That's not the way progress is going to be made. That's not the way we're going to be able to turn abortion into something that is.
Unthinkable. What we have to unseat are terrible ideas about sexuality and autonomy. And so on, even if we're going to get it to the point of super rare exceptions, which in my mind still wouldn't be enough.
So it just kind of shows to me a number of things, just how the political motivations. And also just the political Framework that we put on everything is really insufficient.
Well, unfortunately, we have another story about violence as well. This takes place in Nigeria.
So last weekend as well, there was another massacre. Of Christians in Nigeria. And I'm not sure if I'm going to pronounce this correctly, but it's the Bennu state. I think this is a northern state of Nigeria, but this was again a band of Fulani herdsmen, which is a Muslim community. That went into a series of displacement camps for largely Christian people and farmers who've been displaced from their homes.
And according to reports, Went in in the middle of the night, started setting fire to people's homes. And then, when the people came out of their homes, started shooting them.
So far the death toll, I mean, they're estimating around 100, but I think it's clear it's going to be a lot higher than that. It just feels like a state of chaos in Nigeria. What's even more difficult just adds to the complexity and the tragedy of this story. is I'm even looking at coverage from the BBC. Which barely mentions religion.
I mean, this story in the BBC covering this massacre literally blames climate change. It says that these Fulani herdsmen have to rove to find food because of climate change, and that's leading to these tensions and clashes. And it seems like there have been reports as well that the government in Nigeria is very reticent to acknowledge the religious nature of these attacks as well. Which just feels even worse because you can't solve a problem that you can't identify. Look, I you absolutely nailed it on the head.
When you reduce motivations down to just politics, you have too small of a world view. When you reduce them down to just economic considerations, like the BBC is doing here. Then you have too small of a worldview. And you reduce them down to critical theory categories of. the people that are the oppressed ones and the people that you can never say are oppressed.
which has been superimposed on religious categories of Muslim. And and Christian, then it's too small of a world view. Look, it is very clear that the economic concerns and the farming and so on are factors, but these aren't factors that set off this level. a violence that has been going on for so long. It also doesn't explain the fact that the Fulani herdsmen in Nigeria are just one of the three groups that are actively.
Going after Christians, especially in that northern part of Nigeria. And now, by the way, that violence is also spreading beyond its borders.
So that's a new part of this story. Make no mistake, this story goes way, way back, and then every once in a while you have something like this. Look, I've said this on this program a lot. You and I have talked about it offline. I've talked about it with a number of people.
that are uh have deep concern about this and are working in Washington, DC to raise awareness and bring our government to a level of awareness. Every Easter and every Christmas, something like this happens in a house of worship. Right. Christians still go to church because that's what we do on Christmas and Easter, not to mention every other Sunday. And they show up and they pay for it with their lives.
It's a Christmas tradition, it's a holiday. a holy day tradition. in Nigeria. Absolutely horrific. Look, the hard part right now is the world's distracted.
That doesn't explain what happened, what's been happening now for, I mean, we're 10 years into this now. Uh or more, more actually. But right now, the world's distracted with Iran and Israel, Israel and Gaza. Obviously Russia, Ukraine, there's a lot of concerns. that on a national level are going to keep uh the United States from, you know.
Do doing too much. And then the question is, what is it that we need to do? Very minimum, you know, this back and forth on whether Nigeria is a country of great concern. which goes back and forth between conservative and liberal administrations. That makes no sense.
The violence here is consistently high. That makes no sense that in terms of all the things that are triggered by those categorizations in the state. that that wouldn't just be a consistent category.
So I mean that's the very, very least. We can do. But this story. is unbelievable. And it almost did not even hit.
anyone's radar. In the United States. I went on a Google search this morning just to see what the latest death toll was and the latest information. And all of the top hits on Google are small religious sites like the Lutheran Church of America talking about it. I mean, it It took some scrolling even to find a major news outlet that's covering this.
The violence here is systematic and indiscriminate. It's discriminate in that it's Christian communities that are being targeted, but it is men, women, and children. It is families. Like this, this isn't one group with certain economic interests targeting in an art of war sort of way another group with competing interests. It is.
to me, an act of genocide. That feels very clear. But You know, I don't know all of the political implications of that word, but I feel helpless about this.
