You're listening to Breakpoint This Week, where we're talking about the top stories of the week from a Christian perspective. Today we're going to talk about a new women's convention trying to retake the moniker of feminism. We're also going to talk about another case of violence involving the abortion drug. We have a lot to get to this week. We are so glad you're with us.
Please do stick around. Welcome to Breakpoint This Week. From the Coulson Center for Christian Worldview, I'm Maria Baer, alongside John Stone Street, president of the Coulson Center. John, this past weekend, I got to hang out. with none other than your eldest.
and lots of other amazing smart women in Rochester, New York for The first annual Women's Convention, very understated title, but this was a nod to, of course, the 1948, sorry, 1848. uh Seneca Falls Convention in which women met and some men To declare a Declaration of Sentiments in which they asserted that they should have the right to own their own property and to vote, among other things. And this was a really, really special Did you get a rundown on it from your daughter? A little bit of one. I mean, I think it's an interesting idea on a couple of levels.
You know, I think the statement that was released that you signed, and a whole lot of other people signed, was an attempt to. articulate a vision of what it means to be A woman, and it's interesting that they played off of a number of historical things, including the. Independence, the celebration of the 250th anniversary of independence by making a A statement of interdependence. In other words, that we need each other. Women need men, men need women.
We need our children, children need us.
So I think that that's a really interesting take. Um I think that uh Yeah. Kind of points to some of the complicated history of feminism. You know, where it began and where it ended are very, very different places. Along the way, some ideas were put into place that undermined the cause pretty.
directly and undermined some of the progress that was made. Said just recently it's is least something that is going to be The matter for historians or people looking back on this, and it would be interesting if it weren't so serious how a movement. That started by trying to give women equal rights, ended up as a. a movement and that in some ways have been hijacked. Bye.
You know, those who wanted men to have access to women's spaces. It's just a very unexpected twist, I guess you could say. But that doesn't mean that the answer is to be anti-woman or be anti- even feminist, at least in terms of first wave feminism.
So, I think it's a really noble case. It was a very interesting lineup of individuals who are very, very smart. I'm sure you appreciated. uh that and I I I thought that Abigail Favali's Take that, you know, so much of how we think about men and women begins by talking about what's above the neck. And that is very much under dispute or in dispute what that means.
But if we could start with what's below the neck, I mean, in other words, what we actually know are the bodily realities of male and female. Which I think was the case that she was trying to make. I thought that was a fascinating observation that has a lot of, it could take us a lot of interesting places.
So. Anyway, that's my thought. I always love. Any movement that's trying to create some constructive alternatives, that's trying to recover things, I think we need a new. Feminism, certain religious leaders have said that from previous popes to others.
I think that's probably true. And so yeah, I was fascinated by the idea of it. I think that was part of the motivation was to create some kind of new feminist movement.
So this was largely hosted by the Fairer Disputations crowd.
So that's Erika Bakiochi, who is extremely brilliant, and she's at Arizona State. And she's been on Sarah's podcast, on the Strong Women podcast before, and just a brilliant woman and thinker and theologian and feminist writer. Their idea was really to, they call themselves sex realist feminists, and that unfortunately needs to be said. I don't think that the feminist of the Seneca Falls Convention would have imagined it needed to be said, but it does, because we are starting from the premise that a woman is a female human who is made distinctly differently from a male human. And actually, what you said about that distinction between below and above the neck was one of the, I would say, hottest button conversation pieces at the weekend.
What I loved, one of the things I loved about this weekend was that it was, I don't, I have probably 150 or so. I'm really notoriously bad at estimating crowd size. But 150 or so really, really smart women. With some really distinctly sharp disagreements, but everybody was. Encountering everybody else with such charity that it felt like a genuinely free space to disagree smartly with people.
And I've always been, shocking no one, a kind of woman who doesn't shy away from disagreements and likes having conversations like that.
Some women don't like to, some men don't like to. This happened to be a group, maybe that self-selected as a lot of women who were ready to have. Difficult conversations, and there were some sharp disagreements, including over Louise Perry's talk the first night of the conference, in which she talked about above-the-neck differences between men and women. And you know, she she started by giving this example of like the features of the face.
So, if you see a person with a prominent nose, you do not necessarily know whether you're looking at a man or a woman yet. But there are, there's like law of averages and bell curves and whatever else that could govern mostly the people with larger noses tend to be men and the people with smaller noses tend to be women. And she said there's, you know, then you take them cumulatively. And of course, then you need to talk about genitalia and sexual reproductive organs and all of that to get to what, you know, specifically identifying biologically a woman or a man. But she was like, there's a reason you could look at a face.
And more or less with You know, pretty good accuracy determines whether you're looking at a woman or a man without knowing about their reproductive organs. And she says the same is true for personality traits. And this was where things got a little dicey because then she was talking about things like assertiveness and agency and disagreeability. and empathy and compassion and nurturing versus leadership. And you she didn't quite get into leadership, but that led to some really sharp disagreements.
And I think in a really helpful way, because then we were talking about You know, women who have the responsibility to advocate for other women, and you know, given the positions that they hold or the personal assertiveness that they have. But what it really got down to was this opportunity to say, That part of What I think Erica and others are calling for in this new way forward for sex realist feminism is that women are called to develop. their own virtues. just as men are called to develop virtues, and that it is impossible to do that as women. without Being women.
