R. Albert Mohler Jr.'s Blog, page 341

The Briefing 10-08-14

1) Protests over fate of Ebola-infected nurse’s dog reveals drastic worldview confusion

Why Spanish nursing assistant is such a troubling Ebola case, CBS News (AP)

Fate of Ebola-Stricken Nurse’s Aide’s Dog Sparks Outcry in Spain, Wall Street Journal (Ilan Brat and Jeannette Neumann)

2) Significance of midterm elections underlined by radical abortion view of CO Senator Udall

In Colorado Debate, Mark Udall Says He Supports Abortion During the Eighth Month of Pregnancy, Weekly Standard (John McCormack)

3) Instructing teens on ‘sexual etiquette’ for sexting poor substitute for morality

‘Sexting’ is becoming the new norm for teenagers growing up, study finds, The Independent (Heather Saul)

Yes, even your child: New study shows sexting is the new first base. But don’t panic yet, Washington Post (Amy Joyce)

Maybe Sexting Is How Teenagers Will Learn About Consent, Slate (Amanda Marcotte)

4) Investment in wedding not equivalent to investment in marriage

Mega-Weddings: Why You Should Say ‘I Don’t’, Wall Street Journal (Brett Arends)

Transcript: The Briefing 10-07-14

The Briefing

 

October 7, 2014

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

 

It’s Tuesday, October 7, 2014.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Supreme Court rejects all 5 same-sex marriage appeals in major milestone of moral revolution

The news that came yesterday from the United States Supreme Court was the news that virtually no one was expecting. The news came in the most unexpected way when the Supreme Court announced that it was not going to take any – not even one – of the five appeals coming from five different states on the question of same-sex marriage. As recently as Sunday night, it seemed a sure thing that at some point, likely this week, the Supreme Court would announced not just that it was going to take one of these cases, but it would identify which one of these cases it was going to take. So the stunning surprise came yesterday when the Supreme Court announced that it was going to reject hearings on all five of these cases. This means that the United States Supreme Court yesterday decided not to act, and in failing to act it let stand lower appeals court decisions that had struck down same-sex marriage amendments in various states. And this means that the decision not to make a decision is actually perhaps even more far-reaching than if the court had decided to take one of these cases. And this requires a bit of explanation.

At the beginning of every Supreme Court term, the court announces which cases it is going to take on appeal from lower courts. These cases are granted what’s called a grant or writ of certiorari; which means that the Supreme Court is going to take up the case and eventually to decided it. In the shorthand of constitutional attorneys, the United States Supreme Court grants cert or says it’s going to take a case. It also fails to grant cert, and thus it makes the decision of a negative sort – stating that it’s going to let lower court decision stand. And that’s exactly what the court did yesterday, and it did so however in a way to caught nearly everyone by surprise.

In response to the decision yesterday, Adam Liptak of the New York Times said that the court had granted the proponents of same-sex marriage when he called a tacit victory. Richard Wolf of USA Today said that the court had decided to decide by not deciding. Josh Gerstein at Politico said that the Supreme Court had punted. Garrett Epps of the Atlantic said that the court’s decision not to take any of these cases meant that the fighter over same-sex marriage is over. Similarly Britt Hume told Fox News that this means that the issue of same-sex marriage is effectively settled.

Speaking of the effort to defend marriage as exclusively the union of a man and a woman, Britt Hume told Fox News “that’s just basically over.” He said quote,

“I think that, while the Supreme Court didn’t really take up the issue today, what it did, leaving intact these rulings against the bans and given the public opinion where it stands, that there’s just no political momentum on the side of this issue.”

He went on to say,

“This is as fast a reversal of public opinion that I’ve ever seen on a major issue, particularly one this contentious. And there’s now a constituency in both parties in favor of this. You have, of course, many liberals favor it. They constitute most of the Democrat party. And you have the libertarian element of the Republican Party, an important part of the Republican Party, favoring it as well. So it’s been a fast movement, but a bipartisan one.”

Hume’s comments are very interesting, not only because he speaks of the velocity of this change in public opinion but because he points out that the consensus that the issue simply now needs to go away is shared by both many Democrats and Republicans. The surprise here is of course those amongst the Republicans; for the Republican Party as recently as the last presidential election in 2012 overwhelmingly adopted a party platform that called for defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. This shows just how fast a political party can shift on an issue even so controversial and central as this. And of course it’s not fair to say that all Republicans have shifted, but there is a significant consensus building that the political battle is simply over. And on the other side of this you can predict a new Republican synthesis that will accommodate same-sex marriage as a legal reality. What happened on Monday represents a major milestone in our moral revolution and one that is going to have lasting and historical significance.

As recently as last weekend USA Today featured a cover story declaring the virtual certainty that the court would take up at least one of these cases and the paper declared that same-sex marriage is “a cause whose time has come.” Well it may be that this is a cause whose time has come when it comes to the larger culture, and that will be due to the massive moral shift that is now taken place – not just over the last several decades, but even in the last several months. But the nation’s highest court has decided that now is not the time for it to take up such a case. Faced with the opportunity either to stop same-sex marriage in its tracks or to hand down a sweeping decision tantamount to a new Roe v. Wade, the court took a pass. Some will argue that the court’s decision was a strategic choice intended to preserve its dignity and stature; already many defenders of natural marriage are doing their best to argue that the court’s refusal to take a case is better for the cause of marriage than a sweeping decision in favor of same-sex marriage. The proponents of same-sex marriage had hoped for just such a sweeping decision. As a matter fact, attorneys for the same-sex marriage cause were actually even jockeying for position, hoping to be the lead counsel on the case that would later be seen as the same-sex marriage Roe v. Wade.

But make no mistake, the proponents of same-sex marriage won this round and they won big. They didn’t get the sweeping coast-to-coast ruling they wanted, but what they got was perhaps even a faster track to the same result. Had the court actually taken one of these cases, the oral arguments would not have taken place until early 2015. The decision would not likely have come down until the end of next June, until then same-sex marriage would effectively be on hold. Now, the court’s decision to allow lower court rulings to stand sends an immediate signal; it’s full steam ahead for same-sex marriage coast to coast. Just keep in mind the math that is involved here. As of last weekend, 19 states plus the District of Columbia had legal same-sex marriage, the five states that were in play for the court’s decision today now find that they will have legal same-sex marriage; that would raise the number to 24. But to that you have to add six states because in allowing these decisions, made at the US Circuit Court of Appeals, to stand what now happens is that all of the states within those circuits are included in this decision. That means that right away, 30 states out of 50 will have legal same-sex marriage. Yesterday’s decision not to decide was actually a decision with huge and momentous consequences. The math has just gone from 19 to 30 in about 24 hours.

But there’s a bigger message that the court sent. The court’s decision also sent the message that the remaining federal courts are put on notice that same-sex marriage is now the expectation of the Supreme Court and no appeal in the question is likely to be successful or even heard. You can expect the lower courts to hear that message loudly and clearly and fast. There are challenges to the laws in the 20 remaining states, either the laws or the constitutional amendment, barring same-sex marriage. The signal sent today by the US Supreme Court is that those who are pushing for court challenges now have an open door and the court that will hear those challenges now have what amounts to an instruction from the Supreme Court: pave the way for legal same-sex marriage or eventually have your decisions reversed by the appellate courts, and if not by those courts than by the Supreme Court.