Well, Nigeria has met the category of genocide for a long time, and it's important to know that I'm old enough to remember Boko Haran being. considered the worst terrorist group on the planet. And this was at a time when ISIS Was still operating. Under President Obama. Right.
I mean, you remember, I mean, we, the, the conversation there was just like the threat there, the, the, the heartlessness, the, you know, to your point, the indiscriminate killing, the targeting. And so on. For now, the top perpetrators of violence in that region that had. and still does to some degree, that terrorist group. I mean, the Filani her herdsmen have just basically taken over that agenda.
So to say that it's not driven. by religious considerations. and Islamic fundamentalism is just missing all the details on the ground there. The other thing you mentioned, and it needs to be said again, is that the state of Nigeria. has been complicit in allowing this to happen and not stepping in.
Nigeria is an enormous country, fourth largest populated country in the world.
So the potential scale of violence here is breathtaking. And the President has sympathies. And it's been very clear he has sympathies with the Falani. Yeah, listen, it requires a lot of prayer. It should be something that churches talk about on Sunday.
It should be something that. Our elected officials are continually made aware of over and over and over. And that we do everything that we can. I mean, realizing that the kind of context that we're in right now.
Well, John, let's take a quick break. We'll be right back with more Breakpoint this week. 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. A lot of times, the cornerstone will bear the names of the founders who built the church, not just to last during their time.
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The 10th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. This was the decision that created a so-called right to same-sex marriage. Across the country, I want to read an excerpt from Justice Kennedy's majority opinion in this case. And then I was hoping maybe you and I could reflect just on 10 years of.
The aftermath of the decision, just in how it has maybe changed our cultural imagination around this issue.
So here's Justice Kennedy. Fourth and finally, this Court's cases and the nation's traditions make clear. that marriage is a keystone of our social order. marriage remains a building block of our national community. The right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person.
And under the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, couples of the same sex may not be deprived of that right and that liberty. The court now holds that same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry. No longer may this liberty be denied to them. No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.
As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it.
so deeply that they seek to find its fulfilment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest instit institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law and the Constitution grants them that right. And just leave it at that, are you?
Okay, well, here we are. 10 years. First of all, let's just reflect on that. 10 years. It's been 10 years since same-sex marriage.
So, what that means is this first experiment in the history of the world, and that's literally what it was, because even at the time, nations, civilizations, cultures, countries. that did not have any sort of moral objection to homosexual behavior. Never called it marriage. There was never any sense. This wasn't a Christian.
Innovation in the history of the world. If you go back across civilizations, it's really, really difficult to uh determine which um was the first to invent or create this institution called marriage. And embedded in Kennedy's words is something, two or three things that are really important for us to remember. And I want to talk about. That.
And then I want to talk about how we got here and then kind of what we've seen, you know, since. I feel like. That's what we need to cover as we think about this. When it comes to what Kennedy said, do you remember Justice John Roberts wrote the majority, or wrote the dissent? To Justice Kennedy's opinion.
I don't know if you remember that, but he said something in that dissent. He said, If you are for same-sex marriage today, You should celebrate. But don't celebrate The Constitution. Because this decision has nothing to do with the Constitution. And what you heard there was an appeal to adult happiness, an appeal to fairness.
An appeal to at the time was the dominant meme going around love is love, basically. Because The truth be told, what Kennedy says here. is basically something that is misrepresenting what was going on. Same sex people have the right to marry at this time. they could marry just like everyone else.
It was based on an understanding that marriage is a particular thing.
Something that I've said here on a number of occasions is like gravity. In other words, it's fixed into the fabric of the universe, man, woman, and child, what G.K. Chesterton called the triangle of truisms. In other words, Same-sex couples could enter those unions just like anyone else. They could have children just like anyone else.
If they didn't want to, if they found it icky because of their proclivities or something like that. That they weren't deprived of that right. What they were deprived of is the right to make marriage something else. At the time, what we were told is that same-sex marriage would expand marriage to include additional relational arrangements. But that was kind of like saying, the Rockefellers are rich.
I want to be rich, so I'm going to change my name to Rockefeller, so therefore I can be rich. In other words, it was pretending that there wasn't anything structurally to this whole thing called marriage.
So we could suddenly take marriage that has always been a complementarian union. and turn it into something else. Kennedy's right in where he talks about marriage being the bedrock of civilization, something that is essential and core to. to the human experience and all the other things that he. kind of pontificates on.