And without being. significantly more vulnerable than men. by nature of being women. And also by being beholden to each other. And that's where you get the doctrine of interdependence: that we can't flourish and fully develop our virtues.
In a silo or in a vacuum, neither can men, no human person can, and we also can't develop virtues without being women as we develop them. And so I think they were kind of responding to.
Some existential You know, threats, some of them more serious than others, that come from both the ideological left and the ideological right. And I think the threats coming from the ideological left include like refusing to say what a woman is and the forced centrality of so-called abortion rights as a hallmark of feminism, which I think has turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. And then threats from the right, which include things like: perhaps women shouldn't have as many rights as men, perhaps they shouldn't have the right to vote, for example. You know, and I think this was a really positive. Way of like asserting what we think is a good way forward.
And the other thing I wanted to share that I was moved by this weekend is that. There was kind of a At first, this seemed strange, but the more I've reflected on it, it seems perfectly appropriate. There was a a real emphasis on Mentoring other young women. And really diving into in-person embodied friendships with each other. And that could seem like kind of not as serious as the task to which we're calling ourselves.
But I actually think that for all virtue formation, that is really the crux of it. And that includes serving your immediate family and your immediate neighborhood. But it also is something you talk about a lot, which is being called to a certain time and place. You can't cultivate virtues by sitting in a virtual world. And thinking lofty thoughts about virtue formation.
They are cultivated. Through habits. And the habits that cultivate them are played out in our relationships to others, and I thought that was. If this movement is going to succeed, if any movement is going to succeed, it will require that. Yeah, it'd be interesting to see.
It's a heavy lift to start a new movement, it's a heavy lift to. save something that's gone so far off track. It's a heavy lift to Actually, you know, try to do something new, but it's a noble attempt and truth is big enough to hold it. And so I'm a big fan of anybody who tries to do it. I think as you mentioned too, especially on the right, we've got people condemning Feminism and where it's gone, and in the process, condemning women, and actually coming up with really bizarre and unnecessary.
And dehumanizing ideas uh of things that have gone off track. And I think almost always that comes when we are pointing fingers at other people instead of recognizing our own. fallenness and our own sin. And so I I'm grateful for the attempt. I thought that the if anything, that the statement that many people signed, some people chose not to, but many people signed, The statement is probably worth considering.
If nothing else, again, if this never if there's not a second annual, if this was a first annual and done, I hope not. I hope it continues. You know, there's still a real value in clarity. And that's something that we certainly believe at the Coulson Center that. You know, taking the time, if our thinking is muddled, the most practical thing you can do.
Is try hard to think more clearly. You know, some people sometimes ask us, like, well, practically, what can we do to change the world?
Well, the first thing you got to do is think correctly. And so I appreciate that.
So Godspeed to the movement and may it have more days. Yeah. I will just give a plug to early on. Certainly read the Declaration of Interdependence. It's available online now and form your own thoughts about it.
But they're also going to make available some of the talks from the conference. And the interview with Ayan Hirsiali was. really incredible. And whatever you imagine she might have said, I can almost guarantee she will surprise you by what she said. And it was really remarkable.
She was more open and honest about her personal life than I've ever heard her be before. And I think that's. Because her worldview that she has today, including her belief in Christianity. Can't really be arrived at without describing her personal experience. And so that was really, really special to get to hear that.
And then also just to hear her experience, obviously, as a woman who grew up under the most Possibly. I mean, maybe outside of China. But or maybe on par with China, some of the the most um anti- you know, human rights cultures in the world. You know, she grew up in a fundamentalist Islamic family in Somalia and escaped that in her early 20s. And then quickly became disillusioned in the Netherlands with the kind of feminism I think you're describing, that sort of second wave feminism that got really strangely mixed up in So-called abortion rights while ignoring some of the most obvious threats to women's rights, including fundamentalist Islam, in service to like a critical theory situation, which.
Has just more and more proved itself incompatible with actual sex realist feminism. And I think that's what she discovered.
So her talk there, her interview with Erica Bakiyoki, will be available at some point and will. We'll have to share that when it comes available because it was really extraordinary. Before we break, though, I do want to ask if you've seen this news from my home state.
So usually when we're talking about people behaving badly, we're talking about your home state. And I will allow people to draw their own conclusions about that. of Colorado. But today we're going to talk about Ohio because there was a A man who was a surgeon here in Ohio who was just sentenced to prison.
Somehow, just six months in prison, and then I think two years of probation. But this was a surgeon, an OBGYN. who was convicted for Obtaining the abortion pill regimen. and then forcing it down his girlfriend's throat. And my understanding is, he's also facing new charges now, also, on mail fraud, because he used his.
Ex-wives or estranged wife's personal information to obtain these drugs. and then force them on his girlfriend. I wanted to highlight this story, John, for a reason that we've talked about before, which is we've talked about the dangers of the abortion drugs, but the way they are being given now. Under the relaxed rules under the Biden administration, which says that we can get them over telemedicine without having an in-person appointment, has created basically what amounts to a free-for-all and has continued the legacy of abortion, which is allowing men. to victimize women.
Now sometimes abortion is involves a woman's choice as well, and women bear culpability for that too. I'm not suggesting that abortion is only ever coercive, but this has continued that legacy in, I think, kind of an unforeseen way.