Yesterday will be remembered in US legal history for many years to come as a landmark day toward same-sex marriage, it was the day the nation’s highest court took one of the lowest paths of least resistance. It now seeks to maintain its prestige by avoiding the backlash the court experience in the aftermath of Roe V Wade; it wants to have its victory without taking further risk to its reputation. Given the recent remarks made by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, even some of the court’s most liberal justices wanted to avoid a backlash while achieving the same eventual result. Today’s announcement means of that their hopes were achieved. But the decision also indicates something further, it points to the vindication of Justice Antonin Scalia. I wrote about this at my website at AlbertMohler.com yesterday,

“When the Court handed down the decision striking down all state sodomy statutes in 2003 [the case was known as] Lawrence v Texas, Justice Scalia declared that it meant the end of all morals legislation. The majority opinion in that decision was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose legal reasoning was ridiculed by [Justice] Scalia in one of his most scathing dissents. Kennedy, said Scalia, had created ‘a massive disruption of the current social order,’ [he said] that it could not be stopped. Further: ‘Today’s opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium [that meansthat has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.’”

But in that same dissent Scalia wrote,

“This reasoning leaves on pretty shaky grounds state laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples.”

Furthermore he wrote,

“Today’s opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as a formal recognition in marriage is concerned. [Given Kennedy’s majority opinion, Scalia wrote] … what justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples?”

Justice Kennedy joined by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in a concurring opinion, both of those justices we need to remember were appointed by Republican Presidents. Both Justices Kennedy and O’Connor stated that their logic did not necessarily lead to same-sex marriage. But it was Scalia who was right, and his reasoning was vindicated yesterday.

Even more recently, Justice Kennedy was the author of the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in the Windsor decision striking down the federal government’s defense of marriage act. That decision handed down just in June of last year set the stage for today’s development in a big way. Once again, Justice Scalia saw it coming. He called the court’s decision to strike down DOMA jaw-dropping in both its audacity and its reasoning; then he offered these memorable words,

“As far as this court is concerned, no one should be fooled, it’s just a matter of listening and waiting for the other shoe”

The other shoe he was referencing there is the legalization of same-sex marriage. So what happened to the court or perhaps what didn’t happen is a direct vindication of Scalia’s warnings; he saw it coming and he warned us. What the courts majorities has now decided, evidently, is to allow shoes to fall at the hands of lower courts that will follow its reasoning and obey its signals. The news from the court today means a sad vindication for Justice Antonin Scalia; it means an even sadder day for marriage in America, and it means, no matter what you think you heard or didn’t hear from Washington, that the other shoe has dropped.

2) Article on pedophilia inadvertently shifts issue away from morality to medical

But if the news coming from Supreme Court yesterday wasn’t yet enough when it came to bad news, just consider the moral signal that was sent by a major opinion piece that was published in none other than the New York Times in yesterday’s edition. The article was written by Margo Kaplan, a professor of law at Rutgers University. And the title of her article basically says it all, the title is this: “Pedophilia: a disorder, not a crime.” One of the things we need to note, and I will not go into detail about this particular article, other than to say we should note that when something like this is described as a mental illness – and that is the central point of this article – it is basically shifted in terms of our contemporary culture away from being a moral issue to being merely a medical or a psychiatric issue.

I should state at the onset that this professor of law at Rutgers University is doing nothing to endorse pedophilia, doing nothing – I am sure she believes – to even lower the moral outrage at any kind of assault upon a child; but what this article does, whether the author intends it or not, is to shift the issue of pedophilia away from being a matter of right and wrong to be a matter of illness or non-illness, and that is a profound moral shift. It’s one of the most significant moral shifts that now takes place in the modern world. If you can take an issue and you can turn it into a medical problem, rather than a moral problem, than the culture can decide that it will deal with it in some way other than by moral means. And inevitably, this means that moral outrage against what should bring about that kind of outrage is lowered. And without going into any further detail about this issue, lets simply state this: any lowering of moral outrage on an issue like this, any diminishment of moral concern, any moral confusion on this issue whatsoever, is deadly dangerous – not only for individuals but for society at large. And in that light – it should send chills down our spine to know that a newspaper as respected as the New York Times ran this opinion article in yesterday’s edition.

3) ‘Need’ for online abortion class reveals medical professions distaste towards abortion

Then news comes from California yesterday that the culture of death now has a MOOC; that is a massive open online course. These courses, pioneered by major universities around the nation, have become very popular – if not with for credit students, than with the larger public. And now Samantha Allen writing for the Daily Beast informs us that,

“For the first time ever, an American university is offering a dedicated online course on abortion. Starting on October 13th, the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) will offer a six-week class called ‘Abortion: Quality Care and Public Health Implications’”[It’s going to be presented] through the online course platform Coursera.”

Samantha Allen explains,

“Operating primarily in a public health framework, the course will address patient-centered abortion care both during and after the first trimester before proceeding to examine obstacles to safe abortions and abortion access worldwide.”

Note just for a moment that when safe abortion is mentioned here it means safe presumably for the woman, certainly not for the unborn child. Why would such a course be necessary? Well, as it turns out, medical schools don’t want to present course material on abortion and most medical students don’t want to take it. As a matter fact a study done in 2005 of US medical schools revealed that less than a third of US accredited medical schools include even a single lecture focused on abortion during the clinical years of medical education; a 2009 survey also found that fully a third of North American medical schools do not include abortion education in preclinical courses either. Now let’s just pause for a moment to think about this – evidently medical schools charged with the medical education of future physicians, and the medical students themselves are not very interested in abortion; and for good reason, they have gone into the medical profession to heal, not to kill. And the very idea of abortion is at least so reprehensible in terms of a career trajectory that doctors don’t want to go into it and medical schools don’t want to teach it.

There is a basic moral lesson embedded in these statistics, and the medical profession’s long-standing abhorrence of abortion is underlined by the fact that most medical schools don’t want teach it now, and most medical students don’t want to take a course related to it. They certainly aren’t going to set the trajectory of their careers to have anything to do with abortion. And that creates a crisis for the pro-abortion cause and that’s why the University of California in San Francisco is deciding to offer this massive online course. And the agenda is actually made very clear in this article. The courses to be taught by Professor Jody Steinauer who told the Daily Beast,

“I think that if we can inspire even a small portion of the people who take the course to take steps in their communities to increase access to safe abortion and decrease stigma about abortion, then we have been totally successful,”

Note the moral imperative within her course description here. She’s saying that the purpose of the course will have been fulfilled if at least some of those who take the course, to use her words, do their part to decrease stigma about abortion. Make no mistake and just look at her words – that is a moral mission, not a medical mission. One paragraph in Samantha Allen’s article is more revealing than she must understand she writes,

“A stigmatized subject like abortion that barely receives adequate coverage at elite institutions could stand to benefit from an online format, providing educators like Steinauer with the flexibility, freedom, and time that teaching a controversial but important subject like abortion requires.”

Straightforwardly, what those words reveal is this: if a company is doing something that is so distasteful that it wants to keep it outside the view of the public, it takes that business offshore. A medical school determined to address the issue of abortion in its curriculum finds that the only way to really pull that off is to take the abortion course online. That should tell us something, the culture of death is determined to make headway – if they can’t make headway on campus, it will do it’s very best to make headway online.