Where he's wrong is saying that we could then take another relational arrangement, chalk that title on it, and pretend that it somehow is the other thing. As if. Marriage is like a speed limit instead of like gravity. And you see that in his own reasoning. By the way, the other part in an earlier part of that decision that he says is that we have to do this because.
We are now more more moral people than those who had gone before us. were less discriminatory. We've learned as a civilization. It was kind of That long arc. you know, of kind of moral evolution.
that gets proclaimed in the progressive mindset. And of course, there's no evidence to that. About the same time that he wrote that, we got revelations from David DeLeiden and others about the sale of body parts. And things like that, and you know, in the human experience, you say, oh, yeah, we did that. You know, the Nazis did similar experiments.
Are we really that much more moral than them?
So, you have this framework of moral evolution, and you've got this understanding of marriage that basically we can social construct something new into the human experience that never before existed. And we won't have any consequences to it. Yeah, I think that's that was this is why this matters to us, too, is that. I mean the the question is Are we when we use the word marriage? Are we describing something or are we inventing something?
And I think until today. 10 years ago. We were describing something, and then 10 years ago, we decided we were inventing something, and that we had been the whole time. And if that's true, then we should be able to make of it whatever we want. Last week, the state of Ohio introduced a resolution to call June something like Natural Family Month.
Something it was just a resolution. It didn't have much legislative teeth or anything like that. But there were hearings both for and against it. And in one of the hearings, somebody testified. against it, saying that this would Threaten children being raised in homes with same-sex couples, for example, or with single parents.
And this would make them feel that their family was lesser, that something was wrong. And the person making this claim. Said that, and then one of our state representatives, Representative Gary Clix, who was supporting the sponsored legislation, said. Why do you think this person testifying had said, you know, there's always this assumption that there's a mom and dad at home, but we shouldn't make that assumption because not every kid has that situation. And our state representative said, why do you think that assumption exists?
And it was fascinating, John, because for a good solid five minutes. This person kind of reasoned: well, I think because people are closed-minded, and maybe the people who wrote these policies or people who are teachers in schools making these assumptions, maybe that was their own situation at home. They had a mom and dad, and so they just assume everybody else has the same situation. He never got around to saying, well, it's because a mom and a dad are what's required to make a child. And I think that's part of what 10 years of Obergefell and all of the leading cultural change up to that moment.
Have done, which is reshaped our imaginations into forgetting something really basic. And the reason it's important, like it's not just that we're looking at the fact that it takes a mom and a dad to make a child. That points to the larger reality that that's what children need. When they're being raised, they need their mom and their dad at home as well. And we have tons of social science research at this point to show that that's the case.
So this isn't just about we don't like Changing the definition of marriage, or we don't like new things, or we're somehow like personally grossed out by homosexuality. You could set all of that aside and just acknowledge that the reality of procreation Points to a deeper reality of what children need, and I would say what they deserve, which is why it matters to us. what we call marriage.
So, I mean, what you're pointing to here is the gravity nature of this. And it's really important to note, too, that. In the years leading up to Obergefell, The argument was not Oh, hey, listen, same-sex couples can be just as good of families. It wasn't arguing on the base of the goodness of the child. That was a bait and switch that happened after Obergefell.
It's very, very important that the entire discussion was where Kennedy landed on this, which is adult happiness.
Now you're exactly right. And this guy was exact this rep was exactly right. But that kind of... You know, kind of, oh, we're just going to dismiss any opposition to this as bias and discrimination. That was the entire country.
That was what was in Kennedy's opinion, as if there weren't realities that we were dealing with. Think about the meme Love is Love or the slogan Love is Love. That's observably an absurd statement on its face. My friend Frank Turek articulated this so well, even all the way back then. He said, I heard him say this and I've quoted him ever since.
If every single person lived in a loving, committed, Faithful monogamous. Long term. heterosexual relationship. Would the world have a future? And the answer is yes.
If every single person lived in a loving, Committed. faithful, monogamous. permanent. Homosexual relationship. Would the world have a future?
And the answer is no. All the adjectives are the same. All the emotions are the same. Right, it has to do with the fact that one is a procreative union and the other is not. And that's not something somebody invented.