Well, I think the other part of the story, too, is that in the trial of this surgeon... He was found guilty, uh but sentenced to only Six months or something like that? Is that is that is that how the story went? Six months and two years probation, yep. Yeah.
I mean, I think that's a, you know, points to a number of things. You know, you know, first, I think part of this is the legacy of the opposite human value that is being expressed in the sexual revolution, and it's something that I Clearly, with the idea of interdependence, this group of women we're trying to push back on, and that is this. you know, this magical right to privacy that's found that some Supreme Court justices found in the Constitution, these issues of autonomy. uh that we should have You know, no one should be looking over our shoulder. We shouldn't have to answer or be accountable to anyone else to do exactly what we want to do.
And when you enter that into the The kind of the cultural waters, it's kind of hard to know when does that stop. Like it's just us and no one else. And then when people actually live that out in such a violent and vile kind of sort of way. It ends up being a problem. And what drove forward the whole process of chemical abortion.
And particularly the move of the FDA to make it available without having to actually see a medical professional.
So that you could actually just access it through telehealth and then access it through the mail, that then what you're doing in the name of privacy is actually removing these forms of accountability. You know, I remember years and years ago when I first read about a Plan B machine. in a or a Plan B vending machine at the at a at a state university. And of course That's a really convenient, easy way for uh young women uh who who may have had a Too much to drink the night before to not have to live forever with the consequences of that kind of bad decision, so to speak, which is kind of how it was all sold. But you know what it also did is that means without ever having to actually be accountable for their behavior, they could get that taken care of.
And not only that, but if. If they are the victims of the kind of abuse that we're talking about here, then the man could actually access that and pressure and even, as in this case, coerce a woman to do that.
So it does make possible the victimization of women. And some, what it also, by the way, takes this right to privacy to a level which actually isn't healthy because we're actually not radical individuals, we actually are. Interdependent. We actually are in relationship with other people. And when you deny that, then you set up systems to deny that, then I think you're going to have unforeseen consequences.
And that, I think, points to the other thing in this, which just was so stunning. I mean, why would we talk about a story that's so horrible? And then, you know, how is that speaking to? The whole issue.
Well, I think it is in this issue of privacy. I think it is in kind of what the the values that drove the whole FDA reversal on this or the FDA policy on this forward. I think it speaks to that. Six months is insane. This is an insane ruling on any level, right?
No matter what you think he was guilty of, how do we get to six months? You know, if he was So violent and assault. I mean, at the very least, we're talking assault here by any stretch of the imagination. And that's more. Within six months and two years on many occasions.
It's just a bizarre ruling. And I go to something that we've talked about before: that somehow, because sexuality has been elevated as identity, as it's become kind of the key aspect of who we are and how we think about right and wrong and so on, suddenly. Sex plays by different rules in almost everything else. If you involve sex or abortion, Suddenly, it's like the rules don't apply here. The rules of common courtesy, the rules of expectations.
And this is a real, real problem, I think, for the FDA's. A policy, the mail order policy.
So, I don't know how what are all the backdoor connections here if somebody has an ideological commitment to this or that or the other, but my goodness. This makes no sense. You know, we talked recently just quickly on it was a week you weren't here about. If you think about the Clancy trial, if you think about this, now we have kind of a set of. you know, that that that kind of demonstrate This idea that when it comes to the sexual revolution, we got to throw all the rules outside the window.
Or out the window, and then just move forward. It's a really odd and bizarre thing. And a sad thing, I think, to to witness. But what a horrific story. I just think if there ever were a time for feminists to Of whatever ilk to rise up and say, This isn't okay, it would surely be a man.
Forcing a woman. There hasn't been any sort of public outcry. No, anyways. All I can conclude is that it's for exactly the reason you're saying, which is that.
Somehow, in this bizarro world that we're in, abortion has become so central to progressive feminism that they won't touch it. And if that's if your worldview won't allow you to condemn something like that, then it's time to question your worldview. And that that's all I can say. I d I don't know how else to understand uh this. The ruling or the situation that led to it.
I mean, this should be the beginning of a. A d you know, the next chapter of the Me Too era, because this is not the first time that this has happened. There are other cases where people have either men have either been convicted already or are going through the criminal court system for illegally obtaining this medication and then giving it to their partner, either without them knowing or forcefully. It like it's officially a pattern is happening. And I think it you know w what needs to be said is that that's not what makes this abortion pill regimen wrong, right?
The abortion pill regimen is wrong on its on its own account uh because it takes the innocent life of a child. And as you mentioned earlier, women themselves are responsible if they make that moral decision. Absolutely. But this kind of policy, the way we approach this as abortion is untouchable, as you put it, will enable all kinds of other things and certainly will enable the sin nature of men to be like what men sometimes do, which is be abusive to women and to use abortion as a way to get out of moral responsibility for their own behaviors. That seems to be the case here.
Yeah. And you get yourself you'd have to tie yourself into a pretzel because if you're if you refuse to accept the interdependence of everybody and you you look at a a woman and say she should not have to carry a pregnancy because she should have the right to To determine with no limits to whom she is dependent and who is dependent upon her, then how do we not extend the same right to the man involved in the situation? And I think to be logically consistent, you'd have to. And so if a man does not want a woman to be dependent on him. Or a child to be dependent on him, then what are his limits in terms of mitigating that dependence?