4) Atlantic City’s massive Revel casino a poor gamble for city 

Finally, a parable being played out there in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Some days ago we discussed the fact that Atlantic City, New Jersey is experiencing a severe recession – even a depression – when it comes to the gambling industry. The industry that that community had pegged its hopes on, an industry that has always failed to deliver on its promises – both to the gambler, and as it turns out, to the community that hopes to profit by gambling. Several of the leading casinos in Atlantic City have already closed and there are others that are teetering on bankruptcy. But the most infamous of all was the one that is only two years old; and that is the bankrupt Revel Casino that was built at a cost of $2.4 billion just two years ago in hopes of revitalizing Atlantic City’s gambling industry. Let’s look at the math again; this was a massive casino, including a skyscraper hotel, built at the cost of $2.4 billion. It went bankrupt just a matter of weeks ago. And it sold over the weekend for $110 million. Now if you’re doing the math that means that those who gambled on this gambling casino lost 19 of every $20 in the transaction.

Meanwhile down the boardwalk in Atlantic City, the Trump Entertainment Resorts are trying to avoid bankruptcy by asking Atlantic City to give a forgiveness of $30 million in property taxes already owed. Now just consider that, these gambling enterprises were opened promising to bring massive millions of dollars into local coffers and now they’re asking in this case for $30 million out of the city just to stay in business and keep the lights on. Given all of this out of Atlantic City, it’s hard to imagine that anyone can take the claims of the gambling industry seriously. But just one state to the north in the state of New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo is going ahead with a bold proposal to expand gambling, and indeed even casino gambling, in that state. How that can be done with a straight face is virtually anyone’s guess, but then again that’s true of the whole picture of gambling. It fails to deliver on its promises every single time, but states and municipalities and others seem to go at it time and time again. And in so doing their simply duplicating what takes place in terms of how they sell gambling to the eventual customers who also, against all the odds, and against all the evidence, gamble their hard-earned money over and over again and lose, over and over again. In so doing, writ large, or writ small they simply confirm what the Bible has taught all along; sin always inevitably fails to deliver on its promises.

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information go to my website at AlbertMohler.com you can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boyecollege.com. I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

 

Reformed Theological Seminary Chancellors Forum: A Conversation on the Direction and Trends in the American Church

Will He Find Faith on the Earth? – Inauguration Sermon for Dr J. Ligon Duncan III

The Briefing 10-07-14

1) Supreme Court rejects all 5 same-sex marriage appeals in major milestone of moral revolution

Supreme Court Delivers Tacit Win to Gay Marriage, New York Times (Adam Liptak)

First Takes: Justices Decide Gay Marriage By Not Deciding, USA Today (Richard Wolf)

Why the Supreme Court punted on gay marriage, Politico (Josh Gerstein)

The Same-Sex Marriage Fight Is Over, The Atlantic (Garrett Epps)

The issue of gay marriage is now politically dead, The Right Scoop (Brit Hume)

Gay marriage, once inconceivable, now appears inevitable, USA Today (Richard Wolf)

The Vindication of Antonin Scalia — A Sad Milestone for Marriage and Morality, AlbertMohler.com (Albert Mohler)

2) Article on pedophilia inadvertently shifts issue away from morality to medical

Pedophilia: A Disorder, Not a Crime, The New York Times (Margo Kaplan)

3) ‘Need’ for online abortion class reveals medical professions distaste towards abortion

The Internet’s First Abortion Class, Daily Beast (Samantha Allen)

4) Atlantic City’s massive Revel casino a poor gamble for city 

Revel Casino in Atlantic City Is Sold to Real Estate Company, New York Times (Charles V. Bagli)

 

 

The Vindication of Antonin Scalia — A Sad Milestone for Marriage and Morality

A giant milestone in the moral revolution passed today when the U.S. Supreme Court turned down every single appeal from several states on the issue of same-sex marriage. This decision not to take at least one case under consideration stunned both sides in the same-sex marriage battle. Last weekend’s edition of USA Today featured a front-page story that declared the virtual certainty that the Court would take at least one of the cases and declared same-sex marriage to be “a cause whose time has come.”

Well, same-sex marriage may well be an issue whose time has come in the culture, due to the massive moral shift that has taken place over the last few decades, but the nation’s highest court has decided that now is not the time for it to take up such a case. Faced with the opportunity either to stop same-sex marriage in its tracks or to hand down a sweeping decision tantamount to a new Roe v. Wade, the Court took a pass.

Some will argue that the Court’s decision was a strategic choice intended to preserve its dignity and stature. Already, many defenders of natural marriage are doing their best to argue that the Court’s refusal to take a case is better for the cause of marriage than a sweeping decision in favor of same-sex marriage. The proponents of same-sex marriage had hoped for just such a decision, and attorneys were jockeying for position, wanting to be the lead counsel for the “gay marriage Roe decision.” But make no mistake, the proponents of same-sex marriage won this round, and they won big. They did not get the sweeping coast to coast ruling they wanted, but what they got was an even faster track to the same result.

Had the Court taken one of the cases, the oral arguments would not have taken place until early 2015, and the decision would not have been likely until the end of next June. Until then, same-sex marriage would be on hold to some degree. Now, the Court’s decision to allow lower court rulings to stand sends an immediate signal — it is full steam ahead for same-sex marriage coast to coast.

As of last week, 19 states and the District of Columbia had legalized same-sex marriage by one means or another. The Court’s decision not to take one of the cases from the lower Federal courts means that every one of them stands. Therefore, not only will same-sex marriage be legal in the states that made a direct appeal, but in every state included within the same U.S. Circuit.

That result is that the decision made clear by the Court will lead, automatically, to the fact that 30 states will have legal same-sex marriage within weeks, if not days. The news from the Court means that the vast majority of Americans will live where same-sex marriage is legal, and three fifths of the states will have legalized same-sex marriage.

But the Court’s decision also sent another even more powerful message. The remaining federal courts were put on notice that same-sex marriage is now the expectation of the Supreme Court and that no appeal on the question is likely to be successful, or even heard. You can expect the lower courts to hear that message loudly and clearly — and fast.

This day in U.S. legal history will be remembered for many years to come as a landmark day toward same-sex marriage. It was the day the nation’s highest court took one of the lowest paths of least resistance. It now seeks to maintain its prestige by avoiding the backlash the Court experienced in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade in 1973. It wants to have its victory without taking further risks to its reputation.

Given the recent remarks made by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, even some of the Court’s most liberal justices wanted to avoid a backlash while achieving the same eventual result. Today’s announcement means that their hopes were achieved.

But the decision today also indicates something further — it points to the vindication of Justice Antonin Scalia. When the Court handed down the decision striking down all state sodomy statutes in 2003 in Lawrence v Texas, Justice Scalia declared that it meant the end of all morals legislation. The majority opinion in that decision was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose legal reasoning was ridiculed by Scalia in one of his most scathing dissents.

Kennedy, said Scalia, had created “a massive disruption of the current social order,” that could not be stopped. Further: “Today’s opinion is the product of a Court, which is the product of a law-profession culture, that has largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda, by which I mean the agenda promoted by some homosexual activists directed at eliminating the moral opprobrium that has traditionally attached to homosexual conduct.”