That's not because of discrimination. Right? And so basically. leading up to the days, the attention was taken all off the children. It was put on Adult happiness.
And Kennedy's opinion, argued on adult ca on adult happiness. It was about 'em. I I think three or four months after the Bergefeld decision came out that I saw two things that were fascinating and troubling at the same time. An Australian High Court judge argued that in light of the same-sex marriage change, that there would also need to be a change on regulating against incestuous marriage. And what he was using was the logic that marriage has nothing to do with children.
which was made. On during the same-sex marriage battle.
Now, he's looking at the United States and making this argument. basically saying, Look, we have birth control. We have permanent sterilization. If we have a social concern, about particular deformities that may come from children who are born. from relatives that are too close.
We can arrange for that, but who's to say that their love is not love? And you see the the despicable logic of what he was trying to say. I don't know if he was saying it seriously or if he was saying it. you know, by b by basically parroting this position. High court of the EU, a judge made the same exact argument.
The fact of the matter is They're not wrong in this. And now let's go beyond. What happened? It was not very long at all that two things started to emerge. Because if you take the complementarity out of marriage, you take the exclusivity out of marriage.
Right? The only reason you limit marriage to two It's not because love isn't love. You take marriage. You limit marriage to two if you're talking about not just a husband and a wife, but also a Mother and a father. And to separate this Triangle of truism, as Chesterton said.
means now other relational arrangements have to be included or you're discriminatory. You have to include not just couples, but thruples and quadruples and quintuples and Whatever comes next, you have to include. People that we have previously prevented from getting married because of our concern about the children. But then something else happened. The other thing that happened was On the other side, of dismissing the essential role that the procreation plays in the context of marriage.
And then opening up to other relational arrangements. And we've heard arguments on this, especially polyamory. That's become the most important one, right? And basically you start hearing these rumblings and then you start having a reality TV show and then you have to do it, right? And we've already got to the reality TV show part.
But the other part is that same-sex couples then asserted. what Kennedy said about marriage. that marriage is a fundamental right. Is marriage a right? Does everyone have a right to marriage?
If everyone had a right to marriage, then we need to take up all the singles that want to be married and we need to let them have their human right too. That to use marriage as a right. Is fundamentally a problem. In the same way, they use cheap. children as a right.
Because as soon as same-sex couples got on the other side of Obergefell. There was this demand. And it went under the title of Universal Parentage and Legislative Action. that it is now unjust for all married couples not to have the same access to reproductive services. And therefore Also, the same insurance coverage for those reproductive services.
Now, I mean, think about that. When a heterosexual married couple cannot have a child, It's because something's not operating correctly. When a same-sex couple cannot have a child, It's because everything is operating correctly.
So one is you're trying to heal, and the other is trying is an attempt at a technological workaround. And the demand now, for example, for IVF, for surrogacy, the demand that same-sex couples have to be parents means that you're demanding. children to be Treat it as a commodity. you're demanding third party parents, right, a third party introduced into the whole process. Not because, again, there's been a tragedy that you're trying to fix through the context of adoption, but you're essentially creating orphans.
You're creating children who have been separated from their biological parents in some ways. Not to mention, you got these terrible photographs of two men lying in the hospital bed as if one of them just gave birth. I'll never get over that. That should be, again, always. Always elicit the gag reflex.
That should.
So, you know, here we are. None of this was promised in Kennedy's decision, was it? Right? We were promised that we were more just and more merciful and so on, that this doesn't have anything to do with kids. This is about adults and their happiness.
And yet here we are. The people who warned. about where Obergefell would lead us, we're exactly right. I think that, in a way, this demonstrates that the truth of what marriage actually is. is stubborn and persists because like you said beforehand, The arguments before Obergefell were all about adults.
And civil unions, and we want to be able to visit each other in the hospital, kind of thing. And Kennedy even mentioned that in his opinion as well. And then as soon as it happened, it was like.
So, the argument is: marriage can be what we say it is, and we would like to say that it can be homosexual. And then once that is created through Oberkafell. Then the argument it's like a bait and switch. Then the argument is, well, we all know that marriage is actually a union that includes children. And so now since you've said we can have marriage, you have to say we can have the whole thing.
which means we deserve children. But that again, in a way, while I lament all of the harm that's done and being done to children in this. Scenario? It is a glimmer of hope to me that the idea that marriage is... Two people.
book together create children. that that is so stubborn that it would persist even into this strange New World. Is a sign of hope, I think.