If you value and you see that all human life requires interdependence, then you can quickly see how this becomes irrational and frankly violent, which is what we're seeing. Let's take a quick break, John. We'll be right back with more at Breakpoint this week in just a moment. Hey, John Stone Street here. I want to say thanks for listening to Breakpoint, and I want to invite you to the 2027 Colson Center National Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, June 4th to the 6th, 2027.
This year, we're going to talk all about what it means to pursue wisdom. We live in an age of information overload, and it's easy to confuse information or the access to information with wisdom. But as the church, God calls us to pursue wisdom with urgency, and even better, He promises to always provide wisdom when we ask for it. At the Colson Center National Conference 2027, we're going to be joined by speakers like Dr. Robbie George, Malcolm Geith, Amy Orr Ewing, Henry Kaisner, and more.
These folks can equip us on how to apply God's wisdom across our lives, in our various spheres of influence, and across the cultural challenges that face us in this moment. You don't want to miss it. Please register before. November 30th, so you can receive up to 50% off ticket prices. We sold out last year.
I'm expecting we will sell out again, so don't miss this special deal before November 30th. For more details, go to colsonconference.org. That's colsonconference.org. We're back on Breakpoint this week. John, I want to talk about education now.
So there's been a firestorm. I don't use that word lightly because I find it annoying cliche, but I think there has been a veritable firestorm this week. Over a piece by Nicole Hannah-Jones, who most people will recognize her name probably as one of the chief architects behind the 1619 project, but she's a writer with the New York Times. And she wrote a piece this week about how her commitment to sending her daughter to a public school. Um in the interest of both racially integrating the school, but also in trying to improve the public education system from within, as she put it.
She now worries her daughter is 16 and she now worries that she You know, in a way that you've characterized before, she made her daughter a missionary. She sacrificed the educational needs of her daughter, including the safety needs. on the altar of this bigger project of being For lack of a better word, woke, right? And she's, she wrote this piece. you know, kind of humbly admitting the issues that she saw in her daughter's public school.
that I guess she never listened to anybody claiming were the issues before, which were that. You know, crazy disciplinary activities were not being disciplined, that kids were being given A's, including her daughter, and passing classes that they should not have been passing because they weren't learning the information they were supposed to learn. And that, you know, the more she, as a parent, tried to get involved and ask. For better attention and more scrutiny on the kids' work, she was rebuffed. And You know, it really seems like she discovered what a lot of people had criticized beforehand, which was that these public schools are failing kids.
You know, at some level, I'm. There has been a lot of talk about whether what she did was noble in admitting she was wrong, or whether she was just kind of using it now that. Her daughter's college resume has been so deeply harmed that this is a way to get around that and still get her into. A good college. I heard some commentators talk about that.
I think that's a pretty cynical take. But but I also think about You know, whether she deserves at least a little bit of credit for being a true believer. I mean, how many times over the last Couple years have we heard people make similar statements? Like, if you don't take advantage of your local public school, then you're robbing. the community and this is a way of advancing racism or whatever.
And there's so many people who appeal to the public to send their kids to the public school and yet you find out later that their own kids are in private school or their own kids are taking advantage of some choice programs because they realize what's at stake. And here you have someone who's at least a true believer. You know, she believed that it was her moral duty to support the local public school. It was her moral duty to send her own kid, not to use her position in any way to have some kind of privilege. And now her daughter apparently realizes that she, how did she put it in the piece?
I mean, her daughter really is upset about the missed opportunities that she was not able to take advantage of. I thought it took a good bit of, I don't want to say courage, but at least like I respect admitting like, hey, this was a big problem. And this is where my ideas about reality and reality didn't align. But I have a bigger interest in mind, and that is, look, I have been an advocate right now of any cracks in the system when it comes to the status quo for education in America. We need to point them out.
We need to, you know. Put a crowbar in the middle of those cracks and try to pry them open and make it worse so that people can actually see what's on the ground. I thought that there's a lot in this piece that we can point to. You know, for example, that. A big problem here is the behavioral problems of students.
That points to something That happens before the school. That points to the family.
So the breakdown of the family and how that leads to the problems in education is a direct line. And I think that needs to be highlighted. Even more importantly, which is You know, you almost never, never hear this because we're never supposed to say out loud that a teacher who is supposed to be a kind of among the most noble individuals in history, and you're never supposed to say, Hey, something's wrong here when it comes to educators, she did. And uh, You know, I think that's an overdue statement. I'm a fan of teachers.
I come from a family of teachers. I have. I am a teacher. I have been a teacher. And I think we have to call a spade a spade.
There are wonderful teachers, incredible teachers who are creative and innovative and have. I think a rightly ordered mind when it comes to what learning is supposed to be about. And there's a big old disaster. In education, when it comes to teacher training, when it comes especially to The master's in education. Listen, the higher up you get in learning.
Education, I guess. I don't know how you say it, but. If you get a master's in education, you have learned less. about what kids need to know. Do you have learned a whole lot more?
about a certain theory of teaching. There was a whole survey done on this by the American Enterprise Institute. I put it in a commentary this past week called What Are They Teaching the Teachers These Days? We always talk about what are they teaching our kids these days? What you need to be looking at is what they're teaching teachers these days.