Eleven years earlier, Scalia had dissented from another Kennedy majority opinion, that time on abortion. Justice Kennedy had sustained a right to abortion, maintaining the central impact of Roe and pushing further toward a mysterious existential argument. Kennedy had written, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

Scalia famously rejected that language as Kennedy’s “sweet-mystery-of-life passage,” and he saw that same reasoning behind the Lawrence decision.

But Scalia also said this about the 2003 decision: “This reasoning leaves on pretty shaky grounds state laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples.” Further: “Today’s opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as a formal recognition in marriage is concerned. If moral disapprobation of homosexual conduct is ‘no legitimate state interest’ for purposes of proscribing that conduct … what justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples?”

Indeed, the Lawrence decision did put all laws limiting marriage to opposite sex couples on shaky ground. Very shaky ground. Justice Scalia saw what now appears obvious. The Court’s decision in Lawrence in 2003 set the stage for today’s news.

Even more recently, Justice Kennedy was the author of the Court’s majority opinion in the Windsor decision striking down the federal government’s Defense of Marriage Act. That decision, handed down in June of 2013, set the stage for today’s development in a big way.

Once again, Justice Scalia saw it coming. He called the Court’s decision to strike down DOMA “jaw-dropping” in both its audacity and its reasoning. Then he offered these memorable words: “As far as this Court is concerned, no one should be fooled; it is just a matter of listening and waiting for the other shoe.”

That “other shoe” was the inevitability of same-sex marriage as a national reality.

What happened today at the Court — or perhaps what didn’t happen — is a direct vindication of Scalia’s warnings. He saw it coming and he warned us.

What the Court’s majority has now decided, evidently, is to allow shoes to fall at the hands of lower courts that will follow its reasoning and obey its signals.

The news from the Court today means a sad vindication for Justice Antonin Scalia. It means an even sadder day for marriage in America.

And it means, no matter what you think you heard or didn’t hear from Washington, that the other shoe has dropped.

I am always glad to hear from readers. Just write me at mail@albertmohler.com. You can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/albertmohler

For more information on Southern Seminary, visit SBTS.edu and for more information on Boyce College, visit BoyceCollege.com.

Transcript: The Briefing 10-06-14

The Briefing

 

October 6, 2014

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

 

It’s Monday, October 6, 2014.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Response to ruling on Texas clinic standards reveals pro-choice motivated by profit

One of the most important court victories for the pro-life cause in many years came at the end of last week. As Paul Weber for the Associated Press and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, a federal appeals court gave Texas permission to fully enforce a sweeping abortion law signed by Governor Rick Perry last year that would effectively close all but seven abortion facilities in America’s second-most populous state. And Paul Weber is entirely correct when he writes,

“The decision [by a panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court in New Orleans] wipes out what was a fleeting victory for abortion rights groups — a lower court in August blocking another portion of the law that say clinics must meet hospital-level operating standards to stay in business.”

Last year the Texas legislature adopted a law that brought abortion clinics under the same kind of medical requirements and medical supervision as would be the case and other medical facilities in the state; including hospitals. Doctors performing abortions were required to have admitting privileges at the local hospital. The facilities themselves also came under expanded regulation; bringing those facilities up to the same kind of codes experienced by the hospitals. The bill was signed into law by Governor Rick Perry of Texas and almost immediately the pro-abortion movement went into overdrive seeking to go to the courts in order to nullify the legislation. The math is itself really interesting. Just two years ago Texas had 40 abortion clinics, at the beginning of last week it had 20, as of the end of last week only seven functioning within the state. What we’re looking at here is a direct collision between the pro-abortion movement and the pro-life movement, and ground zero for that battle right now is the state of Texas.

Manny Fernandez, reporting for the New York Times use this language,

“The decision by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, will have a [immediate] effect on abortion services in Texas… The ruling gave Texas permission to require all abortion clinics in the state to meet the same building, equipment and staffing standards as hospital-style surgical centers, standards that abortion providers said were unnecessary and costly, but that the state argued improved patient safety. Thirteen clinics [he writes] whose facilities do not meet the new standards were to be closed overnight, leaving Texas — a state with 5.4 million women of reproductive age, ranking second in the country — with eight abortion providers, all in Houston, Austin [or] two other metropolitan regions. No abortion facilities will be open west or south of San Antonio.”

Now you’ll note that these two news reports differ in terms of the number of clinics now functioning; one says 7, one says 8. But in any event, we’ll know this week exactly what the number is and we will also know just how the pro-abortion movement intends now to respond. You can count on the fact that they’ll ask for an immediate hearing by the full panel of the Fifth Circuit, and if they fail there, you can count on the fact that they will then appeal to the United States Supreme Court. Either way, if Texas loses in the next round, Texas itself will appeal to the Supreme Court – meaning, that as the court begins hearing cases just today in Washington, it is likely to face yet another landmark abortion decision in this term or, if not, immediately in the next.

The decision handed down by the three-judge panel includes language of tremendous significance. For example, the judges rejected the claim made by the proponents of abortion that the closing of these clinics would mean that a substantial fraction of Texas women would be outside access to an abortion. They claim that it was not a large fraction when even those who are arguing against the law indicated that the closing of these clinics would mean that one out of six Texas women would be placed out of 150 miles of a local abortion clinic. In the words of the judge panel,

“This is nowhere near a ‘large fraction,’ ”

But the real issue isn’t math in this case, its morality. And the clash of moralities is both instructive and alarming. What we have here is a clash of worldviews, the worldview of the pro-life movement and the worldview of the pro-abortion movement. And the clash of worldviews leads to a clash of moralities. The morality of the pro-choice movement is that the only morally significant issue here is what is claimed to be a woman’s right to an abortion – that is a right that supposedly now is to trump all other concerns.

And, as is almost universally the case, the one person who is absent from any mention at all in terms of the references of the pro-abortion movement to their cause is the unborn child – but then again, they reject the fact that that unborn child is a person; certainly legally defined who might be understood to have any rights, such as a right to life. On the other side, the morality of the pro-life cause points to the fact that there are at least two morally significant individuals involved in the equation of abortion; there is both a woman and the unborn child. Very interestingly, the Texas legislature’s law makes clear that the right of a woman, even a woman seeking an abortion, to a kind of quality medical care that can be found for any other procedure should be the expectation of the woman and the requirement of the state. It should tell us something that the pro-abortion movement is adamantly opposed to requiring that abortion clinics would be up to the same kind of code that would be required of any other kind of similar medical clinic, and after all, the abortions being conducted – surgical abortions – are surgical procedures. It tells you something that the morality of the pro-abortion cause leads to the morally significant assumption that the only issue of moral concern here is the right of the woman. And furthermore, you also have in this clash of worldviews, the revelation that the absolute panic on the pro-abortion side comes down to the fact that there is a reduction of abortion clinics in Texas. And, as one of the pro-abortion advocates arguing before the panel said just a matter of months ago, if there are fewer abortion clinics, there would likely be fewer abortions.