Well, it's yeah, maybe you're being more hopeful than me, which is so unusual because I'm always the chipper one in this conversation. And I know we've reached the end of our time on the segment, just for that, and there's more to talk about. But listen, don't underestimate. What Romans 1 says is the ability of an individual and the ability of an entire civilization to suppress the truth in their wickedness. You know, the truth about the unborn child was made obvious.
for decades as well. And it's still obvious through ultrasounds. True. What people know about their child when they find out that they're expecting. you know, both in terms of scientific knowledge and just kind of gut level knowledge.
And yet, and yet, we still sacrifice these babies on the altar of sexual dignity and other things that we've made up. This is the same way. Look, it's not clear to me at all. that Americans and even American Christians. Have the fight in them.
to go back and say, oh, Bergefeld was the source of an incredible injustice. There are too many. Christians that I don't think have the gut for this. The Republican Party. Clearly doesn't.
have. the the the the the s the the spine or the political will to do anything. and to push back on this. It is now considered beyond the pale to challenge what is quote unquote settled law. Honestly, I would surprise that it had been 10 years because it does feel that way.
And part of it is all this other stuff becomes normal. I mean, we haven't talked about, for example, lying on federal documents. That was a direct result of Bergerfell. We haven't like birth certificates and passports and so on. We haven't talked about.
The genderless way that other things have been affected.
So, in other words, all this started, all the gender stuff started. It was made thinkable and possible when you degender marriage. That's the most obvious place. You de-gender parenting. That's the most obvious place that male and female matters, right?
It's the most obvious way.
Well, then it's a small step to say that it doesn't matter in locker rooms and swimming pools and everything else. You you you or clothing lines or you know that that stuff is cosmetic compared to marriage and and and and babies. And so things become normal really, really, really fast. My hope is in the fact That The the T moment seems to have reached its apex and people are just can't buck against reality. that that much for for that long.
Now, here's what I want to say. There was a 50-year battle. Against Roe v. Wade. And we're still now in the tail end of.
not tail end, but we're still in the midst of dealing with the reality that it was about, which is abortion. We have to do the same thing on a Bergerfeld. This is as much of an injustice. Not as much bloodshed, but as much of an injustice as as Roe. and much and much a source of cultural confusion.
Downstream from this has been everything that the critics predicted. And worse.
So we have to have the political will. I think that one thing that everybody can do, and maybe this will just serve as my recommendation this week. This coming week, I've got a piece coming out on this, probably maybe more than one on Breakpoint, where we talk about both the cultural implications and the legal implications long term. uh of the Obergefell uh decision. Secondly, there was a terrific piece by Nathaniel Blake.
Who is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center? It was written over at the Federalist. uh on this legacy about the critics being right. If kind of being reminded. Oh, it's 10 years.
And kind of being. Reminded, oh, here's all the things that Obergefell made thinkable and possible and plausible. in America. If that all is kind of like, I need to get my mind around that again, read that piece. I think we need to kind of gather.
We need to kind of figure out what it. what it's going to look like. And there are some people that are thinking about this and working on this. There will be some campaigns launched to turn this around. It'll be an enormous fight.
It'll be a long-term fight. But it's one, I think, that is demanded of Christians in this cultural moment. John, I wanted to pose a question that I had, and I'm assuming a lot of our listeners had as well. About this week.
So, this week was Juneteenth, which kind of recently, relatively so, became a national holiday. This is observing the commemoration of the end of slavery. in the US, and it receives mixed results. Should Christians celebrate it? And if so, how?
Yeah, it's an interesting question because it is a holiday that became a holiday in the mix of some. racially divisive. Movements that came out of since 2020 and so on. And that's what makes it really difficult. It's a new national.
holiday, you know, which has implications. uh in broader circles, you know, than just Remembering what happens in the past. And I think that's been kind of problematic. But what Juneteenth? Commemorates, and I'm not a fan of the name, by the way.
I don't know where that exactly came from, but I've read a little bit about it. I just can't remember what it is off the top of my head. It seems like an awkward name.