Because you have entire programs dedicated not to learning more about specific things that kids need to know, but learning more about these kind of theories about what it means to be human that are problematic. And here in this piece, Uh there was a clear you know willingness to say, look, some of these teachers were bad teachers. And I think we need to hear more of that. I think we need to get off this kind of we can never say anything bad about teachers if they're not performing, if they're not doing their jobs.
Some of what she was talking about was just teachers not even showing up to school. I mean, there was certainly critique of their teaching styles in here, but I think teachers' unions is another big part of it.
Well, of course, and that goes way back. And I think the innovation that has come in the last couple of decades, it's a pretty remarkable thing. And I don't want to downplay it. That this This is a new place we're at culturally with an opportunity to disrupt the system and to introduce better. And new ideas.
I was at meetings, you know, where we were trying to figure out how do we. kind of you know, create space in this place where there's such a stranglehold by Progressives and anti-Christian ideologies in education. And people were like, wouldn't it be great if we could. You know, have our tax dollars follow the kids and not just go directly. And people were like, yeah, that'd be great.
But it honestly seemed like an impossibility to achieve. And here we are a decade later or 15 years after some of those initial conversations, and it's been largely achieved in many states. And others are seeing that it's actually a good idea, not a bad idea, because it does two things. Number one is not only is it increased choice and therefore competition and that helps, but it actually puts the control back in the hands of parents. And what you're seeing between these two theories is theory that says, no, really, parents should make the hard decisions on behalf of their own kids, and that level of self-interest in their own kids will improve the system.
Or you're having people say, no. kids really belong to the state and the state knows best and we need to keep the parents out of it. And when you put into the system actual strategies that reflect these two different beliefs, you get very, very different outcomes.
Well, and the addendum to that is that that other belief that says the kids belong to the state, they may assert that. But then on top of it, they assert. through function. That the purpose of a state organization like the public education system is to keep adults employed. and happy.
That that's how it that's how it plays out. They might not say that, but that is how it plays out. When you combine those two things, it's a disaster. That's what's happening in the public education system. Right.
I mean but it's anytime you you you remove accountability, right? And there's not accountability built into the system. Uh, you know, this is what a lot of colleges are seeing with tenured professors with grade inflation. There's not an incentive for them to get better at their job, there's not a sense that they actually need to improve, there's not even a sense. You know, other than the publisher-perish push, that they each need to stay up with their discipline.
I think that's a hit or miss, depending on. where you're at. But if you're at an institution where you're not at least encouraged to publish for public notoriety and grant funding and that sort of stuff, then there's really no incentive for you to actually stay up to speed and get better and be innovative in your ideas. That higher education.
So, this is a multi-layered problem. Starts at the beginning, goes to the end. And, you know, humans should never have structures without accountability. That just should be, you know, a no-brainer. There is an incentive to continue getting better in your field and to be a good teacher when nobody's watching.
And that is. The incentive toward excellence and virtue formation, but that requires self-governance. And we're not particularly good at that. We're struggling with that. Idealism and some would say naivete.
So we're struggling to find. Like a corporate motivation toward self-governance. Which then requires accountability if we don't have it and we don't develop it. And that's where we are.
Well, look, I mean, you know, the question is: should we be sending Christians into these public schools and all that? And the answer is teachers, absolutely. Because honestly, it's like I tell my kids right now: if you can look an adult in the eye and you can work really hard and you commit to doing something and then you actually do it. That's not only the right thing to do, which it is, but you know what? You're going to be better than all your peers because they don't know how to do that.
And, you know, my daughters, for example, I've entered the workforce and they found that. I mean, you know, in their. And there are more honest moments they're willing to tell me, Dad, you were right about this, that, you know, actually in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, you know. If everyone's bad, then better than bad is good. And that's not what we should pursue, but my point is, is that there is a real opportunity for leadership within education.
For Christians, if we start with the sort of ideas and and understanding an approach to reality. that will will feed into a vision of improvement and excellence and so on. And I'm not saying you have to be a Christian to be a great teacher. There are people who are really skilled who are not. And again, there are wonderful teachers that are out there and there are wonderful educational leaders that are out there.
There's a you know a tremendous woman in and Brittain, who spoke at the recent art conference talking about this. I don't get the sense that she's a believer, but she is hammering away at some of the failures of education and where we can go from here.
So I'm I'm a fan of all that. I just think Christians of all people should have the intellectual resources, the motivation, the vision of what it means to be human. the high view of knowledge that can take us forward. Mm-hmm. Agreed.
Well, John, I want to pivot now to a story that was in the New York Post a couple of weeks ago, but we've kind of popped in and out of this developing research over the last couple of years. But this is about. This claim that unless we indulge the transgender ideology, particularly of young people, that we will. have to deal with a suicide epidemic. that if we don't offer gender medical clinics.
Everything from hormone therapy to to sex mutilating surgeries. particularly for minors. that the only possible other outcome is a rise in suicide deaths among kids who are dealing with gender dysphoria. And that claim has been made by WPATH and others for years. It's been asserted as the reasoning behind these gender clinics and the necessity of them.
And why it's so evil to challenge them. But more and more researchers are looking into that claim and looking for the data. And it turns out, more and more, the data suggests those claims are wildly misleading, that actually. among youth who struggle with their gender dysphoria. The suicide rates.
For it. Those kids who grow into adulthood. are not statistically different from the suicide data. of kids who grow into adulthood who don't struggle with gender dysphoria and do not. get this sort of medical intervention.