And that points to the real cause of their panic. It appears that the pro-abortion movement is now so adamantly convinced that the only issue here is a woman’s right to abortion under any cause – for any reason or no reason, at any time, that they are absolutely opposed to anything that, for any reason, in any place – would reduce not only access to abortion but ultimately the number of abortions themselves. It remains to be seen exactly what abortion clinics will remain open in Texas, but there’s another angle to this that must always be kept in mind; the culture of death also seeks to make a profit. Abortion is actually in this country a huge business, a multi-hundred million dollar business. And organizations such as Planned Parenthood receive an incredible percentage of the revenue by performing abortions. So as it turns out the pro-abortion movement isn’t driven only by its fanatical obsession with what it calls a woman’s right to abortion, it is also driven by a profit motive. And that is also something that should always be kept in mind when the issue of a reduction of abortion clinics, and thus a reduction of abortions, is treated by abortion advocates as the very fall of civilization itself. For now, thanks to this decision by three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit, the law of the state of Texas on abortion will stand – and that is good news. Not just for women in the state of Texas, and not especially we might point out for unborn children in Texas, but for both women and unborn children elsewhere in America as well. For if this law is eventually, finally, sustained and we must hope that it will be so and pray to that end, it will almost assuredly be emulated by other states as well – and that is profoundly good news.

2) Minnesota debate on teens playing on ‘preferred gender teams’ reminder transgenderism not abstract issue

On Saturday I was in Washington DC at the Verizon Center speaking at a conference on marriage. When I picked up the Saturday edition of the Washington Post, I could hardly believe a headline story on page 1 of that newspaper. The headline: “Transgender athletes struggle to find their playing field.” The writer is Sandhya Somashekhar, and she’s writing about the fact that there are transgender athletes in schools, and they are challenging schools to allow them to play on whatever team that corresponds to the gender they now identify with. As the report says,

“It had been a relatively quiet policy debate until the full-page ad appeared in the local newspaper. ‘A male wants to shower beside your 14-year-old daughter,’ it said. ‘Are you OK with that?’ The ad [according to Washington Post], placed by a socially conservative group in Minnesota, was meant to snap attention to a proposal to allow transgender students to play on teams based on their preferred gender rather than the sex assigned to them at birth.”

And, as the Washington Post reports,

“It appears to have worked. More than 100 community members flooded a meeting this week near Minneapolis, and thousands more sent e-mails. In response, the quasi-public body governing high school sports in Minnesota decided to delay a vote on a new policy covering sports participation by transgender students. Members of the board of directors said they needed more time to study the issue.”

The policy is now going be taken up in December and as the Washington Post says, it was an attempt to grapple with a question that has bedeviled many states. The question is this:

“How do you deal with the growing number of children identifying as transgender who want to participate in the highly gender-specific worlds of high school sports and extracurricular activities?”

This is one of these stories that demands our attention because it makes very clear that this is not just an anecdotal issue; this is not a theoretical issue when it comes to the gender revolution we are now experiencing. We’re talking about the state of Minnesota and we’re talking about a proposed policy that would relate statewide in terms of athletics and extracurricular activities in the public schools there. But as this new story also makes clear, it would also affect Christian schools and other private educational institutions because those schools also play the public schools in the same athletic events; leading to the question, if you have a Christian school that is unwilling to play under these rules, must it forfeit specific games or will it eventually have to forfeit the sport altogether? The article cites Helen Carroll, identified as sports project director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights. She said,

“Generally, our society is becoming more accepting in its understanding of gender identity and what that means, and we’ve been very lucky that in the last few years this cadre of young kids has started identifying themselves as trans from a young age. [She then says] It’s really pushing folks to really grapple with and understand what it means.”

Well that’s something of an understatement. Once again we face a clash of worldviews, this time over the kind of policy related to who can play on which team when it comes to gender specific sports. As the Post reports,

“Thirty-two states have adopted policies in recent years regarding transgender athletes, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations, with several states [have placed] restrictions on their ability to compete with teammates of their preferred gender. For example, Virginia, Georgia and North Carolina require students to play on teams based on the gender listed on their birth certificate, according to Trans*Athlete, an online clearinghouse for information about transgender athletes. At least 10 states and the District allow transgender athletes to play on their preferred teams, according to [a group known as] Trans*Athlete. New York is expected to consider such a policy this month.”

You can absolutely count on the fact that your state, or your local school district, will confront this issue and likely very soon. This article is filled with the kinds of things that should set off all kinds of worldview and moral alarms. For instance, one young person quoted in the article is identified as an 18-year-old student at the University of Puget Sound and Washington. This individual graduated from a Minnesota high school last year, had been born as a girl but – this is going to the article – “came out as male just prior to his junior year.” At that point, the student remained on the girls’ track team in part because the coach was an advisor to the schools Gay Straight Alliance. This is indicative of the kind of language you find in these kinds of debates. The language of “coming out as male just prior to the students junior year,” the coming out as male is countered in this article by the fact that some of the policies identify, for instance, “biological boys.” We are the first generation, we should note, in all of human history to have to put the word ‘biological’ before the word ‘boy’ when it comes to identifying a young male by gender. In Minneapolis a group known as the Child Protection League stated that there would be a greater risk to girls playing with “biological boys” on teams, and furthermore said that a transgender girl with intact male anatomy could shower next other girls or bunk with them overnight trips, putting at risk of sexual assault.

Now at this point, we should simply interject this puts the entire society at risk of an absolute insanity. One of the realities of the transgender movement is that it always comes with demands that simply cannot be met. And furthermore, it also comes with incommensurate demands, sometimes even contradictory demands. When you look at the issue of gender, you have the feminists on one side arguing that when a boy decides to become a girl, it’s just an exercise of male privilege and then you have the trans-advocates saying that biological sex has nothing to do with an individual’s gender identity whatsoever. The collision of worldview here is not only between those who hold to a worldview that gender is assigned at birth, and is a biologically determined reality, against those who argue the gender is entirely fluid – there’s also a clash of worldviews within the radical agenda of the moral revolutionaries.

As you might expect, an article like this is also filled with absolutely heartbreaking language. One mother, responding to the proposal that children should be required to play on teams is assigned by their biological sex, said,

“It absolutely misrepresents the reality of what it means to be transgender.”

That was said by Alison Yocom, a Minneapolis mother of a transgender 11-year-old boy who is undergoing hormone therapy. The mother said

“You’re not a boy showering next to a girl,” she said. “A transgender girl is a girl. There’s a difference between your parts and your gender, and I know it’s hard to understand and there is a lot of controversy around this, but to be misgendered as a boy when you are actually a trans girl is incredibly offensive.”

One of the things to watch as this story continues to expand, not only over time but over geography, is the fact that many parents who claim to be absolutely enthusiastic about the moral revolution when it comes to normalizing homosexuality and even legalizing same-sex marriage, they have to come to a pause when it comes to the demands of the transgender revolution. That’s another revelation in the story by the Washington Post – it makes very clear that there is a division on this issue isn’t the same division as over the issue of homosexuality.

From a worldview perspective that is, indeed, interesting but it also affirms a basic principle of worldview thinking. When you find yourself in a position of joining this kind of moral revolution, you sign on to it. But then you discover that it has no limits. The moral revolution, the sexual revolution now set loose in our society has no limitation. It isn’t a stable project. It isn’t that it can simply stop with the normalization of homosexuality – it won’t stop with the legalization of same-sex marriage. It won’t stop with whatever comes next.