Somebody argued this week that it it's a name that posits itself up against July 4th. Maybe, I don't know if that was the intent, but Frederick Douglass, of course, back. at about the same time where the events happen, where Juneteenth commemorates, as Or, you know, has a very important speech in American history about who should celebrate July 4th. Frederick Douglass, of course, the great abolitionist, eccentric, but also. just an incredibly important voice in American history.
Listen. The news of the Emancipation Proclamation going to Texas and slavery being abolished in that state Which is what Juneteenth points to is an enormous moment in American history. This was a great evil. This was an evil that took moral courage from an awful lot of people to push back on for a long time. It was a long fight.
It was. a dividing point. uh in American history. It led to Civil War. We need to learn from this.
On all kinds of levels, if for no other reason, then we are now again state by state divided on issues of incredible moral gravity. Like abortion and the treatment of children who are already psychologically distressed. This is an incredible uh moment that we're in now And the the closest thing we have to look at is then. And so for us to think about that. And when you have what has been called one of America's original sins, clearly was the enslavement of image bearers.
at a mass scale. using them as tools of economic uh production. And horrific treatment, you know, dividing the family. Leveraging spiritual talk in the South in order to maintain this. You know There's no question that the history of this has been confused and corrupted.
by by voices on both sides. But when slavery is abolished is a way better day. than the day before when slavery wasn't. And so now I I don't I I I think that the Resistance to it. Has come from some of these abuses and also co-opting this into something that it's not.
It points to a very specific thing. that is worth remembering, learning from, and commemorating. Does that equal celebrating Juneteenth? I don't know. But is it something worth talking about?
Absolutely. We need to learn from this, particularly at this moment in time. I'll confess that given just the state of culture over you know, the culture over race and these discussions over the past several years. always give me pause when it comes to things like this. More because, I mean, the event itself, like you said, I think is completely worth celebrating.
I mean, and it's worth lamenting that it even had to happen, all of that. But I'm always like, what if I do it wrong? Or what if I'm not supposed, since I'm white, I'm not supposed to celebrate it? Like everything has become so loaded with so much baggage. That I just feel like I want to, on these kinds of days, I'm like, I'm just going to stay inside because whatever I say, it could be misconstrued.
I'll either celebrate it wrong, I won't celebrate it enough. Or Know and that's just a feature of the divisiveness of right now. That's true about a lot of different things that we celebrate and don't celebrate, right? Yeah, well, and that's what I mean of it being confusing on all sides, right? Like, You know, for some, it's just, oh, to celebrate that, it means, or to even commemorate it or remember it.
And I think those words, by the way, should all have meaning in how we think about this. You know, to do that is woke. No, that's not necessarily any more true than to say that America had a history of racism and slavery and the legacy of it was devastating and destructive for America and Americans. And it had a really long tail that carried out for decades and in some ways still today. That's observably true, but you don't have to talk about race the way That in some ways, for example, Juneteenth celebrations sometimes are a new segregated reality.
You're not allowed to be a part of this because it has something to do. With you know, this it it belongs to another group of people.
Well, that that that's that's That's the corrupting it from the other direction. And both of those things are wrong. And we need to be able to, and Christians, by the way, should be able to look at history. in a way that gets us at the truth. In a way that secular theories of history, Marxist views of history, Uh racialized views of history.
Feminist views of history and all the other kind of critical theories. of history uh do not. And I think we should show the way that way and do it courageously. And do it. I get the skittishness, though, trust me.
Well, John, that's going to do it for our show this week. I can share a recommendation here really quick. I think you already shared yours. I'll just really quickly recommend. A story I had on the world and everything in it this week.
It was on yesterday's show on Thursday this week. I did a little story about what it's like to learn the violin as a grown-up alongside two very young girls who are excelling at it much more quickly than I am. And it was a really fun piece to do and my daughters are very excited because they're famous now because you can hear them playing their violin on The World and Everything in it, which is their favorite show. And they especially loved that Myrna Brown introduced the segment because they love Myrna.
So shout out Myrna and go back and Myrna's a Colson fellow, by the way. Did you? Oh no, so is her husband just got commissioned. And her husband as well. She rocks.
So go back and listen to the Bear girls playing their violins on this week's The World and Everything in It on Thursday. Otherwise, thank you so much for listening to Breakpoint This Week from the Coulson Center for Christian Worldview. I'm Maria Bear alongside John Stone Street. Have a wonderful weekend and we'll see you all back here next week.