There is a you know, statistically significant Increase in suicide risk among people who deal with gender dysphoria generally. But the medical intervention piece Does not have a statistical influence on the outcome of that, if that makes sense.
So basically, these claims are being disproven again and again the more we study them. Yeah. Well, again, I don't know what else to say about this one other than here we go again. I mean, this has been a number of studies that continue to point to this. There was never really a good source for.
The claim to begin with that was made by medical professionals, that was made by Educational professionals, school counselors, and so on. You know, I I I've met parents who were told Do you want a live son or a dead daughter? This is part of Chloe Cole's story. She told it at the Colson Center National Conference last year. Like, this was a threat used against parents over and over and over and over again.
And it turns out that there was no grounds. For the threat, but can you imagine something that? Because what you actually done now is you have. made it impossible. for a parent who believed the initial threat, right?
To ever admit that they were wrong on the second front. You're actually walking a parent into a lifetime of guilt and shame. Here's what I mean. Let's say that you were convinced just deep in your heart. that your your your child who obviously and clearly was struggling Would kill themselves if they did not go through this medical treatment.
Uh that was claimed to be Researched and secure and proven and tested and so on. And so you've actually walked through some interventions in your child's development. That ended up being Irreversible, that ended up being permanent, that at very least did something where it created some. maybe sterility for the rest of their life. They'll never be able to Have a child, maybe they'll never be able to experience sexual pleasure.
That's an outcome that we have seen for young children. who have gone all the way through transitioning or maybe you walked all the way through The amputation of completely healthy body parts. And the reason that you did it was because a doctor looked at you and said, If you don't do this, then your child's going to kill yourself.
So you've walked all the way down that path, and now you see this and you say, They made this stuff up. That there was actually never any ground for them to level this level of a threat at me on behalf of my kid. I mean, I just think this this there should be even more malpractice suits. I said it before. Whenever I say it, people get upset.
They write in and say, you can't say that. I'm going to say it. There are medical professionals that need to go to prison for this. I mean, that's what they did. They threatened a parent.
into embracing this permanent damage to a child. What's a parent supposed to do now on the on the tail end of hearing all this? You know? I mean, they're they're they're so far, you know, now down this dark tunnel. of their child's story.
It's absolutely horrific and the reason is because they were threatened. They were threatened with this myth. Yeah. Well, you've talked about this before, and I think it's a good time to be reminded of it that there is going to be an opportunity here for the church too to welcome people. who've been through this and maybe who even made those decisions because You're right.
I can't imagine being in that position. At the same time, you know, the stakes vary. These stakes in this particular case are so high. Like, what. What these kids are facing for the rest of their life.
is so immeasurable. I mean the harm is is immeasurable. But every parent. At every level, it has to make decisions with the best information that they have at the time. And I mean, I would hope that this would be informative in terms of our worldview.
Like the idea that you could ever accept that mutilating your body or. You know, in service to your mind, whatever be healthy, like that premise should be challenged and should change. That should have never been, you know, entered our mind regardless of what a doctor was telling us at the time. But every parent has had to make the best decision they can with the information they have at the time. And this is an opportunity, I think, for.
churches and for Christians to offer grace To people who found themselves in that position. I mean, there's no other way out of it, right? I mean, you're not going to find it by now all of a sudden trying to. You've essentially done to your child the worst thing that can possibly be done to your child. Maybe you allowed it to happen or maybe you actually encouraged it.
I mean, I I don't know how you live with that as a mom or a dad. I know. That's it's gotta be tough. But I think you're right too that there needs to be malpractice after malpractice after malpractice suit, and that at the very least, the people who did this should not be able to practice medicine anymore, but they still are. And a lot of these gender clinics have closed.
But The doctors have simply been reassigned to other parts of medical practice, and that needs to be something we don't let up the attention on. At this point, John, let's take a quick break. We'll be right back with more Breakpoint this week in just a moment. Christian Educators, this is Billy Hutchinson with Colson Educators. And as a former teacher myself, I know you're busy, and I know you want to teach like a Christian, not just be a Christian who teaches.
Well, that's why we created the Colson Educators app. You can get practical worldview training wherever you are, complete courses on your schedule, earn CEUs, and connect with a community of like-minded educators. Download the Colson Educators app on the Apple App Store or Google Play. Welcome back to Breakpoint this week. John, I want to talk now about Greenups.
Do you remember the Kanye song? No. Are you too old or too young to remember the Kanye song? There was a Kanye song that where he yelled, We want prenup or something. Hi his advice to young men everywhere was you better get a prenup because Otherwise, your uh wife will take half of everything you've got once you get divorced.
And that is exactly the kind of thinking going into a marriage that tends to weaken a marriage. Shocker. That's what the research has found. Institute for Family Studies did a piece recently that I was happy enough to be a part of looking at some of the data on prenuptial agreements. I was surprised to find that this has become something of a trend.
There are now like websites where you can set up your prenup at home, just like doing your taxes from the couch. There are influencers on TikTok and elsewhere. That host podcasts about prenup talk. And, you know, they're, it's really being framed as a sort of. Mostly a women's empowerment situation, but also more and more as like the very obvious Of course, everyone should get this before you get married.
If you are an enlightened, evolved, young adult who is entering into a marriage, and you don't want to be adult, then of course you will get a prenup.