But now we know at least what the next is, it’s the transgender revolution. And what we see is that there are parents – who despite their claims to hold to a very liberal position on many of these issues – they actually still believe that if their child is, to use the language in this article a biological boy, he should play on a team made up of other biological boys, and vice versa when it comes to girls.

But there’s another angle on this as well and this one also demands our attention. For reasons that have nothing to do with gender ideology, the distinctions between many male sports and female sports or male and female versions of sports has a great deal to do with athletic ability, and strength, and other issues that are rather gender specific – some privileging women, some privileging man. If this is a problem in terms of high school sports just imagine what the total controversy will be when eventually the International Olympic Committee has to come up with some policy to deal with this at this point the IOC is dealing with a patchwork of policies, not anything that amounts to a comprehensive approach to the issue. And for good reason – just think of the composition of the International Olympic Committee.

It does include representatives from very liberal Western societies such as Western European nations, Canada, the United States, but the rest of the world is not signing on to this agenda, and they’re not signing on to this moral revolution. In the rest of the world, they’re still operating by more simple vocabulary. A vocabulary that, whatever the language, doesn’t require the word ‘biological’ before the word ‘boy’ or the word ‘girl.’ Those operating out of a biblical worldview understand that gender is a part of the goodness of God’s creation, and that as we are embodied human beings, our body – also a gift from God, a gift from our Creator to establish our identity – we understand that what we’re looking at here is the unraveling of the civilization and its entire moral understanding. And when we think of the roots of this we can certainly look to more proximate causes nearer to us in history; the ideologies, the academic theories, the political activism behind this. But in reality Christians have to go back where it began, and where began is Genesis 3, where the perfection of God’s creation was corrupted by human sin and by the effects of that sin. And what we’re looking at here is the kind of confusion that can only be explained by the fact that the creature is trying to determine his or her own identity apart from the Creator.

3) Hong Kong protests led by 17-year old voice for democracy

Finally, while we’re talking about teenagers, do you realize that the young man leading the political protest now garnering headlines around the world from Hong Kong is 17 years old he began his career as a political agitator and protester at age 14. This teenager has become a primary symbol in the world of opposition to a totalitarian government and advocacy of democracy and human rights. 17-year-old Joshua Wong was arrested on Friday night along with other leaders of the political protest, and he was released after 40 hours of being held by those authorities. We’re all waiting to see what’s going to happen now, as the Chinese government will respond to these protests. We have to hope and pray that they will not respond with the kind of murderous repression that took place a generation ago in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.

But the jury still out to see what the Chinese government will do. A political autocracy, a totalitarian dictatorship, doesn’t want to put up with protesters, regardless of age. But it should tell us something, something that should have our attention as well, that at the head of the protest in Hong Kong, a young man who is helping to advocate for and define democracy in his time in his country and his generation is 17 years old. You know, it just might be that the Chinese Communist Party is found someone they can’t shut up – a 17-year-old the message of democracy.

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information go to my website at AlbertMohler.com you can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boyecollege.com. I’ll meet you again tomorrow for The Briefing.

 

 

Genesis 21:1-21

The Briefing 10-06-14

1) Response to ruling on Texas clinic standards reveals pro-choice motivated by profit

Fewer Texas abortion providers after court ruling, Associated Press (Paul Weber)

Decision Allows Abortion Law, Forcing 13 Texas Clinics to Close, New York Times (Manny Fernandez)

2) Minnesota debate on teens playing on ‘preferred gender teams’ reminder transgenderism not abstract issue

A question for schools: Which sports teams should transgender students play on?, Washington Post (Sandhya Somashekhar)

3) Hong Kong protests led by 17-year old voice for democracy

Joshua Wong: The 17-Year-Old Public Face of Hong Kong’s Protests, Wall Street Journal (Isabella Steger)

Transcript: The Briefing 10-03-14

The Briefing

 

October 3, 2014

This is a rush transcript. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

 

It’s Friday, October 3, 2014.  I’m Albert Mohler and this is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.

1) Rise of ISIS reveals world is not becoming less religious

The rise of the Islamic State and other terrorist groups in terms of their contemporary threat to the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, has shocked many people – but it hasn’t shocked those who’ve been watching what has been going on in the world around us. A very interesting article comes from Pankaj Mishra, writing at Bloomberg BusinessWeek, when he writes about what he calls the New Crusades. As he writes,

“The so-called “return” of religion shocks us [he put the word return in quotation marks], it is because we are too accustomed to reading its premature obituary. A range from European prophets, from Marx to Max Weber, shared the belief that democracy, economic growth, technology and mass culture would wean people away from reliance on the supernatural and usher them into a truly ‘disenchanted’ secular world. [But as Mishra writes] As the process of modernization moved from the West to the non-West, [they believed that] religion would retreat from the public into the private sphere.”

However he says,

“For much of the world’s population, however, religion has continued to provide the basic vocabulary for conversation about society, politics, law and the good life. In fact, the threatening incursions of the West and the modern world in the 19th century stimulated a reinterpretation of religious faith and identity in many Asian and African countries.”

In other words, here as Pankaj Mishra writes, whereas many Western intellectuals promised that the modern world would become more and more secular in many parts of the world, he writes that the world has actually become far more religious; where even those areas that were more secular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are more explicitly religious now, at least in terms of the thinking and what he calls the basic vocabulary of the citizens of those countries. And furthermore, when you look at his article entitled “The New Crusades,” you understand that he’s making another point as well. It’s not just that in many parts of the world that there’s been a resurgence of religious belief, he’s writing that even in the parts the world declared to be most secular many people haven’t gone along with the secular trend.

I think his article is important for several reasons; one of them is of course the fact that he uses exactly the right kind of nomenclature to explain what’s going on. As he says,

“For … [many people in]…the world … religion has continued to provide [this is very important] the basic vocabulary for conversations about society, politics, law and the good life.”

As a matter fact, you can talk about the modern secular dream in the West being the dream of coming up with a way of having those conversations with out a theological vocabulary. But as we comment again and again on The Briefing the impossibility of that task continues to shine through. It shines through when you find modern secular intellectuals forced to use the word ‘evil,’ making that kind of severe moral judgment when you have the beheading of a Western journalist. No other word will do, and yet the word ‘evil’ is resisted amongst the secular elites, precisely because it has so many theological connotations; it has an overarching theological sense about it that simply can’t be denied. And now you have this article by Pankaj Mishra coming back to say that the elites continue to be surprised by the return of religion, but the big story is it never left. I think this article by Pankaj Mishra is actually brilliant in another way as well, because as he points out – even the anti-religious secular theories of so many intellectuals in the West, they were driven with a religious fervor that these intellectuals proposed even as they claimed to the end to all religious beliefs. He writes,

“Modern nationalism itself has the symbolism and ritual of religion: a missionary belief in cultural distinctiveness, a political theology that includes declarations of independence and constitutions, and civic liturgies demanding reverence for the flag and founding fathers. Religious symbols and narratives have long permeated even the evidently secularized West.”