Now Perhaps paradoxically, or not, depending on your worldview priors, I guess. The people who do get prenuptial agreements are statistically More likely to get divorced later in life or to report marital struggles. And Uh I think we can make some Really obvious assumptions from that. One of them. I kind of went down a rabbit hole when I was researching this piece that was really fun.
into some psychological studies. Including by Dan Gilbert, who's one of my experiments, he designs the coolest experiments. If you're ever bored, you've got to research Dan Gilbert. He designed one to study how people feel about the choices that they've made. And what he did was he.
Gathered a bunch of photography students from Harvard. And he said, You're going to pick one of your photographs from the last couple of weeks, and we're going to send it off for publication in a magazine. And for one control group, he said, You're going to pick your photo and hand it to me, and we'll mail it off. For a second group, he said Pick your photo, and then you have three days to really consider whether that's the photo you really want to go with. And then on the fourth day, I'll let you go back and look at it again and make sure that's the one you want to choose.
And then we'll send your final choice off to this magazine. And he found that the. kids who were given the option to change their mind. Regardless of what photo they ended up choosing, they were less satisfied with their choice afterwards. And the conclusion he came to from this and other research is that we are much happier creatures with a fixed choice than with.
an open mind. or with open-endedness. And that's kind of anathema to the the autonomy. Freedom means freedom from all restraint and freedom to all future choices mindset that governs a lot of. Marriage discourse right now.
But I think that helps explain why couples who enter a prenuptial agreement. who are by nature saying, That our commitment here. You know, we're not sure. We hope for the best, but we're not sure. Um they are more likely to struggle in their marriages.
Does that surprise you, John? No, I mean this is the innate rocket surgery, you know, kind of category to me. Like uh the old dude at my church used to say, um, it's obviously explainable, but it it it it you know, I Kind of growing up in an era where divorce was becoming more and more common. I mean, that was a big part of it. The the number of my friends, my demographic who ended up getting married and then getting divorced.
I mean, just a big part of it. Had to do. It's not all of it. I mean, sometimes you end up finding out, you know, horrible things.
Sometimes horrible things happen, you know, within a marriage, some even unexpected. You know, I've had some friends deal with. you know, everything from you know, unexpected deaths of children to brain injuries and how they chose to nav navigate that is, you know, you never put you make a vow, but you don't really put those plans into the system. that that it could be something like like like that But there were some. You know, where if divorce were an option going in, they were much more likely get divorced if it was even The kind of get out of jail free card that they were going to keep in their back pocket, you know, for years from now or whatever.
It ended up kind of becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. And those who went in saying, It's never an option, we're never going to do it. That ended up having a different outcome. I mean, I once had a conversation with a friend who. Whose husband had been unfaithful, and um, this friend asked, Well, What should I do?
And I'm not a counselor or anything like that. But she asked specifically, what does the Bible tell me to do? And I said, here's the ideal, and here's what. the Bible accommodates to and she went with the ideal. Uh I have have had a friend where the husband was unfaithful and divorce was just not in her her her was not an option for her.
And that from the very first day she made a decision. I'm not gonna let this marriage lose and now their family is beautiful and you know, now they're talking now there's a lot of grandkids involved and all kinds of other things. And it has to do with the decision made. It was a hard one for her. and a hard one for him.
But it was just basically, this is not an option. And then of course, I've got friends who got divorced for far less than something as terrible and dramatic as that.
So it's just it's it's it's an interesting thing to to to see. And a lot of this has to do with what do you think marriage is? What kind of relationship is it that we're talking about? And those, of course, are values that are culturally catechized, right?
So when you have an artifact like no-fault divorce, you have an artifact like cohabitation. You have an artifact like prenuptial agreements that they change how a culture sees the thing itself. And all of those things, I think, have had an impact of thinking about marriage as if it were an institute of adult happiness, as opposed to. uh an a a union for life between a man and A woman. And those artifacts are brand new.
I I don't want to say brand new, like brand new, brand new, but they're not that old in cultural history. And so we're now just really kind of seeing what those kind of cultural artifacts do to our imagination. That's what artifacts do. They make things thinkable, right?
So The printing press made thinkable the ideas of the Protestant Reformation. The pill makes thinkable the ideas of the sexual revolution. And these are artifacts that make thinkable certain ideas about marriage as temporary. And um They've had their impact. You know, we're in the process of moving right now and The process of looking for a house.
It starts out fun and then it just gets so stressful that it's hardly worth doing. I think we would have just lived in a hole at the end of it. But we did find a house that I'm really excited about. But it's not perfect and it doesn't have all the boxes that we had written. But the second we bought this house, I became Like anybody, just utterly committed to making this the best decision, right?
And so now I'm committed to making it beautiful and making it exactly how I think our family needs it at this moment. And I think that's what we tend to do when you make a commitment to something. You're also more likely than to do the sorts, to develop the sorts of habits and to do the sorts of things that make that work. and that make it beautiful and good. When you make a commitment with one foot out the door, and I don't know that everybody who enters into a prenuptial agreement is thinking about it necessarily that way, but you are planting a seed of an idea.
That there is an escape hatch, or there is at least a non-zero likelihood that this could end at some point, and that you would need to protect yourself financially or however else. It just changes the math with your fidelity to, you know, your motivation to make that thing as good as it possibly can be. The stakes of a marriage are far different than a house. I don't mean to say they're the same thing, but I do think that that's just a part of human behavior that once you enter, once you plant that seed, it does change the way things feel. And, you know, there are people who certainly, this is not a one.