Well, I think any cogent analysis will indicate that secularization is real, but it’s never as even, it’s never as continuous, it’s never as pervasive, as many of intellectuals want to claim. And as he writes, even when you find rather authentically secular moments, those moments tended not to last. Just consider the claims for secularity made by the French revolutionaries and how short-term many of those pretensions turned out to be. Mishra points out that even when it comes to nationalism, the nationalism often has a theological element to it that can’t be denied. Queen Elizabeth remains, as he says, the head of the Church of England; even today, supposedly secular Germany, finances its churches and allows them to tax their members. As he says, even in the increasingly secular United States of America most political debates include explicitly religious, if not theological, elements. He then writes,

“Clearly, our faith in the miracle of secular modernization defies all evidence of the intensity, persistence and variety of religious belief in the West as well as the East. More fatefully, it hinders us from questioning whether there is such a thing as the purely secular.”

From time to time an article like this appears that simply cries out for attention. And this article by Pankaj Mishra at Bloomberg BusinessWeek certainly does, because it speaks a word of ringing truth. The word of truth that even in a secular age, you can’t suppress the religious vocabulary – it comes out again and again. As much as you might want to eradicate theology from the intellectual public square, you can’t – because you find yourself required to use words like ‘evil’ when no other word will do. It was that great Christian theologian Augustine who pointed out in the fifth century that our hearts are restless until they find their rest in God – it is true that nature abhors a vacuum and there is no such thing as a theological vacuum, there is no such thing as a truly secular moment or a truly secular state. And it is important that we realize that. And it’s important that Christians understand that that is not simply a sociological reality, it is because God made us as human beings in his image and made us to know him – whether we want to know him or not.

2) Fall of Arab civilization reminder of danger of seeds of barbarism to any civilization

Next, we often talk about the achievement of society or civilization – far too many American Christians take for granted the fact that civilization just exist, it doesn’t just exist. It is the product of a worldview that is embodied in certain acts, in social trust, that builds up a society and eventuates into a civilization. And a civilization can be built and a civilization can be destroyed. That leads us to a very important article that appeared in Politico Magazine, the article is written by Hisham Melham and he writes about Arab civilization; saying that the barbarians are winning and the civilization is collapsing. In his article he writes this,

“Arab civilization, such as we knew it, is all but gone. The Arab world today is more violent, unstable, fragmented and driven by extremism—the extremism of the rulers and those in opposition—than at any time since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire a century ago. [He continued,] Every hope of modern Arab history has been betrayed. The promise of political empowerment, the return of politics, the restoration of human dignity heralded by the season of Arab uprisings in their early heydays—all has given way to civil wars, ethnic, sectarian and regional divisions and the reassertion of absolutism, both in its military and atavistic forms. With the dubious exception of the antiquated monarchies and emirates of the Gulf—which for the moment are holding out against the tide of chaos—and possibly Tunisia, there is no recognizable legitimacy left in the Arab world.”

Now this article, which amounts to an elegy for civilization in the Arab world, is heartbreaking – it’s tragic – it’s heartbreaking to read the words of an Arab intellectual who, looking at the Arab civilizations of the past, says they are just that – of the past. The hopes had been dashed; the barbarians are now in control. And those of us who are Christians looking at this to a biblical worldview have to understand the sheer tragedy of what he’s writing about here – it is an authentic tragedy, it is an unquestionable tragedy. And the rise of the Islamic State and so much mayhem in part to the Arab world is the demonstration of the fact that when civilization disappears, something far more ominous and dangerous appears as its replacement.

But we also need to look at this and consider the fact that the barbarians, as he says, in the Arab world were always in the gates – they were just held in check. And that’s certainly true for every single civilization. As many people – historians of old and more recently – have noted, Rome fell not just because of the barbarians outside but because of the barbarism that spread within. And the point made by this article in Politico Magazine is that the roots of the barbarian that have overtaken the Arab world came from not outside those societies but inside. And that’s where American Christians looking at this from a Christian worldview have recognize that this isn’t just about the Arab world and the demise of Arab civilization, it’s also about the fact that when the seeds of barbarism are sown in any civilization, they eventually bear fruit in the kind of lawlessness, anarchy, and collapse of civilization, we find here. We should not rest in any false assumption that there is some divine providence that protects America and Western civilization from the same kind of collapse. We look at examples of old, like the fall the Roman Empire, and we look at examples closer to hand, such as the fall of Arab civilization, and we understand that when barbarism is set loose inevitably the barbarians win. You can’t limit this to the Arab world – when barbarianism rules anywhere, the civilization dies.

3) Consent laws replace objectivity of marriage with subjective experience as basis of morality 

And next, earlier this week we talked about the moral insanity demonstrated by the fact that the governor California signed a bill that changes the law in California away from a ‘no means no’ understanding of sexual morality to a ‘yes means yes’ understanding; in other words, redefining consent. But as we discussed, consent simply can’t bear the weight of sexual morality. What you have here is the accusation that the way to respond to an epidemic of rapes happening on American college and university campuses, is to educate young people on how to have sex outside of marriage in a way that will create a safe moral environment by the category of consent. One of the things we need to point out is that from a Christian biblical worldview, there is a huge problem here before you even get to how the world you might define consent. What we’re looking at here is the proposal that you shift the moral question about sexuality away from what’s called an ontological reality to a subjective experience, or you might say away from an objective institution like marriage towards a subjective experience. Any sexual morality that ignores the objective reality of marriage as the moral norm, and tries to exchange instead a morality based on a subjective experience, is going to discover that you can never define that subjective experience. That kind of shift is not only wrong, it’s actually impossible to carry out.

We talked about the fact that even as now, you have these educational projects going on in American college and university campuses, trying to tell young men that ‘no means no’ has to give way ‘yes means yes,’ saying that they have a clear vocal or visual and unambiguous and continual consent in order to continue in a sexual conquest. You know, a further insanity demonstrated in article that appeared just days ago in Slate.com when Amanda Hess writes that a new app for the iPhone has been developed in order to indicate consent. This article by Amanda Hess goes on to try to explain how all the options in this app work. You really don’t need to know them, let me just explain this: what you have here is a classic example of insanity turned into a consumer product. Here you have an app for the iPhone, also available on Google Play, in which the biggest most consequential moral decisions of life are exchanged and minimized for ‘good to go,’ ‘yes, but..,’ ‘No thanks.’ Look at this and you recognize, here you have the institutionalization, the commercialization of this kind of moral insanity. And you’ll also notice something else; look how quick the market is to respond to this. Governor Brown signed that bill into law on Sunday night, and already you have people saying “we’ve got an app for that.”

4) Individualized preferred gender pronouns underline centrality of gender to human identity

Next, when it comes to moral insanity it’s hard to top an article by Allan Metcalf that appeared recently in the pages of the Chronicle of Higher Education. The title of the article, “What’s Your PGP?” If you don’t have a PGP, perhaps you need to know that at least some academics think you need one. It is your preferred gender pronoun. This is what Metcalf writes,

“It’s a question we didn’t have to answer in the 20th century. In fact, it’s a question that didn’t exist until recently”

Now let me just pause and say, he’s profoundly right about that. This was a question we didn’t have to answer in the 20 century or any previous century of human existence. And as he says, it’s a question that didn’t exist until recently. And the fact that it does exist is a demonstration of the moral confusion of our times. And it’s the kind of article, the kind of development that demands Christian attention. He’s talking about the fact that when you look at the now multiplication of all these initials for gay lifestyles, in fact it’s hard to come up with the adequate word for that, you have LGBTQQ2IA and as some are using the acronym “Quiltbag.” When you look at this, Metcalf says,

“Nowadays we understand that anatomy isn’t destiny; it’s your choice to be called lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning, intersex, asexual—or something else.”