Size fits all, or you know, this explains every single individual case. There are plenty of. Marriages that did not start with a prenup and ended in divorce tragically. And there are some that started with a prenup and they're still great.
So, you know, this isn't an explanation of everything by any means. Or you've like violated the sacredness of marriage by doing it, or it's a sin to have a prenuptial agreement. I just think your point is the salient one, which is that the things that we do. influence the way we conceptualize marriage. And this is one of those things.
Oh, Don, there was one other thing about marriage I wanted to ask you about. Did you see this really cute clip of Taylor Swift cheering on her husband at the football game last weekend? I did 80%. She says something like she like points to her ring and is like that was that's my husband down there.
Well, good for her because he had a great game and he hasn't been as consistent as he was in the past. I think Scott Van Pelt said that he had a how did he put it, a flashback game, you know, where it was like he was 20 years or you know, younger and he was playing the way he used to play and that sort of stuff. I don't have a whole lot of thoughts about that. I know people found it cute. I am very, very tired of seeing Taylor Swift every time the Chiefs play over and over and over again.
But I'm not a big fan.
So there are other people that are a big fan. People found it cute. People found it. And it's, you know, look, people found it even culturally significant that here you have, you know, maybe the most recognizable person in all of pop culture. As an example of a happy married woman and, you know, celebrating and staying, you know, doing the kind of thing that.
Happy married women do. And so that's a lesson.
So maybe, maybe God can use anything, including Taylor Swift, for his ultimate purposes. I think it's adorable. And I think you're being way too cynical. And I also just want to point out that in the only kind of cancel culture that I will endorse, the free press unearthed a tweet from Travis Kelsey in 2011. And the tweet just says, guys, I just gave a squirrel a piece of bread and it's straight.
Can't even get through it. It straight smashed it. I had no idea they ate bread like that. Hashtag Haha crazy. And I just think that Travis and Taylor can do no wrong.
If that's not the best tweet you've ever heard. then I don't know what to tell you. That's what Twitter was made for. And good for you guys. Enjoy it.
Enjoy married life. Um John, let me read one quick question to you that came from a listener this week. This was a comment on your breakpoint commentary about remembering the past and the gift of remembering the past. This person writes, You quoted many good examples in scripture and in culture regarding this need to remember the past.
However, Distinct from this teaching is Philippians 3, verse 13, which says, But I focus on this one thing. Forgetting the past. That is, of course, a paraphrase. But forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead. How do you respond to that?
Well, I don't think there's really a lot to respond to because all the commands and the way that the Old Testament points us to remember the work of God, remember the work of God, remember what God has done. As part of human history, is pretty clear, and this is a pretty clear teaching in terms of. I forget the bad person that I used to be and the bad things that I used to do because I'm a new person in Christ. I mean, we're just not, we're talking about apples and oranges. We're not talking about the same thing.
This isn't about history. This is about actually the power of God to be able to transform people in Jesus Christ. and that we should actually accept that new creation that we are.
So, yeah, I don't really think we're talking about the same thing here at all.
Okay, fair enough. One more question. Breakpoint has included comments for several years about the challenges facing the church in today's culture. At the Coulson Center National Conference, Ryan Burge painted a pretty gloomy picture about the future. Christian Smith has also rearranged his observations, suggesting things are worse in the church today than what he'd previously observed.
And these are statisticians talking about whether the church is growing, whether it's shrinking. Continuing this question, but then Glenn Stanton. Says observations about the dying church are a myth. I know the global picture is complex. But I would love to make a concise statement on what's failing and what's not to give a realistic picture.
when talking to others about the future of the church? Is that possible?
Well, it is it is a complex thing. And I think i it the church is God's plan A and there's not a plan B. And so what we believe about the church and its future is not going to be up to What statistics are finding? What they're going to, stats are going to tell us is what's happening right now. It's not going to point to the future.
We know what the future is because of what Christ. has told us um you know that his He'll build his church and the gates of hell won't stand against it. I mean, that's that's pretty clear. And through history, we've seen the church become more effective by shrinking, and we've seen certainly the church expand so that the message of the gospel has been spread virtually all around the world. Not quite, but almost.
So, I think all of that's really, really good news. I think what you can say is that there's interesting things happening with young men being attracted. That's part of a larger trend of young men wanting something more, wanting something deeper. I think rebelling against the meaninglessness. That's why some of it's taking good forms and some of it's taking troubling forms.
I think you're seeing the gospel continue to go into new places and some work being done, such as the translation of Holy Scripture into every heart language being done at a breakneck pace. That's going to be good news for the world. And we're also seeing the churches that require more, that have higher views of doctrine and higher expectations. Those are the ones that seem to be the most attractive, that people want something out of religion, not just something at a surface level. And I think that's good news, too.
Agreed.
Well, thank you to those of you who have sent in comments and questions for us to tackle here on Breakpoint This Week. If you would like to do that, you can go to ColsonCenter.org and click on contact us. We would love to hear from you. It could be a comment or a question or anything relating to something we've talked about or not. We'd love to hear from you.
Thanks so much for listening to Breakpoint This Week from the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. I'm Maria Bear alongside John Stone Street. Have a great week. We'll see you all back here next time. God bless.