And then he goes on to say,

“That’s not a mis-statement. It is your choice, we have been told. We have reached the point that regardless of anatomy, you can choose your gender identity. And you can choose to change your gender identity as often as you change your clothes.”

Which, he says, brings up a question we didn’t have before: what pronouns should others use in talking about you? And then, celebrating the revolution, he writes,

“Fortunately, it’s not a problem in direct conversation, where first- and second-person pronouns are used: I/me/mine, you/your/yours. Those are gender-neutral and all-encompassing, regardless of your gender identity.”

He says, but the problem also doesn’t exist in the third person plural when you say: they/them/their. No, the problem is in the first person other than the plural. When someone talks about the singular you, using the third person – this is where the problem comes when in the new sexual revolution you can’t say ‘him’, and you can’t say ‘her’; you can’t say ‘he’ and you can’t say ‘she.’ So what are you going to say? Well, according to this article – meant to be taken very seriously on American college and university campuses and in the society beyond – we are told you need to ask ‘what’s your PGP?’ Which stands for preferred gender pronouns.

Allan Metcalf points to a series of suggestions made at Carleton College, a Liberal college that has a sexuality and gender activism club, which suggests

“Kick things off by asking: ‘Do you have a preferred pronoun?’ Recognize that while this might make some people confused, it’s also an awesome opportunity to explain why you’re doing it, and it will really mean something to those who have been misidentified or care about the issue.”

So now you’re supposed to start every conversation on an American college or university campus, and in the society beyond, by asking: do you have a preferred pronoun? Carleton’s group, again it’s a sexuality and gender activism club, says,

“One great way to ask for preferred pronouns is to incorporate preferred pronoun into introductions, particularly in student organization meetings. So, for example, you could say, ‘Hey, I’m Schiller, I’m from Germany, I’m a super-senior, English and Philosophy double major and my preferred pronouns are he/him.’ See [says the article], wasn’t that easy? Your turn!”

Nationwide, the Gay Straight Alliances for Safe Schools explains the question is necessary.

“Could a person identify as female and also prefer he/him/his? Sure!” And as [the Carleton college group], “Don’t expect that if you ask once, you’re set forever—people’s (gender) identities can change, so check in!”

The group known as the Gay Straight Alliances for Safe Schools has put out an article entitled “What the Heck is a PGP?” and in answering it, they say this:

Some people prefer that you use gender neutral or gender inclusive pronouns when talking to or about them. In English, the most commonly used singular gender neutral pronouns are ze (sometimes spelled zie) and hir. “Ze” is the subject pronoun and is pronounced /zee/, and “hir” is the object and possessive pronoun and is pronounced /heer/. [Here] is how they are used: ‘Chris is the tallest person in class, and ze is also the fastest runner.’ ‘Tanzen is going to Hawaii over break with hir parents. I’m so jealous of hir.’”

Well, here you see absolute insanity played out as a moral mandate on American college and University campuses. And furthermore, the documents from these groups I hold in my hand is a multipage document that includes charts of exactly how you should consider alternative ways of doing this; giving every single individual on the University campus an equal right to claim a completely different set of pronouns and to demand that they be used for now – reserving the right to change at any point what those pronouns may be; as Metcalf says, as quickly as one can change your clothes. This kind of insanity is now ruling in American academic life. These rules I’m pointing out here, are not merely suggestions on some campuses, there now being legislated in terms of the speech codes that are expected to be used by all professors, administrators, and fellow students. And of course what happens on the American college and University campus never stays there, nor is it intended to. This is the launching of a further moral revolution that is intended, eventually, to show up in your local high school and eventually in your kindergarten and preschool. And pretty soon, we are told that this is the only way you can talk acceptably in public. And of course what it amounts to is a direct rebellion against the idea that human beings are made as male and female, and that these are morally significant and reality significant categories.

And it’s not just the college and University campus as we’ve said, a recent edition of the Washington Post, included under the national common, an article entitled “When no gender fits: A quest to be seen as just a person.” This is a really important article from the Christian worldview. Monica Hesse he writes, that what happens in terms of the experience of some modern individuals is that they want to identify with no gender what so ever. The article here centers on an individual known as Kelsey Beckham, who doesn’t want to be known as male or female – or for that matter anything else – but wants to be known as no gender whatsoever. Now this is a truly radical proposal, it’s radical enough to gain the attention of the Washington Post. But the writer for the Washington Post seems to think that this is probably something that ought to make common sense if only we can figure it out.

The modern secular worldview has disarmed itself from having any moral mechanism for dealing with an argument like this. If you agree that every single human being, at every single moment, has the right to determine what they are in terms of gender and sexuality, even to demand a completely new vocabulary, maybe even an individual vocabulary, you’re absolutely disarmed from being able to say “we don’t know what a person is without some concept of gender.” Now you’ll notice the biblical worldview starts with this: in the beginning and in the beginning what do we find? That God created human beings in His image. And how did he create them? Male and female, he created them. And throughout the Scripture, there is a continuous narrative rooted in creation of the fact that human beings are made is male and female and that from beginning to end – in past, present, and future – in the kingdom represented in creation and in the new kingdom yet to come, gender is still important. And it is because, at least in part, we are embodied creatures and our bodies are not merely some kind of vessel into which we have been poured or trapped, it is indeed a part of who we are made in God’s image – and for that reason, our bodies tell us something.

In reading an article like this one at the Washington Post or like the previous article at the Chronicle of Higher Education, Christians are often prompted to respond with a sense of tragedy. And it is undeniably tragic. Christians are prompted to respond with a heartfelt concern, and that is an appropriate response. But we also need to understand that behind this kind of rebellion is the affirmation of a biblical truth, and that’s almost always the case. Every time a heretic utters a heresy, accidentally, the heretic actually points to the truth; because by denying the truth, the truth is even indirectly affirmed. And that’s what you see here in this as well – in the denial of the importance of gender, in the claim that you can have a human being who claims no gender at all and rejects any gender identity whatsoever, you have the Washington Post understanding that it has to write a news story about this and try to understand it because the secular mind, being as secular as it can possibly determine itself to be, simply also lacks a category to explain how this can work. And so Christians looking at this have to recognize that it is not only an article that sounds an alarm, like so many others, it’s also an article that announces an opportunity – an opportunity to respond to this kind of confusion in a world that is increasingly scratching its head in befuddlement as to how it can even follow its own advice. The opportunity is this: to speak the word of the gospel perhaps where it isn’t expected and the word of the gospel that brings moral sense, as well as the message of salvation, a word of the gospel that tells us that indeed a part of the good news is that God knew us before we even knew ourselves and had a plan for us, even before we existed.

Thanks for listening to The Briefing. For more information go to my website at AlbertMohler.com you can follow me on Twitter by going to twitter.com/albertmohler. For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary go to sbts.edu. For information on Boyce College just go to boyecollege.com. I’ll meet you again on Monday for The Briefing.